If you’re fed up with data breaches, this new technology could finally help

Every few weeks, Americans get another letter in the mail that starts the same way: “We’re writing to inform you that your personal data has been exposed.” A retailer gets hacked. A hospital. A supermarket. A travel site. It never ends. Most of us feel like we’ve lost control over who has our information and how it’s being used. But a new kind of privacy technology, one that lets companies confirm what they need to know without ever seeing your personal details, may finally offer a way out of this mess.

We’ve slipped into a world where giving away our personal information is the “cost” of participating in modern life and where we’re frustrated, but not surprised, when it gets stolen. In an age defined by apps, AI, and digital payments, our data has become both currency and collateral damage.

But we may finally be reaching a turning point. And the solution that’s emerging didn’t come from Silicon Valley or Washington; it came from an unexpected place: cryptography, the science of using math to secure information, and the foundation of blockchain technology.

It’s called zero-knowledge proof technology, and despite the intimidating name, it theoretically offers something every American wants: privacy without the headaches, and security without the surveillance.

Wall Street quietly moved first

While consumers are dealing with endless breach notifications, something very different is happening on Wall Street.

Many of the world’s financial titans, including JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and BNY Mellon are testing blockchain-based trading, settlement, and other systems that let assets move 24/7. Tokenized treasuries, money-market funds, and even tokenized stocks—a mechanism where something is turned into a digital “token” that lives on a blockchain—are no longer experiments; Robinhood introduced tokenized versions of stocks and ETFs for European Union investors this summer.

But there’s one major barrier: on a public blockchain, everyone can see everything.
Investors don’t want that. Banks, pension funds, hedge funds don’t want that—for competitive reasons, among other things.

If financial markets are going to ultimately run on modern cryptographic infrastructure, they will need privacy that doesn’t compromise trust or oversight.

Consumers feel the same way

Americans are tired of being told that if they want convenience, they must give up control of their personal information. The AI economy depends on “massive streams of data” and whether it survives may come down to one thing: trust.

Right now, trust is running out.

People don’t want more logins, more verification codes, or more data sitting in more databases that will inevitably get hacked. They want a world where businesses can verify what they need to verify, without collecting everything about us.

That’s exactly where zero-knowledge proof technology comes in.

Zero-knowledge proofs: verify without exposing

A zero-knowledge proof lets someone prove something is true without revealing the underlying data.

•       You can prove you’re old enough to buy a product, without giving away your birthdate.

•       A bank can prove it has enough reserves, without exposing its entire balance sheet.

•       A company can verify a user is real, without storing personal details that can get hacked later.

This isn’t science fiction, and it isn’t just “crypto.” It’s already in the apps Americans use today:

• Google Wallet has quietly integrated zero-knowledge technology. 
• Bumble uses it to verify user attributes without storing sensitive data.
• Financial institutions are incorporating it to protect user data.

StarkWare’s founders codeveloped zk-STARKs and zk-SNARKs, advanced cryptographic methods for zero-knowledge proofs, and this technology now underpins some of the most promising privacy tools in AI, fintech, and digital identity.

Regulators are finally ready to talk about privacy and the crypto angle

For years, the word “privacy” in Washington was viewed with suspicion, confused with anonymity, or treated as a threat to oversight.

Hopefully, that’s now changing.

Back in August, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce wrote compellingly that the “sledgehammer has become the tool of choice for monitoring financial crimes,” and “[t]he American people and their government should guard zealously people’s right to live private lives and to use technologies that enable them to do so.” The SEC is now preparing to convene a first-of-its-kind roundtable on Financial Surveillance and Privacy, where builders at the forefront of privacy technology will show how these tools allow for risk management without exposing every transaction. 

At the same time, the Executive Branch has embraced emerging technologies, signalling a top-down encouragement for regulators to approach innovation as a path towards improvement, and to encourage its growth. 

Why this moment matters

The privacy wave is not just a consumer protest. It is institutional. It is technological. It is regulatory. It is an inflection.

•       Institutions need privacy to operate competitively.

•       Consumers need protection from constant breaches.

•       Regulators need tools that preserve oversight without creating systemic vulnerabilities.

Zero-knowledge proofs sit at the center of all three needs.

The digital economy, from AI systems to payments to financial markets, is gaining speed.

But without privacy infrastructure, we are setting ourselves up for a future where every trade, every transaction, and every personal detail is visible to everyone.

We don’t need to accept that world.

Zero-knowledge proof technology offers a better one:
a world where verification is possible without exposure, where markets are efficient without being surveilled, and where people can participate in the digital economy without surrendering their most intimate data.

Privacy is not anti-technology.
It is the foundation of trust and trust is the one thing the AI economy and the financial system cannot survive without.

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