Zcash Advocacy Group Registers Its First Washington Lobbyist Effective October 1

A Zcash-focused advocacy group has formally entered Washington's lobbying rolls, naming its executive director as its first registered lobbyist. Pretty Good Policy for Zcash, known as PGPZ, filed a Lobbying Disclosure Act registration with an effective date of Oct. 1, 2026, listing Divij Pandya as its sole lobbyist, as shown in the public filing. CoinTelegraph reported the registration on Oct. 5, and Crypto Briefing covered the move on Oct. 4.

The filing names "PRETTY GOOD POLICY FOR ZCASH" as both registrant and client, marking the organization as self-represented rather than retained through an outside firm. It gives an address of 818 18th St NW in Washington, describes the business as Zcash ecosystem development, developer protections, and financial privacy, and lists Pandya as the contact, according to the registration. The form records no covered-official positions for Pandya and no affiliated organizations or foreign entities behind the effort.

Three specific measures appear under current and anticipated lobbying issues. The filing lists H.R. 3633, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, alongside the Aligning Digital Assets with Principles of Taxation Act and the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act, the filing shows. Those entries signal a two-track agenda in Congress, with market-structure legislation on one side and tax treatment of digital assets on the other.

The issue codes selected on the form run wider than those three bills. Banking, finance, constitutional issues, science and technology, and taxation are all checked, which leaves room for work on related topics as they develop. Crypto Briefing said the group's agenda also spans anti-money-laundering rules and sanctions questions, alongside developer protections and tax policy, while keeping financial privacy at the center of its pitch.

PGPZ itself is new. The group launched in the summer of 2026 after growing out of Pretty Good Policy for Crypto, an earlier effort started in 2022 by Electric Coin Co. that hosted policy roundtables and organized a congressional briefing on encryption technologies in 2023, an Oct. 5 article explains. Founder Paul Brigner, who serves as policy officer at the Zcash Open Development Lab, known as ZODL, told the outlet the goal is serious and organized representation for Zcash in Washington.

Brigner framed the stakes around whether privacy-preserving digital cash can exist, be used lawfully, and serve the public interest, adding that PGPZ exists to keep Zcash understood and defended in policy conversations, according to CoinTelegraph's report. The group operates as a 501(c)(4) organization built for advocacy specific to the Zcash ecosystem, in a profile of the registration.

Pandya brings a crypto-policy background to the role. He previously worked at FS Vector, a financial-services advisory firm active in digital-asset policy, and now leads PGPZ as executive director. At the group he will head lobbying, policy analysis, and coalition-building on Capitol Hill, an Oct. 4 write-up states. The filing, digitally signed by Pandya on Oct. 1, lists him as the only individual expected to act as lobbyist for the client.

Money for the operation runs through the Zcash community's own grant system. Zcash Community Grants approved a $750,000 grant to fund PGPZ's first year, as detailed in an Oct. 5 piece. Crypto Briefing described the funding as still moving through the grant process, presenting the request as an ecosystem-level decision on whether direct political representation merits the cost.

The division of labor with ZODL is part of the design. ZODL keeps its attention on core protocol work, infrastructure, and wallet development, while PGPZ handles policy education, coordination, and advocacy as a standalone shop, according to one account of the filing. That separation gives the lobbying arm its own registration, leadership, and funding line rather than operating as a side project of a development team.

Market-structure legislation is the near-term item to watch. How Congress classifies digital assets and assigns supervisory authority will shape compliance duties for projects, exchanges, and wallet developers alike. A Zcash-specific advocate in those talks means privacy considerations get raised by someone whose brief is the shielded ecosystem itself, rather than as an afterthought in broader industry testimony.

Developer protections form the other live front. Rules that touch people who write and publish open-source code carry direct consequences for protocol contributors, and PGPZ has flagged the topic as a core priority from the start. Tax questions complete the listed agenda, with two separate digital-asset tax bills named in the filing as measures the group expects to engage on.

The registration does not authorize any meeting or guarantee access. It discloses the representation, the issues, and the lobbyist, as the disclosure law requires. What follows is the ordinary work of briefings, comment letters, and coalition talks, with the $750,000 first-year grant setting the budget for that effort, as recounted in contemporaneous coverage.