Mert Mumtaz, co-founder and CEO of Helius, joins Lukas and Saila to explain why privacy is crypto’s unfinished business, why he sees Zcash as encrypted—or “better”—Bitcoin, and what the Ironwood upgrade means for the Orchard pool, supply integrity, formal verification and quantum recoverability.

They compare Zcash and Monero, unpack fungibility and tainted coins, discuss private finance on Solana and Helius’s work with Light Protocol, and examine why public blockchains risk becoming a global financial panopticon. The conversation then moves into AI, DeFi security, startup hiring, company names, Slavic relationship theory, emergency flowers and the collapse of straightforward Western dating.

Sponsored by:

Polymarket: https://polymarket.com
Zcash: https://z.cash
CitizenX: https://citizenx.com
Passage Press: https://passage.press

Plausibly Deniable: https://plausiblydeniable.org
Lukas: https://x.com/SCHIZO_FREQ
Saila: https://x.com/sailaunderscore
Mert: https://x.com/mert