Interview│Reuben Yap - Firo│ETHDam III - 2025

Hello, my name is Reuben. I'm the project steward and co-founder of Firo. And today my message is about fighting for the crypto privacy middleground because the only way to legitimize privacy and made it mainstream is to keep bad actors out. Why is privacy in crypto becoming so extreme? All of nothing.

I think uh there is it's not just a problem with crypto. I think we're also seeing in politics and it's the extremes are easy to understand because they are the extremes you know it's like all or nothing right and when you are talking about the middle ground it's more nuance right it takes longer there's no like simple bite line it's like no one wants to listen to oh it's like this like I was actually explaining it to someone uh in the conference and he was like saying you know why why is it so polarized right I mean it's easy to say okay yeah privacy it's everything right or my privacy coin is the best no one wants to hear oh it's actually more nuance you know there are certain cases where this works and this doesn't work that's too long and you know in this attention deficit Tik Tok age uh I think uh no one has enough bandwidth to process all this information and we all looking for those quick sound bites and I think that has also contributed to the polarization of of crypto in general. Yeah. Is regulation always the enemy or can it buy us time to build? I don't necessarily see regulation as an enemy.

I think overregulation is an issue. Right. Obviously there's certain things that need to be guarded. You know we have a whole waw waw west. you know we allowing all sorts of bad actors but at the same time we were having like overregulation you know things innovation stops uh people get persecuted uh you know nothing actually develops or it just introduces so many barriers so I don't necessarily see regulation as always a bad thing I do think there is a place and time for it but at the same time there's also a place where you know you're building things that is above a regulation because We also have to push the norm, not just like follow follow what what's the norm currently?

Yeah. What's one trade-off solution that actually worked? I I mean I don't think we especially for privacy were not none of the solutions work until they don't right like for example like the things that we developed uh at FO with uh Zcash as well which was like uh exchange addresses and transparent uh tax addresses as they call it worked and then well it's debatable whether it'll work in the future but it's worked it kept us listed you know on on the largest exchange in the Well, I do think also privacy pools uh you know is a great idea with the rail guns POI but again it's how do we know whether it works until we see how the regulation develops around it. I think it's a constant battle there. So I I think these are two good examples where there's a good trade-off uh like you know between balancing individual privacy with you know disallowing bad actors you know privacy for the good guys.

So yeah, but I don't think there's one solution that will always work. Regulation always changes and the new challenges always changes as well. Yeah. What's the biggest myth about privacy coin? I think the biggest one is that you know we the only the only thing that we're good for is money laundering and you know illicit activity.

Um like even you know I go to crypto conferences, oh yeah, you're the guy that helps with money laundering and stuff like that. So unfortunately like uh some in the privacy community, you know, especially like Monero being the poster boy for for privacy coins, some within the communic community actually sort of um they champion criminal usage saying, "Yeah, criminals use cuz we work, you know." And I think that's a really dangerous myth um that doesn't do any favors to any privacy project or privacy in general as all. Yeah. What's your message to privacy maximalists?

Uh I mean I respect the the stance. I you know really en I really respect what they're building and you know I do think that they should continue doing what they're doing but at the same time uh also respect those that are taking the middle ground. We are trying to make privacy accessible to the masses and keeping that fight. I think it's important to make sure that privacy isn't made into like a barrier or some sort of you know really niche category. I mean there is a place for this definitely always but we also should fight where for the regular Joe as well and that's why I think it's you that's what my talk is all about about fighting for that middle ground and respecting that fight rather than saying oh we are sellouts or we are you know uh selling out individual liberties or you know playing catch ball with with regulators as well of of course there is always a line where that line is depends from from from individual to individual or like you from project to project.

But I think we should champion that as long as we are all promoting privacy in not invasive ways. Uh we should be all at least even though respecting each other's views but still working to together to build like useful privacy tools. Citizens are not suspects. Yes. Go ahead.

Tell me. Yeah. So I mean like this idea that you know we often forget like even the whole idea of like privacy pro proofs of like you know proofs of innocence you know I have to prove that I'm innocence when you know all this while we shouldn't we are like you know should be innocent until proven guilty we shouldn't have to prove innocence which is sometimes quite tough to do right I've been the subject of like like a wrong uh like wrong raids where the police raided me for the wrong reasons which I won't go into details but I guess the idea is that governments are there to you know govern but they're not there to control us. We have to remember that you know like the US government shouldn't be spying on its own citizens. You know what Edward Snowden said like it's it's not always about fighting crime.

I I don't think there is actually really good evidence that all this surveillance actually help in in in protecting uh individual citizens. So just you know a reminder that we are citizens not suspects. So even if we have nothing to hide we should reme remember that that we shouldn't be just giving it all away because you know we we should be innocent until proven guilty. Yeah. [Music]