Gemini's Tyler Winklevoss says Zcash is not a public good and should not be grant-funded

what happened

Gemini co-founder Tyler Winklevoss said on Friday that Zcash (ZEC) is not economically a public good and that its development should be paid for by the market rather than by a grants committee, Stocktwits reports. He made the point in an X reply to L. Amber O'Hearn, a former member of the Zcash Community Grants (ZCG) committee, who had argued that Zcash is a public and social good that private interests should not capture.

Winklevoss said a public good must be non-rivalrous and non-excludable, and that Zcash fails both tests: a holder's coins belong only to that holder, and anyone using the network has to pay. He agreed the network is open and good for society, but argued that economists use the term to mean something else. In his view, ZCG operates like a government-style taxing mechanism, and the market can fund the network better. He also brushed aside concerns that the coin would become reachable only for the rich, pointing to wider wallet and exchange support and to exposure through public companies and exchange-traded funds.

Winklevoss also co-founded Cypherpunk Technologies (CYPH), a Nasdaq-listed firm that holds roughly 294,700 ZEC. At the time of the report, ZEC traded at $1,270, up more than 1% over 24 hours, while retail sentiment on Stocktwits stayed bearish.

why it matters

The dispute reaches beyond one coin because it targets how the network is funded. ZCG takes 8% of each block reward, and a draft proposal from Sean Bowe would redirect that share into the protocol reserve known as the Network Sustainability Mechanism. Changing the split would require a network upgrade, and every proposal is still a draft. Zcash is up nearly 150% this year and more than 214% over the past 12 months, so the outcome may matter to holders and to the wider privacy-coin market.

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