rick rubin of crypto and recently vibe coding: "I have no technical ability, and I know nothing about crypto, i have good taste and that's my superpower"
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I’ve been sitting on this for a while, but something about @RaoulGMI bullishness just wasn’t congruent with the way I saw things that line up with how @joemccann describes these platforms.
Thread: Ethereum as Microsoft vs. Solana as Apple? Nah, it’s more like BlackBerry vs. Apple. Here’s why Ethereum is closer to BlackBerry than Microsoft. 🧵👇
1/ Raoul Pal says Ethereum is Microsoft—stable, dominant, enterprise-friendly. But that misses the mark. Ethereum’s more like BlackBerry: a pioneer that owned the early smartphone (smart contract) game but got clunky, slow, and stuck in its ways.
2/ BlackBerry had first-mover advantage, just like Ethereum with smart contracts. But high gas fees, sluggish transactions, and a rigid dev ecosystem scream BlackBerry’s outdated QWERTY keyboards, not Microsoft’s adaptable Windows empire.
3/ Microsoft scaled by embracing developers, open ecosystems, and constant reinvention (think Azure, Office 365). Ethereum’s upgrades (like EIP-1559 or the Merge) are slow and divisive, more like BlackBerry’s half-hearted OS updates that couldn’t keep up.
4/ Solana, on the other hand, is Apple. Sleek, user-focused, and built for speed. Sub-second transactions and low fees are like the iPhone’s intuitive UX—designed for mass adoption, not just tech nerds. Solana’s ecosystem feels like iOS: vibrant, dev-friendly, future-ready.
5/ BlackBerry clung to its niche (secure email, physical keyboards) while Apple redefined the game with touchscreens and ecosystems. Ethereum’s stuck on “decentralization purism” while Solana optimizes for scale and usability, capturing DeFi and NFT mindshare.
6/ Data backs this up. Solana’s TPS (transactions per second) can hit 65,000 vs. Ethereum’s ~15-30. Gas fees? Solana’s often < $0.01, while Ethereum’s can spike to $50+. BlackBerry’s clunky UX lost to Apple’s polish; Ethereum’s cost loses to Solana’s efficiency.
7/ Ethereum’s community points to L2s (like Arb or Base) as a fix, but that’s like BlackBerry slapping Android on its phones too late. Patching an outdated core doesn’t match Solana’s native speed and vision. L2 =two problems
8/ Microsoft dominates because it’s everywhere—cloud, gaming, enterprise. Ethereum’s influence wanes as Solana grabs DeFi TVL (e.g., $10B+ in Solana DeFi vs. Ethereum’s slipping share). BlackBerry faded as competitors innovated faster. History’s repeating.
9/ Don’t get me wrong—Ethereum’s a legend, like BlackBerry was. But legends can fall. Solana’s Apple-like focus on performance and adoption makes it the future, while Ethereum risks being a nostalgic relic. Who’s building the next iPhone moment? Not ETH. 🏁
One line Raoul says “you can’t get fired for using Eth” but I disagree, you can be left in the dust and obsolete just like you couldn’t be fired for investing into Sears vs AMZN
jonathan retweeted
I believe $ZEC will soon eclipse 2% the market cap of Bitcoin, which will lead to a series of god candles to new highs beyond $2000 by the end of the year.
Believe in something. Send it zigher.
$ZEC is an extremely misunderstood asset, which is why there's still so much upside left.
ZEC started to bottom around April 2025, when @ebfull shared a blog post about Project Tachyon. Tachyon makes Zcash quantum proof and paves the way to scale Zcash to 50k TPS. And you cannot address quantum without addressing scalability since post-quantum cryptographic signatures are going to be an order of magnitude larger.
At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, the real bull case for Zcash is to fulfill Satoshi's vision: becoming peer-to-peer electronic digital cash. What many Bitcoiners gave up on. Zcash has the same properties as BTC, except it has a credible roadmap to scale to 50k TPS at the base layer, with built-in privacy. It's extremely ambitious, but that is the vision.
At the same time, I expect Bitcoin to undergo a crisis of confidence. Crypto participants have been conditioned to blindly believe BTC will hit new highs every couple of years. I believe these assumptions will be challenged as the quantum overhang looms large, and continued underperformance will drive more flows into ZEC. I would not be surprised if BTC trades like ETH last cycle.
Peter Thiel talks about the "Last Mover Advantage." That is, it's far better to make the last great development in a market and then dominate. Facebook vs Myspace. Google vs Yahoo. Zcash has dominated a small niche (privacy), and then it plans to scale to the ambitious goal, which is peer-to-peer electronic cash.
The ZEC trade closely resembles the SOL trade last cycle. ZEC's ability to move fast challenges a slow-moving incumbent (BTC), similar to how SOL challenged the ivory tower of ETH. History doesn't repeat, but it often rhymes.
There’s a fundamental mismatch between why Zcash is going up (Tachyon + last mover advantage) and the broader market’s understanding ("just a privacy coin"). Understanding this is a form of alpha/edge. I expect this knowledge gap to close when Tachyon hits mainnet in Q1 2027.
As a result, I expect the following over the next 1-2yrs:
1) Bitcoiners will start "silent quitting" and begin hedging their holdings with ZEC
2) Capital allocators that may have full ported BTC 5 years ago, will buy both ZEC and BTC as a bet on a sovereign SoV
3) Smart crypto developers to move on from other ecosystems to start contributing to Zcash
4) As ZEC continues to outperform BTC, people will start to seriously entertain the possibility of a flippening
5) $20,000 ZEC
Zigher.
jonathan retweeted
2nd inning was memory burned to the ground while zcash consolidates
base case for 3rd inning is memory relief bounces while zcash prints a series of god candles
jonathan retweeted
Last time the market didn't properly sell off after a huge event like this was the FTX collapse
When I saw the lack of follow through then I got giga bullish
And we subsequently went from 16k to 100k
Hard to be bearish here after having been given the same setup yet again
jonathan retweeted
$ZEC is an extremely misunderstood asset, which is why there's still so much upside left.
ZEC started to bottom around April 2025, when @ebfull shared a blog post about Project Tachyon. Tachyon makes Zcash quantum proof and paves the way to scale Zcash to 50k TPS. And you cannot address quantum without addressing scalability since post-quantum cryptographic signatures are going to be an order of magnitude larger.
At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, the real bull case for Zcash is to fulfill Satoshi's vision: becoming peer-to-peer electronic digital cash. What many Bitcoiners gave up on. Zcash has the same properties as BTC, except it has a credible roadmap to scale to 50k TPS at the base layer, with built-in privacy. It's extremely ambitious, but that is the vision.
At the same time, I expect Bitcoin to undergo a crisis of confidence. Crypto participants have been conditioned to blindly believe BTC will hit new highs every couple of years. I believe these assumptions will be challenged as the quantum overhang looms large, and continued underperformance will drive more flows into ZEC. I would not be surprised if BTC trades like ETH last cycle.
Peter Thiel talks about the "Last Mover Advantage." That is, it's far better to make the last great development in a market and then dominate. Facebook vs Myspace. Google vs Yahoo. Zcash has dominated a small niche (privacy), and then it plans to scale to the ambitious goal, which is peer-to-peer electronic cash.
The ZEC trade closely resembles the SOL trade last cycle. ZEC's ability to move fast challenges a slow-moving incumbent (BTC), similar to how SOL challenged the ivory tower of ETH. History doesn't repeat, but it often rhymes.
There’s a fundamental mismatch between why Zcash is going up (Tachyon + last mover advantage) and the broader market’s understanding ("just a privacy coin"). Understanding this is a form of alpha/edge. I expect this knowledge gap to close when Tachyon hits mainnet in Q1 2027.
As a result, I expect the following over the next 1-2yrs:
1) Bitcoiners will start "silent quitting" and begin hedging their holdings with ZEC
2) Capital allocators that may have full ported BTC 5 years ago, will buy both ZEC and BTC as a bet on a sovereign SoV
3) Smart crypto developers to move on from other ecosystems to start contributing to Zcash
4) As ZEC continues to outperform BTC, people will start to seriously entertain the possibility of a flippening
5) $20,000 ZEC
Zigher.
How Zcash Flips Bitcoin This Cycle
0:00 $ZEC flipping BTC?
1:20 Second Mover Advantage
3:41 Project Tachyon: Path to 50k TPS
5:39 How To Think About Zcash
13:05 How Zcash gets to $20k
15:13 Their Bias is Your Opportunity
jonathan retweeted
Pretty remarkable: British Columbia elects Conservative majority government for first time in nearly 100 years.
jonathan retweeted
I tried to warn you
Last month, we demonstrated high-rate alchemy: turning mercury into real, stable gold, beating CERN’s record by a factor of 10.
Last week, we enriched isotopes in the world’s most powerful plasma centrifuge, beating the Soviet record that stood for 40 years.
Now, we’re building a fusion reactor in San Francisco to achieve record power density.
