Edward Snowden, who became a whistleblower in 2013 for exposing the NSA's mass surveillance program, has had a bittersweet relationship with blockchain. Snowden worked as a computer intelligence analyst in the Global Communications Division of the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Since he exposed the CIA's explosive insider, he has been hunted down by the US government, and then he was granted political asylum in Russia, and his life gradually stabilized. Hollywood has also made his legendary history into a movie.

Snowden has a large following, participates in public debate by appearing in the news, and through his social media handle, he expresses his thoughts on a variety of different issues.

His recent comments on the Biden administration's $6 trillion stimulus plan, saying it was "good for Bitcoin," sparked a lot of interest among cryptocurrency enthusiasts. Of course, this is just one of many examples of Snowden talking about Bitcoin.

"If you're a con man who scams the ignorant masses with everything that will help you achieve your goals, cryptocurrencies will be the best."

secondary title

Bitcoin holders, you are under surveillance!

Edward Snowden has been a fierce critic of government surveillance. According to him, governments across the globe are employing highly sophisticated surveillance and surveillance systems to collate vast public ledgers.

For these governments, Bitcoin’s public ledger is tantamount to the jackpot, which is why they often go to great lengths to keep an eye on it, using state-of-the-art surveillance technology.

In response to this invasion of privacy, the most logical next innovation is the development of private blockchain cryptocurrencies like zcash, which provide privacy by default.

"secondary title"

Cryptocurrencies are here to stay, Bitcoin isn't

Snowden believes that Bitcoin's design has serious flaws, such as its transparency, security, transaction rate and propensity for speculation. But as Snowden pointed out, Bitcoin's biggest structural weakness is its public ledger, and if this problem is not addressed, it will lead to Bitcoin's gradual disappearance in the long run.

That's because Snowden made privacy a priority. The public ledger is a record of every transaction in Bitcoin that is readily available to everyone.

secondary title

What is the value of Bitcoin?

Bitcoin's inherent design allows for mining with a predetermined and natural acceleration. In addition, there is a total cap of 21 million bitcoins. More than half have already been mined, prompting us to think that Bitcoin will soon become a fixed money supply with very little room for further growth or expansion. In an interview, Snowden pointed out that aside from the fact that fiat currencies are backed by states, there are small differences between fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies.

secondary title

Bitcoin is slow

Bitcoin's throughput is severely limited by factors such as block size and on-chain scaling. Snowden claimed that Bitcoin's transaction channels can only handle about seven transactions per second. By comparison, payment gateways such as Visa and MasterCard typically process tens of thousands of transactions per second.

According to Snowden, this is a significant flaw and limitation in the Bitcoin network. Therefore, in order to be efficient for day-to-day transactions and reduce the associated costs of the Bitcoin blockchain, there is an urgent need to fix failures and increase its throughput to higher levels with Bitcoin’s Lightning Network (LN).

secondary title

Bitcoin Does Not Meet Fundamental Privacy Rights

Snowden's complaints about bitcoin revolve around the fact that transactions via bitcoin are not private because the ledger is easily accessible to everyone. He felt strongly that it should be designed to be private. He believes that public ledgers are very harmful and fundamentally negate the idea and concept of private funds that can be used freely.

Open ledgers force a business’s ledgers to be open to everyone, including its competitors, which may ultimately lead to a loss of leverage.
Combined with digital surveillance issues and the rise of authoritarian regimes around the world, Bitcoin appears to be failing across the board on privacy, as it is highly vulnerable to related attacks that could reveal a variety of personal details about users. In extreme cases, it can reveal identities when user histories are accessed through highly sophisticated surveillance systems.

Summarize

Summarize

• All in all, he boils down to when cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are designing competing systems and mechanisms to deal with the threats to privacy posed by powerful institutions, governments and authoritarian regimes with powerful surveillance technology.

• Sooner or later, governments, powerful entities, corrupt and resourceful individuals will appropriate these emerging technologies and outlaw them.

• The only sustainable way forward is to design competing systems that address all the shortcomings of existing systems while appealing to a global consumer base. Until then, the only form of money that trumps everything when it comes to privacy is cash.