If its true that the trusted setup was done behind closed doors and with only 6 people involved then it surely cant be trusted. Can anyone confirm how the setup was done?
Why wouldn't they use hundreds or even thousands of people generating shards of the golden key and have them all doing it in different ways to just about guarantee that there was no funny business in the setup. Without the ability to audit the blockchain we cant know if they created a gazillion coins or just 21 million. The technology behind Zcash whereby making the entire blockchain a black hole is great for anonymity but not so great if we cant trust how many coins are in this black hole.
I don't even think that this is the major problem. It is likely that one or more computers of them is infected. It is just to easy for professional hackers. And this not a kind of conspiracy theory. It's a honey pot for any hacker to get these data for a money printing maschine.
Exactly. We have to trust the setup, and if this was how it was done, then that doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in it.