Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox steps down from Electric Coin CEO role

Zooko Wilcox, co-founder of the Electric Coin Company which develops the privacy-focused cryptocurrency Zcash ZEC -4.32% , has stepped down from his CEO role.

"The Board of Directors of the Electric Coin Co — which consists of Alan Fairless, Michelle Lai, Zaki Manian, Christina Garman, and myself — has decided to make Josh Swihart the CEO of the Electric Coin Co, taking over that role from me," Wilcox wrote in a blog post .

Swihart has been at ECC for five and a half years, first serving as the firm's Marketing Director for seven months in 2018 before working as it's SVP of Growth for the past two years. 

"I have known and worked with Josh for a long time," Wilcox wrote. "While he and I have often disagreed about how we should do things, we’ve never disagreed by why. We share the mission of putting irrevocable, sovereign economic freedom into the hands of every person on earth."

Wilcox will continue to serve as a director on the board of ECC's parent firm Bootstrap Project, it said in a statement.

Zcash price

Zcash's price pared earlier declines on the news to end the day mostly flat at $29.07, according to The Block's Price Page for Zcash . The protocol uses zero-knowledge proofs to shield an individual's wallet balance and transaction history, while still ensuring the two are accurate. 

"Zcash took over not only my life but also my identity. It was hard for others to see Zcash as something separate from me. Sometimes it was hard for me to do that myself," Wilcox wrote. "So what am I gonna do now? This transition has been like waking up from a dream. I’m still blinking and rubbing my eyes. I’ve been thinking about all the interesting new technologies that are coming out and how they can impact us and our society. Anything that I could commit to would need to be focused on human freedom, because freedom is what breathes life into everything that we love and value."

(Corrects story to show that Zcash price pared declines on news.)