"ZODL is to Zcash What Coinbase Was to Bitcoin" | Josh Swihart on ZEC’s Awakening

What happens when every payment, wallet, and onchain interaction becomes searchable by governments, companies, adversaries, and AI? Josh Swihart, founder and CEO of Zcash Open Development Lab, joins David to explain why Zcash is having a major privacy comeback, how ZODL and the Zashi wallet helped unlock real shielded adoption, why the shielded pool may be the most important ZEC metric, and what it will take for private money to become too big to kill. --- 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION MARKET https://bankless.cc/polymarket-podcast 🧭OKX | TRADE, EARN, PAY to OKX | 120M+ USERS WORLDWIDE https://app.okx.com/join/USBANKLESS 🦊 METAMASK | DOWNLOAD NOW https://go.metamask.io/BL-Pod-Download 🌐BRIX | EMERGING MARKET YIELD https://bankless.cc/brix 🎯THE DEFI REPORT | ONCHAIN INSIGHTS https://thedefireport.io/bankless --- TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 4:17 Privacy in the AI Era 6:19 Crypto’s Missing Privacy Layer 9:49 The Political Fight for Privacy 14:42 Can Crypto Retain Privacy? 16:47 From Zashi to ZODL 19:48 The Zcash Reawakening 21:41 Balaji, Funding, and the Mission 24:49 Product Market Fit for Shielded ZEC 27:51 ZODL's Role in the Zcash Stack 29:36 The Zcash Roadmap 32:56 What Is ZEC and is it Undervalued? 36:56 The Shielded Pool Explained 45:12 The $25M ZODL Raise 47:16 Compliance and Shielded ZEC 51:25 Institutions vs Cypherpunk Values 53:58 Personal Privacy in an AI World --- RESOURCES Josh Swihart https://x.com/jswihart ZODL https://x.com/zodl_app --- Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures