Welcome back to Market Movers, the opening bell. Well, in New York Morning Trade, we are looking at Bitcoin and ETH higher on the session, and this does follow the late August rally. Now, that was fueled by the debasement trade, the Treasury's move to take on yields, as well as regulatory support from leaders in Washington. And the industry is facing some potential geopolitical headwinds in September trade. Well, we are continuing to monitor rate hike odds. Right now, we are looking at a 50-50 break even when we're looking at expectations for what will happen at the Fed reserves meeting in terms of the rate decision. And the midterm elections are also two months away and put pressure on lawmakers to get the Clarity Act across the finish line before a potential shift in the balance of power. Well, joining me to break all of this down is StarkWare CEO, Eli Ben-Sasson, who's also the author of Zero Knowledge, Infinite Trust. Well, great to have you back on the show, Eli. Thank you so much for joining us. So I do want to start out with a look at price action here. So what do you make of what we're seeing given all the volatility across asset classes? Where do you stand when it comes to digital assets?
I think the big exit from digital assets into AI mostly and, you know, related stuff, I think that sort of run its course a little bit. And I think there'll be some sort of either staying in the same way or like a little bit of return of capital into the digital asset market, which isn't going anywhere. So that's my thoughts on like where we're heading, but, you know, obviously not investment advice and do your own research.
Yeah, absolutely. And I do want to zoom in on Zcash, which we saw make a 52-week high. So do you attribute this to a rise with the broader crypto market, the launch of the Grayscale Zcash ETF, or would you say this comes down to privacy, in particular the demand for privacy?
Yeah, you know, as a co-founder of Zcash and someone who's been in the trenches for a while and, you know, saw all of its magnificent progress, I think this is mostly about privacy being very important and people just recognizing this. And, you know, there is a room for basic infrastructure that is so much needed in the crypto world and appears in the conventional world. In this case, it's privacy. So I think it's mostly attributed to that, to the importance of privacy as a basic financial right for all of us.
Yeah, and I do want to get your take on the quantum migration. So last week, Starkware completed the first-ever post-quantum Bitcoin transaction. So following the recent quantum-resistant Bitcoin transactions using Stark Lightbooks, what is the realistic timeline here when we're talking about standard L1 blockchains to migrate in? Will social consensus or technical implementation be the more harder problem to solve here?
That's a terrific question and one that I talk about a lot. So the technical issue of moving a chain to become post-quantum secure is relatively easy. And I'm saying this as, you know, CEO of Starkware, where I'm overseeing this transition as it's happening. The tougher part, especially for Bitcoin, is the whole consensus, you know, the politics of this decentralized ecosystem. So it's 95% of the challenge is convincing and reaching consensus on doing the move. But as we see on StarkNet and other places, the actual technical implementation is rather simple.
And Eli, I do want to get your take on Starks versus Snarks. And these are the two primary families of zero-knowledge proof technologies. And now that hardware acceleration and new recursive proof systems are narrowing the performance gaps, tell us where you see the theoretical limits of proof generation efficiency. And break this down for the layperson out there who's watching.
First of all, I am so happy that this is a topic that is, you know, discussed on a TV channel, you know, out of NYSE, right, the New York Stock Exchange. We have moved forward so much since I spoke first about the possibility of ZK. This was at a Bitcoin conference 13 years ago. So, now, we have a class of cryptography that is quantum susceptible. Those are the snarks. And they could break by a quantum computer. Luckily, you know, my co-authors and I co-invented a better technology, a newer one called ZKStarks, that is resistant to quantum computers, and that is what we deploy on Starknet, and what, by now, all of the other cryptographic teams working on blockchain have adopted. So, all of these technologies, you know, you talked about recursion and technologies to make them faster and safer. These things are in production right now on Starknet and coming to other chains. So, really, the future is bright for ZK and even for post-quantum secure ZK-Starks.
Well, Eli, we will have to leave it there for today, but always great talking to you. Thank you so much for joining us and we look forward to speaking with you soon.
Thank you, Remy.
