this is what you call missing the forest for the trees you've got to assume that any transparent address on any chain you've used will be deanonymized by an ai at some point so going from a transparent address on a CEX to a shielded address on zcash (via another transparent address) is equivalent to going from an ethereum /solana/bitcoin address to a shielded zcash address once you're in the shielded pool there is no information leakage past that point (it doesn't matter where your funds originally came from) no one can see what you've chosen to do with those funds without your consent this has strong parallels with gold fwiw. approx 22% of gold is stored as numbered (non fungible) bars in vaults. but you can reset provenance (in a sense shield it) by turning that gold into another form (recasting, jewelry, etc) -- unnumbered gold coins already preserve this property by default to a certain extent gold's ability to be free from connections in this way is one reason why dalio thinks it is a more appealing sov than btc long term. its ability to be stored in a non-private / non-fungible way (e.g in vaults) doesn't detract from that, it just gives it broader appeal

@goodalexander spagni, fwiw, is blocking some people for engaging with him in good faith (incl myself). he doesn’t seem to be open minded enough to even consider that he might be missing something here

@goodalexander note that the t address zec volume has no impact at all on your privacy if you’re holding long term shielded same way that etfs buying numbered gold bars or traders betting on the price of gold has no effect on the how private your personal stash of gold is