This week: our waitlist crossed 45,000, a French court kept the EU's crypto tax data rules in force despite a recent breach, Zcash is targeting a November upgrade to triple payment speed, and a16z's actual paper names the privacy tools banks would need to go permissionless.
In House
A few things from our side first.
We just crossed 45,000 people on the waitlist. If you haven't joined yet, sign up on the new website and start earning Raypoints by completing tasks, live now.
Join the waitlist at raycash.xyz →
On Our Radar
Here is what got us excited this week:
45K on the waitlist, Zcash gets faster, and France keeps its tax database anyway.
This week: our waitlist crossed 45,000, a French court kept the EU’s crypto tax data rules in force despite a recent breach, Zcash is targeting a November upgrade to triple payment speed, and a16z’s actual paper names the privacy tools banks would need to go permissionless.
In House
What happened at Raycash this week:
We just crossed 45,000 people on the waitlist. If you haven’t joined yet, sign up on the new website and start earning Raypoints by completing tasks, live now.
On Our Radar
What got our attention this week:
France keeps DAC8 in force, weeks after its own tax agency got hacked
France’s Council of State turned down an emergency bid from Bull Bitcoin and Paymium to suspend DAC8, the EU rule that forces crypto platforms to collect and report customer data to tax authorities. The court’s reasoning: the risk of that centralized database getting hacked, or used to physically target crypto holders, was too speculative to justify an emergency pause. The bigger case, on whether DAC8 is even legal, is still working its way through the courts.
Here’s the thing though. France’s own tax agency admitted in August that a hacker had already stolen data on 678,438 taxpayers. So “speculative” is doing a lot of work in that ruling, about a month after the exact scenario stopped being hypothetical for a database run by the same government.
Zcash’s next upgrade makes shielded payments three times faster
Zcash developers are targeting November 5 for NU7, an upgrade that cuts block time from 75 seconds down to 25. A shielded payment waiting on multiple confirmations, the kind an exchange or bridge requires before releasing funds, would clear in roughly a third of the time. Supply stays basically flat, block rewards get divided by three and the halving interval triples to match. Code is due September 30, testnet is October 6, and the final go or no-go call lands October 20.
Zcash’s ETF pulled in real institutional money right after it launched, and speed has always been the actual weak point of shielded payments next to a normal card tap. This isn’t as flashy as a listing, but it might be the upgrade that decides whether people actually spend ZEC or just hold it.
a16z’s compliance paper names the tools banks would actually use
We covered a16z’s case last week that permissionless blockchains already satisfy US AML law. Their full paper is worth reading directly, because it names the actual toolkit banks would use to get there: proofs that a counterparty isn’t on a sanctions list, or that reserves exceed liabilities, without publishing the books behind either claim. One tool they cite by name is Privacy Cash, a zero-knowledge protocol on Ethereum and Solana that lets institutions transact confidentially while still holding a viewing key an examiner can ask for.
Most of that toolkit is still early. a16z’s own paper says sanctions and provenance proofs are in pilot testing, not production. The legal argument reads pretty settled at this point. Whether banks actually build or adopt the cryptography is a slower question, and a separate one.
Thanks,
From the Raycash team
.
