Pantera Capital reposted this
For years, blockchain's promise was radical transparency—an open, immutable ledger creating trust through verification. But as the industry matures, we're learning that transparency alone isn't enough. We invested in Zcash in 2015 when this was controversial. Today? It's obvious. Three massive shifts are happening right now: * Consumers are done with surveillance (your metadata reveals more than your messages ever did) * Institutions need confidentiality with optional transparency—not full exposure * FHE technology finally makes private smart contracts scalable and compliant Tornado Cash showed us what NOT to do: strong privacy without auditability gets shut down. Zama shows us what's next: fully homomorphic encryption that lets you compute on encrypted data while maintaining verifiability. Private DeFi. Encrypted order books. Confidential RWA issuance. All without leaving the EVM. Apple and Microsoft are betting big on FHE frameworks. They see what's coming. The next wave—tokenized assets, cross-border payments, enterprise settlement—only works if blockchains can be both transparent AND private. At Pantera Capital we’ve believed in this thesis since day 1, and we now believe that we’re entering a privacy renaissance, one that blends the ideals of open blockchains with the practical needs of global finance.