And now for something (almost) completely different.

Welcome to Out of Scope, a new sub-series where Austin and Tori Pastore (aka Birb Bernake) riff with guests on hot takes from the frontiers of tech, finance, policy, and whatever else is the flavor of the week In this debut episode, they sit down with Austin Campbell to discuss... quite a few things: running stablecoin reserves, repealing the 17th Amendment, why banks resemble cartels, insider trading, market structure, why regulators should be paid more and held to higher standards, modernizing the BSA, and—most importantly—a definitive ranking of video conferencing tools.

00:00 - Introducing Tori

01:24 - Chinese Peptides Explained

02:45 - GLP 1 Hype Cycle

05:40 - Peptides and Food Science

10:49 - Enter Austin Campbell

16:11- Stablecoin Reserve Rules

20:35 - Gold Doom Scenarios

22:59 - Banks' Payment Monopoly

34:38 - AI Lobbying and EA critiques

38:20 - Prediction Markets Incentives

43:59 - Fixing Regulator Accountability

47:39 - Prediction Markets

48:47 - Market Manipulation Debate

59:54 - Perps Versus Futures

01:02:51 - Assassination Markets Debate

01:06:21 - Austin's Magic Wand Reforms

01:10:40 - Blooper Reel

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In this episode, Austin chats with Mert about why privacy is becoming essential for crypto and on-chain finance. They discuss how ZK-based privacy works via shielded pools, commitments, proofs, and nullifiers, contrasting it with Monero’s probabilistic obfuscation. Mert explains Zcash’s renewed adoption through improved usability, macro and regulatory shifts, and fairer historical distribution. He argues privacy layers fail when they lack tangible benefits, and outlines a new fully on-chain, composable, atomic privacy protocol for Solana built with Light Protocol’s compression approach, including permissionless and enterprise “zones” with configurable compliance features and reduced MEV via encrypted swaps.

00:00 - Why Privacy Matters

03:05 - Zcash And ZK Origins

06:26 - How Shielded Pools Work

09:56 - Why Zcash Broke Out

15:52 - Why Privacy Layers Fail

19:47 - Solana Privacy Protocol

22:57 - Composability Breakthrough

25:51 - Go-To-Market Plan

30:50 - Compliance And Zones

32:40 - Onchain Versus Off Chain

34:58 - Zcash And Solana’s Future

40:29 - Bitcoin Privacy And Quantum

43:48 - Closing And Where To Find

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In this episode, Austin chats with Seth (Cake Wallet) about why privacy is gaining traction after years of being niche, tracing Seth’s entry through Monero and other privacy-preserving products. They compare Zcash’s seemingly influencer-driven pump with Monero’s quieter but rising real-world usage, discuss Cake Wallet’s UX-driven approach (including enforced auto-shielding for Zcash), and debate how criminal adoption can actually validate that privacy tools work in adversarial settings while emphasizing legitimate use cases and storytelling. They explore why app-layer privacy on major L1s has weak adoption versus privacy-native L1s, the importance of defaults, and what’s next for privacy in DeFi and stablecoins.

00:00 - Seth’s Personal and Professional Privacy Journey

05:53 - Zcash vs Monero Adoption

09:51 - Crime Compliance and Privacy Ethics

15:25 - Why Privacy-Preserving Wallet UX Has Lagged

20:49 - Privacy L1s vs. App-Layer Privacy

27:30 - What’s Next Private DeFi

30:07 - Why Monero Has Survived CEX Delistings

32:35 - Privacy in the Age of AI Surveillance

41:51 - Conclusion

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