Bitcoin Takeover Podcast | Have Fun Staying Private - Vlad Costea | ETHDam III - 2025

Welcome to East to E to E to E to E. Hi. Is this working? Do I get a clicker for the slides? Oh, it's on it's on the table.

It's here. My bad. Uh, it should be this one. So, thank you very much for coming to see this talk. I know that it's the last one of the day and I know that there's a temptation to go out and have a drink and talk some business and do whatever.

So I decided to do something fun for a change. I usually do talks which are boring and philosophical for conferences and this time I wanted to do something super fun which I dedicate to Adam back who said I'm going to get wrecked if I switch from being Bitcoin only. It's called have fun staying private and it's a take on the famous phrase by Udy Verheimer have fun staying poor because I'm not sure how many of you invested in privacy projects but they're not performing so well but as everyone else who is trying to sell you something which I'm not by the way not financial advice but I have a solution so who is this guy right do I need to flex to show you that I'm exactly the person in the I host the Bitcoin Takeover podcast. I produce the Bitcoin Takeover Privacy Edition magazine, which you can find at the Zano booth outside. And currently, I'm working with my girlfriend on something that's called Bitcoin Year 1, which is a fun way to present the history of Bitcoin.

Last week, I interviewed Vitalic Bhuterin, so you might want to check that out on my podcast. It's three hours long, but it's pretty good. And self-promotion aside, I'm here to talk about having fun staying private. So, what is privacy? For the people at home who maybe tune into this talk and they have no idea what this is and they expected some Ethereum content, which they're not getting, privacy is the human rights and the human fight.

This is the short definition. It's also chapter 10 of the Bitcoin white paper for the nerds who know this. It's about revealing yourself to the world in a selective way that gives you control of shared information. A natural instinct that you have when you get caught or exposed doing something you didn't want the rest of the world to know. Just think of kids when they're dancing in the mirror and then someone enters the room and they they have that shocking moment, that reaction that makes you realize that they do care about privacy.

In most cases, it's a reaction that comes after a disheartening experience. And this is unfortunate especially in Bitcoin and Ethereum that people care about privacy after they get wrecked and exposed to the world. And the main point of chamom which is basically the grandparents of cryptocurrencies and I think all of them should provide some privacy at this point. What is fun? I put the definition from the Mariam Webster dictionary because most of us have no idea what fun is.

We're nerds. We spend our time, you know, glued to our computer chairs looking at screens. And yeah, I'm gonna present a different type of fun, which is dunking on people when you're right and they turn out to be super wrong. I think th this is the supreme way of having fun, right? The lowest denominator is just looking at someone getting hurt and you're like, "Aha, they're so stupid."

That's that's what apes do, you know? But if you're a human being and you have the capacity to process your own thoughts, you should be able to be right in relation to others and enjoy it. And that that's what I'm going to do. What is not fun is this. You you enter a conversation with someone on Twitter and you say, "Hey, I just bought Zcash."

That's an example. And they're going to send you this graph and they're going to say, you know, you you just bought something that's 90% down against Bitcoin. And that's not fun. And then that's what I got a lot when I started buying privacy coins this summer when I woke up and I realized I need to support this ecosystem. And when you get excited about something that's technologically interesting, you identify how it can improve your life, but then you get called a shitcoiner by an online rando with laser eyes in their profile picture.

It's not fun. When someone tells you, "This coin is down 90% from its all-time high. You should only look at Bitcoin." This is also not fun. You're feeling like you're a loser, right?

You're second class. And once again, it's not fun. And then you have to explain that not everything is about gains or making more US dollars and freedom tech is important. That's how you cope. That's how you say, you know, I'm a loser.

Okay, I accept it, but let's move the goalposts and make myself look good. Then that's not how you do it. So this is the historical price of Ethereum, 85% down against Bitcoin. This is the price of Monero, 91% down against Bitcoin. This is Zcash, almost 100% down against Bitcoin.

This is not fun. This is Dash. I did this for Joel. I hope you're here. 99.

8% down against Bitcoin. And I put this gift from Carlos Moss who said, "What am I gonna do?" When he was explaining that Bitconnect might be a scam. So avoid copium. I'm like, "Yeah, at least it's still outperforming the US dollar or I'm only interested in the tech."

This is how you admit that you're losing. You don't want to do this. This is the worst, honestly. Stay calm. Don't resort to insults such as, "Stupid Maxi, your your coin only does 7TPS.

You have zero privacy and Black Rockck owns your ass. Don't do this. Don't do this. You're changing the rules of the argument. They told you that you're underperforming, which you are.

So you you should make sure that you're overperforming somehow. So yeah, in an argument about price, you got to beat them at their own game, which is why I created the have fun staying private system, which is not poor anymore. As you can see, I decided to buy Litecoin and Monero and Zcash in Zano and NIM in equal amounts and create an index which seems to perform better in some ways and underperform in others. Thanks to Zano, it's performing very well right now. And I can show this to people right now and say, you know, I'm actually outperforming Bitcoin, which you're not because you only hold Bitcoin.

Like I I have more Bitcoin than I had before if I convert everything back to Bitcoin. So how do you do this? You have to do serious fundamental analysis obviously not financial advice. You have to index different risk factors like something well established, something promising and something new and risky which I did. I think Litecoin is super underrated because it has the Mimblewimble extension block which grants you some privacy and it's listed on all exchanges.

You have Monero which is most used around internet markets. You have Zcash which has the best scaling also scaling and best privacy technology in the industry. You have Zano which is basically a way to do tokens with Monero tech. And you have NIM which I thought was interesting but I got wrecked every time. This is the worst choice of them all.

I don't recommend it. It it pulls down the whole investment fund. and Harry Halpin is going to come come here tomorrow so I can grab him by the collar and tell him do something about this because NIM is actually pretty good. They're doing the mixnet. This is the May 8th performance of the Freedom Gains Fund.

As you can see, my Litecoin investment is 15% down against Bitcoin. My Monero is 21.5% up against Bitcoin. Zcash 13% down. Zano 161% up against Bitcoin and NIM 26.

84% down against Bitcoin. I'm not measuring against the US dollar. I only care about outperforming Bitcoin. And I guess if you do an average here, I'm like 40% up against Bitcoin, assuming, of course, that I bought equal amounts of all of them, which I may or may not have. I'm not going to tell you, but I explained here why I picked each one of them.

And I said this previously and if I update this with the latest numbers, I think many of these went up this morning. And maybe that this looks better. It's just that I did my slides yesterday. And yeah, this guy Predator is trolling me constantly. He saved the data, which is basically this.

when I started the fund, he took all of these values and he created a tracker to make sure that he can troll me every time I'm underperforming, which is not every day. Maybe like three or four days I was underperforming Bitcoin and he made sure to troll me, but most days I did outperform Bitcoin. And he said, I will check back in a few months to see if that Zano price holds, which it did so far. And I said, this is why you index. And this is important because you can't predict which one is going to be successful.

And contrary to what they're telling you, usually the whole industry is not correlated. I mean, we do have bull markets and bare markets, but they don't happen equally across all the assets. So once again, not financial advice, but if you put all your eggs in one basket because you like Monero or you like Zcash, you're more likely to lose as opposed to trying to index in a way that rationalizes your whole teasis. And I'm not going to tell you what to buy. I'm just showing you what I did.

And telling Sailorite laser eye maxis that there is in fact an option, which isn't a second best, but actually outperforms BTC feels good. This is for me having fun. It's like telling them, I'm beating you at your own game. I I managed to do it. Mostly thanks to Zano.

I have to admit, but there were moments when also Zcash was outperforming Bitcoin and Litecoin and Monero. Nim never did. Once again, I regret this. Maybe I could get Decarred or Dash or something which could get better chances. Various Maxi accounts are tracking the performance of my freedom gain gains with double Z index only to dunk on me when it fits their narrative.

And I'm actually having fun while supporting something in which I believe and I want to put an emphasis in this that I invested in something which I think actually developed something as opposed to going full DJ on memecoin. This is a very old card. It was issued in 2014 on Counterparty as No, I think it was 2015 as one of the series two rare Pepes. And it says, "Great riches await in the world of shitcoins." And it's been pretty true unless you hold the bag during bare markets.

But Vlad, are you aware that XYZ coin does ABC? Yes, I I did consider other coins for the fund. I did look at FO and I know that Reuben is here. I did look at what else is there? Grin and Beam and all of these interesting projects that do privacy stuff, but I only pick something that I understand and recommend you to do the same.

Not the same as me, but just think about what you like and what you deem valuable and become a value investor or someone who aspires to support something that might have a future. There are lots of other coins that outperform my index, but it doesn't mean that they're fun for me. This is also important because the narrative right now is that privacy makes you poor. Whenever you tell someone that you bought Monero or something, they're going to say, "Oh, I'm so sorry." Yeah, it happens.

And I'm trying to destroy this narrative that privacy makes you poor. For me, longer term performance is more interesting than chasing trends. And I believe privacy is more worthwhile than ICOs, NFTs, yield farming tokens, RWAS, memecoins, you name them. I I'm not very interested in that, but I do care very much about getting privacy working. I think Zcash has done a very good job.

They actually created the roll-ups which right now are scaling Ethereum and they're scaling Bitcoin too and a lot of this innovation is bleeding out into the rest of the industry because it's open source and it's free to use. Market trends are ephemeral and Bitcoin is forever. And when I say Bitcoin is forever, it doesn't necessarily mean that the network will be around 100 years from now being mined. It means that the ledger with all the transactions will be around a 100 years from now. And just because you don't know who transacted today doesn't mean you will not have means to find out a few years into the future.

Bitcoin only has deniability, meaning that you can claim that somebody else did a transaction as opposed to yourself, but it doesn't have privacy in the sense that there's no way to hide who's sending the transaction. There is no way to hide the amount. And you have deniability when it comes to receiving because you generate a new address for every transaction like you should. But it it doesn't give you pretty good privacy. And that's a bad pun.

Once you understand that bitcoin has no privacy only a diminishing amount of deniability and blockchain analysis is eroding it. Just because you don't know who are the sender and the receiver of a transaction today doesn't mean you can't find out in the future. The biggest most secure and most financialized I have a typo here. It's not financialized asset of our industry needs privacy. Investing in privacy is useful and privacy might just become the new bullish trend.

not financial advice once again, but I do hope that in the future privacy will be much more important and it will be taken seriously and not just as a joke because honestly if we could get Cam Rocket and what's the name of what's even her name? There's that singer who became famous with the mother token somethingalia. Iggy Aalia. Yeah, if that one can get viral and get a lot of action, why can't Zcash and Monero and all the cool stuff that's being built out there? And if you want to learn more about privacy projects, I actually have a magazine which is free and open source.

You can download it for free by scanning this QR code. And I also recommend you to read some cipher punk literature from Tim May, David Ch, Hal Finny. He actually said in a 1990s article that you should not support any chamomi and e-cash project that doesn't have good privacy as in digital money project without privacy. Eric Huges very important Nick Sabo if you want to learn about law and cipher punk philosophy it's important to understand why privacy matters beyond the internet memes. It's not just about Pepes and whatever people make to popularize privacy.

It's also about getting to understand yourself and explaining to others why this is important. And don't be afraid to just install a wallet and try something new. Today someone offered to send me one Dash and I was like, "Okay, I don't have a wallet for that. How do I do it?" I discovered that I actually had a wallet.

It was an edge wallet. Thanks, Paul. But my point is that sometimes people make an offer and you should not be close-minded in person. On the internet, it's fine. you're lazy, whatever.

You're in front of your computer, you have different tabs open, you don't want to waste your time. But when you're dealing with someone, just be open-minded. Try something different sometimes. Have fun, but stay private. This is what my message is to you in closing.

And I think I'm done. I I have three more minutes. I can take questions. Amazing. Amazing.

Um guys, for the last time for today, please remember to use this to use Slido for any questions you might have. Please let them all roll in. Um but we're going to start with what we already have. Oh, why do you have a BTC podcast and not a privacy coin uh podcast? Haha.

Well, it's a scup. Obviously, I'm trying to get Bitcoin people to care about privacy. Actually, if I speak in the middle of an echo chamber where everyone agrees that privacy is nice, nobody calls me a loser shitcoiner. Okay, that's that's very very uh I would say that's a strong argument. Why are privacy coins lagging in popularity and price despite their super technological security over simple coins or coins like other people would say?

I think it's bad marketing mostly. It's just that people don't understand why they need something. And you think about it, Zcash is a fork of Bitcoin, right? Which added this zero cache protocol which was actually proposed for Bitcoin in 2013. Yeah.

So the fact that this exists and has some technological advantage over Bitcoin, but is not the more popular version of Bitcoin, it means that the market does not know or does not care. And I think branding is very powerful and network effects and just being around for a long time and proving that you're not a scam is also important. Yeah, those are very legit things. All right, because especially now of the low, you know, low and short time attention span, you know, it's you just like get, you know, get quickly and, you know, get out. That's usually what most people are into.

So, it's very hard to like get something. Wo, a lot of things have coming. Okay, let's move on. Um yeah, who is giving out free Dash? Who who is that?

Oh, he's giving out free Dash. So if you want free Dash, everyone go to him later. Okay. Um another question was how does it feel to be at an EAT conference or EAT dam specifically in Amsterdam 2025? I'll do the Pepe meme and say it feels good, man.

Amazing. Amazing. Uh someone said you tweeted like that you you tweeted that you feel like a king. I don't No, that that's taken out of context. I think that's my girlfriend, by the way, according to the emojis.

Okay. Okay. Yeah. A round of applause for the girlfriend. What I'm trying to say is that I tweeted that I feel like the king of nerds, which is an entirely different statement.

Okay. Amazing. Amazing. Um, yeah. And last one.

Oh, okay. Now, still more coming up. I Yeah, let's see. Um, bro, I've got nothing to Okay. Okay, come here on stage.

Take your clothes off. That's the solution to that. No, that's actually because since we have so much questions. Um, let's I think we're getting spammed here. Uh, let's see.

Will laws and regulations just kill all those privacy chains in the future? Yes and no. Like, they exist without anyone's permission on the internet. They can delist them on exchanges, but it doesn't mean that they can't be accepted for trade on the internet. I think the Decarred people are doing a great job right now building the Bison decks.

There are a couple of them on Monero right now which are being built. I don't remember the names. I'm bad with this. But I saw them I saw their presentations last year at Monerotopia. And it's good to see that the market routes around centralized exchanges and they do find ways to provide utility and give people the option to swap their coins to maybe get stable coins to do whatever they want in an environment that requires no KYC.

I think bisque is a big one and there was a fork of Bix Bisay or something surk. Yeah, it's a fork. Not a fork. Thank you for clarification. Really much appreciate it.

And yeah, I think that's pretty much it. Any other questions? All right, another round. I think this is good actually. Do you ever think the negative opinion of these privacy coins used for bad purpose will ever fade?

And what do you think could help this? Think about Bitcoin 10 years ago. What was the perception about it? It's the Silk Road asset. It's only used by money launderers, by drug dealers.

It's only used by the worst people. So you can find TV shows of of the era that were portraying Bitcoin as this evil asset and then it turned out that it's not even good for privacy. So perception changes over time and we just need to progress into a world where we care more about privacy. I think compared to the world before this node and revelations, we have made some progress. The average person cares about privacy there.

There are more users on signal. there are more people within my circles who prefer to pay in cash because they say it's untraceable at the local level in midspace. So I do see some progress towards accepting privacy but at the same time it's not there because it's not always the most convenient method and I hope that we route around this caveat. Um, it's not really a question, but someone said someone should make the index more popular, like a website with a bunch of tutorials and integrations. Um, who's building this?

I don't know. I think uh anyone can build it. Someone at the hackathon upstairs. Yeah, actually. Yeah, maybe that's a project.

Find out on Sunday. Um, yeah. Will will laws and regulations just kill all the privacy chains in the future? What do you have to say to that? I just answered it.

Oh, that was the one you answered. Yeah. All right. Okay. There there's the other one.

How would you feel about a CBDC, central bank digital currency, if it provided proper proper privacy? I think they they announced this for the digital euro. They said amounts under hundred euro or something are going to have some sort of privacy. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, right. It's terrible. But it's nice that the free market can come up with something that competes with this and something that it's important for the people to understand that CBDC's are evil and they have alternatives which are less evil or not evil evil at all. All right. Um Okay.

One more time a round of applause for Vlad. Very interesting. And a way