Balaji Srinivasan is as soon as once more making probably the most provocative model of a privateness argument and he’s pinning it to a particular chain: Zcash. In a Feb. 18 video shared on X, Srinivasan framed the stakes in stark phrases: “The selection is obvious. It’s Zcash or communism,” tying the rise of AI-enabled surveillance to what he described as a renewed urge for food for wealth seizure.
In a follow-up submit, he argued that AI has shifted surveillance from a state-scale challenge to one thing nearer to an on-demand service. “Any scrap of knowledge on-line can now be built-in, digested, and synthesized…by any state or stalker able to working an AI mannequin…to kind a file extra full than something the Soviets may ever dream of,” he wrote.
Srinivasan’s prescription was blunt: “There will probably be no single silver bullet. However something you haven’t encrypted can and will probably be used in opposition to you.”
Srinivasan anchored his “communism requires surveillance” declare in an historic instance meant to make a contemporary level about information exhaust. “In 1918, within the midst of the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin gave an order to homicide 100 close by ‘kulaks,’” he mentioned, emphasizing that such an order “required an inventory”: names, areas, and a inhabitants that couldn’t simply transfer.
His argument is that the web reverses that asymmetry if encryption turns into the default. “As we speak, neo-communism is rising as soon as once more. However the Web may change the sport,” he mentioned. “No full listing, if we encrypt it. No fastened location, both. They’ll’t hit what they will’t see.”
These themes carried into an extended dialogue on the By no means Say Podcast, the place Srinivasan linked privateness to fundamental operational freedom. “When you’re underneath surveillance, you’re not sovereign,” he mentioned. “If each transfer is being tracked…you don’t have the benefit of shock. You possibly can by no means launch one thing. You possibly can by no means have personal deliberations.”
Arjun Khemani, a 19-year-old Zcash researcher on the episode, echoed the AI angle from the person aspect: “Particularly with AI, having the ability to acknowledge the place you’re precisely…you possibly can’t have freedom with out privateness,” he mentioned, arguing that broadcasting each transaction and context sign is “not… the world that I need to stay in.”
The selection is obvious.It’s Zcash or communism.pic.twitter.com/4sAG9WG0jA
— Balaji (@balajis) February 18, 2026
Zcash As A Scaling Wager, Not Simply A Privateness Stance
Srinivasan’s pitch wasn’t restricted to privacy-by-principle. He positioned Zcash as a technical response to the place he thinks the market has landed on scalability: on-chain throughput wins, and routing complexity loses.
Requested why “Zcash should scale” is a “ethical crucial,” Srinivasan contrasted Bitcoin’s scaling actuality: exchanges, custodians, and database entries with the decentralization promise many customers suppose they’re shopping for. “Lightning…they’ve been saying, ‘Lightning goes to be there any day now’ for 10 years,” he mentioned, arguing that real-world deployments have a tendency towards “a hub and spoke topology” resembling conventional finance rails. “Inside a financial institution, it’s quick…between banks, they do settlement,” he added, describing a dynamic he sees mirrored in main Lightning implementations.
From there, he argued crypto has successfully segmented into layers: Bitcoin for immutability and model, Ethereum for programmability, and Solana for easy on-chain execution at scale. The opening he sees for Zcash is combining “Solana-like scalability” with personal transactions, leaning on zero-knowledge proofs as “compression expertise” as a lot as secrecy. “It’s what lots of people needed Bitcoin to be,” he mentioned.
Srinivasan additionally careworn that privateness doesn’t essentially exchange transparency, it enhances it. He argued that Bitcoin’s public ledger is usually a function for proof-of-reserves narratives, whereas Zcash’s private-by-default design targets a unique risk mannequin. His backside line is coexistence, not conquest: “It’s attainable that Bitcoin… and Zcash coexist as a result of Bitcoin is clear and Zcash is personal,” he mentioned, whereas suggesting “this might be Zcash’s second.”
At press time, ZEC traded at $259.18.
Featured picture from YouTube, chart from TradingView.com
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