A few years ago, @paulbrigner, Gary W. (then ECC) and I met with the Biden White House. The threat was clear: ‘you must figure out how to get us a back door to Zcash.’ Our response was also clear, we cannot, we will not. Soon after, TC was sanctioned and Roman Storm, Roman Semenov and Alexy Pertsev were arrested. Later, Samourai Wallet cofounders William Hill and Keonne Rodriguez were arrested and sentenced. The threat to our core teams is very real. And the US has a very long arm.
Another former higher-up at Fincen once told me that Zcash will never succeed. Speech is one thing, money is quite another. Someone in OFAC told me that they recognize that privacy is necessary for national security, but only if it goes mainstream, and they had no intention of allowing it to go mainstream.
In addition to the White House meeting, I have had various meetings and conversations with the DOJ and Fincen. One former DOJ prosecutor with a brief stint at Fincen, Michelle Korver, is now at a16z and a supporter of Zcash. Former acting director at Fincen, Michael Mosier, is another and a friend of the project.
It takes years to build trust, and then coalitions, to ensure that we can continue to build privacy protecting tools for people in the US, and around the world. We have built significant trust. Not by compromising our cypherpunk values, but engaging person to person.
I am not naive. Our window is limited. But we must hold that window open for as long as possible for the sake of those building, and the sake of humanity. Paul is, and has been, on the front line in DC, building a broad coalition of builders, think tanks, regulators and policy makers. It is no accident that we have been able to build in relative freedom.