Zcash, the latest virtual currency, has been a smash success since its launch seven months ago, drawing in new users with promises of unrivaled privacy protection.
However, the cryptocurrency could face a tough battle integrating into the wider financial system.
After debuting on currency trading platforms in October last year, Zcash took off, hitting an exchange rate of US$1,000 per unit, putting it in a league with the much better established bitcoin, the virtual currency pioneer created in 2009.
While its value has since come down to earth, Zcash is attracting the interest of Russian, Chinese, Venezuelan and, as of Thursday last week, South African consumers.
To make its mark in the world of virtual currencies, Zcash says that it protects user privacy.
However, because of that guarantee it does not offer the transparency demanded by authorities who want to prevent it from being used in money laundering, financing terrorism, evading taxes or fraud.
Zcash was developed by researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US and Tel Aviv University and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Israel. Only five of the six people who developed the cryptography have been publicly identified.
It is based on a technology dubbed “zk-Snark,” which allows untraceable transactions. The resulting data are encrypted but users are free to identify themselves.
Other cryptocurrencies such as Dash and Monero offer a level of privacy, but Zcash goes further, even obscuring the origin of a payment.
This is the opposite of bitcoin, which uses blockchain technology that publicly records transaction details including the unique alphanumeric strings that identify buyers and sellers.
“You don’t expose all of your communications or all of your transactions to random people on the Internet you barely know,” said Zooko Wilcox, chief executive officer of Zerocoin Electric Coin Co, which manages Zcash.
Virtual currencies are produced, or “mined,” by banks of computers solving complex algorithms, an operation that can be expensive.
Wilcox said he hoped the expanded privacy protection could overcome businesses’ reluctance to adopt Zcash as a trustworthy alternative to traditional state-controlled currencies.
However, Zcash is unlikely to find its place in the wider financial system, said Jonathan Levin, co-founder of Chainalysis, a start-up that helps banks and authorities trace the origins and destinations of virtual currency payments.
“It is hard for existing financial institutions to integrate these types of cryptocurrencies as information on the origin of funds is very hard to ascertain,” he said.
Financial institutions began to take an interest in bitcoin, and in particular in its blockchain technology, once the Darknet marketplace known as Silk Road was closed in 2013.
Silk Road facilitated bitcoin transactions, but was also a platform for the sale of illegal drugs.
“Nobody has ever used Zcash for any kind of crime as far as anyone knows,” Wilcox said, while conceding that “all technologies can be misused.”
Wilcox said he gave a presentation on Zcash to Canadian and US authorities in November last year and their attitude was “very pragmatic.”
Nevertheless, despite Zcash’s efforts to protect users, the currency might be vulnerable to hacking or counterfeiting. In a June last year attack, hackers reportedly stole 3.6 million units of the cryptocurrency worth US$50 million.
Zerocoin Electric is alert to such risks and pays hackers to test the currency’s security, Wilcox said.
Zerocoin Electric expects a maximum of 21 million Zcash units to be mined, or produced, of which 10 percent would go to Zcash Electric shareholders, including founders, employees and investors.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last