Vitalik Buterin stated that "privacy is a hygiene habit" and called for stronger digital privacy protections.

Following the potential breach of customer data from several major US banks due to a cyberattack on mortgage technology provider SitusAMC, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin commented on privacy, stating that "Privacy is Hygiene." The breach stemmed from unauthorized access to SitusAMC's systems, with the company confirming on Saturday that threat actors had stolen data related to several large financial institutions, including "accounting records and legal agreements" and "data related to certain customers." Affected banks include JPMorgan, Citi, and Morgan Stanley. In a tweet responding to the incident, Buterin stated that privacy should be considered a fundamental digital "hygiene" habit, not an optional feature. This aligns with his consistent emphasis this year that privacy is a basic requirement of digital systems, not an add-on. In an April article, Buterin outlined Ethereum's path to supporting stealth addresses, selective disclosure, and application-layer zero-knowledge tools, aiming to reduce the problem of structured data exposure in traditional finance and public blockchains. The crypto space is seeing a growing focus on privacy: Ethereum is advancing protocol-level tools and new privacy Layer 2, Bitcoin is working on Taproot upgrades and wallet-based approaches, and Solana is integrating around the Light Protocol. Furthermore, the privacy-focused cryptocurrency Zcash is gaining more attention. Quinten van Welzen, Head of Strategy and Communications at Zano, stated that “default privacy” ensures everyone automatically benefits from strong crypto protection without needing to understand complex tools or make conscious privacy decisions for every transaction. Bitcoin’s anonymous founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, wrote in 2009: “We have to trust banks to hold our money and make electronic transfers, but they lend it out wave after wave with credit bubbles, and reserves are only a tiny fraction of it. We have to trust banks to protect our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves empty our accounts.”