Threads Part III : US Election Day edition
Extending my posts Independence, Threads I and Threads II, which examined the ZODL “seed round” pattern and some connected ideas, this zooms in more on the investors themselves.
The impact of these crypto investors on the business and politics of the United States (and the world) is solidly significant. Inevitably, there is crossover with the new Zcash lobbying apparatus PGPZ, which I wrote about here.
But, as a US election featuring the highest funding for paid speech in history (a staggering $12 Billion USD estimated) is now occurring, a recent roundup found almost every major player listed as an investor here has also donated to the midterm efforts, for a (known†) amount of $225 million dollars, with over 75% going almost completely to republican efforts, and the remaining 25% split about evenly between the two dominant parties.
The republicans (mainly the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement) are the ruling US political party associated with the most severe and uncontrolled authoritarian policies active in today’s USA. The facts above point to an overwhelming majority of funding support going there; almost 90% - now, partly fueled by Zcash.
While not exhaustive, I found many facts, shared below. This is a long one, they made it complicated. Get a snack now.
We have visibility into these funding sources only through press releases, public comments, and public financial filings in the USA.
In a June 2026 interview, ZODL CEO Josh Swihart (@joshs) said:
We got rid of the governance structure, which was effectively a two of two multi-sig between the Zcash Foundation and ECC.
We had to deal with some toxicity. Like every ecosystem goes through these kinds of governance and toxicity stuff. But we had to get that behind us.
…the investors that came in, we want to be very careful about who participated on the cap table. It wasn’t just taking checks from anybody. We were very intentional… the check is important, but we need to build a coalition of people that believe in what we are trying to accomplish, that want to be a part of what we’re trying to accomplish and that are in positions of power to, to help us do that, to help us push boulders that we just can’t do alone. So yeah, it was heavy hitters…it’s been really encouraging to see the entirety of crypto kind of come behind this mission.
Though more issues are addressed in my Hazards post, my main concerns are these two: investors may be dictating or guiding protocol development, and the appreciation of ZEC itself serves as their profit strategy: as the value of ZEC increases, it will grow the wealth of these investors, many of them actively engaging politically, technologically, and economically in advancing authoritarian interests.
Beyond the enumerated investors, there were also “a group of leading angels across crypto and technology” noted. To my knowledge, no credible journalist, analyst, or community member has named any entity beyond those who have been publicized.* Of course, we can’t evaluate the unknowns, so we’ll look at the known investors here in more detail.
Institutional VCs
chapter one
A Los Angeles USA based fund begun in 2017 by a former VP at Tinder. Backed by Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins, Bessemer Venture Partners, and individuals including a16z’s bighead honcho Marc Andreessen and crypto-division leader Chris Dixon. Beyond possible conflicts of interest, apparently, they had invested in FTX, the crypto industry’s largest fraud to date, among other companies. I found no public statement from Chapter One regarding any loss, or the implications of FTX’s implosion.
paradigm
Begun by Coinbase cofounder and former Sequoia Capital partner Fred Ehrsam, paradigm could be seen as struggling with an identity crisis and a hangover from the FTX scandal, in which it was estimated to have lost nearly $300 million dollars, after overcoming some misgivings about FTX’s governance. Recently, it’s been de-emphasizing crypto and endorsing AI, and investing in firms working in autonomous drone delivery and the ‘defense’ sector.
Not only does paradigm hold public market shares directly in fellow investor Coinbase of ~$866M, they also have shares ($2.6 Billion) and equity in prediction market Kalshi along with Coinbase and a16z.**
There’s also a history with Israeli company Starkware (equity shares 21.5% for ~$1.72B)
co-founded in 2018 by Eli Ben-Sasson of Technion, and essentially a Zcash co-inventor. Offering the Starknet L2 on ETH, the company raised ~$261M across six rounds, with Paradigm leading both the Series A ($30M, 2019) and Series B ($75M, 2021). The Series C ($50M, Nov 2021, $2B) was led by Sequoia. They’re now downsizing.
But most poignantly, for the privacy-minded human, paradigm was the lead investor of the series D in Chainalysis, the firm that sells blockchain-tracking (surveillance, compliance, forensics) tools to law enforcement and governments worldwide. They currently have a direct stake (equity) [worth ~$415 million]. Sequoia also participated in their series E..
So, paradigm co-led the ZODL round while simultaneously being one of the largest backers of the industry’s most prominent anti-privacy surveillance tool vendor.
a16z crypto
With the slogan Software Is Eating the World, a16z is one of the world’s largest VC funds, and alone presents an enormous corpus of questionable activities outside of their over $115 million involvement in support of republicans in the current US midterm elections.
I’ll just point out a few high points of their investments.***
Really, a16z is so grotesque, looking into their dealings and statements makes my head spin. But here is a mini-game to help the medicine go down! ◊
Other than observing they are boosting projects featuring mass surveillance, companies that rewrite video recordings, literal botfarms and scamming platforms, prediction markets/gambling, NFTs, and have a specifically pro-american fund for autonomous weapons programs, but still likes Saudi Arabian money too, etc, the one I really want the Zcash community to know about is NEAR, also funded by Coinbase. I believe NEAR is likely important in the ECC → ZODL for-profit funding story, which leads me to suspect a16z and Coinbase were working there, behind the scenes.
But why would a single company engage in so many awful, antisocial things at once? Look no further than the founders, who provide ‘their DNA.’
Generally speaking, the more out there we are, and the more outspoken we are, and the more controversial we are, the better for the business
He states he engages in “zero introspection,” says Edward Snowden is a “textbook traitor,” and in a section called ‘enemies’ in his so-called ‘techno-optimist manifesto’ quips that social responsibility is a “zombie idea.”
Obvious and intentionally inflammatory, this billionaire troll calls everyone opposing him an obstacle to progress, seeking to strip away supports from marginalized groups and insinuating they are, as a straight white rich authoritarian united states man, are the true victim (of reverse discrimination). They also want to stop funding university research and development programs, saying they are fighting american innovation, even though a large NSF grant in 1994 led directly to his massive fortune as creator of web browser Netscape.
He is also a thought leader in a ring of right wing group chats, and serves on the board of Coinbase and Meta.
Partner Ben Horowitz can’t hold a candle to this guy, but he tried, by dehumanizing millions of people as a business metaphor, comparing corporate culture adoption to prison stabbing and slavery, and said “Sorry mom, we have to do it.” when the pair were first endorsing Trump.
Additionally, the fund’s website is manifestly ripe with bullshit. §
The scammy companies simply underline the amorality of the entire operation. While bad consumer apps are merely unhealthy for society, providing poor choices for consumers, surveillance and warfare tech are an ill imposed upon people against their will. They represent freedom taken away. They are everyone’s problem.
Corporate Investors
cypherpunk technologies
Backed by the Winklevoss twins, this publicly traded corporation is a digital asset treasury focused on Zcash, and their SEC filing explicitly calls their money going to ZODL an investment to complement their ZEC holdings.
They also recently launched world’s largest ZEC mining fleet, financed through Winklevoss Capital, detailed below.
On December 9 2025, @zooko officially joined cypherpunk as a strategic advisor, joined 10 days later by CEO Josh Swihart (@joshs), creating a direct personnel link between ZODL, Shielded Labs, and cypherpunk. On the news, cypherpunk’s stock jumped 39%. Just 10 days later, Josh and ECC would quit Bootstrap en masse to quickly re-form under the ZODL banner.
I think this compressed timeline is worthy of more attention.
In August 2026 Dev Ojha (@ValarDragon of Valar Group) was announced as having joined, which along with Tachyon, created Zakura, now used by the Winklevoss exchange Gemini, and as I pointed out, made the use of the Zcash Foundation’s full node Zebra optional: removing any non-aligned interests from critical roles on the software side.
coinbase ventures
Coinbase Ventures is the strategic investment arm of Coinbase, founded in 2018 with over 600 investments across 422 active portfolio companies, making it one of the most active crypto VCs by deal count. Coinbase listed cbZEC (wrapped Zcash), tokens that represent ownership of ZEC, on its ETH L2 Base chain in September 2026, and has listed tokens for approximately 30 of its own VC portfolio companies, a conflict that brought an SEC complaint, and its CEO declined to address directly. Like a16z there is a lot to investigate.
Also positioned with NEAR, participating in the $12.1M Series A in July 2019, alongside early Zcash VC Pantera Capital, and others. This makes a direct, confirmed overlap between ECC/ZODL development priorities and a a16z and Coinbase funded project, before the ZODL funding round was announced.
Worldcoin, co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Coinbase Ventures participated in the $25M Series A (October 2021) that valued the project at $1B. The product is literally a physical “orb” that scans people’s iris geometry to create a permanent biometric identity, minting a token (WLD) as “proof of humanity.” Clearly, could be another Black Mirror Sponsor.
They were also involved in ZORA, a token that crashed 90% on launch and showed signs of insider trading pre-launch.
Sardine, founded by an ex-Coinbase employee, is a San Francisco-based fraud-prevention and KYC platform that uses machine learning, behavioral biometrics, device fingerprinting, and identity verification to score users in real time for banks, fintechs, and monitor crypto transactions for exchanges. Both Coinbase Ventures (seed, 2020) and a16z (Series A, B, and C, $145M total) are investors, making it a shared portfolio company of two of ZODL’s institutional funders. Sardine’s product docs state: “Sardine can detect users who are on Politically Exposed Persons (PEP), Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) and global watchlists.”
Glacis Labs investment was announced recently. A New York based crypto infrastructure company building ZeroDelta, a multichain clearinghouse that embeds protocol-enforced KYC, asset whitelists, travel-rule compliance, and sanctions screening directly into the settlement layer. This pushes crypto toward a model where all value transfer is routed through compliant, identifiable clearinghouses.
As mentioned in Independence, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong made a single tweet bringing critical US crypto legislation immediately to a halt, and essentially proving these investors can stop legislation they dislike cold. This might be a ‘superpower’ in the current regime, but I am not sure these facts will be seen the same way if political winds shift.
“Family Offices”
Winklevoss Capital
A VC firm in form (seed/Series A deals), but structured as a family office, it has no external LPs. Beyond the billionaire twins, the investment team has been limited to two non-family members: Sterling Witzke (now Senior Advisor) and Will McEvoy (principal since 2022, also CIO of cypherpunk).
Seeded from the famous Facebook settlement, with a significant (10-15%) position pushed into early Bitcoin accumulation (~1% of supply), the twins now seem to be following a similar but extended pattern with Zcash. This amounts to a vertically integrated position across multiple layers: token hoarding and significant mining representation (~18%) with cypherpunk, official protocol guidance and flagship wallet software via ZODL investment, the on/off ramp exchange Gemini (GEMI), institutional market with the Winklevoss Zcash ETF (WINK) recently announced on October 6 2026, and it seems to me very likely, unofficially, pushing the boundaries of the protocol with Tachyon/Valar.
With a notable employee advocating for ending the dev fund and Zcash Community Grants program here and here, now echoed by Shielded Labs, @zooko, and Tachyon’s @ebfull and ZODL’s @joshs the systemic funding of independent development is staged to end, in favor of directing funds exclusively to miners, who of course directly secure the network, and currently get 80% of rewards. But naturally, the proposed new arrangement (miners get 100%) fixes something that wasn’t broken (there are no 51% attacks happening), and helps to consolidate the system further in favor of Winklevoss Capital. There have also been calls for draining the existing ZCG treasury, essentially killing the system on the spot.
The office was an early investor in the exchange Gemini, named after the twins, who still hold ~94% of voting power there. The exchange has an interesting history, including a near-death experience.‡
And, of course, there is the US political/regulatory angle, detailed more in Independence. Essentially, they appear to operate the regulatory relationship as a business function, including tens of millions in political contributions. Their wealth was fueled by Bitcoin and is now fueled by Zcash.
Beyond Zcash, the office invested in Crusoe Energy (data center/crypto mining), Colossal (‘de-extinction,’ genomics), BlockFi (trading, crypto-backed loans), and, unverified, one source cites Mach Industries (‘defense’ manufacturer building autonomous unmanned systems for the US military) alongside Sequoia Capital.
Maelstrom (Arthur Hayes)
Hayes was co-founder and former CEO of BitMEX in 2014, the exchange famous for 100x leverage, and stepped down as CEO in October 2020 following US criminal charges (Bank Secrecy Act / AML violations), when his remark that he incorporated in the Seychelles
because it cost less to bribe Seychellois authorities - just ‘a coconut’ - than it would cost to bribe regulators in the United States
was noted. He was pardoned by US President Trump in 2025, in what might have also been the first presidential pardon of a corporation in modern history, and BitMEX shut down for good.
He said he sold whatever ZEC he had following the recent counterfeiting bug disclosure, so he may be now out of the picture.
Individual Angels
David Friedberg (via The Production Board), Haseeb Qureshi (of Dragonfly Capital)], Mert (Helius, ex Coinbase engineer)
After brief investigation, all of these come away looking relatively clean. Mert had a labor dispute, and Friedberg made a billion dollar business sale to Monsanto (!). Nothing much here, move along.
Balaji Srinivasan
(@balajis, ex Coinbase CTO, ex a16z general partner, early investor in Paradigm)
Offering the blatantly false binary rhetorical trap “The choice is clear. It’s Zcash or communism,” Srinivasan played an integral role in the ZODL funding story publicly offered by CEO Josh Swihart..
While personally, I give Balaji credit for putting things into black and white (naturally - I mean text!) in his 2022 book articulating the uber-libertarian ideal Network State, and then not compromising (and having non-fabricated citations), the ideas later realized in September 2024 by the affiliated physical Network School near Singapore, in Malaysia soon fell on difficult times. Less than two years later, Malaysia revoked their business licence, and the school quickly came to arrangements with and then moved to the forward-looking nation state Kazakhstan, which might have a few pain points. It’s said to now be open there.
This shift did not stop a16z, Coinbase and Balaji himself from participating in a $2 Billion dollar valuation funding round for Network School announced within the last month.
I just wonder where the ZCG funded Zcash Network School office is now.
To move toward closing:
Some of the investors’ business models and investments are actively opposed to human dignity. That is important to note.
As I see it, the major standout players in the Zcash ecosystem involved politically and socially, given the scope and overlap in interests, appear to be the Winklevoss twins, a16z, and Coinbase.
The surveillance companies underline the profit motive above any true value of privacy in the starkest terms.
With their investments, Paradigm, Coinbase and a16z are all playing both sides of the privacy debate. However, I see the heavier investments in surveillance tech (Chainalysis, Sardine, Glacis, Flock Safety) as suggestive that they are preparing for a future where privacy coins are regulated (perhaps, out of existence), and they control the compliance layer. Even this year, Coinbase the exchange announced the delisting of ZEC (alongside XMR, DASH, and ZEN) on March 30, 2026, effective April 7, but the token remains listed on US Coinbase as of now, with withdrawals restricted to transparent addresses only.
a16z and Coinbase Ventures have plastic worldviews, compatible with any ethical contortion that allows for their enrichment.
Together, the funders also have aggressive lobbying apparatus. Coinbase led Fairshake, which funds both political US parties, which in turn form a broad consensus to support the wars, surveillance and financial systems that so many of us find objectionable. But probably about 90% of their overall political funding goes to republican interests, where the others, a16z and The Winklevoss twins, openly accelerate authoritarianism in its most powerful, politically accessible form in the US (the MAGA republicans) and fund their efforts to the level of hundreds of millions of dollars. This directly supports the current, radically authoritarian US regime, which of course knocks on to the rest of the world in the form of warfare, debt, trade wars, election and social interference, extrajudicial killings, removing heads of states, and much more.
Where is this all leading?
In an ideal world, everyone could have a positive relationship with technology. One reason I engaged with Zcash in the first place is because it offered opportunities for people to have freedoms in their choices. Not all, but some of these investors have pushed for a world where most people will have no choice but to have more negative relationships with technology.
For the VCs I think it’s clear that the idea is simply to concentrate more capital with haste and scale. The rest is probably mostly mere ornamental rhetorical misdirection.
Is there influence capture at play by way of funding? Shielded Labs has gone on the record saying no. There is no comment to such effect from ZODL, or other orgs.
Why worry? I wrote down some thoughts here, though they’re not exhaustive, and the landscape is moving quickly by.
If you’re working on Zcash or a supporting technology, I’d like you to consider that it is not an isolated thing. At least, not any longer. What does Zcash support, right now, what is it driving?
Is it a force for public good, or a tool and/or vehicle these firms mentioned above?
Regardless of how the upcoming US elections (an indirect referendum on trumpissimo and all of its deleterious effects on the people of the US and the world) resolves, one thing is clear.
The mental gymnastics needed to reconcile Zcash’s “human dignity” with the “legal, VC and market compatible” narratives is already exhausting, and we’re just getting started as our surroundings shift around us.
(footnotes to be found in following post)