Privacy Now - Privacy, Web3 and AI

Privacy Talks #4 - The Mass Extinction Event

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 ✊ Follow us on X: ⁠⁠Mihnea⁠⁠ [https://x.com/MinnyTheRapper] ⁠⁠Matej⁠⁠ [https://x.com/matejanez] ⁠⁠Marko⁠⁠ [https://x.com/markowifk] Subscribe to our Youtube channel: ⁠⁠Youtube [https://www.youtube.com/@PrivacyNowWeb3/videos]

Privacy Talks Episode 3 - The Fragility Report

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. Follow us on X: ⁠⁠Mihnea⁠⁠ [https://x.com/MinnyTheRapper] ⁠⁠Matej⁠⁠ [https://x.com/matejanez] ⁠⁠Marko⁠⁠ [https://x.com/markowifk] Subscribe to our Youtube channel: ⁠⁠Youtube [https://www.youtube.com/@PrivacyNowWeb3]

Privacy Talks #2 - Who Controls the Kill Switch?

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. Follow us on X: ⁠Mihnea⁠ [https://x.com/MinnyTheRapper] ⁠Matej⁠ [https://x.com/matejanez] ⁠Marko⁠ [https://x.com/markowifk] Subscribe to our Youtube channel: ⁠Youtube [https://www.youtube.com/@PrivacyNowWeb3]

Privacy Talks #1 – AI Agents, AGI Arms Race & Europe’s Crypto Crackdown

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? Follow us on X: Mihnea [https://x.com/MinnyTheRapper] Matej [https://x.com/matejanez] Marko [https://x.com/markowifk] Subscribe to our Youtube channel: Youtube [https://www.youtube.com/@PrivacyNowWeb3]

The Race to Real-Time Privacy

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 Follow Mihnea Stefanescu on X - https://x.com/MinnyTheRapper Follow Adam Gagol on X - https://x.com/GagolAdam Check out Blanksquare - https://blanksquare.io/ Follow Privacy Now on Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@PrivacyNowWeb3