Mexico's new regulation (effective June 30) requires linking every SIM and eSIM to a government-issued ID. Miss the deadline, your line gets suspended.
On the surface, this is about reducing crime. In practice, it collapses the boundary between communication and identity. Once your phone number is tied to your passport, every app, every payment, every service that authenticates via SMS inherits that link. A Zcash transaction sent from a phone whose number is tied to your identity isn't private by default — it's private only if the layers between you and the chain are airtight.
This is why protocol-level privacy matters more than app-level privacy. If the phone knows who you are, the app knows who you are, and the only thing standing between that identity and your financial activity is whether the chain itself leaks information. Transparent blockchains fail this test completely. Zcash passes it — but only if you're using shielded transactions with a wallet that doesn't phone home.
Mexico isn't unique. Turkey, India, Pakistan, Nigeria — over 150 countries now mandate SIM registration. Each one narrows the set of people who can transact privately without protocol-level encryption. The demand for Zcash doesn't come from ideology. It comes from policy.