Why Israel's Banks Will Unite Over Blockchain

The general consensus is that there is huge potential in blockchain technology. Some say it may be as big as the Internet itself, doing for transactions of value what the former has done for transfers of information.

 

Blockchain could completely alter traditional industries, changing the face of financial transactions, legal contracts, verification mechanisms and even voting procedures. Where consensus is lacking, there possibly lie the future steps of blockchain.

What can we expect to see next? Our hunch: we are entering the phase of the institutionalization of blockchain, and it will be led by the financial system. Yes, by the banks.

The potential advantages to using blockchain are obvious. Most significant is the ability to remove the middleman, and allow for faster, cheaper and more secure transactions. This could prove to be economically beneficial to the financial system which facilitates billions of transactions every day.

 

No less important is the advantage it provides for developing countries, where trust in the authorities is relatively low, and especially for those which suffer from high levels of corruption. There, people are looking for different ways to realize their civil liberties, including voting, identity verification, registering land ownership, etc. Blockchain technology – direct, decentralized, and secure – provides a potentially unprecedented and private alternative to these.

 

Early adoptor

Arguably one of the most vibrant blockchain industries currently is in Israel. A combination of expertise in cryptography and Big Data gained in the world of security and defense, combined with a passionate and talented entrepreneurial ecosystem has led a growing number of companies to lead the way to the next big thing in the blockchain domain.

 

These companies include startups like Synereo (a decentralized communication platform), Simplex (a payments service working on enabling bitcoin purchases with credit cards), Colu (Colored Coins).

Yet, careful observation of the Israeli ecosystem shows that it comprises much more than early-stage startups. Major Israeli financial institutions, perhaps lacking the sheer magnitude and market share of their American and European counterparts, are showing increasing interest in various applications being developed by these younger companies.

 

Several banks (such as Bank Hapoalim, Leumi and Citi Bank) have launched accelerators with infrastructure designated to support early-stage initiatives. They offer much-needed funding, technical support and the opportunity to interact and collaborate with the banking system. This synergy could prove to be extremely valuable, as one of the major hurdles facing entrepreneurs in the field is developing products and solutions that could be adapted for, and used by, the highly conservative, heavily regulated environment such as that in which the banking system operates.

 

In addition, more investors are being drawn into the industry, incentivizing promising ventures and adding fuel to the growing excitement and expectations surrounding the field. Recently, we're also seeing increased involvement of lawyers and accountants in the sphere, discussing implications and working with their clients on some of the challenges associated with blockchain.

 

Regulation driven

One cannot ignore the resemblance between the current growth in the industry and the evolution of the Israeli cyber industry roughly a decade ago. What began as a small group of cyber startups soon became a deluge of hundreds of companies, providing innovative technology and multi-tier services around the globe. Similar, but not the same. Unlike the cyber industry, the blockchain industry is lacking crucial tail-wind from the regulator.

Almost two decades ago, the Israeli regulator came to the understanding that cyber was becoming a major new front. The main driver was the concern surrounding cyber-attacks on critical national infrastructure and security installations. The sharpest minds from the Israeli defense industry convened to discuss a national realignment to ensure Israel's ability to confront future challenges.

 

Eventually the government adapted a combined approach, emphasizing the development of human talent, investment in technology, building institutions, allocating funding and providing a regulatory environment that allowed the industry to thrive. All together this has led to an unprecedented boost to the Israeli cyber industry, a push that Israel is still reaping benefits from to this day.

This is not yet the case with blockchain. Regulators worldwide remain skeptical of virtual coins that circumvent banks and government authorities, and seem prone to criminal exploitations. We've seen that SilkRoad, Mt Gox and the recent Bitfinex scandal has not done anything to defuse this stereotype.

 

But resistance may be more deeply rooted than mere concerns over criminal misuse and consumer protection: a decentralized alternative to centuries-old systems of centralized governance and control is not something any regulator will be able to swallow too easily. Likewise, Israeli regulators are still 'sitting on the fence'. Given that both future uses, and implications of blockchain, are unpredictable, this is to be expected.

 

However, the regulator provides an indispensable support system, including supervision mechanisms and an appropriate legal framework. Such regulatory backing can bolster consumer awareness, understanding and confidence in the new technology and accommodate the move of blockchain from fringe to mainstream. But who will lead the charge?

 

Meeting of worlds

Various businesses worldwide are already beginning to take note of the potential economic value in using blockchain technology in myriad applications. And as competition grows, an even larger circle is beginning to feel the pressure to follow suit. Although the movement is certainly expanding, this grassroots growth may not suffice to live up to the disruptive potential of blockchain. This is where the big banks come in.

 

Looking back at the major developments over the past year, there is no doubt that the ripest industry for blockchain is the financial system. The big financial institutions would have the most to gain – or lose.

 

It is, however, the most highly regulated industry. Therefore, authorities need to deepen their engagement with the various applications of the technology with the aim of creating an appropriate regulatory framework applicable for the technology, whilst increasing consumer confidence, but without undermining the economic model of the financial system.

And who is best qualified for that role if not the financial system itself? It has both the knowledge and capacity to conduct meaningful dialogue with the regulator on the one hand, and the economic incentive to cut down costs by using blockchain on the other. If that happens, we could soon find ourselves in an era of institutionalized blockchain, where cutting-edge technology meets conservative infrastructure to generate a wholly new and fascinating system.

Smart contracts for bitcoin

 

As we approach the release date for the SEGWIT (Segregated Witness) update to the blockchain, we were pleased to see a complete update from the BitcoinCore team about how this update will affect the network, what will change and where are we going to proceed in the future.

 

For those of you who don’t know what SEGWIT is software that is used to produce transactions for which it separates the TxID transaction signatures from the rest of the data, thus Segregated Witness. This allows miners to place the transaction signatures outside of the block-chain.

 

Pros and cons

There are benefits that we will immediately be able to enjoy once the update has been complete. The first benefit is that malleability will be ultimately eliminated, and third-parties won’t be able to interfere with the transaction process, and transaction ID’s will be hidden from everyone, while at the same time allowing the transaction software to calculate the transaction without reference to the witness. This update will open up development paths for Bitcoin, by eliminating security holes and lowering the complexity of smart contracts for Bitcoin.

 

The second benefit is that capacity of transactions will modestly increase. New-style blocks can hold more data than current versions, which means that the amount of transaction data will increase per block. That doesn’t mean that witness data is stored off-chain, but rather following this soft-fork, the data will start being signed on the new-style blocks (which include the old-style block and extra space).

Overall this update will simplify things for developers to produce new features for Bitcoin use and it improves the efficacy of running full nodes. We are happy to see that long-term benefits will come out of this update.

 

According to the blog post that the BitcoinCore team released on June 24th, 2016, SEGWIT has been extensively tested by Bitcoin developers, and this was necessary because of the way SEGWIT changes parts of the Bitcoin system. One of the most important change happens to the consensus rules that full nodes use to agree on the current state of the ledger. That shift is the primary reason for such tests to be performed, because if we come to a position where the network stops agreement on the current state, Bitcoin transactions become dangerous.

 

Other notable changes happened to the peer-to-peer code that’s used by the network to distribute blocks and transactions. (This was all included in the 0.13.0 BitcoinCore Update, but it’s not going to happen be accepted on the main network until at least ver. 0.13.01) SEGWIT blocks and transactions are different from previous versions, so it’s important that the network is capable of distributing both SEGWIT and old-style data.

The complete update added about 7800 lines of code to the proprietary software, with the majority of lines relating to the SEGWIT capabilities. A large part of the code update related to the automated testing system, which enabled Bitcoin developers to test out the features on a separate network extensively, promptly called “testnet”.

SEGWIT was initially implemented by the Elements Project, led by Pieter Wuille. This initial implementation was happening in April through June of 2015. It was never intended for the main blockchain but is actually considered a side-chain. A few months later in October 2015, Luke Dashjr describes a method that allows SEGWIT to be implemented by using a soft-fork and they team up with Wuille to work on the implementation that is going to be completely compatible with the main blockchain.

 

The first version of this new code comes out in December 2015, close to the end of the year. (New year, new updates!) It’s implemented and tested extensively for the whole duration, ranging from the beginning of the year to August 23rd, 2016, when the BitcoinCore team launched the update.

 

Within this update, SEGWIT is completely implemented, but it’s sitting there in a passive state, only used for testing purposes. Like I mentioned before, it will become operational with the next update! The Bitcoin Core developers are finally convinced that implementation of SEGWIT will not cause any adverse effects and it won’t negatively influence Bitcoin, it’s value and reliability.

 

SEGWIT won’t change a lot about how you perceive Bitcoin transactions happening, well… There is one pretty perceptive change, but I’m sure you’re not going to mind it.

 

Transaction fees are going to get a little bit cheaper.

I’m sure we all can appreciate spending a little bit less on our transactions. But wait, what about Bitcoin smart contracts?

Yes, I’ve mentioned them. Well SEGWIT will not introduce any smart contracts, but it’s the first step allowing the development of the capability to support these.

 

It solves a crucial problem that currently is affecting the creation of smart contacts and script functioning. It opens up the doors to new development paths and creates new opportunities that were previously inaccessible due to security loopholes and visibility of transaction identifiers. In the future, smart contracts and scripts will use MAST, an acronym for Merkalized Abstract Syntax Trees.

 

A short description of MAST is that it allows the creation of conditional Bitcoin scripts to be utilized. For now, it’s being reserved for the extremely tech-savvy people, the developers to use these tools and potentially make them available to Bitcoin users. MAST is going to be available for use following the SEGWIT update in the future.

Decentralized Internet Can Be the Answer to DDoS Problems

The recent DDoS attack on some of the major websites on the internet has renewed interests in the decentralized internet. While there are multiple initiatives concerning blockchain technology and decentralized network in development, the DDoS attack is expected to accelerate the process.

The CTO of Golem, Piotr Janiuk has recently explained that by decentralizing the internet using peer to peer technology the chances of such attacks can be minimized. He believes that the attack was a result of an attacker or a group of attackers exploiting one or more single points of failures on the internet.

One such decentralized internet project is known as SAFE Network where safe stands for Secure Access for Everyone. The SAFE Network is powered using the unused hard drive space, processing power and data connection of its users. It uses MaidSafe crypto tokens as a medium of exchange on the network. By distributing data and processing power across the network, decentralized internet platform ensures much higher security and privacy to its users.

MaidSafe's CEO David Irvine was quoted by a tech publication saying,

"DDOS depends on a target, in SAFE the target is everyone's computers. An analogy would be DDOS is like swatting a large fly, in SAFE the large fly is a mass swarm of mossies which makes it hard even with 8 arms filled with fly swatters."

DDoS attacks involve hitting a server with tons to requests with an intention of overloading it and shutting it down. By doing so, the attacker effectively brings down the applications running on that server. However, in the case of MaidSafe, the Opportunistic Caching feature creates copies of requested data. This, in turn, speeds up the websites and other data feeds as the number of requests increases. Such a feature can make conventional DDoS attacks ineffective against decentralized internet protocols.

A few reasons why you should invet in bitcoin

During the last couple of months, bitcoin has had numerous ups and downs, yet the number of total investors has increased exponentially. Judging by this practice, it seems like there is a clear demand for the digital currency. In fact, the year of 2015 represented the year of venture capitalists, especially on the blockchain, after the number of investments in both bitcoin and its underlying technology has increased. As there is clearly some risk associated with the practice of trading and investing in bitcoin, numerous potential investors are staying away from it.

 

The supply of bitcoin is fixed

Since the currency was first released back in 2009, its value has increased from next to nothing, up to 1,100 and its current value of around $600 at the time of writing. However, not many people are aware of the fact that the digital currency has a strict, limited maximum supply, of 21 million coins. Judging by this aspect, once all of the coins will have been mined, the coin will have the potential to increase in value a lot. While it will surely go through numerous more price fluctuations until the limit is reached, if the number of investors and adopters of the digital currency continues to increase, then this will likely bring the value of one bitcoin to astronomical numbers.

 

A larger number of individuals and businesses are turning to bitcoin

While the digital currency was still fairly new, numerous businesses had started accepting bitcoin as a form of payment. As time passed, however, other companies began paying their salaries in the digital currency, whereas others simply stopped using fiat and just moved to bitcoin altogether.

 

Bitcoin is entering a trend where it’s being adopted for more and more practical reasons

Using the digital currency as a form of payment only is surely beneficial. Yet, adopting it for its practical reasons can yield much better results over the years to come. To put things better into perspective, with each day, bitcoin is getting more ingrained in our society. Thanks to this, it’s also being built within the back bone of numerous products and services. Judging by this trend, companies and individuals will need more of the digital currency to take part in the online and offline markets with ease.

 

When it comes down to moving to a digital currency, most people choose bitcoin

As it is by far the most popular cryptocurrency available on the market, it yields an impressive advantage to new-comers. Based on this, people who are just getting started with the world of digital currencies are much more likely to invest in bitcoin, rather than other altcoins such as Ethereum, Litecoin, Dogecoin etc.

 

Higher prices increase transaction volumes, which in turn boost prices even more

This is an interesting trend in the world of bitcoin, thus creating a circle of benefits for its adopters. With this in mind, as soon as the price increases, trading data has shown that the number of transactions increase as well, which in turn, act as a catalyst for higher prices. In case no event shakes the world of bitcoin, then this could lead to a continuous price increase, which would further be boosted after reaching the limit of coins, as mentioned above.

 

Governments take it lightly

While there have been a couple of government talks on regularizing bitcoin and the use of the blockchain alongside with other digital currencies, no harsh practice has been imposed so far, apart from 2-4 countries. Most governmental agencies are open to the use of the digital currency, whereas others even encourage it (the United Kingdom, for example). Taxes have been imposed on both individuals and businesses in the past, yet many of these regions decided to remove the taxing, and regard bitcoin as a commodity, asset, whereas others talked about it as real money.

 

It’s easy

Chances are that the most pragmatic reason on why you should consider investing in bitcoin, is that doing so, is extremely easy. To put things better into perspective, it could be as easy as simply buying a number of coins, and holding onto them through the price fluctuations. Of course, there are also slightly more difficult practices that you could get into, such as trading, which can turn out to be extremely profitable, especially if you have some experience as a trader. Practices such as margin trading, lending bitcoin, and simply speculating on the price can result in higher profits for those who do this constantly, and have a good judgment of the short and long-term future.

 

Based on everything that has been outlined so far, the 6 reasons mentioned above, should have convinced you about the profit potential that bitcoin offers, and should have encouraged you to consider the idea of investing. There are of course, also a couple of disadvantages, which we will cover in the next articles to come. Based on everything that has been outlined so far, what do you personally think about the reasons mentioned above? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.

Can payments firms monetise data and meet new privacy laws?

The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) represents a watershed moment for the payments industry. This is not simply another data compliance headache. GDPR enshrines a new idea: that consumers have ultimate control of their data.

 

This concept will lead to a new model for the payments industry; one centred on the empowered customer and based on informed consent.

 

The impact on the payments industry

Payments industry businesses – from merchants to the financial services organisations that support them – are increasingly looking at how they can monetise their customer data.

Some adopt direct monetisation models, selling their customer data to third parties, whereas others indirectly monetise customer data through analysing payments history to drive up- and cross-sell of new services.

 

Much of this data is unfortunately anonymized given it is personally identifiable information (Pii) and there is a lack of customer knowledge and/or permission for use. As such it has essentially been stripped of a fair amount of its utility to directly personalise and make offers more customized and relevant.

Either in aggregated form or linked to an individual, how can firms continue to monetise data and also meet the privacy demands of GDPR?

 

Putting the customer in control

The challenge can be met through informed consent. Firms must take a customer-driven approach to information sharing, empowering the consumer to share and rescind their consent.

It is not enough to simply ‘ask’ for consent. Organisations must capture gained consent in an auditable workflow. This requires a sophisticated information management platform; one which enables an automated and secure digital communication link with the customer.

 

Once consent is secured, payments industry businesses then need a flexible, secure platform to store and manage the data in customer-driven way. One way firms are looking to build this framework is through digital rights management services that create a digital ‘vault’ for customers to store personal data.

 

This approach enables simplified and streamlined Data Portability and the Right to be Forgotten; empowering customers and meeting the stipulations of GDPR.

 

A new model for a changed world

While GDPR is a significant enabling event for the rollout of consent-driven data management, it is a symptom of a wider change. The sharing, and peer-to-peer economies are already shaking up the world of commerce and changing the payments landscape for good. At the same time people are becoming more aware of their personal rights over their own data.

 

Payments businesses can’t take anything for granted any more. They must proactively enable a customer-driven and customer-centric data framework and provide customers with the tools they need to view and manage their own data. The result will be GDPR compliance, a much better customer experience and a new method for building customer loyalty. It will also mean they can continue to monetise their data.

Blockchain Surveillance is Accelerating Privacy Tool Development

When it comes to cryptocurrencies one treasured goal is the ability to remain private, which requires both an anonymous and fungible currency. At times, it seems fungibility is the holy grail of the ecosystem. Bitcoin definitely achieves most of the qualities of sound money, but some believe it needs a lot of work in the development of fungibility.

 

Privacy cannot work without the basics of a fungible asset as both fundamentals are mutually exclusive. The rise in popularity concerning both fungibility and anonymity can be seen with the latest trends in market trading and development.

 

Just recently Bitcoin.com spoke with Daniel Krawisz about his new bitcoin shuffler, Shufflepuff. Krawisz explained he was still in the developmental process but had achieved the first shuffled transaction on August 15th. The Coin Shuffle protocol finds other users to tumble their bitcoins as variants of this technology are the most common protocol for mixing Bitcoins.

 

On August 29th, another tumbling protocol called TumbleBit was announced on Reddit, with the post being very popular among cryptocurrency community. The project developers say they are producing a roadmap in the near future. The team gives credit to David Chaum’s ecash for inspiring some of the project’s attributes.

FW: Ways to stay anonymous and protect your online privacy

Now more than ever, your online privacy is under attack. ISPs, advertisers, and governments around the world are increasingly interested in knowing exactly what you’re up to when you browse the web. Whether you’re a political activist or simply someone who hates the idea of third-parties scrutinizing your surfing habits, there are plenty of tools available to keep prying eyes off of your traffic.

 

In this post, I’m going to highlight 19 ways to increase your online privacy. Some methods are more complicated than others, but if you’re serious about remaining private, these tips will help shield your traffic from snoops. Of course, internet security is a topic in and of itself, so you’re going to need to do some reading to remain thoroughly protected on all fronts. And remember, even the most careful among us are still vulnerable to imperfect technology.

 

The Onion Router (Tor)

If anonymity is what you're after, The Onion Router (Tor) is what you need. It uses a vast network of computers to route your Web traffic through a number of encrypted layers to obscure its origin. Tor is a vital tool for political dissidents and whistleblowers to anonymously share information, and you can just as easily use it to help protect your privacy. Get started by downloading the Tor Browser. This customized fork of Firefox automatically connects to the Tor network, and includes some of the privacy-enhancing browser extensions discussed later in this post. This package has everything you need to use Tor successfully, but you'll also need to change your web surfing behavior to retain as much anonymity as possible. Abide by the Tor warnings, and remember this isn't a magic bullet. It still has some significant weaknesses.

 

 

Justified paranoia

You might not think you have anything to hide, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t enjoy the benefits of online privacy. Some of these recommendations are a real hassle to live with — I’m well aware. It’s a lot easier to shove your fingers in your ears, and pretend like the NSA and your ISP aren’t watching every move you make. But what you browse is your business, and your business alone. Now is the time to stand up for yourself, and take back your privacy.

In time for Black Hat and DEFCON, we’re covering security, cyberwar, and online crime all this week; check out the rest of our Security Week stories for more in-depth coverage as the week goes on.

Zcash, an Untraceable Bitcoin Alternative, Launches in Alpha

BITCOIN MAY HAVE become the currency of choice for the anonymity-loving Internet underground. But it’s never been anonymous enough for Zooko Wilcox. As he’ll remind anyone who’ll listen, the blockchain, bitcoin’s very public ledger of all transactions in its crypto-economy, means that unless bitcoin’s users funnel it through intermediaries or special software, their transactions can easily be traced.

 

Today Wilcox and his startup Zcash are launching the first public alpha release of the cryptography world’s best shot yet at perfectly untraceable digital money. Using a mathematical sleight-of-hand known as a “zero-knowledge proof,” Zcash (until recently known as Zerocoin or Zerocash) offers the same anti-forgery assurances as bitcoin: No one can counterfeit Zcash, or spend the same Zcash “coin” twice. But thanks to its zero-knowledge feature, any spender or receiver can also choose to keep their Zcash payment entirely secret.

 

The company holds the potential to empower a new form of near-perfect financial privacy—or, put in the terms of less friendly financial regulators, to enable a new form of airtight money laundering. “Consumers want to buy and sell things over the Internet and need privacy from snoops who might use the knowledge of their transactions against them,” says Wilcox, a 41-year-old cryptographer who’s also known in the crypto community for creating Tahoe LAFS, a decentralized, encrypted file-storage system. “This is the first time you can transact with anyone on the Internet, and control over who gets to find out about those transactions is solely in your hands.”

 

On Wednesday morning Zcash published its source code on Github, and is now allowing anyone to test out the software in what Wilcox calls a “preview.” But in an interview with WIRED he warns that the data moving on the Zcash network doesn’t yet represent actual money, only a “test net” that’s designed to give Zcash a chance to iron out its bugs before anyone makes investments in the cryptocurrency. Wilcox estimates the “real money” launch of Zcash is likely still close to six months away. The prototype version of Zcash that WIRED downloaded still lacked a user interface and instead required figuring out a tough-to-navigate set of command line functions.

 

Like bitcoin, Zcash’s currency will be created by “mining” computers that compete to solve mathematical problems. But unlike bitcoin and other attempts to create an alternative cryptocurrency or “altcoin,” Zcash is launching as a for-profit company. For its first four years online, a portion of every mined Zcash coin will go directly to Wilcox’s Zcash company and a smaller portion to a non-profit he’s creating to oversee the Zcash code and community longterm. Wilcox says that he plans for 1 percent of Zcash’s currency to ultimately go towards that non-profit, and 10 percent to be paid to the for-profit startup.

 

That for-profit strategy, Wilcox says, was designed to raise money to fund the project: Much of the 10 percent it earns will repay Wilcox’s investors, who as of November had put more than $715,000 into Zcash. Those investors include Naval Ravikant, an investor in Twitter and Uber, Barry Silbert, the founder of startup equity-trading platform SecondMarket, and Roger Ver, a staunch libertarian who’s invested in bitcoin startups Blockchain.info and Bitpay, and who also bankrolled much of the legal defense of now-convicted Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht. (Wilcox says that Zcash remains on the sidelines of the schism over bitcoin’s scalability and speed that’s currently splitting the cryptocurrency community, though he hopes it will be able to integrate any upgrades to bitcoin’s code that solve those issues.)

 

Plenty of cryptocurrencies that have boasted features bitcoin lacks have launched and languished over the years, without seeing even a fraction of bitcoin’s adoption. But Wilcox argues that Zcash’s incognito properties, when the currency finally does launch for public consumption and real financial applications, will be crucial for those who need a more privacy-preserving form of digital money. That includes anyone from a medical startup trying to comply with healthcare privacy laws to a businesswoman in Afghanistan dodging corrupt cops and tyrannical male family members. “Privacy makes whole societies safer, stronger and more prosperous,” says Wilcox. “Ubiquitous privacy helps prevent corruption and abuse and oppression.”

 

Of course, the sort of “ubiquitous privacy” that Zcash is designed to allow will no doubt find fans within black markets, too, like the dark web’s $100 million-a-year drug trade. Until now, bitcoin’s lack of connection to banks or registered services has made it a convenient tool to spend money online without necessarily tying that money to the user’s identity. But the blockchain’s privacy problems have remained a nagging threat to anyone who makes a drug deal using bitcoin’s digital cash. Prosecutors proved bitcoin’s shortcomings for narco-money-laundering applications last year, for instance, when they traced $13.4 million from the drug site Silk Road to Ross Ulbricht’s laptop.

 

Zcash’s untraceability features promise to remove that sort of blockchain analysis as a tool for law enforcement surveillance. That notion has created controversy around the currency since it was first proposed by a team of cryptographers at Johns Hopkins University Back then, the anti-money-laundering think tank Global Financial Integrity published an op-ed in the Baltimore Sun describing the idea as a boon to black markets of all kinds, from human trafficking to wildlife poaching. “More girls will be sold as sex slaves, more rhinos will be poached, and every other large-scale transnational crime that you can name is going to become a lot easier if criminals have a way to transfer very large amounts of money completely anonymously,” wrote the group’s spokesperson E.J. Fagan.

 

Wilcox maintains his stealthy digital cash startup isn’t intended to facilitate crime, but also notes that the company isn’t liable for any criminal applications for which Zcash is used. “The people who built the first cars weren’t held responsible for car accidents or bank robberies,” he says. “The people who use these tools for good or ill are held responsible for that.”

 

But Wilcox also insists that Zcash’s legitimate applications will outweigh its shady ones. He compares Zerocoin’s ambiguous potential to that of the Internet itself. “Can the internet be used for crime? Yes, it can be, but that’s not what’s important about it.” Wilcox says. “I’m focused on the trillions of dollars of legitimate commerce that flow around the world.”