Edward Snowden criticizes the transparency of Bitcoin's blockchain

The world-famous ex-employee of the NSA and unmasker Edward Snowden gave an interesting and extensive interview to Peter Van Valkenburgh during the conference "The Blockstack 2018" in Berlin.

Snowden discussed with the journalist the current issues of confidentiality of cryptocurrencies and his preferences. He also took the opportunity to criticize the development of internal conflicts in the cryptocurrency industry, challenging the maximalists, and insisted that the main developers needed teamwork.

Edward Snowden made several remarks:

"I do not think that Bitcoin will live forever [...]," Mr. Snowden teases. "The first browser created is not the best browser we saw. Bitcoin does an important job, and I think it will have a long-term value. However, if we look closely at the team of the main developers and their pace of protocol improvement, we will see that they should try harder, otherwise they will cease to be competitive. "

After listening to all the questions, Edward Snowden stated: "As a security specialist, I would never recommend to anyone that they have cryptocurrencies," he smiled and laughed hoarsely along with the applauding audience. "What I will say is that when I worked for an excellent project earlier in 2013, I tried to figure out how I can get this archive of materials for journalists [...] safely, without control, without monitoring, without permits. Then I had a question about whether I needed my own server infrastructure. "

Public blockchain of Bitcoin is a mistake

Undoubtedly, the most contradictory of his comments was: "Everyone focused on the fact that the central disadvantage is a limited amount of transactions, but I would argue, because a much larger, long-term shortcoming in Bitcoin's structure is the public registry. This is simply incompatible with a reliable trading mechanism. You cannot ensure the lifelong preservation of the confidentiality of all purchases, all actions are freely available, and globally nothing good will come of it. "

Asked about his favorite cryptocurrency, Snowden said, "When we talk about what cryptocurrency is interesting to me, I'll repeat: ZCash for me is the most interesting now because of privacy security. It is truly unique. We see more and more projects that try to imitate this, and I think this is a positive development. Monero came out, and I use Monero, like everyone else. "

Snowden despises the maximalists and the wide crypto community, for their attachment to a particular currency or project. He stressed that the relative size of the ecosystem is still very small and needs to be expanded, which is why new and different projects should be involved in order to involve more and more people using cryptocurrencies.

"We already see how the state finally reaches the point at which officials begin to get very nervous and move closer and closer to the point of meaningful intervention in order to determine what these technologies can be used for. In addition, if public awareness of the use of cryptocurrency will not be able to protect digital savings, we will have big problems. "

Asked about the Venezuelan state of the Petro cryptocurrency and about the prospects for technology in general, thanks to dictatorial preferences, Snowden assured: "The question is not whether this will happen, but when it will happen. It is a question of how we will create competing technologies that are so attractive that they will not be rejected by public systems that try to confront them and make them outlawed [....] ".