In the fall of 2016, the cryptocurrency world was aflutter with excitement about the creation of a new kind of cryptocurrency, zcash. Unlike bitcoin, which is designed to be completely transparent – and trackable – zcash was coded to hide all information about a financial transaction, including not only the amounts involved, but also the public keys. That meant that prying eyes could no longer follow the cryptocurrency as it changed hands. Developers of zcash, at the Denver-based Zerocoin Electric Coin Company, used cutting-edge math that allowed an individual to prove a truth, such as that they owned an amount of cryptocurrency, without even revealing what that truth was. It’s called a zero-knowledge proof. Math would do the work, no humans needed.

The Notorious whistle-blower acknowledges he was the sixth person who participated in an elaborate 2016 ceremony that led to the creation of zcash, a leading privacy protecting cryptocurrency now valued at $2 billion.

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