Meme Insider
In a single, ice-cold tweet that hits harder than most 50-tweet threads, Helius CEO Mert (@0xMert_) just reminded the entire crypto timeline what actually matters:
freedom, in its most bare form, means optionality
if you don't have privacy, you don't have optionality
so without privacy, you don't have freedom
when people say privacy is a meta, they are saying freedom is a meta
zec, btc are call options on freedom becoming more important
That’s it. No fluff. No charts. Just pure, distilled truth.
And it’s absolutely correct.
Most people in crypto today chase leverage, narratives, airdrops, or whatever influencer is yelling loudest this week.
But underneath all of it, the only thing that has ever mattered — the only thing that will still matter in ten years — is freedom.
Real freedom isn’t being able to 100x a cat coin.
It’s being able to move your money, speak your mind, or build without asking permission or looking over your shoulder.
Privacy is the prerequisite for that freedom.
If every transaction you make is permanently etched on a public ledger, traceable by governments, corporations, or anyone with a block explorer, you will eventually self-censor.
You already do. We all do.
That’s not optionality.
That’s a leash.
When people call “privacy” a meta right now (shielded pools, Railgun, Tornado Cash remnants, Nocturne, etc.), what they’re actually saying — whether they realize it or not — is that freedom itself is becoming the meta again.
And the assets that survive the longest, compound the hardest, and become generational wealth are the ones that embody that freedom most purely.
Zcash with full shielded transactions by default.
Bitcoin with its unbreakable monetary policy and growing Layer-2 privacy tools.
They are literally call options on the world waking up and deciding freedom actually matters more than convenience or surveillance.
We are still early.
Most people still think privacy is for criminals.
Most governments still think they can control capital flows forever.
Most normies still think “nothing to hide, nothing to fear.”
All of those assumptions are aging extremely poorly in real time.
The moment the pendulum swings back — and it always does — the coins that preserved real optionality will be the ones that absorb all the value.
Mert didn’t just write a tweet.
He wrote the quiet part out loud:
The meta isn’t AI agents.
The meta isn’t memecoins.
The meta isn’t restaking or L2 scaling.
The meta is freedom.
And privacy is the price of admission.
ZEC and BTC remain the cheapest, most asymmetric ways to get exposure to that outcome.
Everything else is just noise.
