Balaji Srinivasan has distilled 15 years of crypto experimentation right down to a stark declare: after Bitcoin, solely two core protocol breakthroughs really matter—Ethereum for programmability and Zcash for privateness.
In a wide-ranging look on Mert Mumtaz’s “Speed up with Mert” podcast, Srinivasan argued that the trade has already accomplished the “programmability period” and is now coming into a decisive section the place privateness and zero-knowledge cryptography grow to be central to crypto’s mission. “The 2 main improvements on Bitcoin have been programmability within the type of Ethereum and privateness within the type of Zcash,” he mentioned.
From Bitcoin To Programmability To Zcash
Srinivasan breaks crypto’s historical past into three arcs. First, Bitcoin merely needed to show that non-sovereign, cryptographic cash might work in any respect. Then, Ethereum generalized that right into a programmable platform with sensible contracts, stablecoins, NFTs, DEXs and on-chain capital markets.
By now, he argued, that second section is successfully validated. “We now have scalable on-chain sensible contracts that may assist [a] massive variety of customers, massive numbers of transactions with finality. There’s a number of good chains. It really works. It runs 24/7,” he mentioned, noting that crypto is already functioning in growing markets: “In Bolivia, they quote costs in Tether. In Nigeria, they save in Bitcoin. These things is not principle. It’s truly there.”
The following section, he says, is privateness by design. “Now the following eight years… privateness,” Srinivasan mentioned. “Taking all the pieces we simply did and encrypting it utilizing ZK.” That features ZK-based KYC (“ZKYC”), privacy-preserving DEXs, and sensible contracts that reveal solely the minimal essential info. He pointed to trade work displaying how conventional KYC could possibly be replicated with zero-knowledge proofs: “For those who nail ZK then you may exchange the complete [compliance] system.”
That is the place Zcash issues: not as a advertising and marketing model, however as the primary mainstream proof that superior zero-knowledge privateness may be embedded on the protocol stage. Ethereum represents programmability; Zcash represents privateness. In Srinivasan’s framing, the longer term is about merging these concepts—Ethereum-style expressivity with Zcash-style cryptographic concealment—throughout L1s, rollups and application-specific programs.
.@balajis thinks the following 8 years in crypto would be the age of privateness.
2009-2017: proving Bitcoin would work2017-2025: proving programmability + scalability would work2025 onwards: privateness pic.twitter.com/LrU8ATsZI8
— genzcash (@genzcash) November 13, 2025
Srinivasan pushed again onerous on the concept crypto is now primarily a speculative or industrial area. “Crypto isn’t simply concerning the industrial half,” he mentioned. “It’s concerning the ideological half. It’s about the truth that the banks have failed. It’s concerning the reality the political system has failed. It’s about the truth that we want an exit. It’s about the truth that we want self-sovereignty. And the lacking a part of that’s privateness.”
He in contrast this to the best way Christmas is usually defended by non secular believers as greater than purchasing and Santa. “Bear in mind the explanation for the season” turns into, in his telling, a reminder that crypto’s “season” is about exit and self-sovereignty, not simply yield, DeFi and token costs. Privateness, he argued, is what reconnects trendy “industrial crypto” to these unique cypherpunk and anti-censorship roots.
Notably, Srinivasan is a long-time advocate for ZK based mostly applied sciences. In November 2024, he wrote by way of X: “Sure, Zcash is nice and it’s already match for goal. One can proceed utilizing it for personal transactions. However ZK is to encryption what the transformer is to AI. It generalizes many particular case hacks into a brand new compute paradigm. We are going to get a ZK financial system. So we do need a chain with ZK primitives along with a easy Zcash-like chain.”
At press time, ZCash traded at $501.59.
Featured picture created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
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