Originally published at: https://freekeene.com/2017/10/02/shielded-zcash-transaction-at-nh-retail-store/
A customer purchased a “Live Free or Die” wood plaque and a “Legalize Gay Marijuana” bumper sticker at the Free State Bitcoin Shoppe in Portsmouth, New Hampshire using an encrypted digital currency called ZCash. The cryptocurrency is the most private money ever created, relying on a complex mathematical principle called a “Zero-Knowledge Proof”. Essentially this…
I believe Radiolab has a fun podcast episode relating to ZCash for anyone that’s interested. Not a tutorial but a retelling of a story.
Last November, journalist Morgen Peck showed up at her friend Molly Webster’s apartment in Brooklyn, told her to take her battery out of her phone, and began to tell her about The Ceremony, a moment last fall when a group of, well, let’s just call them wizards, came together in an undisclosed location to launch a new currency. It’s an undertaking that involves some of the most elaborate security and cryptography ever done (so we’ve been told). And math. Lots of math. It was all going great until, in the middle of it, something started to behave a little…strangely.