Cypherpunk Owns $500M of Zcash and 18% of Its Hashrate | CIO Will McEvoy

David Hoffman (0:00)

Welcome to Bankless, where we explore the future of Zcash and privacy. Today on the show, I talked to Will McEvoy. He is the CIO at Cypherpunk Technologies. Cypherpunk Technologies is on a mission to accumulate 5% of the total Zcash supply, but don't call it a debt. It's closer to a normal company that engages in non MNAV strategies to accumulate ZEC. One of them being the largest Zcash miner, controlling about 18% of the hash power of Zcash, but they also invest in the privacy space around Zcash too in value accretive ways. I learned about CYPHERPUNK Technologies when I was buying my first Zcash back in May and found the opportunity to invest in Zcash Alpha to be pretty compelling. It has since become one of my largest holdings in my equity portfolio due to the incredible 400% run up in price since August alongside Zcash's crazy price performance. So I wanted to learn a little bit more about the company, its goals, its leadership and how it sees the world. So ladies and gentlemen, let's get into my conversation with Will McEvoy from CYPHERPUNK Technologies.

Bankless Nation, I'm here with Will McEvoy. He is the CIO and a board member of CYPHERPUNK Technologies, the subject of today's podcast. He's also a principal at Winklevoss Capital. Will leads the company, the effort to accumulate 5% of the Zcash supply and also invest in their surrounding Zcash ecosystem.

CYPHERPUNK Technologies, I believe, is the world's largest miner of Zcash. We're also going to talk about mining today on the show. Will, welcome to Bankless.

Will McEvoy (1:29)

Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's great to be here.

David Hoffman (1:31)

I want to learn quite a lot about CYPHERPUNK Technologies in this episode, but first, we first have to start talking about Zcash. Why did Zcash go from $50 to $150 in about 13 months?

Will McEvoy (1:42)

I think that's the question everyone's asking. I mean, I think it comes down to a handful of macro reasons, right? One is, people are waking up to the importance of privacy. This is really, I think, dominated by just the awareness that AI is probably the most sort of important macro trend. It has the ability to be the most pervasive force in everyone's life. And I think when you're using models or using agents, you're sort of prompted to give it as much information about you as possible. So it just sort of, I think, starts to bring up the alarm bells, right? Of like, oh wow, I actually don't have that much privacy.

And I think that's been pretty dominant.

And then it's just the awareness of, you know, in a world with AI, Bitcoin is fully transparent. And actually, you need a crypto asset, you need to be holding a store of value that is private in a world with AI, given the fact that AI can parse transparent ledger like Bitcoin. It can tie that information and analyze that information alongside other information that's been leaked about you, whether it's, you know, your address or, yeah, you know, close friends and family and phone numbers and social security numbers to de-anonymize your Bitcoin wallet. So I think that's scared a lot of Bitcoiners. It scared a lot of people in crypto and Zcash serves as the solution.

David Hoffman (3:24)

But how do you account for the fact that Zcash was so dormant for years after we had AI? Like AI came around in 2023 and granted, you know, it takes a while for society to really understand and adapt to the introduction of Chatsubti. And in 2023, AI was still kind of hallucinating. So granted, there would be some lag. But, you know, three, three and a half years of lag before Zcash woke up. How do you explain why Zcash just felt so dormant for a while?

Will McEvoy (3:52)

It's a good point. I will say that the trend in AI has been exponential, right? So 2023 is not half as good as where we are with AI today. It's, you know, 5% as good or something like that.

And then I think what people have noticed is that over the past couple years, Zcash has attracted essentially the best cryptographers and security engineers in the world that are now battle testing the code. They're proposing upgrades to the network to make it more scalable, more usable, more accessible. We have great teams building applications in Zcash now, like Zottel and Vizor and others. So yeah, I think part of the reason was, you know, yeah, people noticed there's so much talent in the space.

And you know, these crypto communities are not dissimilar from companies where it's really all about the talent. It's about the people. What's being built, what's being shipped. And that gives, I think, investors a lot of confidence. Again, similar to like a venture, a venture-backed business with a great team.