The world-famous ex-employee of the NSA, Edward Snowden, gave an interesting and extensive interview to Peter Van Valkenburg during the conference "The Blockstack 2018" in Berlin.
Snowden discussed with the journalist the current issues of confidentiality of cryptocurrencies. He also took the opportunity to criticize the internal conflicts in the cryptocurrency industry, insisting that the main developers needed teamwork, otherwise the Big Brother eye will break them all.
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 one we saw. Bitcoin does an important job, and I think it will have a long-term value. But, if we look closely at the team of the main developers and their protocol improvement efforts, we will see that they should try harder, otherwise they will cease to be competitive."
“When we talk about which cryptocurrencies are interesting to me, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Zcash for me is the most interesting right now, because the privacy properties of it are truly unique, but we see more and more projects that are trying to emulate this and I think this is a positive thing.”
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 the Venezuelan state of the Petro's crypto currency and about the prospects for technology in general, thanks to dictatorial preferences, Snowden assured: "The question is not whether this will happen or not, but when it will happen."