The era of AI auditing has arrived, and the true nature of privacy coins has been thoroughly exposed.

CoinWorld Network reports that Claude Opus 4.8 uncovered a fatal vulnerability from the past four years, causing the 9-year-old privacy coin ZEC to plunge within hours, with the price briefly falling to $250 and the market value nearly halving. Security researcher Taylor Hornby used a new model to pinpoint a flaw in Zcash’s underlying Orchard privacy pool and successfully completed a hard fork to patch the vulnerability on June 3. Although the vulnerability has already been fixed, Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox’s public disclosure sparked market panic, prompting investors to reprice the credibility of the available supply and leading to defensive divestment across the entire privacy track.