Joel 
Bitcoin, the fact that Bitcoin has let in people and institutions and companies, I actually don't think that's the real problem. The real problem is it only made room for them, that the average person at the farmer's market, he's not there. The average person running their small business, taking, receiving crypto, she's not there. Those people got cut out and it's only banksters, bankstersonly.com. So at some point, anything that gets successful enough will have all kinds of things. 

Doug 
All right, we are live. What's going on, man? 

Joel 
How's it going? Just putting out these links here real quick. Not to be, desert links, but yeah. Just figured someone's gotta show this stuff. 

Doug 
Please do, please retweet like, it is privacy season. I feel like there should be a lot of people out there right now that want to hear what we have to talk about.

Cause yeah, for sure. Right. It's like we're, we're finally part of the in crowd. 

Joel 
Yeah, and I kind of feel like in general, you know, not to dig into the tribalism type thing too much so early, but I kind of feel like things were trending towards a much better, more kumbaya direction in the space. And then the Zcash pump kind of reignited some of that stuff. And then now the pump is not as furious. I kind of feel like it's back to like, you know, back to the baseline of, you know, we're all kind of in it for the right reasons, hopefully kind of thing.

Maybe that's just me being an optimist. I don't know. What do you think? 

Doug 
No, I feel a little bit of that. I mean, in my mind, and this is where I was ultimately looking to take the conversation at some point, was to talk about my overall view of Monero and Zcash and where I see the two kind of playing a role.

And I could get into the details why, but ultimately, I see Zcash as a good hedge to Monero. So I used to see Bitcoin as that. Now, if I'm going to hedge Monero, I would look to hedge it with Zcash before I'd hedge it with Bitcoin. And we can get to all the reasons why I'm thinking like that, but that's kind of where I'm at. 

Joel 
Things have, it is interesting how things work. Um, I've traditionally been, um, and this is not just like discouraged $5 wrench attacks, but I have never been a, a high net worth individual despite my years in crypto, uh, but he's a lot of, say here, say here. 

Doug 
I just I just bought a car on XMR bizarre for you know, five thousand dollars at 2013 in buying a new lambos 

Joel 
But so I'm not used to like any of my bags do it. Well, like that's just kind of always do the opposite in time for my use them. But I have noticed.

So like obviously a lot of most of what I earn and stuff is in Dash. And then for my podcast, I get sponsored by Coin ATM Radar that pay me in Bitcoin Cash, and I did some work for did a Zcash podcast series in twenty twenty two or three. And then also I have the power of privacy grant that was given to advance Dash privacy was all in Monero. So over the last few months, like one of the four has been doing well and the rest have been flat at one time. And so like I found that that really helps the psychological outlook versus when I had more just one asset or another kind of thing. So now I'm just like, oh, well, you know, those bastards are pumping. And so they're by masters to, you know. 

Doug 
Yeah, the bags you hold really does have an effect on your impression of things. That's reality.

Anybody who's not cognizant of that or willing to admit that is just lying to you. If you hold a little of these bags and those bags, then yeah, you're probably not going to be as pissed and angry and tribal about it when they're also like, oh, okay, I could bet on it. And I have to be trained. 

Joel 
too like of as far as like which bag would if it went to like 50% dump overnight which would stress me out the most probably the Monero because I'm like oh I got this I got this grant to you know we to deal with this stuff and it's just like it's not they don't grow on trees and I'm really excited about the work you can do with it all that stuff and if that went away that would be a big bummer whereas like other things I kind of feel like it could roll with obviously the dash went down I'd have to find other you know things to supplement income whatever figure things out but it is kind of funny how like

Doug 
You're saying if Monero went down, that would hurt you, perhaps more. Is that what you're saying? Yes, in my... 

Joel 
own, you know, for my personal finances, no, but for my own like, you know, my short mid-term situation of things I want to accomplish in life, it probably, yeah. 

Doug 
Yeah, I mean, I am so numb. People are like, should we hodl it or should we spend it? Some people want to pump the price, right? If you want to accomplish both, just hold nothing but Monero and then you're forced. You're hodling it, but then you're also forced to use it out of a need. So that's where I'm at with Monero and that's where I'll continue to be.

So for me, it doesn't matter. That may sound stupid, but I'm just completely dedicated to it at this point. Obviously, if I saw some major flaw that's coming, then yeah, I would be a complete fool not to jump ship. It wouldn't be responsible for me, myself and my family. But other than that, I'm tied and nothing has changed for me in terms of what my hypothesis is and currently how things are playing out. So I'm fine with it going down, going up. And Monero, I think it is fair to say, is less volatile than other cryptos because it's not listed on as many centralized exchanges. So the likelihood of it 10Xing may not be super high, but the likelihood of it going down 90% is also very unlikely, I would say at this point. 

Joel 
Yeah, I always wonder what, how exchanges like the price, how the price is actually determined, because I mean, theory, it's very clear, right? But as far as like, how many centralized exchanges could do up and down. And there have been some cases where you have seen massive price differences for very short periods of time across centralized exchanges. And I just wonder if, obviously, the more up and down, more trading, more speculative trading, the more volatility, of course.

I wonder if having just one exchange could be the problem. Like, what happens if you get down to like, Kraken's the last one standing, and then one whale with like, you know, 40 bucks, more than that, but like, is able to just move the entire price down by 50%, or increase it by 50%, according to that. But then that's, that's where things get a little bit interesting. That's where I like the decks. 

Doug 
Yeah, I mean, at that point, Kraken would start to lose its ability to affect the price of Monero, right? There'd be like two prices. There already is the street price of Monero and the listed and the sex price. And so I guess at that point, people would just respect the street price more.

It's start to trend, which is already, it's like trending towards that now as it becomes more and more untethered. But I could see it's swinging back and getting relisted on exchanges. I could see that happen too. I mean, with the headway that Zcash is making and the normalization that it's doing, the effect that it's having, the difference is very small, what it comes down to. Zcash just has this address that you can send to before you then make it private. What's the big difference there versus just being able to send your Monero off back to a Monero address? My understanding is even Gemini, they allow sending to a shielded. So if that's allowed, why isn't Monero allowed? And I get it. I mean, I would love to hear your insight on this. I think I've heard some things, but my opinion is that I guess they hold a lot of Zcash bags. Like we're saying, the bags affect the people. And that's why they're not in any rush to list Monero or deal with the possible hurdles that they have to jump through to list Monero. I do think maybe at some point that changes where it becomes worth it for even them to be like, you know what? Just like we're saying, it's good to be hedge. They'd be like, alright, why not? The more, the merrier. Let's now get Monero listed. 

Joel 
I don't know 100% of things, obviously. I do, however, deal with exchanges just about every single day I get some message I have to talk to. And there's super demand and then there's the law as far as what's legal in a jurisdiction. And there is a massive gulf of different factors that hit in between them. And a lot of that is extremely opaque in the crypto world, in the exchange world, particularly.

So for the most part, there are the only things where I could see actual legal issues with listing certain cryptocurrencies are is in the EU, because Bika, the new law in the EU for crypto, has some very specific provisions of what custodial explicitly exchanges have to do in order to list assets. And it basically means they have to be able to see where a transaction is coming from, see an address where it came from. And the depositor has to be able to sign that address and say, I certify I own this address. And so because of that, you need to send from a transparent to transparent. And if you what you could like, so there's this exchange only address thing that I believe the Fero team were the first ones to sort of come up with the concept, but then Zcash quickly kind of followed and some other coins might have done the same. I'm not exactly sure. But basically, it's an address that can only receive from transparent addresses. Now, that's one way of doing things. I the other way of doing things might just be you say, well, you need a transparent address of some kind and just say only deposit from transparent addresses. I've seen this because Litecoins, MIMWIMBL, has kind of a similar problem and they don't have exchange addresses. And I've seen payment processors and other things with the thing in Europe that says when Litecoin don't send from M-web or you might lose your funds. So I guess you don't necessarily need an exchange address, but you do need some sort of a transparent address or some sort of a address plus view key thing or something like that. Monero has an operator and type data set. You can include data with a transaction. Oh, sorry, you're muted there still. 

Doug 
Sorry, I keep muting myself because I have a little bit of cold, so I'm sneezing over here. Yeah, no problem.

And I'm using my honey purchased with Monero from Porkfest, by the way. Yeah, very nice.

You probably know these guys, these guys that they run at the Indian restaurant. Mm-hmm.

You know what I'm talking about? The Forkfest? 

Joel 
think so. I can't remember which one in particular. 

Doug 
They're fantastic. But yeah, so with Monero, there's no easy way to send data with a transaction. We used to have the payment ID thing. We deprecated that.

Monero tries to eliminate... There are ways to do it, but there's no easy way to do it. Monero goes out of his way to not allowing there for it to be any way to connect data with any transaction that's being sent. They can have changes at some point. But as you know, Monero is dedicated to being private by default and any talk of adjusting code or adding things that will, for the purposes of integrating with the centralized exchange, is a complete non-starter. So it's like, you got to take it or leave it. And Kraken currently is able to do it. There was rumor that once they go public, that they'll de-list Monero. That was a rumor that came out a couple of weeks ago when we saw the price of Monero crash overnight on Kraken.

Low volume, but somebody just sold a bunch in one shot. I don't know if that's true. I could see things going either way. With the Trump administration and everything being pro-crypto. Seemingly, it seems like this would be a friendly environment for Monero, if not now, then never. But that's also right. We're seeing the Samurai devs like, let's see what happens. If they get pardoned, that's another good indication that they're reeling back, loosening the noose. But yeah, I wouldn't be surprised either way, to be honest. 

Joel 
Yeah, the thing is it's a, it's simple and complicated at the same time. Um, the simple thing is it has never been in, as far as I know in the U S illegal to use any kind of privacy preserving cryptocurrency. And it's the previous administration has tried its best to, in my opinion, behave extra legally in order to try to crack down on this kind of thing. Whether it's with the sec going after crypto projects and on purpose, refusing to sort of define what is or isn't a security so they can attack as many as they wanted, whether it's like trying to find money wandering type charges or sanctions, evasions, or whatever kind of things they could do to silence some of the, or silent, you know, sanction tornado cash or whatever, whatever weird loopholes they tried to do, but it's never been actually illegal, illegal.

And now the administration is different. The new administration is not going after that nearly as much. Now, um, I'm not optimistic about any more pardons because we got Russell brick. That was way more than I thought we'd get. Um, then Roger Veer guts let off with a big fat bribe, you know, which I think is a little bit more like, ah, let's just like, it's like, I think that Trump's favors to the crypto world are kind of like paid in his eyes, just like, all right, I did all these things. I'm on to other things you let me do. Right. And let's just go to. 

Doug 
make him money, make his family money, right? And I don't know.

Maybe the Zcash cartel is knocking on their door, right? That's one of the things, benefits, right? That Zcash has compared to Monero is they have a network of people that are basically on payroll, working for them, advocating for them, lobbying for them. And ultimately, I would see that could help Monero too. Yes, of course, if they start to influence, because if it's going to be okay for Zcash, then it should be okay for Monero. 

Joel 
Yeah, in a lot of cases I would say so. The thing is, the tale as old as time is like, it's who you know, what your relationships, what you're able to do. And it's like Zcash doesn't have any mystery, like war chest of money. They don't have any, like if you look at the market cap of Zcash versus Monero over the years, of like the total money that exists, it's been less than Monero probably for a lot of this time.

And the difference is just instead of giving it all to miners, it's not all been to miners, but even what has funded the foundation and ECC and the grants and now the lockbox mechanism and all the other stuff, that stuff is still not enough to make some of these big moves. What they did do in the early days is a lot of them, again, some of this is speculation by the way, I should just say that because I don't have a lot of knowledge on this, but they did get a lot of friends and investors. And so for example, when you have like, you know, Silberg and Digital Currency Group, you have the Linkovoss twins, you have other people like that, that you go, you make those connections and you sell them that this is a great idea. This is gonna be the future of crypto and privacy of all. And you sell them, they're like, okay, I'm sold, I'm gonna buy a bag. Eventually, some of the-

Doug 
Some of them are part of the founder's rewards here, right? 

Joel 
Yes, possibly. To be completely frank, I have not researched who of anyone got that first few years of that. But I'm sure there are some of those. But I'm sure that they also, again, speculation, have not dumped their Zcash bags over the years.

And eventually, they're just like, you know what, I'm seeing a turnaround. I'm seeing the Zashi wallets looking great. I'm seeing there's momentum. I'm seeing a lot of good decisions. And I have a bag of this. Why don't I make some aggressive tweets? Why don't I make a few connections and introduce some people? Why don't I, when I'm on Capitol Hill already lobbying for my industry not to be completely wiped out, why don't I also say, by the way, privacy is normal? Because I got the Zcash bag over here. And so it makes a whole lot of sense. And that's when you see, having been in the sort of Zcash trenches for just a little dipping my toe in the earlier days, there's a lot of regular normal people on all walks that have been like, there's a surprising number of sleeper cell Zcash fans over the years, just waiting for the right time to be active. And so for example, Shielded Labs is entirely donation funded. It's not funded by any of that kind of stuff. And they just have an R&D group. And I guess I'm kind of different things. At the end of the day, that stuff is, I think, super important, the networking. And I think Monero has done a lot of the same types of things in just the yin-yang, the opposite side of the world, as far as getting into all these safer punk groups. I'm sure someone's been approaching dark net markets or petitioning or doing stuff like that, hitting up the agarists, seeing the farmer's markets, those kinds of things. 

Doug 
That's me. That's how I spend my time, right? Which, see, but that, it's, you're a, you're a, 

Joel 
half of a Winklevoss right there. 

Doug 
on the back. It's a grassroots Winklevoss, which is the true cypherpunk way, right? It should be grassroots. It shouldn't be talking to, I don't know, although we have the guy from Simple Exxon and he's saying real cypherpunks basically negotiate with the regulators and deal with the regulators and win lawsuits and win Supreme Court cases. And I agree with that.

That's definitely part of the battle, big part of the battle. But yeah, I think that fundamentally is where Monero and Zcash differ. And that's, once again, I think why it makes it a good hedge because I think both methods will work in their own way. But my thesis is at the end of the day, Monero's approach will allow it to be the least susceptible to being co-opted. And that's what will give Monero its value at the end of the day, and that'll be the one true, detached crypto. It's not going to be on an ETF anytime soon. We just saw Zcash, they just announced, Grayscale just announced, they're launching an ETF. And I even see some Zcash people being upset about it because they see it as not being cypherpunk. There are cypherpunks in Zcash, there are legit, where they're like, no, we don't want to see that because this could be a means towards controlling Zcash. And I don't think you're going to see that in Monero anytime soon. So ultimately, that's where I see these, I think the tech, yeah, you can argue Zcash has better privacy tech right now, on a mathematical level, effectively, they both work, they both do privacy well enough where it's untraceable digital cash. But I see that kind of being their difference, where Zcash gets more integrated, and there are benefits to that, as we've seen with Bitcoin, that is very much a number go up thing. And Monero doesn't get integrated, but it allows that to maintain its grassroots nature, it grows deep roots and becomes a true global utility that no government or corporation is influencing. That's my overall view with two projects. I don't know, what do you do? 

Joel 
There is a lot of, this is something I'm not actually fully decided on because not everything, like there's definitely advantages. So decentralization is obviously a strength because the fewer big entities can be targeted to take you down, the better. I mean, obviously it should be very obvious to anyone. On the other end, there's the other side of having powerful friends, well-capitalized friends is a great security countermeasure too. And ideally you kind of want both.

You want to have the most distributed network you can that has the hardest attack service, right? The most difficult service to attack both from an economic perspective, from a network security perspective, socially as well, all that kind of stuff, legally as well. You want to have as diversified as possible. You also want any, these are monetary systems. These are economic systems, all of them. And you do want to have economic incentives in your corner, of course. You want people to be incentivized to do the right thing as far as the network are concerned. And part of that means you want people with a lot of money doing stuff on your behalf. And so like Roger Verre, for example, is one of the best examples of this because he had a lot of money from other things, got into Bitcoin, and then there was no Bitcoin industry at all until he kind of started it. He sort of ceded the capital for things. He used his influence to start a whole economy around digital cash. And then since then, he's been, of course, a privacy fan and advocate. And I don't think we'd be nearly as far without, again, big rich friend in big rich places, right? That kind of thing. So it's kind of like a thing of balancing of you want powerful friends of some kind. You want money interested in your success. And you also don't want them to have an outsized influence, which could bring you away from your roots. And I kind of feel like if you look at this in 10 years, in terms of Monero and Zcash, the ecosystems power structures, I guess, or their entrenchments would look a lot closer to the way they do now. There's a little bit more top-down looking stuff on the Zcash side and a little bit more bottom-up on the Monero side right now, where Monero doesn't have these big friends in high places for the most part. And then Zcash is also a little bit heavy on those, but then I think that they're gonna start filtering out towards, assuming they both succeed, right? If they don't succeed, you might see something different. But if they both succeed, I would say they start to look closer to each other. So like, for example, if Monero keeps growing and there are ETFs in 10 years, Monero will probably have an ETF. Like that's just the way it's gonna be. 

Doug 
kind of like the last crypto to get an ETF type thing, right? 

Joel 
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And, you know, again, ETFs are great for some things, but I mean, on the whole, like getting an ETF, I should say, are great for some things and bad for others.

On the whole, I don't want there to be ETFs to begin with, but there are so. 

Doug 
Yeah, it's to complain and be like, ETFs exist, so what are you going to do about it? These tools need to still be able to maintain their decentralization despite the fact that an ETF exists.

But it is a very real attack, the ability now, because those powers that be can have direct access to the money printer, and then they can use that to essentially co-opt and take over your crypto by turning their worthless fiat dollars into your crypto and just taking control of it over time. So yeah, I think the narrow is less susceptible to that. Obviously, eventually, it would be also attacked in that way, but I think it would be the final battle. I don't know what happens at that point. 

Joel 
I guess if you just imagine a world where Monero is the only cryptocurrency that exists, and then also where it becomes super successful to where it's like the global money of some kind, then it would definitely be in everything, then definitely every government on the world and the world would have their treasuries in Monero, definitely every evil bankster person here and definitely everyone would be trying to push weird nefarious poll requests and like, you know, there'd be mining farms in China that would just, you know, there would be everything, right? It's just, it's one of those things that like, to a certain extent, with any radical movement, but also these tech, when you're really small, you get to be like really pure. And at some point, when you let everyone in, everyone is in, sometimes you don't like some of those people. But it's like, it's like a growing thing. And I think that Bitcoin, the fact that Bitcoin has let in people and institutions and companies, I actually don't think that's the real problem. The real problem is it only made room for them, that the average person at the farmer's market, right, he's not there. The average, you know, person running their small business, taking, receiving crypto, she's not there. Like there's, those people got cut out and it's only banksters, bankstersonly.com, right? So they, at some point, anything that gets successful enough will have all kinds of things. And you know, it's, it's kind of interesting. There's a debate going on in the Zcash world that I've sort of seen on the fringes right now, because a lot of the new people are very much like neo Bitcoiners in a way, where there, there's already talk about ossification of the protocol. There's already talk about proof of work only. There's also already talk about no shielded assets, like all these roadmap items that were kind of the Zcash community was for the most part in consensus over that they're like, this is, we like this, we want to move to a hybrid security model. We want to have these things. Now you get like the Mertz of the world coming in, and a bunch of other people being like, nope, it's got to be just like this. And then now there's like, oh, who did we let in kind of thing? Although to the completely fair, Josh of Dr. Corn Company, he's, he's kind of divided on this. He came out sort of against this whole crosslink idea in the last day or two. So yeah, that's kind of interesting twist to the whole thing. But, you know, as always, there's, there's risks when you let people in, but also you should not be able to decide who you let in or don't really, you know, 

Doug 
Right. It should be permissionless. The community has to end up and the protocol has to evolve as new people come in. If it's built with a good enough base and structure, it should be able to withstand that and not be altered to the point where it's no longer what it was meant to be.

So Zcash has been a little less toxic in that way, right? In that they're open to negotiating with the regular, all right, we'll make these changes to the protocol. They're opening the doors a little bit. And so in various ways where they're letting these parties in, right? Monero is a little more resistant to letting people in that aren't fully on board with the value proposition of being like peer to peer digital cash, right? Are people sneaking in and being like, let's pump it. Let's do this. Let's just focus on... Yeah, those people are getting in the door, but they're not making much headway.

But yeah, like you said, we'll see. As we grow, the tent will get larger and we'll have you deal with those issues as well. We have been dealing them with a little bit, right? Like this talk of potentially doing a hybrid proof of stake to solve the issue that we had with the cubic attack, right? That was like a moment for Monero. It was a little bit of a growing pain as more people are in the community. And then you really saw the strong pro proof of work crowd went out and wanting to maintain itself as proof of work. Zcash, I mean, how do you see that playing out? Will it stay proof of work only? Basically, like what you're saying, you have these new ideas being brought in there. Some people are more focused on number go up, it being the encrypted version of Bitcoin. So just like Bitcoin, 21 million only, the focus is literally on just number go up and the fact that it has this privacy feature where you could shield it. But other than that, we're not so concerned about, let's say, keeping transactions super cheap or things like that. Which version do you see winning out for Zcash?

What does Zcash become? 

Joel 
So I would probably say the previous roadmap idea is probably, if I were to bet, you know, which I don't know, I really don't know. But if I had to bet, I'd probably say the previous idea would win out. We have a more of a progressive mindset around that. And I would have said that much more securely until Josh came out and said that other stuff, because he's one of the bigger driving forces in the ecosystem.

And he's bringing a lot of new people in. And if he's kind of on the fence about that, you know, I don't know. But then also, like, there's a, you know, Shielded Labs is working on crosslink. So it's hard to tell. I think, well, here's the thing, it ultimately depends on two things. One, you do need some sort of a community governance mechanism of some kind. Now, some people like the Bitcoin Cash community don't have anything in the protocol, but they have like the chip process that's very well defined as far as like someone proposes an idea, we have this much, this is just the way we do things around here. Propose an idea, there's this much discussion. And then there's, you know, this many public figures and entities signing off on this versus that. And then this happens. And then the note implementations decide what they're going to do. And like they have a process for that. And then there's like actual DAOs that have baked into the protocols as far as how you vote. And so Zcash has been, as they've been decentralizing pretty rapidly this last couple of years, I would say, the adding in like coin holder voting and some other things, I think will make it easier for, you know, whatever the reasonable ideas are to move forward.

It's, I've noticed this with, again, being like a veteran of the whole block size wars, the big block camp in Bitcoin was almost undoubtedly the majority camp, but the less strong, strongly public voiced camp. And so because of that, that ended up winning out and Bitcoin became what it is today. And so if it's defined, though, it's harder, it's harder for these kind of new passing fancy voices to come in and make an impact. And the other thing, though, of course, just like thought leadership, right? And this is something it's, you know, it's like who, like the founder of the project, if they're still involved, the key leader of these big organizations, the people people listen to those kinds of people. And I have to say, in the Bitcoin block size wars, those thought leader people tended to be more on the small block camp, I think, and that might have affected it as well.

But so that's kind of it. And I don't see a lot of, here's the thing, like the Bitcoin is doing just like this whole narrative that we should whatever we are and whatever it is, we should do what Bitcoin did, but this thing different. I think that that's going to be a dated narrative pretty soon, because it sort of pebacks on the idea that Bitcoin is doing just great, but maybe has one or two things we can fix. And I don't think Bitcoin is doing just great. 

Joel 
I think that the, based on price adoption, it's doing pretty well, but I don't think I think that's temporary. And I also think there's a lot of things that could be done way differently and should be done differently.

And so I think that if you start seeing Bitcoin slip in the rankings, if you, you start to see its dominance effects start to go down and other coins start to have the spotlight, I think that people will be less scrambling to be like, let's be just like Bitcoin. Don't touch it. It worked for them. When it's not working for them, it won't be there anymore. And it's crazy to see sentiment change over the course of an hour based on a price candle. I don't know if you've seen this happen, but like, I'm sure you've had time times when people are like doom and glue on Monero and in the community. And then like a day later, the price is doing really well that day. Now all of a sudden that the perspectives on these very same technical issues they're talking about, oh my gosh, we can get 51% attack to hell. This sucks. We need to do something. And then boom, it pumps. They're like, ah, we don't need to change anything. It's great. Like the mind is so plastic with this guy's stuff. 

Doug 
Yeah. That does not happen that often in Monero though.

The price is usually just... So, where do you see Zcash going? Will it be a hybrid proof of stake? Are they adding that tacky on thing? What exactly is that? Assets on Zcash, I guess like a Zano thing, confidential assets? What are all the things that you are likely to happen on Zcash? 

Joel 
So I think that the most likely thing would be Tachyon. I don't know very much about Tachyon. All I know is what I heard from Ruben Yap of Furo who described what he could tell me about it. I will have to interview Sean Bow in my own podcast and kind of get the whole breakdown. It sounds like Tachyon is mostly a way, an infrastructure type thing as far as how nodes connect to the blockchain and wallets that kind of make it easier to scale up like wallet infrastructure and stuff when you scale. But it's not like a blockchain scaling thing at all itself. That's my understanding at least.

So therefore I think Tachyon is probably going to happen. Then the other one I think is probably going to happen I would say is this thing called the NSM or the Network Sustainability Mechanism which basically allows, it turns, it defers some transaction fees to later basically and allows you to donate to the future block reward. So basically it took me a while to kind of come around to this. It's similar to what you could consider with like a tail emission plus fee burn mechanism or like a way to burn coins but they aren't actually burned. But basically if you think of the network like a business and you make ton of revenue and if you spend all that revenue on stuff immediately then if you make no revenue later in the season like where I'm at in New Hampshire like half the the restaurants are in the black half the year and then the red the other half because of tourism season. If you spend it right away you're gonna have like ups and downs of like you're gonna have to lay off a bunch of people whatever but if you kind of you know meter it out over a long period of time it's more sustainable I guess. So I kind of like that idea because like the block reward at the inflation already is kind of over time and like Monero has this base sustainability in the tail emission. It kind of adds something like that without changing the actual supply where you would still have, sorry do you need it again? 

Doug 
What is it exactly it's it's you could they're gonna adjust the you could preserve your block reward Like it doesn't get admitted right away 

Joel 
Yeah, basically, for every, I think something like 60% of transaction fees would be paid out over the next couple years as opposed to kind of immediately. So it was like right now, all the transaction fees that go in just get paid out and whatever minor gets the block gets all those fees.

This would go into something that would go into a block of board that would still come out over a certain period of time. And it also allows you to do something like-

Doug 
What problems do they feel like they're solving with that? They're just preserving block reward for future incentive for mining type thing? 

Joel 
Yeah. So, you know, Bitcoin is coming up on this security ticking time bomb with the block rewards going down, but then you had these massive ordinals pumps and other things and BRC 20s that just pumped the fees to the, you know, astronomically, all the people who are mining at that moment got all that money.

And then in five years, when everything's, whenever it's poor, there's going to be nothing to pay the miners to keep that level of security. Basically what that would be saying, 60% of those fees would just be added into the mix over the next couple of years. That's kind of what it would do. Just smooth it out a little bit. 

Doug 
Okay. Like, they saw it coming down the road as being a problem. Like you said, similar to Bitcoin considering that it may need to add a tail emission or something. This is what they came up with.

Yeah. Ever be any talk of potential tail emission in Zcash? No, right? Because they are so stuck out in the 20... They want to be the 21 million privacy coin. 

Joel 
I would say probably not, but it's basically like the equivalent of having a tail emission as far as it does the same effect, where you always have a similar security budget long term, but just where you get it from, it isn't so much, you know, you just have potentially infinite inflation. It's where the fees just sort of get squished out over a long period of time, so it ends up being like that.

It's kind of the same thing. The interesting part about that, other than just the fees, is I would say it has like a donation mechanism as well. So imagine this, right? Imagine you say, hey, I'm going to crowdfund this killer app, or I'm going to get network funding, however that works out, for some killer app, and out of every dollar I make on this app, once it's there, I'm going to donate 10% to the network itself. And so then you could actually send from a company profits, just like buy ZEC and dump it into that NSM address, and then it would be the same as if the network itself burned those fees. So who knows, maybe you've seen how some of the Bitcoin ETFs have talked about donating to Bitcoin development, and imagine if the Zcash ETF, like 10% of their profits, they just dumped into the network, block reward itself, they could do something like that. And so it's kind of an interesting thing. I think it's good to have, especially the voluntary side of things. I mean, imagine if someone said, I'm going to crowdfund from the crowdfunding system, I'm going to crowdfund some awesome project for Monero, people are giving me money to do this, but once it comes up with money, like imagine someone said, hey, can you give me like 150K worth of Monero? And in return, I am going to buy the absolute dip of whatever crypto assets, and I'm going to sell the absolute top, and I'm going to 10X the money that I got. And then of all the stuff that I get in, I'm going to donate most of the proceeds back into the tail emission, let's say, the block reward. And it's something kind of like that, which could, it's an interesting function, kind of operates more like an economy, right? 

Doug 
Is there any ever talk of adding dynamic blocks to Zcash or increasing block size? 

Joel 
I'm sure the idea would be, I'm sure the blocks would be increased over time. I'm not exactly sure what these, what the parameters might be. I mean, it's like a one and a quarter minute block time right now. So that's kind of like a, what is it? Like a, um, eight X Bitcoin's capacity. If they have one megabyte blocks, I think they might have two megabyte blocks anyway. So it's, it's a decent capacity for now.

Uh, I'm not exactly sure what the plan is. I think it must be to just increase it over time. The dynamic blocks are an interesting concept. I kind of like the idea of like, I said it and forget it kind of block size limit. Um, at the same time, I, I'd have to think about ways it could be gamed or maybe it couldn't, can't be gamed. I don't know, but, um, I definitely, you know, then there's like the BSV approach is like put a gig of blocks right now and just like let it happen. But yeah, that's something else. 

Doug 
And obviously no talk of Zcash ever becoming private by default, right? I mean, I'm sure there's talk, but there's no consensus around it. 

Joel 
Well, it depends on really what you mean, because, um, I've heard arguments and I kind of agree that it's private by default right now in that all the block rewards go to shielded immediately. All the new coins go there and every major wallet is shielded by default. But as far as to not have a transparent, um, address option, I'm sort of 50 50 on that, and I didn't think that there was, and I did not think that there was a, a push to do that internally in Zcash, but I've seen a few influential people, um, talk about that. That's something they'd like to have happen over the next few years.

So I think, I think that if the risks surrounding like delistings and stuff start to significantly go down, I think that the idea to get rid of transparent addresses will probably start to become dominant, right? And we're actually seeing something. So my week has been kind of crazy because, um, I remember early 2024 or so, um, a couple of those big, your P big exchanges, um, operating Europe, mostly, uh, delisted dash, and I was talking, okay. X was one of these, and I was trying to get in touch with them, trying to do this. And then they're just like complete cold shoulder doesn't work, whatever. And then just yesterday, uh, okay. X relisted dash without telling anyone, they just like, guess what? You're back. And I'm like, Oh, I know what happened to that. What happened to this whole regulatory problems thing or whatever. And then at the same time, um, I think it's called Jew.com, JU.com. Again, not that kind of Jew you guys, um, if you get, it was some big Asian exchange relisted or listed for the first time, maybe dash in, um, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. And dash has not been on a Korean or Japanese exchange in at least five years. That's one of the,

Doug 
I remember when Monero got delisted off, yes, I remember when Monero got added to the Korean Exchange for the first time That was when it first like mega pumped like well, you know, that was like one of its big pumps Yeah added to the Korean Exchanges and like so

Joel 
So I haven't gotten to the bottom of this, but clearly something changed. Something is different to where the risks ... I think that over the last year, the risks from governments have gone of cracking down on this stuff outside, of course, the EU bubble and their very similar ... Yeah, but that was ... 

Doug 
Dash though, right? I mean, Dash, I don't know, you know, you could catch me up on Dash too.

That's a whole, that's a whole nother shell. But it's not, I mean, would you categorize it as a privacy coin at this point? 

Joel 
Yeah, I absolutely would for a few reasons. Number one, I would just say anything that has a built in network level, anything to provide better than Bitcoin privacy could be considered that.

And there's also network level stealth addressing got built in last year as far as the privacy, which would basically add confidential transactions in at the protocol level, the developments already begun on that, the DAO vote passed to do that. And I don't know how many more months got on that. 

Doug 
Is Dash going to give a talk at Monero's Hope? Yeah, I mean, well, I... 

Joel 
So first off, I can do it for sure, but by the way start 

Doug 
Sorry, not to start drama, but sorry about offering you the host and then having to cancel you. So, you know, I'm trying, listen, Monerotopia is a balancing act. I try to bring in all these projects, but I also have to balance that with, you know, maintaining, keeping the Monero faithful, happy, right? And I was hearing it from respected members of the community, too.

It's just like, I guess because there's been things and we don't need to get into it, but, you know, there's been things that perhaps you've said where people feel like, you know, that you're not set, you know, you're just kind of trolling. 

Joel 
Well, I've never been anything but truthful. That being said, I do enjoy a good troll now and again.

And I have to admit, I mean, you say, why don't you be the host? I'd be like, sure, why not? And I, of course, instantly thought, I'm sure the initial reaction to this would be, this is a troll on the Monerotopia side of things. It's like, you know, because

Doug 
I mean, it worked out well with Vlad, in my opinion, although there's a lot of people in Monero that are angry at Vlad because he doesn't talk enough about Monero now. He's just shilling Zcash, which he is. But, you know, people should be able to get over these things a little bit.

I think it's very clear that he's got his Zcash bags. I don't think he's anti-Monero by any means. I guess, once again, maybe he said some inaccurate things about Monero, which being in his position, knowing nobody knows, he shouldn't be saying those things. 

Joel 
So here's a couple of things about Vlad and I have to say, you know, Vlad's a friend of mine. I met him a few times in person. I hung out with him. I write for his magazine.

You see there on the shelf right there. So Vlad was a mostly Bitcoin person up until like a year ago or so, year and a half ago. 

Doug 
his arc as well, yeah. 

Joel 
Yes, and he's a lot of people in crypto and by included like he was a wasabi 

Doug 
He was a Bitcoin privacy Wasabi wallet guy. I remember trying to convince him of Monero, and I was like, no, Wasabi. I was like, no. 

Joel 
It's a tough life to leave. So that's why I'm sure the switch happened. But so he's, I think he likes to, everyone wants a hero, like a champion. It's hard to be like, oh, I like all kinds of things. It's much easier about to be like, this is the thing.

And I think that he, I would say he, I don't think he's a dishonest person. All I think that if he said inaccurate, he said some things that I think are inaccurate, but I think it's because of, of not fully understanding. And I have to say the privacy space is one of those spaces where I don't trust a single voice 100%. Whereas the rest of the crypto space, I might trust a couple of people kind of 100% as far as, because privacy is so, it's so technically, you know, challenging, but also so many people are so siloed to where, I don't know anyone who's like a in-depth level, like expert in Zcash, Monero, Dash, Decred, you know, Firo, and like can actually just like, like Antonopoulos style, just like describe all the pros and cons. That's you, bro. You are that guy. Yeah, but I'm like the dumb, dumb Antonopoulos, you know, I'm not like the,

Doug 
I mean, I know Monero, Zcash, I know well enough, but yeah, I'm not, I hear what you're saying, there's nobody that's, there are, I could maybe think of a couple of people, well, it says even narrow it, and Zcash, that really understand Monero and Zcash very well. 

Joel 
I would say Ruben Yap is the closest we got to that as far as he just 

Doug 
Justin Earnhofer, I'd say, has a very good understanding of both projects, at least historically he has. Where were we? I feel like you were making... 

Joel 
exchange delisting stuff. So there's been a crazy arc on the trying to message about that. I remember Brian Taylor, who was kind of heading up a lot of stuff in Dash in years past was very like pro, I'm trying to think of a political way of a politically correct way to say pro appeasement. But basically pro like try to downplay privacy to say it's not that great, make the regulators treat you nicely. Now I don't think it worked. And he got sort of voted off the island for the, in Dash. Anyway, that's a different story. But I guess the point is all this stuff, nothing worked.

As far as like, hey, guess what? This is like trying to say there's no legal reason that you need to treat this like this. Just no one cares. And I think that something changed where the pressure on exchanges must have gone way down over the last year or so. That combined with as soon as they started to see that Zcash God candle and everything else around it, they're just like, we want that money. Whereas that is the big thing. And I make it sound maybe a little cynical by saying that, but it's true, exchanges make money and they want, and the lower, I've noticed this in real time because I talked to the biz dev team of XANO, of Decred, of the Bitcoin Cash community, of the Zcash community as well. And of course I talked to you about Monero stuff as far as New York regulations and other things. Sometimes you compare notes about proposals for integrations and different projects. And whenever I look at people who are lower in the market cap rankings, I feel sad because the prices go so far up. As soon as you're like, hey, this exchange just listed you guys. They want to charge us 500K. I'm just like, we didn't pay anything. What are you talking about? Oh my gosh. It gets, so I think that some of this was, it just wasn't worth them to do the research, to do the regulatory compliance stuff, to do, they're just like, these guys have no volume anyway, get out of here. And as soon as the volume comes, they're just like, hey, maybe it is worth our while to look into this. So I guess Zcash is the next thing to look at, but I don't know, there might be, there might like, I wouldn't be surprised to see Monero make a certain comeback in some of these areas, maybe not the EU. But I've noticed that like, the open crypto, the DFX people in Switzerland that have like all those supermarkets and stuff, like they don't have to deal with EU law at all. They have, they seem to be getting a lot of demand for Monero, Zano, other things like that. I think that, yeah, I think it's a good shot that you could see a delisting reversal in the Monero world in the next couple of years. I wouldn't, do you think that's realistic? 

Doug 
Yeah, I do. I think it's a possibility.

Like I said, things can end up going the opposite direction or you're kind of staying the same, but I'm leaning towards that outcome where we start to see relistings and things like that. I mean, it's going to happen in tandem with, you know, Sarai DEX will launch. I know you've been a little doubtful and I understand why, but I do think, I'm very confident that that will launch soon. Yeah. 

Joel 
on the inside of that. But I heard Thorchain is considering doing Winero. I think they might be waiting for full chain membership proofs because otherwise everything has like code audits and other stuff like that. It's a lot of work and money, so they might wait for that.

But then there's that. All you gotta be is on one of these. Do you know if anyone's talked to the near intense folks about any of that stuff? 

Doug 
Um, that's a, that's a good question. I don't think, I don't know if those conversations are happening. I know, like, Norton is looking to add some kind of near intense feature, right? But that's a whole nother discussion.

But yeah, for near intense itself, just natively adding Monero, I don't know why that's not happening. That's people, somebody should be putting pressure there. Yeah, there's probably no reason why it can't happen, right? I think it's, I don't really completely understand how near intense works, but I don't think there's really any technical issues, right? Like, to add something like a Monero. 

Joel 
Well, it depends. Everyone who's ever told me, everyone who's ever worked on Monero Tech has always said it's more challenging than other blockchains.

And there might be some of that. But from my understanding, the way Near Intense works, the technical side of things tends to be more streamlined than something like ThorChain, for example. And so I think, on the other hand, I don't want to be, as far as I understand, there's more optionality with Near Intense solvers, meaning the market makers, to, I guess, refuse business from certain swappers. So for example, with ThorChain, any interface can put in like Know Your Transaction, whatever, kind of blocking stuff. But if you just interact with the protocol itself, no one can really censor anything unless the nodes get together and just decide to shut down trading entirely on certain pools. But there's no ability to block any transactions going through. As far as I know, it's a little trickier with Near Intense. There would be a possibility where a lot of the independently running market makers known as solvers could say, we don't want these transactions going through or something like that. So maybe they've decided because of their risk profiles and stuff and lack of compliance tool or whatever else that they don't, they would rather not add in the narrow. Maybe, again, I'm just making some supposition. 

Doug 
Yeah, I don't know. That's a good question.

Yeah, I don't know if anybody's pushed that issue. They should be Yeah, I don't know if I've heard the responses to why or why not they may they may not add Monero But yeah, Thor chain supposedly working on it right as far as I know as far as you know I mean, we're trying to get them involved in the conference, but it looks at we'll get the Maya protocol people instead. Mm-hmm Yeah, no sneeze. I know they're there. They already have zcash My understanding is if Thor chain adds Monero, then they'll likely probably just add Monero as well because those they're very interoperable Right, like if Thor chain can add Monero, then they could have done easily added as well after so we'd probably see that but you know more about that than I do

Joel 
Yeah, it's kind of interesting because I'm hearing some, I wouldn't say conflicting things, but I'm, there's, there's a lot of people involved with both ecosystems and they kind of have a complimentary, like they are completely separate, but they kind of work together a little bit. And typically Maya has added assets that Thorchain was not going to add. That's kind of been their MO.

I don't think it's been, I don't think they've actually checked and they're like, Hey Yachting, no, great. Let's do it. They've just. 

Doug 
I think Thorchain is adding Zcash now though, right? 

Joel 
Well, that's the thing. And now the other way around, I did talk to, um, one of the lead dorching guys recently about that and basically just said like, yeah, well, there's enough volume and stuff that it probably makes sense to have both.

And basically like we, we work together closely ish, but we also don't like base our listing decisions on who, what the other one has. So it is interesting because Maya kind of was like the, almost like the sloppy seconds decks to a certain extent. And then I had like the dash was the first new coin that they added. And then they had a bunch of other ones. And then Z cash. And then before you know it, the Z cash and, and dash volumes for a while, uh, we're like competitive with Thor chain. I think Thor chain got dead jealous about that. And we're like, Oh, we got to do this too. 

Doug 
That's it's not as funny either way. It's working out that way which is why I think they might be kind of the kind of group That would be susceptible to adding Monero.

I mean they're coming to Monero topia. So we shows them you shall see the Mayans. Yes Via you because you got me connected with

Joel 
Also, like if I were to describe like the ethos alignment, right? So I feel like Thorchain came from this ethos that was kind of hardcore cypherpunk, but a little immature in the early days, where it was a little more like Silicon Valley cypherpunk, where you liked all these high-minded ideas, but weren't ready to get dirty yet. And then when the whole DPRK stuff started hitting, things got dirty really fast. And I, there was a time a lot of people, influential people in Thorchain were like wanting to start censoring North Korean transactions or like do something like that, and they ended up like losing.

So the, the cypherpunk tan tendencies won out. On the other hand, um, and some people did actually resign from like the, the main development teams during that time, because they just did not want the smoke of being on a development team of a product that the North Koreans were using, which I will not judge anyone for. Like, because you don't want to go to prison. Like no one needs to go to jail. And so on the minds, on the other hand, I feel been way more aligned from day one as far as I know for a fact that did some, some work with them in the early days. That the, the team is not doxxed. They don't have like the Maya protocol itself. There are no corporate bank accounts or anything. Like they're, they're completely unbaked, like the individuals or whatever, but they, you know, it's purely cypherpunk in that way, purely decentralized, purely whatever, and also as Alex said before, he says, you know what, this revenue share token that we have built in, um, it might be considered a security, but I don't care because we're not in the U S and we're not doxxed. And also, you know, who cares what the government says kind of thing. So maybe the ethos is much more kind of aligned. I don't feel like one thing's for sure. I don't feel like it's the same risk aversion in the ethos as you might've had in Thor Ching in the past and maybe still in the present, but, um, either way, you get on one good decks, you're in. 

Doug 
Yeah, yeah. And like I said, I do think Sarai is going to come relatively fast now at this point, and now they're competing too, right? So I'm sure in the back of Luke's mind, he wants to get it out there and launch before Thorchain takes all the liquidity for being under the first decks. So we shall see.

But thank you for putting me in touch with the Mayans. I appreciate that. I think there'll be a great contribution to the conference. And thanks for connecting me with some of the others. Litecoin as well. We have, what's his name? David? Burkett. He'll be participating. That's exciting. He's kind of like the MimbleWimble guy, right? He's... 

Joel 
Yeah, he's kind of, from my understanding, he's kind of like the lead Litecoin developer right now, and he implemented, and as far as I'm aware, Charlie Lee came up with the idea to do a MimbleWimble implementation on Litecoin initially and talked about it, but it was basically David and a couple other devs who like did the whole thing, and he's a, I like the guy a lot, I've met him in person, he's been on my podcast, he's a very like, you know, develop like a proper developers or extremely like, I would say no bullshit, as far as they're just like very tech oriented, and they're not like, they don't pad things with like, oh, well, the

Doug 
This is so cool. They just, they're very agnostic. 

Joel 
Not that this equals that, that equals that. And so also very sovereignty based guy.

There's a lot of like around all the weird chicken memes and stuff, like Queen community has a lot of sovereignty forward people, which is pretty cool. 

Doug 
Yeah. Yeah.

No, I'm excited that they'll be participating in Monero topia for the first time. That being said, actually, let me let me quickly run a Monero topia ad here just like a minute long, I could go throw some water on my face because I'm fighting this cold. And then we'll wrap it up. I want to talk a little bit about Monero topia. I want to get your prediction on kind of privacy season, like, you know, it has the best yet to come. So let me quickly run this ad and we'll get right back at it. 

Speaker 2 
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Doug 
The water on the face felt great. Oh my God. Yeah, it's the first time I've gotten cold in a long time.

I don't know. I don't know what's going on. I thought I was doing well. I was doing well. Did not be able to exercise outside. No, it's gotten, you know, gets dark at like four o'clock over here. 

Joel 
Yeah. So I had, uh, after I came back from, um, high Fest and Croatia last year, I got some like pretty bad pneumonia for awhile. And ever since I, and I feel, I feel fine, but I've gotten sick very frequently, like once a month almost or something.

Really? You know, it just gets a lot easier. And I don't, I don't know, I guess I gotta, I heard according to the GBTs, it is something that happens. So hopefully this gets better over time, but yeah, I've had a lot of sniffles this year. 

Doug 
Not me. So I hope I don't trend towards sniffles now as did I, I think I'm good.

Yeah, man, so very excited that you'll be coming down to Mexico City and participating. Like I said, thanks for getting some of those other projects involved, looking forward to that. Yeah, what do you think about privacy season, man? Do you think Monerotopia could be, you know, will still be in privacy season come February? I'm hoping that will be kind of like peak for Monero as as we near full chain membership proof launch. So yeah, is there a. 

Joel 
launch date for that yet, you know? 

Doug 
No, there's not a launch date. I think that the goal is by that February time that they'll be ready to maybe announce when it will launch.

That's what I'm hoping. That there'll be a kind of a date at that point. 

Joel 
Yeah, that'd be good. So my prediction. I think it'll be somewhere. I do think that privacy season is this end of cycle kind of. And December, January, February, maybe March, that's like the zone of like peak.

Typically, could be could have already happened. But I just, I don't know, my gut feeling after like my first bull cycle was like 2013. So I've kind of seen some of these vibes many times over the last over a decade. But as far as like privacy in general, this might, this might be the first and last privacy season as it were, where all the projects that have some sort of explicit privacy features just pump crazy. Because I think that next cycle, I think privacy is going to be even bigger, but I think it's going to be a much more competitive as far as like, any serious blockchain is going to have a really robust privacy something in some way. And so it's going to be, it's less, you know, in a few big popping off projects, you're like, Oh, let me look at those ones. They said they like privacy. When we go there, put, you know, put money in them. It's gonna be less like that and a little bit more like in a mature and broad way, I guess. 

Doug 
Yeah, I agree right cuz you'll you know like even the the existing bigger bigger projects that exist Will be adding privacy features, right? Right, so it's not going to be as unique I do think now is the time right would seek Zcash is definitely leading the way on it You know applause is to them for doing so that ultimately I think it's I think it's good Obviously be great if it was Monero leading the charge, but it's just that's just not the way I mean I wouldn't even

Joel 
to say that like there's a lot of a lot of pain in the ass and being the first mover like there's a lot of like scrutiny you get there's a lot of big decisions you have to make first and if you make them right you're good if you don't make them right that other people learn from your mistakes and overtake you there's just a lot of yeah then there's just a lot of like the like the encrypted bitcoin narrative like can you imagine if people came in to Monero and were like we're gonna make it 21 million limit people we're gonna make like a burn we're gonna redenominate he's like oh my gosh can you just you don't have to deal with that right it's just like let the pioneer take the arrows in the back and then just like come and settle later right yeah

Doug 
Yes, I agree. That's that's a good way of looking at it.

And I think I do about on the like the usage front. I think Monero is doing great there. What's your take on that? Because you have insight into some of these other crypto communities. 

Joel 
So I think a lot of things have been popping off lately. ZCASH has had a bunch of pumps. ZCASH had no usage until relatively recently, and then it came significantly up, and some of that has been pumps from ordinals type things. Some of it's been just speculative of course, but it's done a lot better.

Just about everything I've seen has been doing pretty well in the transaction front. But what I have to say is no one comes close for payments to Litecoin these days. And that's something that like, it's kind of almost, people get surprised. I think I'm a weird gross Litecoin show when I say this. It's just, I know what's going on, and like they consistently have like 10 times the transactions of anyone else currently, other than it's not Bitcoin as far as like for payments. And it also-

Doug 
I mean a lot of traditionally that's always been because it's just a it's a easy coin to grab on any centralized exchange So even if you're gonna go get Monero like all right Just grab some light coin first pull it off the exchange or do you think it's actually being used for transactions? 

Joel 
I would say both and you can't 100% tell, but like, for example, in Bitpay, the big payment processor, Litecoin has been above Bitcoin volumes for a consistent period of time. And if you look at CoinGate, which is the big European one, Litecoin, it's like Bitcoin, then it's like Tether, or there's some stablecoins, then Litecoin, it's like, it's not quite as high as on Bitpay, but it's still like Litecoin and then other cryptos like that. And you see that in, you know, bit refill stats as well. You see that in just about everywhere, Litecoin is very big in this.

So I would say it's like, for sure, legit as far as like how many things. And I do, Litecoin is always a thing I have a backup of because odds are if there's some place I can't spend Dash, I can spend Litecoin. And it's also odds are very little that I can use something else, like say Bitcoin Cash, for example. It didn't used to be quite like that, but it is now. So, yeah, it's long. 

Doug 
You know, is there a good percentage of that? Is that mim the wimble Litecoin? People using it privately? 

Joel 
Um, I think that, um, M web transactions are still pretty low, but I think that they're growing all the time. It's kind of, it's not quite as fast as like the Zcash shielded pool thing, but I think it is, you know, it's growing. I don't know how I couldn't remember off the top of my head how many per day, but it's gotta be reasonable volumes.

Now, a lot of these things have to do with integrations, like as far as, and how many wallets have M web, how many wallets do M web by default? Like, for example, edge does not have M web or by default. And then how, how broad is that? And I think that as we increase that, we're going to see that, that grow a lot, but, um, it's just like, I keep a very keen eye on all the competitors on what everyone else has, um, I've been watching like, um, in terms of like adopt of business adoption, I've been especially paying attention to the making some very shrewd moves in very different ways, by the way. And I kind of copy some of their homework. Um, it, but as far as like, you know, Litecoin is the one to beat right now, as far as like the usage, everyone's using Litecoin, relatively speaking. If you can get close to Litecoin, you're doing pretty good. 

Doug 
That's interesting. It's not even talked about much in that. I mean, obviously, if you're in Litecoin, people are talking about, but people that aren't in Litecoin aren't even really cognizant of that.

That's interesting. So what do you see as the most used private digital cash? Obviously, I would say Monero, number one, because it's default private. We know that it's used on things like XMR Bazaar. It's used on the dark markets, for better or worse.

It's used. What do you see as the next one after? I mean, is Litecoin like you want to buy, but Wimble? 

Joel 
by credit transaction numbers 

Doug 
Yeah, like Zcash, Zcash shielded, is that the next or is it like, uh, so 

Joel 
I honestly don't know. This is where the data I have is not good data.

I did ask Grok to come down with some stats and stuff for me. As far as I've been able to tell, they say that Dash's private transactions are number two historically and even today. I'd like to know where they get those numbers. I'd like to analyze some of the sources. 

Doug 
It's the Monero guy talks to chat GPT gives different answers that when the when the dash gas talking to chat here Right. It's like it loves answering in a way that you're gonna be pleased. Yeah 

Joel 
it's hard to tell. I would like to have some reliable data.

Of course, data and privacy have a little bit of a conflict sometimes, like I would like to just know. And of course, I think that we will see for most cryptos over the next five years, most of the ones that have a privacy function, the percentage of transactions in that function will be much, much higher. Whereas right now, in the era of no one uses crypto, I would say if Monero had an option to be transparent, probably 80% would be transparent right now. But because it's not an option, it just all is that way. And it's a big part of the allure. It's always that way. So as far as people intentionally choosing to transact privately, that might be a different story, but does that really matter? Probably not. 

Doug 
Now, I know you probably don't like talking price and stuff like numbers, but for fun, it is privacy season, it's Thanksgiving Eve. Any thoughts on where Zcash could go, where Monero can go, Dash, as we round out, as we hit peak privacy season here? 

Joel 
I have to remember the prices of these things for a second. 

Doug 
Wow, look at this guy, he doesn't even know. 

Joel 
Price I remember cuz also like I haven't it because I haven't checked in the last like few hours. It's like my data's old like 700s now it's what I've 30 about and there was close to 400 Just about like very close to 400 um, I Would say my prediction for Monero this cycle, I guess so first off.

This is all complete just for fun guesswork There's no course no data. No charting just just the disclaimer I get the feeling that when there would be somewhere in the 500s. I just you know, it's just less

Doug 
to a thousand, c'mon! 

Joel 
be maybe not this cycle I mean it's always been slow and steady let me here's think about I have to look at what the 

Doug 
This is a wildcard. 

Joel 
Yes. I have to look at like the price chart. The thing is like, if I said any, I'm going to have to abstain from the dash side because I think people will say, well, he said the guy who does this said this. They're like, it's too much pressure on like, you know, that stuff.

So I probably should abstain with that. I think that probably higher than it is right now, but that's just a guess. I also don't know. Let me look at the Zcash chart. I can see

Doug 
I could see Monero going to 1,000 too also because I could see some of the Zcash pump bleeding into Monero because if it is privacy season, you're betting on Zcash. Like we said, you have all the institutional money, whatever the connected exchanges.

If you're looking for the next bet, the next runner, I would think people would look towards Monero as being the next bet. 

Joel 
Yeah, you see, I, you never know. I'm going to say this is my gut feeling, right? I don't think Zcash hits a thousand this cycle. And this is going to be the most famous last words because we saw it go from like 30 something to a hundred. So I could do it again, just the way it looks 10k. I just, I don't see the next leg up of that kind of level. I kind of feel like that it's already really cool that it's like holding the five hundreds after like that 700 thing. But I'm just going to say, I don't know, it could be somewhere like six to 800.

Let me just say that somewhere like that. Let me just guess. Like I, I kind of feel like, you know, it's funny. I kind of feel best about my Monero prediction because even though I've watched that chart probably less, I don't watch charts anyway, but I watched it less than the others just because of the relative predictability of the price movements. It doesn't go crazy. And so I'm just like, all right, a reasonable increase over time. That makes sense. Whereas with Zcash, I'm like sweating bullets with this prediction.

I'm just like above 300, I'm pretty confident on, right? And below 5,000, I'm also confident on, but like, I don't know. Let's say 700, 800. Like that's as far as I'm okay. Watch me, the, you know, astronomical. 

Doug 
I mean, I could see it approach 1000, who knows though, like you said, it could be a blow off top, it could be a blow off top and it goes to, you know, you know, these things to get crazy because you could have kind of like a dogecoin moment, you know, but, but for privacy coin could, who knows, who knows. 

Joel 
Yeah, I already made that comment, I made a post saying 

Doug 
pirate chain? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. What's your pirate chain prediction? I don't know. Pirate chain, I think we'll get a good pump off of, you know, we'll get to Lee. 

Joel 
no clue let me just see let's see what the um the actual price is 35 cents um how has it done since i'll 80 cents let's just say 80 cents i don't know the thing is like um yeah i'm surprised fear has been i mean i'm surprised but i'm happy fear has been doing pretty well yeah

Doug 
It's nice to see. 

Joel 
2.285. Maybe he'll pass three bucks when it was already at four something. Something like that.

Here's a funny thing. I have to say, I have sort of been... I'm not going to say beefing because it's not true, but I've made some random person said something about Ycash. I don't know if you know about Ycash, right? 

Doug 
I've just, I've seen it being, I've yet to stop to look, I just, 

Joel 
Like another classic basically, but someone just mentioned something about why cash about like can someone donate me? 5000 why cash or something and I just flippantly commented from the dash handle like what is that 47 cents or something?

Just to be funny or whatever and then those people have been going nuts Like they took it super personal and I'm like harassed by why cash trolls constantly It is so like that Derek

Doug 
of Z-Casually? Yes. It's so hilarious. Are they trying to be a prize by default? I think so. Oh, okay. So they want to take the pirate chain. Yes. 

Joel 
And also like, what was it at like two cents, um, in September and now it's like a 44 cents or something. So I had a pretty good pump, but let me just give a price prediction for them.

I would give a say two cents back to two. All right. Why cash back to two cents is already here. 

Doug 
Oh, W-W-W-W-W-WY Cash now, you got it. It's gay. 

Joel 
I just know that if one of those people watches this stream they're gonna be so triggered and then I'm gonna get more engagement which by the way I am monetized on X so 

Doug 
Yeah, no, you're good at that you play that game. I don't really I'm gonna be 

Joel 
paid a whole 5 million Y cash per tweet. Thank you. 

Doug 
That's gonna be great. Listen, man, I appreciate you coming on the night before Thanksgiving over here. I know it's holiday time, so I appreciate you dedicating your time to come on here tonight.

And very excited to hang out with you in person at Monero Topia. I think it's gonna be great. I think you're gonna make for some great contributions over there, whether people like it or not. I think once you're down there and they hear from you and then they'll be able to ask you questions on stage. And you too, man, you should know it's a good vibe. Like I know you've seen the worst of the Monero community. That is not what Monero Topia is. You'll be seeing, hopefully, traditionally it's always the best of the Monero community. So I think you'll be very pleased in that regard. 

Joel 
advance for any you get from bringing the, you know, great thank you. 

Doug 
And I'll continue to fight to keep Monerotopia open to, you know, interesting people and projects that are beyond just Monero only, uh, you know, it would get boring otherwise to be honest. Of course. 

Joel 
And I have to say I did make a very strong push in my own personal circles to get some Z catch people there and A couple thought about it. But the end of the day, they're yeah, I know I was like, well and yeah The fit really they're just like look like it was in the middle of like all that hate against Dario and all the other stuff It is they were just like, you know what?

Screw those people like we don't want it like we'll be gracious another time and I understand I just hate that I get

Doug 
We hide into that and the Monero-Topia community gets signed into that because that's not who we are. I mean, there's all types of people that attend Monero-Topia, that are on stage talking.

I think that was a little bit being... Who knows? Who knows who was mounting that attack from Monero, just made Monero look bad in my opinion. 

Joel 
Yeah. So all I'm saying is maybe 2027, right? As far as like, I think that I think it's just like too fresh. 

Doug 
try on them now, now that like, you know, cause I'm going to, I'm going to try them one more time. I haven't, you know, I was talking to them.

They kind of, like you said, they, I kind of got that same, that same response, maybe not with them, the backstory as to their, as to their why, but maybe I could still convince them. 

Joel 
Yeah, I think if you get sending with 

Doug 
Zek is a corpo coin. I'm kind of done with corpos.

Yeah. There we go. There we go. But it's yet whatever. We will get into that. Joel, man. Thank you. Thank you so much for jumping on today and excited to see you down there. Anything you want to close out with any info you want to get out there, please. 

Joel 
Yeah, I would say I've been, I've had a lot of demand from people to write or do another video on my how to live on crypto thing. I'm going to probably do something like that, realistically, probably 50-50 if it's this year, but I will do some sort of an update because the landscape shifted a little bit.

Oh, okay. 

Doug 
Maybe you could include XMR Bazaar in there. In fact, you do use it. I don't know. I wouldn't want you to artificially talk about it. 

Joel 
I like there's a strong possibility that I will of course I'd article by for it 

Doug 
car. I just bought a used car on XMR Bazaar with Venera, by the way. For me, that was like up me. That was a smiley ear to ear moment, crypto moment for me. 

Joel 
it is pretty cool. 

Doug 
Hopefully yeah, it works, but I'm so still I'm still happy with 

Joel 
And no refunds, you know, but yeah, oh, hopefully it all works out. Um, but yeah, basically that just, that's it.

Just, I would encourage anyone to get out of a Fiat mindset and get into the live all in crypto, if you can, and use your favorite coin as much as you can, but use other stuff too, and then just phase out, like in the last few years, there was a time when I used like five to 10% of purchases at least were with Bitcoin over lightning, even though I was grumpy about it, just because there were some things I could do with it that I couldn't otherwise. And thankfully for me, for my own little prissy perfectionist, whatever, I don't have to do that right now unless I go to steak and shake for some reason, but like just do it's better than having Fiat in a bank account.

One of the lead marketing guy for shape shift just got debanked. Like the bank just shut them down and I just jump right into his DMS. Like, Hey, let me help you out real quick. Uh, thankfully I know the guy and so can help him, but the point is this could be anyone at any time except me and some other people, cause I'm already there. 

Doug 
You de-banked yourself. I'm similar. I mean, we still have, obviously, I still have a 9 to 5 and a part of a credit union, which actually, that's another good thing to do. It's better than a bank.

I've been part of a credit union for basically my whole adult life. So I'm crypto and credit union, which is interesting. But yeah, I hear you, de-tether as much as you can. And then I think that's also how you stand to have your benefits. It's also how you stand to benefit the most, right? Because then you immerse yourself in this stuff. So by way of doing that, you're learning more about it, you're really understanding which ones are offering the most utility, and you'll just find yourself holding bags that will go up in value. I would hope. 

Joel 
Yeah, perfect. Well, anyway, you got to come on my show at some point, too, obviously, not going to coerce you during your time of illness and near death, but you feel better maybe for yourself. 

Doug 
Yeah, please, please have me out because then I could get the word out. I'm an aerotopia to your people as well. That would be great. Yeah, good stuff. All right, man. Well, we'll end it here.

Happy Thanksgiving. Have a good one. Yeah, you too. And take a touch. 

Joel 
All right, peace. 

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