Zcash is a cryptocurrency as well as Bitcoin. But it’s not the same thing.

When Bitcoin was first released, it brought an open financial system to the world. Anyone could connect without requiring permission from anyone else; anyone could extend and improve on it without permission.

However, it came with a drawback – privacy. Bitcoin allowed everyone to see the sending address, recipient address, and value of all transactions on the blockchain. Sure, they weren’t tied to a user (or computer) by default, but contamination was a possibility. People are, after all, only human. In contrast, Zcash automatically hides the sending address, recipient address and the value of all transactions – unless you have the viewing key.

The Zcash team was founded with privacy in mind: privacy for businesses; privacy for commerce. To be viable long-term, tangibility is needed – and without privacy, tangibility can’t exist. Bitcoin brought tangibility to the digital world, but Zcash is making it accessible. No longer do coins need to be tumbled; no longer do new addresses need to be generated for each transaction to ensure complete anonymity. It’s built in from the get-go.