StarkWare Founder and Saylor Face Off for the First Time: Should Bitcoin Have Privacy Features?

[Chain News] StarkWare’s leader Eli Ben-Sasson recently met Strategy’s Michael Saylor for the first time to discuss how Starknet could ignite the Bitcoin economy. But the real sparks flew when the topic turned to privacy.

Saylor’s stance is clear—Bitcoin should stay away from privacy features, especially anything like Zcash, or governments around the world could shut it down in no time. Ben-Sasson disagrees; he believes privacy and transparency can coexist, and that implementing a view key would do the trick—protecting privacy while still allowing a backdoor when necessary.

They also discussed the OP_CAT upgrade proposal. Saylor is worried that making changes too aggressively and too fast could lead to problems, while Ben-Sasson isn’t buying it: “This thing has been debated and studied for ten years—do we need to wait another few hundred years?” One is cautious, the other is pushing for progress—it made for an interesting conversation.