researchers just put out a design for private $BTC transfers on bitcoin itself, with no soft fork. the paper is Shielded Bitcoin, from Clara Shikhelman, Mikhail Komarov and Aleksei Moskvin at [[alloc] init]. bitcoin already proves ownership without a custodian. it also publishes amounts, timing and the links between wallets, which is a problem for treasuries, desks and anyone moving size. their fix is a metaprotocol on L1, closer to a Zcash-style shielded pool than a new chain. a sender seals an encrypted note for the receiver, then publishes it inside a normal bitcoin transaction with a zero-knowledge proof and a nullifier that marks the old note spent. the data can sit in OP_RETURN or witness space. bitcoin stores the bytes and orders them. it does not read the amount or the counterparty. you would run a bitcoin node plus a Shielded Bitcoin indexer. no coordinator and no bridge operator in the current design. invalid blobs can still land on-chain. the indexer has to ignore them. some publication metadata stays visible. peg-in and peg-out through PIPEs are still later work. so this is a paper, not a live wallet. it is trying to hide amounts and counterparties on L1 without changing $BTC ’s rules. that is the claim. it still has to be built, and the peg is not done. #BTC Price Analysis# #Bitcoin Price Prediction: What is Bitcoins next move?# $ETH