Updates :)
'Been an interesting month!
December 23rd:
At the image below, it shows “Our animations were made by humans”.
As of this week, Porsche uploaded a video that was done by an artist.
Hi all,
Apologies for taking a months long hiatus. Unfortunately endured a paralyzing repetitive stress injury in my right hand earlier in October, and my previous post is now wildly dated. A few friends told me I could make a change and have AI write this post, but I really strive to write every single one of these with my two paws.
In connection to my hand and AI, I went against advice and decided to drive my driver assistant-less SUV and when going to shift out of park LOUDLy winced at the sharp pain sent up to my shoulder. Had scheduled to be places prior to the injury and I’ll never miss plans that I’m scheduled for.
Driving got me thinking about the strange juxtaposition of a driving experience I’m doing though. I’m talking to the very horrible but marketed upon us Siri via CarPlay, but gripping the steering wheel as I’m without proper lane keep assist.
What’s interesting about my generation is that around 60% of us are open to driving a vintage car, while the majority of us were… mentally open to full AI adoption circa 2022’s ChatGPT release as we were late in high school at the time, and many of us (as Gen Z goes up until 2010) are of high school/driving age.
When I speak to fellow Gen Z’ers (who all use AI) about their love for tech-less cars, they often say that in an age where tech is integrated into all other parts of our life, the car is a great respite per se.
As driving becomes more and more assisted, I predict the “luxury” experience will be to have no driver assists at all.
We see this with the immense rise in high cost restomod Bronco’s, G Wagens and Range Rovers.
As an aside, gaying out and buying a faint pink barbie truck would be akin to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessents pink house choice, in time I may join him, but I’m still grasping to my twink phase.
I commonly wonder what to address an elderly gay man by. As a post AIDS crisis gay I have immense respect for those who are part of the lost generation, and this is a question that many others have as well.
Those who have a word for one I’d love to hear it below!
Regardless, there have been many updates in the crypto market since I last left off, and the main one has been in regards to privacy.
ZCash has seen insane price jumps over the course of this time, soaring from just $40 at the start of October, to now sitting at $422 as I hit publish.
Bitcoin had three core challenges at birth: legitimacy, programmability and scale, and privacy. Bitcoin solved legitimacy by becoming a trillion-dollar asset. Ethereum and Solana solved programmability and scale. Privacy is the last major unlock and the biggest remaining market gap, with projects like Zcash leading the charge.
Privacy coins like ZCash and Monero have had a rocky history, but this time, market timing, tech maturity, and macro backdrop all line up. This wave includes ZK, but also mixers, FHE, and MPC.
Quick history:
Bitcoin emerged from the cypherpunk movement post-2008 as internet-native money. Early on it was radical, fragile, and fighting for legitimacy.
Two criticisms followed it as it grew: lack of programmability/scale, and lack of privacy.
Ethereum was born to tackle programmability, then Solana to scale it. That arc defined the last cycle and largely capped out the big leaps in that branch of innovation.
Meanwhile, Zcash set out to solve the privacy side. Satoshi and Hal Finney both knew privacy mattered and referenced early work from Zooko. But solving double-spend required full transparency at first, and ZK was too early to deploy.
Zcash became the first team in any industry to ship ZK to production, but the tech needed years of iteration before it could be practical, safe, and trust-minimized.
Now, ZK finally works. Bitcoin has legitimacy. Ethereum/Solana have shown product-market fit for programmability and scale.
Privacy is the last frontier with asymmetric upside.
And the timing hits: crypto is swinging back from pure speculation to first-principles cypherpunk values. Institutions are coming on-chain and will require privacy. Macro instability, debt crises, surveillance creep, and global overreach make private digital cash not just ideologically compelling but economically inevitable.
Add in the fact that ZK and privacy crypto are deep, hard problems competitive with AI for talent and capital, and you get a reflexive loop of investment, innovation, and adoption. My question is whether the talent will pour into privacy as a sector.
Note: Bitcoin, Solana, and Ethereum still have meaningful upside. They just aren’t likely to 100x from here.
I have another piece in the works about why the layman, even those in Gen Z should still invest in crypto besides the perceived corruption that takes place in the industry that’s hyper focused upon by the news.