
✞ • a third culture kid, perpetual optimist & zk maxi • @presto_labs @okx • posts on digital assets and random interests.
Singapore
Joined May 2020
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Can zcash:native actually verify it's own money as privacy coin?
We are so far along to the ultimate privacy protocol, but zcash gave it's decent start.
But why privacy coin hunters are dumping zcash:native beyond the claude opus 4.8 critical vulnerability expose?
1. The anonymity set is small, which directly weakens the protocol
People assume strong proofs equal strong privacy. They do not. Privacy is a function of the math AND the crowd size. zk-SNARKs give you perfect unlinkability inside the shielded pool, but unlinkability only means "you cannot be distinguished from the other people in the pool." If the pool is small or low-activity, the set you are hiding in is small.
Concretely: roughly 30% of ZEC supply was shielded as of 2025. But supply shielded is not the relevant number. What matters for privacy is transaction activity, how many shielded-to-shielded transactions are happening in the same time window as yours. A large dormant shielded balance gives you almost no cover, because cover comes from concurrent activity, not stored value. If only a handful of shielded transactions clear in the window around yours, an analyst is correlating across a tiny set. The math says you are anonymous. The usage says you are one of five. ZEC cannot fix the anonymity set by improving the cryptography, because the cryptography is already excellent. It can only fix it by driving real shielded usage up, and it has failed to do that for nearly a decade. The potential weakness is on demand side.
2. Optional privacy poisons as the default
When privacy is opt-in, using it becomes a signal. On Monero, everyone is private, so being private tells an observer nothing. On Zcash, choosing to shield marks you as someone who wanted to hide something, within a minority of users who do. The act of opting in is itself information.
This produces a perverse dynamic. The more sensitive your reason for wanting privacy, the more your use of the rare feature stands out against the transparent majority. Optional privacy means the privacy-seekers self-select into a smaller, more conspicuous group. Monero's mandatory model dissolves that signal entirely. Zcash's optional model concentrates it. The feature that is supposed to protect you also flags you, because most people around you are not using it.
3. The shielded boundary leaks by design
Most ZEC value needs to touch the transparent world. Exchanges deposit and withdraw transparent. Most wallets, most liquidity, most on-ramps are transparent. So value flows in a pattern: transparent, shield, do something private, unshield, transparent again.
Every shield and unshield event is visible on-chain with an amount and a timestamp. The shielded middle is private. The two ends are not. This creates correlation attacks. Shield 12.7 ZEC at 14:02, and an unshield of 12.7 ZEC appears at 14:40, a chain analyst has a linkage hypothesis. With low pool activity (see point 1) these hypotheses get strong fast, because there are few other transactions to create ambiguity.
This is structural because the protocol cannot close it without forcing all activity shielded, and it deliberately refuses to do that, because mandatory privacy is exactly what triggers delistings. So ZEC keeps the leaky boundary on purpose. The leak is the price of regulatory survival. It is not a bug they will patch. It is a design they chose.
4. The shielded pool sacrifices supply verifiability
This is the deepest one and the one this week made it concrete. A transparent chain lets anyone verify total supply matches protocol rules. A shielded pool gives that up. You cannot see the amounts, so you cannot confirm the amounts sum correctly.
For years this was a theoretical tradeoff. The Orchard bug converted it into a live liability. A soundness flaw let counterfeit ZEC be minted inside the pool with no on-chain trace, and because the pool hides amounts, there is no cryptographic way to prove after the patch whether it happened. The privacy did not just fail to help here. It is the specific reason the question is unanswerable. On Bitcoin, a counterfeit bug would leave a supply discrepancy anyone could check. On ZEC, the privacy guarantee erases exactly the evidence you would need.
So the structural compromise is this: privacy and provable integrity are the same axis pointing opposite directions. You cannot maximize both. Every unit of privacy ZEC provides is a unit of supply-verifiability it gives up. Most of the time nobody notices. When a soundness bug appears, that abandoned verifiability is precisely what you cannot get back.
If the team executes on the NU7 roadmap, faster blocks (75 seconds down to 25), and the Zashi and NEAR Intents UX improvements that are already moving real cross-chain volume into shielded ZEC, the set can grow.
At this moment, adoption is the only variable that matters, and it is the one thing within their control. They have not cleared it yet, but it is clearable, and unlike the regulatory and verifiability tensions, it does not require them to abandon what makes ZEC, ZEC.
Digital assets full throttle
Citadel Securities has hired Willis Croft as head of business development for digital assets in London
Croft joined last month from Wintermute, where he was a director in business development and partnerships. Before that he was a VP at Genesis until it shut in 2023.
Citadel Securities provides liquidity to Kraken and invested $200M in the exchange last November.
Its job listings include a systematic crypto trader role on a team it calls fast-growing
Fridays we do Lagree and my class was filled with happy, lovely looking housewives.
No one was talking about AI trades blown up or any crypto stuff. Just pure smile and loving attitude towards life. I’m honestly digging this lifestyle I can get used to it!
Just a reminder that ladies you can’t stress like men too much!
Еlena retweeted
A male Instagram photo dump is a cry for help.
You could be building something, learning, doing something productive, but no.
You decided to post a highly curated collection of photos, mainly selfies?
Unacceptable
Еlena retweeted
Having many kids in expensive cities are the real status symbol, the rest are larping.
Еlena retweeted
Dads did the most but often under appreciated. I think it’s tough to be a father.
Love you always dad, forever thankful for you (but this pic is still about me)
Ignore the pose lol
I could see why flying private is convenient in the US. This is because airlines in the US is so disappointing in many ways, and inefficient. There's no such thing as prioritizing the customer experience like Asia/ Middle Eastern airlines.
My Singapore Airlines flight attendant turned my bed warm, making sure i had warm food beverages at all times, getting me my favourite chocolate bar because she noticed I'm very low on energy due to PMS.
Then I flew with AA in business, terrible experience and cold food. I believe there's a pending refund/ voucher for I don't know what that's probably expiring anyway.
This is why people who can afford a jet, rent or buy and fly private regularly.
private jets don’t take the same conservative approach that commercial ones do; if they did they would be up to 10x safer
That might be the issue in today Learjet accident I’m told
Get-there-itis seems to be the major cause of private aviation fatalities… I’ve seen this dynamic so many times
One time I watched someone negotiate the number of bags on the plane and I just asked the FBO if they could ups my bags and they were like “we do that all the time for people”
Principle’s spouse was still saying “that’s not necessary we can fit three more bags”
Pilots explained again it was the weight and runway length
I had them send our bags by UPS 😓
Еlena retweeted
After seeing the news on the overall tech sell-off and @binance’s largest hack, I concluded that X is still a much better place to curate your source.
There are a lot of misleading takeaways and hyperbolic perceptions regarding the $BTC pullback, which is likely also factored by broader risk appetite not the hack itself, especially from the developing story by @CNN's tech reporter.
$BTC being down only 4% post $6B hack proves it's resistance and being battle tested against scenarios.
Still not bearish x
Еlena retweeted
Lee Kuan Yew being technically Indonesian-Chinese is something I discovered only late in life.
Еlena retweeted
Today, we're beginning the phased resumption of withdrawals, taking a careful approach to ensure services return safely and securely.
We've now replenished approximately 95% of the impacted assets, and our commitment remains clear: Binance will absorb the financial impact of the stolen funds, not our users.
Thank you for your patience, understanding, and continued trust. We know this hasn't been easy, and we're committed to seeing the recovery through.
Еlena retweeted
US Law Enforcement agencies (FBI, USSS, IRS and more) provided vital help in this incident, including tracking, freezing, etc.
A tweet can’t fully express our gratitude. Many crypto bros may not realize, a lot of the "why bitcoin didn't drop more?" credit goes to them. 🙏
The FBI is releasing information advising the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) was responsible for the theft of more than $6 billion USD in virtual assets from cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, on or about October 29, 2026. The FBI refers to this specific North Korean malicious cyber activity as "TraderTraitor."
The FBI, together with partners at the USSS and IRS-CI, has observed TraderTraitor actors converting stolen assets primarily into Ethereum (ETH). It is expected these assets will then be further laundered by converting them using DeFi and instant swap services as they prepare them for further laundering stages.
How You Can Help:
FBI, USSS, and IRS-CI are urging private sector entities including THORNode operators, RPC node operators, instant exchanges, DeFi services, blockchain analytics firms, and other virtual asset service providers to block transactions with or derived from addresses TraderTraitor actors are using to launder these stolen assets.
A list of addresses associated with this activity is available here: fbi.gov/investigate/cyber/al…
Еlena retweeted
The FBI is releasing information advising the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) was responsible for the theft of more than $6 billion USD in virtual assets from cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, on or about October 29, 2026. The FBI refers to this specific North Korean malicious cyber activity as "TraderTraitor."
The FBI, together with partners at the USSS and IRS-CI, has observed TraderTraitor actors converting stolen assets primarily into Ethereum (ETH). It is expected these assets will then be further laundered by converting them using DeFi and instant swap services as they prepare them for further laundering stages.
How You Can Help:
FBI, USSS, and IRS-CI are urging private sector entities including THORNode operators, RPC node operators, instant exchanges, DeFi services, blockchain analytics firms, and other virtual asset service providers to block transactions with or derived from addresses TraderTraitor actors are using to launder these stolen assets.
A list of addresses associated with this activity is available here: fbi.gov/investigate/cyber/al…
After seeing the news on the overall tech sell-off and @binance’s largest hack, I concluded that X is still a much better place to curate your source.
There are a lot of misleading takeaways and hyperbolic perceptions regarding the $BTC pullback, which is likely also factored by broader risk appetite not the hack itself, especially from the developing story by @CNN's tech reporter.
$BTC being down only 4% post $6B hack proves it's resistance and being battle tested against scenarios.
Still not bearish x
Еlena retweeted
satisfy your soul, not society.
people will always have something to say about how you live your life, how you spend your 20's, who you date, how much money you make, and whether you're doing enough with your life. you could spend all the time in the world trying to meet those expectations and still come up short. at some point, you need to look in the mirror and decide if your life is something you're actually enjoying or just performing to the expectations of others.
$HYPE
Perpetually optimistic on economically useful exports from crypto, one of them is perps, pioneered by Hyperliquid.
i’m insanely optimistic on regulated perp venues and hope to see more doing well to slowly shift outsider perspectives on the industry being the only use to commit crimes and safe haven for grifters. and i would love to see more wealth creation tools being launched directly impacting several other industries for funding as well
much love
In the same day, binance hack with $6B impact. A few missed calls at 4AM SGT because of this.
Take care of yourself. Physically and mentally. You need to be the sharpest now more than ever. God bless 🙏
Binance's initial investigation suggests that the security incident may involve a compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop, which allowed an attacker to gain access to a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawal transactions. We have found no evidence of any wallet private key leak. We will share a detailed technical post-mortem once the investigation is complete and the facts are fully verified.
The estimated total impact sits at around $6.3B. We have worked with blockchain partners to freeze affected assets, with ~$3 billion frozen on-chain so far.
Binance will cover all losses from the SAFU fund and the company’s funds. User funds are safe. We will also publish an updated Proof of Reserves once the remediation is complete.
As an immediate precaution, Binance has:
- temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals while security checks are completed;
- revoked the affected address authorisation;
- engaged law enforcement and blockchain intelligence partners to trace and recover funds.
Our teams are working around the clock to resolve this issue safely and thoroughly. We are working closely with our law enforcement partners to confirm the identity of these criminals and bring them to justice.
Please rely only on official Binance channels for updates. Please feel free to contact Binance Customer Support if you have any further questions.
binance.com/en/support/annou…
Еlena retweeted
Looks like Binance just got hit by the biggest hack in crypto history.
~$1.8B frozen in USDC / USDT so far, so roughly $1.7B in unremediated losses.
Thankfully, Binance is by far the most profitable exchange in crypto. They're good for it. This is considerably less than what they make in profit in a year. So no need to panic if you're a Binance customer.
All of crypto is getting pentested right now. If you are under-investing in AI security / pentesting, now is the time to fix that.






























