Chainfeeds Summary:
As concerns about financial surveillance intensify and Bitcoin accelerates its institutionalization, privacy is once again being seen by the market as a core monetary attribute, rather than just a preference of a few geeks or ideological groups.
Article source:
https://www.odaily.news/zh-CN/post/5208422
Article Author:
Messari
Opinion:
Messari argues that it's highly unlikely Bitcoin will adopt a privacy pool architecture similar to Zcash's at the protocol layer, thus the claim that Bitcoin will eventually absorb Zcash's value proposition is unfounded. The Bitcoin community is known for its highly conservative technical culture, prioritizing the solidification of mechanisms to minimize the attack surface and maintain the integrity of the monetary system. Embedding privacy features at the protocol layer would require modifications to Bitcoin's core architecture, introducing potential inflationary vulnerabilities that threaten its core monetary credibility. For Zcash, this risk is acceptable because privacy is its core value proposition. Furthermore, introducing zero-knowledge cryptography at the base layer would significantly reduce the blockchain's scalability. Preventing double-spending requires nullifiers and hashed ticket structures, which carries the long-term risk of state bloat. Nullifiers are essentially a continuously growing list that can eventually lead to a significant increase in the resource costs required to run nodes. If nodes are forced to store an ever-expanding set of nullifiers, Bitcoin's decentralization will be substantially weakened, as the barrier to entry for running a node will increase over time. The urgency of privacy needs has been amplified by the emergence of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) in various countries. Currently, about half of the world's countries are researching or have already launched CBDCs. A core feature of CBDCs is programmability: issuers can not only track every transaction but also directly control how, when, and where funds are used. Funds can even be set to be effective only at designated merchants or within specific geographical areas. This is not a dystopian fantasy but a reality: In Nigeria (2020), during the #EndSARS protests against police violence, the Central Bank of Nigeria froze the bank accounts of several protest organizers and women's rights groups, forcing the movement to rely on cryptocurrencies to operate. In the United States (2020–2025), regulators and large banks have debanked a range of legitimate but politically unpopular industries, citing reputational risks. This issue has become so serious that the White House has ordered an investigation, and a 2025 research report by the OCC documented systemic restrictions on the oil and gas, gun, adult content, and crypto industries. Canada (2022): During the "Freedom Cars" protests, the Canadian government invoked the Emergency Act to freeze the bank and crypto accounts of protesters and small donors without court authorization. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police even blacklisted 34 self-custodied crypto wallet addresses, demanding that all regulated exchanges cease trading with them. This incident clearly demonstrates that Western democracies are also willing to weaponize their financial systems to suppress political dissent. As Naval Ravikant and Balaji Srinivasan, among others, have emphasized, Zcash is essentially an insurance policy to uphold the vision of Bitcoin's financial freedom. Bitcoin is rapidly concentrating in centralized entities: centralized exchanges hold approximately 3 million BTC, ETFs hold approximately 1.3 million, and publicly traded companies hold approximately 829,000. A total of approximately 5.1 million BTC (24% of the total supply) are currently held by third-party custodians. This means that approximately one-quarter of the BTC supply is theoretically at risk of regulatory confiscation. This structure is highly similar to the centralized conditions under which the US government confiscated gold in 1933. Back then, the US government, through Executive Order 6102, mandated that citizens surrender more than $100 in gold reserves and exchange them for paper money at a fixed rate. This process didn't rely on violence but was completed through the banking system. The path for Bitcoin is entirely the same. Regulators don't need to possess your private keys; they only need legal jurisdiction over the custodian. Once the government issues enforcement orders to institutions like BlackRock and Coinbase, these companies are legally obligated to freeze and transfer their BTC holdings. Without modifying a single line of code, nearly a quarter of the BTC supply could be nationalized overnight.
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