"ZODL is to Zcash What Coinbase Was to Bitcoin" | Josh Swihart on ZEC’s Awakening
What happens when every payment, wallet, and onchain interaction becomes searchable by governments, companies, adversaries, and AI? Josh Swihart, founder and CEO of Zcash Open Development Lab, joins David to explain why Zcash is having a major privacy comeback, how ZODL and the Zashi wallet helped unlock real shielded adoption, why the shielded pool may be the most important ZEC metric, and what it will take for private money to become too big to kill.
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TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Intro
4:17 Privacy in the AI Era
6:19 Crypto’s Missing Privacy Layer
9:49 The Political Fight for Privacy
14:42 Can Crypto Retain Privacy?
16:47 From Zashi to ZODL
19:48 The Zcash Reawakening
21:41 Balaji, Funding, and the Mission
24:49 Product Market Fit for Shielded ZEC
27:51 ZODL's Role in the Zcash Stack
29:36 The Zcash Roadmap
32:56 What Is ZEC and is it Undervalued?
36:56 The Shielded Pool Explained
45:12 The $25M ZODL Raise
47:16 Compliance and Shielded ZEC
51:25 Institutions vs Cypherpunk Values
53:58 Personal Privacy in an AI World
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RESOURCES
Josh Swihart
https://x.com/jswihart
ZODL
https://x.com/zodl_app
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Why the Privacy Coins Mania Is Much More Than Price Action - Ep. 945
In this episode, Josh Swihart, CEO of the Electric Coin Company, which created Zcash, and Harry Halpin, co-founder of Nym, join Laura to delve into why privacy coins have taken off, and why technology is suddenly at the center of conversations involving governments, financial institutions, and national security officials.
They discuss what’s actually driving the privacy coin renaissance, why transparent ledgers create risks far beyond user behavior, and how technologies like zero-knowledge proofs and mixnets are reshaping what’s possible onchain.
Josh and Harry also break down exchange support, institutional interest, the Zcash DAT, upcoming Zcash upgrades, and whether Ethereum or Solana (or others) can realistically add privacy to chains that were never designed for it.
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Guests:
Josh Swihart, CEO of the Electric Coin Company
Harry Halpin, CEO and Co-founder of Nym Technologies
Timestamps:
🎬 0:00 Teaser Clip
🎙️ 1:14 Introduction
🌅 1:29 The reasons why Harry and Josh say we’re in a privacy “renaissance”
🛡️ 11:00 Why privacy matters, and how Harry first got pulled into the space
🔐 15:59 How zero-knowledge proofs and other privacy technologies actually work
⚡ 21:12 Why Josh started Zcash and what his long-term vision looks like
📊 24:48 The real-world ways Zcash is being used
💸 28:40 How the Winklevoss brothers are backing the new wave of privacy projects
🏛️ 30:12 How centralized exchanges should support privacy
🕵️ 35:56 Why financial institutions are suddenly interested in privacy and why governments see it as a national-security issue
🌐 38:42 How Nym aims to protect metadata and network-level privacy
🪙 44:47 Why Nym has a token and what role it plays
🔭 49:53 What’s coming next for privacy tech and for Zcash
🧱 54:55 Whether Ethereum, Solana, or other L1s can realistically add privacy to chains that weren’t designed for it
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