Helius CEO Claims Zcash Patch Banning MSTR’s Michael Saylor, BMNR’s Tom Lee — But Is It Real?

• Helius Labs CEO Mert Mumtaz claimed on X that a patch had been deployed on the Zcash network that would automatically reverse transactions involving Michael Saylor and Thomas Lee.
• The claim remains unverified, with no technical documentation, code commits, or confirmation from the Zcash Foundation or Electric Coin Company.
• Retail traders on Stocktwits applauded Zcash’s outperformance against Bitcoin amid the current cryptocurrency market selloff.

Helius Labs CEO Mert Mumtaz on Tuesday morning announced that his team deployed a patch on the Zcash (ZEC) network that automatically reverses any transactions involving Strategy’s (MSTR) Michael Saylor and Bitmine’s (BMNR) Thomas Lee, effectively barring them from the blockchain.

"We have added a patch on the Zcash network that atomically rolls back any transactions involving Michael Saleor [Saylor] and Thomas Lee,” Mumtaz wrote in a post on X. “These individuals are barred from interacting with the blockchain. No further comments at this time."

The post has not been confirmed as genuine. Mumtaz and Helius have not followed up with technical documentation, a GitHub commit, or any corroborating announcement from the Zcash ecosystem. Stocktwits has reached out for comment.

ZEC’s price outperformed Bitcoin (BTC) on Wednesday morning, rising nearly 5% in the last 24 hours to around $600, while Bitcoin’s price recovered from intra-day lows of $65,000 but still remained down by 3% in the last 24 hours. 

Crypto Twitter Says Zcash Ban Claim Is Just ‘Satire’

Users on X debated where the claim was genuine or just “satire,” because a ban on specific addresses is technically not possible with on the Zcash network. 

Zcash has has two types of transactions – transparent and shielded. The shielded transactions use zero-knowledge proofs to hide sender addresses, receiver addresses, and amounts. Identifying and blocking transactions tied to specific named individuals would be possible only on the transparent layer, not on shielded transactions, which are designed to be unlinkable to real-world identities. 

Why The Claim Raises Questions

Helius Labs is a Solana (SOL) infrastructure company. It provides Remote Procedure Cell (RPC) services, indexing, and developer tooling for Solana applications. 

The company has no publicly documented role in Zcash's core development. Zcash protocol development has historically been led by the Electric Coin Company and the Zcash Foundation — neither of which has commented on the post. 

Mumtaz has been one of Zcash's most vocal public supporters. He was among BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes and AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant, who began promoting ZEC in late 2025 as a complement to Bitcoin. His public stance has consistently been pro-privacy, pro-censorship resistance. 

Many retail traders on Stocktwits speculated that traders were rotating out of Bitcoin and into Zcash amid the current market sell-off that wiped out $1.8 billion in crypto bets.

ZEC’s price has gained 970% in the last year, while Bitcoin’s price has fallen by over 36%.

What If The Patch Is Real?

If the patch were real, its reach would be limited. For a network-wide ban to function, most Zcash nodes and validators would need to run the patched software. A patch enforced only by Helius-affiliated nodes would have no effect on transactions confirmed by the rest of the network.

MSTR’s stock edged 0.3% higher in pre-market trade, after a drop of over 9% in the previous session. On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around the company remained in ‘bearish’ territory over the past day. Meanwhile, BMNR’s stock edegd 0.6% lower, while Ethereum (ETH) fell nearly 5% in the last 24 hours to below $1,900. Retail sentiment around Bitmine improved to ‘neutral’ from ‘bearish’ over the past day. 

Read also: Bitcoin Dumps Below $65K, Spurring $1.8B Wipeout Before Recovery – Analysts Debate The Cause, While Retail Blames Saylor

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