Zcash - The Last Bits of Freedom

Back in the days, thousands of years ago, I didn’t need any money, I just trust my fellow tribe and we all share our stuff, great times. But our tribe grew, and we have more people. More people, more complexity.

Now let’s say we have a big village, and I am a fisherman with lots and lots of fish, let’s Imagine you have lots of bananas, I want banana so I trade fish for your bananas, but maybe you don’t like fish, now I can’t get bananas with my fish, but I really want bananas!! How do we fix this??

What if we make this thing that represents value? Cowrie shells are pretty good, they’re small, portable, hard to fake and pretty scarce so let’s use them! Now I can buy whatever I want with my fish.

Without the concept of money, I as a fisherman need to collect other things, otherwise I will only get to eat fish. Humans as a species are so cool, we get to specialize in one thing and get everything we want. Look at every other species of animal, good at their little thing, but no one is specializing in anything. That’s why we build civilizations, and they don’t.

But civilization grows overtime, and better civilizations require better money.

Back to cowrie shells, they worked really well for us, thousands of years actually. But what happened to them? Well, they were quite scarce back then in the places that used them, but turns out Maldives exist, and they have a bunch of cowrie shells, that means a bunch of them appeared suddenly, and now there are more shells than things. And now things have become really expensive. Cowrie shells are no longer scarce, therefore the society no longer trusts it as money.

Now what?

What about metals? They are valuable and hard to get right? Silver and Gold were great, because they don’t corrode, they are shiny, they are scarce but enough to circulate, and as civilizations grew, they needed a better form of money, Silver and Gold were just perfect.

They are perfect, but they are not convenient. It doesn’t work when we need thousands of transactions every day, we need something that makes trading easy.

Every empire tried to make a variation of money that makes trade simpler like coins or paper money. I as a fisherman loved them, now I don’t need to carry heavy metal with me all the time!

But all forms of non Gold and Silver currency eventually failed.

Rome’s coin fell from 95% silver to 1%, because the ruler wanted to fund wars, build palaces, pay soldiers without raising taxes. Once I realized that my coins don’t have any real value, I stopped trusting them.

That’s why we had to keep going back to good ol’ Gold and Silver every time, and this cycle repeated on and on, in every civilization, ancient Rome, Ming Dynasty, Ottoman Empire, all the same fate.

End of 19ᵗʰ century. Classical Gold Standard Era. Inflation was near zero and the whole world was trading happily. I am a happy fisherman, and every fish I sell was 2 cents a pound, from when I was 20, to when I retire. But then...

World War One happened. The world needed lots and lots of money for the war, and they need it quick. So what did they do? They abandoned the Gold standard to print money for the war. Oh no, but understandable.

After the war, the economy had to be stabilized from that. The U.S had the most control at that point, and they made money cheap to borrow, free money for everyone!

Me and all my friend borrow money to invest on markets, because we all know that the market will go up and only up! With all the technology we are seeing, radio, TV, cars, we are so back! The boom will go forever right? Right..?

The classic bubble pop. The Great depression. Everything crashed. I start withdrawing all my remaining Gold from the bank. Because I know Gold has value. And banks all failed because everyone took their Gold out. I thought I was safe with my Gold. BUT THEN...

Gold ownership became illegal. The government knocked on my door and forced me to sell all my Gold, at 20.67 dollar per ounce. And oh, after they took my Gold, they put it at 35 dollar per ounce. So my dollars? Devalued 40% overnight. That’s okay for me though, because I didn’t have much anyway, I’m happy about it actually because now people have money to buy my fish.

If we have the ability to alleviate the pain when hard time comes, we will always do it. Sometimes this can benefit me, but most of the times it benefits whoever have the power to control the currency. In the long term, we are just kicking the can down the road, and waiting for everything to collapse overtime.

For some time after the Great Depression, Gold Standard still exists between countries and US Dollar, which means every country can redeem their US Dollar for Gold, and overtime countries realized that it makes sense to have the physical Gold in their soil, so they asked for more and more Gold from the U.S.

1971 is when U.S decided to completely remove the Gold Standard. Dollars were just papers, and money now lives completely on our belief of the USD.

But it’s 2025, it’s seems like things are fine, I’m still living okay I guess?

Are you sure?

Why could our grandparents afford living on one income?

Why could our grandparents afford a house when they’re 25?

Why can’t I buy a house with my 100k savings?

This is all a big scam. And we all are getting robbed. The cost-of-living crisis is more like a debt crisis caused by the removal of the Gold standard. You can only print money for so long.

We love creating solutions to our problems. And the first good solution against all this was Bitcoin.

Some person figured out that with Math and Computers, we can create a currency that cannot be controlled by anyone.

But how?

Bitcoin don't rely on control, it relies on transparency and immutability of Math. If everyone can see exactly how and where every Bitcoin is, if you try to do something sneaky, we'll see it and reject the validity of what you just did.

Bitcoin also has a limited amount, there will only be 21 million Bitcoins max. Which means it is less inflatable than Gold and any currency we've created.

Bitcoin is weightless, we don't have to carry it around to spend it. The infrastructure we have makes it as easy as it is to pay with your credit card.

Bitcoin decentralizes the power back to the individual. It solves the problem of inflation, centralized control, counterfeit, lack of storability and transportability. But why aren't we all using it?

The people who have the power are not dumb. Why would they accept a currency that gives the power back to me - the fisherman?

That's why they reject it, and they're convincing us to reject it too. Whoever has the power will reject the very thing that takes the power away from them.

Slowly but surely, for the past 15 years, Bitcoin is becoming more and more mainstream. From the currency of the online nerds and criminals, to major institutional acceptance.

It used to cost 10000 Bitcoins to buy a pizza, and now you can buy an entire mansion with less than a percent of that.

Everyone knows about Bitcoin, everyone knows someone who has some Bitcoin. And we can use our Bitcoin almost everywhere. From fish to bananas, from pizza to mansions.

Governments have it, big companies have it, and most importantly, I as a fisherman also can have it.

Bitcoin is synonymous with digital currency. It is the defacto online money.

It sounds like we're winning, but are we?

Transparency.

It is the solution to a decentralized system, but also a fatal flaw that can be exploited by anyone. It’s amazing that everyone can audit every single transaction for Bitcoin, but it is also terrifying.

Even if Bitcoin is winning, governments now have the power to seize it, corporations now have the power to track your spending habits, and bad actors can tell who to rob. Because every transaction I will ever do with Bitcoin will be traced right back to me.

I want to be a good citizen, but I don’t want to just pray that our government will never be tyrannical. I don’t want to pray for my Bitcoins to remain out of sight, and I don’t want to just pray bad actors won’t rob me of everything I have.

Transparency poses a crucial issue for the present and future. I am a simple fisherman who buys a 5 dollar black coffee at my local gas station every morning at 8, and because of the transparent system, anyone in the world can know about exactly how much Bitcoin I own, where and how I spend every single one of my dime.

We fixed the problem of money centralization with Bitcoin, and now we are left with the problem of transparency.How do we fix that? Zero Knowledge Proof.

What is Zero Knowledge Proof?

In one sentence, Zero Knowledge Proof is a mathematical way to prove that a piece of information exists without revealing any underlying information.

An easy example would be: Imagine you’re locked out of your home. You would need to call the maintenance company to open the door for you, and you usually need to show an ID to prove that you own the house. With Zero Knowledge Proof, you just need to show a code which proves that you are indeed the owner of the house, without telling them your name or your address. And the code reveals no extra information.

Basically pure magic.

The creator of Bitcoin mentioned he would like Zero Knowledge Proof for Bitcoin, but at the time, it was deemed technically impossible, and the infamous “double spend” problem can only be solved by everyone seeing everyone else’s wallet address.

But in 2016, it all became possible.

A group of scientists, builders and cypherpunks have been working on Zcash quietly behind all the boom of crypto for the past decade. Good software takes a decade to build, and that decade is now behind. Zcash now has not only a solid community and tech, but a great user experience for the holders and the builders.

Zcash gives it’s user privacy, and the privacy is optional. You can remain in the light just like Bitcoin, or you can “shield” your token, where only you know how much you have.

Zero Knowledge Proof makes all of this possible, so when the Fed wants you, or when someone wants to stalk or track you, they do not have the capability to do so no matter how hard they try. There is no technology possible for anyone to see your shielded tokens, unless you tell everyone exactly how much you have.

I’m a fisherman, and my village does not need to know how much money I have. Cash is inflatable, Gold is hard to carry and use, Bitcoin is transparent. Zcash on the other hand.

Why 1000x? Because assets like Gold, Bitcoin cannot go too far beyond what they already are. At the time of the writing, Gold is at 30 trillion USD market cap. Bitcoin is at 1.8 trillion USD market cap, and Zcash is 6 USD billion. The world has about 900 trillion USD. When the world wants private money, much of it will be in Zcash, you can take a guess how much money in the world seeks privacy.

But this is not an investment advice, because Zcash is not a trade. If you see it that way, you will lose your money anyway even if Zcash goes to 1000x somehow.

Why is there so much noise about Zcash recently?

While undoubtedly there is massive price swing, the ecosystem around it has evolved over the last decade, and especially this year.

It is now easier than ever to “shield” your ZEC(Zcash token), the friction for the end user is near zero. If you don’t believe me, download Zashi and ask your friend to send you some ZEC, it will take less than 5 minutes.

It is also now easier than ever to spend it privately, you can swap anything to ZEC, shielding it, and literally making all of your money private.

At the end of the day. Price going up is good, it attracts a bigger crowd, and a certain subset of the crowd will understand Zcash substance and contribute. Write, build, and advocate.

Welcome fisherman, and shields up.