The crypto neighborhood on X has been dominated by distinguished figures advocating for the adoption of Zcash as privateness turns into more and more threatened by governments and regulators.
Whereas the Winklevoss twins, Naval Ravikant, and Balaji Srinivasan again the adoption of Zcash (ZEC), its success may spur the Bitcoin ecosystem to push for extra privateness options by revisiting the reactivation of OP_CAT, in line with Eli Ben-Sasson, founding father of StarkWare and a famend mathematician who helped pioneer zero-knowledge proofs.
Zcash was impressed by Bitcoin
In 2014, Ben-Sasson and his co-authors revealed “Zerocash: Decentralized Nameless Funds from Bitcoin.”
The white paper was the end result of six years of theoretical work. From 2008, Ben-Sasson and his collaborators had been engaged on general-purpose zero-knowledge proof expertise. Whereas they didn’t have a use case, they knew the expertise was extremely highly effective.
Zcash has been trending on Crypto Twitter for months.
Not many know the backstory behind the most important cryptocurrency within the privateness house.
We’re chatting to @EliBenSasson in regards to the historical past of @Zcash and the ZK tech behind it.
Be part of me and @rkbaggs reside!https://t.co/ZRh96OzBD7
— Gareth Jenkinson (@gazza_jenks) November 10, 2025
“We knew zero-knowledge proofs remedy two issues: scalability and privateness. They provide integrity. They mainly can persuade you that the proper factor has been finished, even once you’re not watching and even once you don’t truly see all the main points,” Ben-Sasson instructed Cointelegraph’s Chain Response liveshow on X.
The whole lot modified in 2013 when Ben-Sasson gave a chat on ZK at one of many earliest editions of the Bitcoin convention.
“I obtained off the rostrum and a bunch of very influential Bitcoin OGs, like Greg Maxwell and Mike Hearn, got here up and mentioned, ‘OK, the place’s the tech? When can we use the code?’ And I requested them, ‘Why do you want it?’”
Associated: Reality behind comeback of privacy-focused protocol Zcash in 2025
These early Bitcoin (BTC) builders and advocates outlined a number of ways in which Bitcoin may benefit from the brand new methodology. Abruptly, ZK-proofs had discovered their killer use case.
“So we labored very diligently on publishing one thing that shows how this expertise can remedy some of the necessary issues of blockchains, which is the truth that once you’re doing a Bitcoin transaction, everybody can see the quantity, can just about work out who paid whom and the way a lot.”
This transparency, whereas by design, means that there’s an inescapable component of transparency when utilizing Bitcoin. ZK-proofs supply an answer, however Bitcoin’s code doesn’t enable for his or her inclusion attributable to a choice made by Satoshi Nakamoto a few years in the past.
Why OP_CAT holds the important thing to privateness on Bitcoin
Ben-Sasson mentioned that Bitcoin can nonetheless have native privateness and infinite scalability if builders can conform to reinstate OP_CAT, a Satoshi-era OP_Code that Bitcoin’s creator disabled in 2010.
He additionally famous that Zcash’s resurgence in 2025 may function a possible catalyst for Bitcoin’s push for privateness.
There have been whispers of Bitcoin hodlers swapping BTC for Zcash 🤔🔏
Why? As a result of some Bitcoiners need to have the ability to transact with extra privateness.
BUT Bitcoin can nonetheless have NATIVE privateness and scale. @EliBenSasson explains how ZK-proofs and OP_CAT maintain the important thing 🗝️👇
We caught… pic.twitter.com/UTwb6U2hbg
— Gareth Jenkinson (@gazza_jenks) November 12, 2025
“I hope that one consequence of this is able to be that the Bitcoin neighborhood turns into extra open to issues like OP_CAT and OP_STARK in order that it might probably have post-quantum safety, privateness, scale and programmability for this lovely arduous asset that’s Bitcoin,” Ben-Sasson mentioned.
“The expertise is prepared. All you want is a comfortable fork that provides 9 traces of code, which Satoshi truly launched. It’s known as OP_CAT. It’s very, very simple. If there’s a will, there’s a method. On this case, it’s a quite simple technique to give all of that goodness to Bitcoin itself.”
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Distinguished Bitcoiners on social media have largely stayed away from the Zcash narrative, and there has but to be any actual dialog about methods to enhance privateness when utilizing Bitcoin for funds.
Cointelegraph additionally spoke solely to Gemini co-founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss at Bitcoin Amsterdam, who defined their perception in Zcash’s potential to enhance Bitcoin.
The twins made headlines after saying the launch of Cypherpunk Applied sciences, a ZEC-based treasury firm, following their acquisition and rebranding of Nasdaq-listed Leap Therapeutics in November.
Journal: 2026 is the yr of pragmatic privateness in crypto: Canton, Zcash and extra
