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    Zcash Revival Sparks Debate on Bringing Privacy Back to Bitcoin

    Cryptocurrency

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    The crypto community on X has been dominated by prominent figures advocating for the adoption of Zcash as privacy becomes increasingly threatened by governments and regulators. 

    While the Winklevoss twins, Naval Ravikant, and Balaji Srinivasan show strong conviction for the adoption of Zcash (ZEC), its success could spur the Bitcoin ecosystem to push for more privacy features by revisiting the reactivation of OP_CAT, according to Eli Ben-Sasson, founder of StarkWare and a renowned mathematician who helped pioneer zero-knowledge proofs.

    Zcash was inspired by Bitcoin

    In 2014, Ben-Sasson and his co-authors published “Zerocash: Decentralized Anonymous Payments from Bitcoin.”

    The white paper was the culmination of six years of theoretical work. From 2008, Ben-Sasson and his collaborators had been working on general-purpose zero-knowledge proof technology. While they didn’t have a use case, they knew the technology was incredibly powerful.

    “We knew zero-knowledge proofs solve two problems: scalability and privacy. They offer integrity. They basically can convince you that the right thing has been done, even when you’re not watching and even when you don’t actually see all the details,” Ben-Sasson told Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction liveshow on X.

    Everything changed in 2013 when Ben-Sasson gave a talk on ZK at one of the earliest editions of the Bitcoin conference.

    “I got off the podium and a bunch of very influential Bitcoin OGs, like Greg Maxwell and Mike Hearn, came up and said, ‘Okay, where’s the tech? When can we use the code?’ And I asked them, ‘Why do you need it?’”

    Related: Truth behind comeback of privacy-focused protocol Zcash in 2025

    These early Bitcoin (BTC) developers and advocates outlined several ways that Bitcoin could benefit from the new methodology. Suddenly, ZK-proofs had found their killer use case. 

    “So we worked very diligently on publishing something that displays how this technology can solve one of the most important problems of blockchains, which is the fact that when you’re doing a Bitcoin transaction, everyone can see the amount, can pretty much figure out who paid whom and how much.”

    This transparency, while by design, means that there is an inescapable element of transparency when using Bitcoin. ZK-proofs offer a solution, but Bitcoin’s code does not allow for their inclusion due to a decision made by Satoshi Nakamoto many years ago.

    Why OP_CAT holds the key for privacy on Bitcoin

    Ben-Sasson said that Bitcoin can still have native privacy and infinite scalability if developers can agree to reinstate OP_CAT, a Satoshi-era OP_Code that Bitcoin’s creator disabled in 2010.

    He also noted that Zcash’s resurgence in 2025 could serve as a potential catalyst for Bitcoin’s push for privacy.

    “I hope that one consequence of this would be that the Bitcoin community becomes more open to things like OP_CAT and OP_STARK so that it can have post-quantum security, privacy, scale and programmability for this beautiful hard asset that is Bitcoin,” Ben-Sasson said.

    “The technology is ready. All you need is a soft fork that adds nine lines of code, which Satoshi actually introduced. It’s called OP_CAT. It’s very, very easy. If there’s a will, there’s a way. In this case, it’s a very simple way to give all of that goodness to Bitcoin itself.”

    Related: Leap Therapeutics surges 170% after $50M Zcash buy with Winklevoss backing

    Prominent Bitcoiners on social media have largely stayed clear of the Zcash narrative, and there has yet to be any real conversation about ways to improve privacy when using Bitcoin for payments.

    Cointelegraph also spoke exclusively to Gemini co-founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss at Bitcoin Amsterdam, who explained their belief in Zcash’s potential to complement Bitcoin.

    The twins made headlines after announcing the launch of Cypherpunk Technologies, a ZEC-based Treasury Company, following their acquisition and rebranding of Nasdaq-listed Leap Therapeutics in November.

    Magazine: 2026 is the year of pragmatic privacy in crypto: Canton, Zcash and more