Privacy Now - Privacy, Web3 and AI

Your data is being fed into AI models without anyone asking you first. That's what ties this whole episode together.

We debate the claim that Web3 is dead and only DeFi and DePIN are left, Musk's petition to kill the FTC privacy order standing between him and training Grok on user posts, the new Siri running on Google Gemini and what that means for the company that built its brand on privacy first, GitHub Copilot's move to token billing and the end of subsidized AI, the first federal moves on AI regulation in the US, and a chaotic month in crypto with $1.8 billion liquidated in a single day.

We close with a few conspiracy theories, including the uncomfortable one: what if on-chain privacy was already cracked and nobody told us?

Stay safe, stay private.

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⁠⁠⁠Mihnea⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠Matej⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠Marko⁠⁠⁠

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The most consequential month in crypto and AI we've covered.

This episode breaks down the DeFi mass extinction event — 40+ protocols shut down and $770 million hacked in four months, with April the worst month in crypto history.

We cover the AI layoff wave hitting Coinbase and Meta, including the leaked recording of Meta training its models on employees before firing them.

We recap Google I/O 2026 and the agentic Gemini era.

And we close on a historic month at the top of the industry: Anthropic's first-ever profit and the Karpathy hire, OpenAI's IPO filing and its courtroom win over Elon Musk, and the SEC's conditional approval of Nasdaq Bitcoin index options.

Stay safe, stay private ✊

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⁠⁠Mihnea⁠⁠

⁠⁠Matej⁠⁠

⁠⁠Marko⁠⁠

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Episode 3 of Privacy Talks covers the most consequential month at the intersection of crypto security, AI, and privacy in recent memory.

We break down the $292M Kelp DAO exploit, how a single compromised verifier and a 1-of-1 configuration allowed North Korea's Lazarus Group to drain one of DeFi's biggest bridges, triggering $10B in Aave withdrawals and a very public blame war between LayerZero and Kelp.

We debate whether "code is law" still holds, and revisit the 2016 Ethereum DAO fork to ask if the community ever really settled this question.

We also cover the Vercel breach, a compromised employee account that exposed API keys across customer projects and what it reveals about the centralisation risk embedded in Web3 frontends.

On the AI side: Apple's $1B Gemini deal and why keeping Google's model doesn't mean keeping Google's data practices. Claude Mythos, the AI Anthropic built to find zero-days and chose not to release. And an honest take on whether Opus 4.7 and GPT-5.4 Cyber actually deliver on the hype.

Stay safe. Stay private.

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⁠⁠Mihnea⁠⁠

⁠⁠Matej⁠⁠

⁠⁠Marko⁠⁠

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Who gets to decide what AI can and can't do?

In Episode 2, we cover Discord's biometric surveillance rollout, Anthropic's refusal to give the Pentagon unrestricted access to Claude, the 2.5 million user boycott that made Claude the #1 app overnight, China's MiniMax releasing frontier AI at a fraction of the cost of US models, 30,000+ layoffs across Oracle and Block, a critical vulnerability in Claude Code that could silently steal your API keys, and the MacBook Neo, Apple's first $599 AI device. One episode. The whole battlefield.

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⁠Mihnea⁠

⁠Matej⁠

⁠Marko⁠

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Welcome to the first episode of Privacy Talks, a new roundtable sub-series of the Privacy Now podcast.

In this episode, I sit down with colleagues Matej and Marko to break down what’s actually happening in AI, crypto, and privacy right now.

We discuss:

🔹 Moltbook – the social network where 14M AI agents talk to each other
🔹 Is the “AI social boom” already here?
🔹 Vitalik Buterin’s alternative to the AGI arms race
🔹 The rise of the invisible workforce & agent-to-agent commerce
🔹 DAC8 and the expansion of crypto reporting in Europe
🔹 AI-generated artists & synthetic fame
🔹 Claude Opus 4.6 and the future of AI as a coworker

Are we building a parallel digital civilization?
And if so… will privacy survive inside it?

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Mihnea

Matej

Marko

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What if privacy on the blockchain didn’t mean going dark, but going compliant?

In this episode of Privacy Now, Mihnea Stefanescu sits down with Dr. Adam Gągol, co-founder of Aleph Zero, CEO of Cardinal Cryptography, and the architect behind Blanksquare , a new middleware layer bringing Privacy-as-a-Service to the EVM ecosystem.

Together, they explore how the Blanksquare SDK enables private transactions, compliant shielding, and selective disclosure, all while running at subsecond ZK proving speeds.

Topics include:

🔹 The evolution from Aleph Zero to Blanksquare

🔹 Privacy as a compliance tool, not an obstacle

🔹 How subsecond ZK proofs make privacy usable

🔹 Selective disclosure & the “Anonymity Revoking” model

🔹 Why middleware beats L1s and privacy coins

🔹 The future of privacy, regulation & cryptography

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What if the most secure blockchain wasn’t on Earth at all… but in space?

In this episode of Privacy Now, Mihnea sits down with Filip Rezabek, co-founder of SpaceComputer and PhD candidate at TUM, to explore the bold idea of a tamper-proof orbital computer that could redefine trust in Web3.

We cover:

• The vision of an Orbital Root of Trust
• Threshold cryptography, TEEs, and reproducibility in distributed systems
• Why bridges remain fragile, and how SpaceComputer secures them
• Lessons from MEV and cross-chain arbitrage research
• The future of confidential computing, AI, and cryptography beyond Earth
• Filip’s journey from academic research to building cypherpunk systems in orbit is a glimpse into the next frontier of decentralization.

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What does real privacy in Web3 look like?

In this episode of Privacy Now, I sit down with Ameen Soleimani, the founder of PrivacyPools.com and 0xbow and Matej Janez, Head of BD at Oasis, to explore what comes after Tornado Cash, and why privacy is a public good worth fighting for.

We dive into:

• The evolution from Tornado Cash to Privacy Pools
• The injustice facing Roman Storm & Alexey Pertsev
• What “ethical privacy infrastructure” actually means
• Ameen’s friendship with Vitalik & values as a builder
• Privacy as a public good, decentralization, and building under pressure

With Roman Storm’s trial beginning this week, this episode could not come at a more crucial moment.

Subscribe and listen now to hear why Ameen believes privacy isn’t just a right , it’s the foundation of a truly decentralized world.

Find us on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/@PrivacyNowWeb3

Host & Guests' Socials:

Mihnea - https://x.com/MinnyTheRapper

Ameen Soleimani - https://x.com/ameensol

Matej Janez - https://x.com/matejanez

What if unvested tokens didn’t have to sit idle?

In this episode of Privacy Now, I sit down with Rico van der Veen, Co-founder & CEO of SemiLiquid and Robert Brienza, BD Specialist at Oasis to explore a bold new frontier: using unvested tokens as collateralized liquidity instruments (CLIs), without breaking vesting contracts.

Rico and his team are building SemiLiquid on Oasis , leveraging Liquefaction technology to make token vesting smarter, more liquid, and enforceable by design.

We unpack:
🔐 The problem with today’s illiquid vesting schedules
🛠️ Why OTC and wrappers fail to scale securely
📜 How Liquefaction changes assumptions about token ownership
🌐 What “CLIs” are and how they unlock capital without violating trust
💡 How this could reshape tokenomics, compliance, and early-stage markets

Whether you're a founder, fund manager, protocol team, or just fascinated by the future of crypto economics, this one’s a must-listen.

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Rico (@Rico_0x) / X

Robert (@robertbrienza) / X

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In this episode of Privacy Now, we sit down with Yannick Myson, founder of Swarm Network, to explore one of the most exciting trends in AI and Web3: decentralized agent swarms.

Yannick unpacks how autonomous AI agents can collaborate to verify truth, preserve privacy, and reshape the future of intelligence, all without centralized gatekeepers.

We dive into:

– What AI agent swarms are and how they work

– Why decentralized intelligence matters

– How Swarm uses zero-knowledge proofs for privacy

– The intersection of AI, blockchain, and governance

– The risks of centralized AI and the ethics of swarm systems

This is the episode for anyone curious about the next wave of AI in the Web3 world.

Listen now and subscribe for more episodes on the future of privacy, decentralization, and emerging tech.

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#AI #Web3 #SwarmNetwork #PrivacyNow