Edward Snowden: "the whole point of the blockchain is trust"

26.11.2018

Former AMB employee Edward Snowden (Edward Snowden) expressed some interesting thoughts about the blockchain in a recent interview. According to Snowden, the main reason for introducing the blockchain into government organizations and business is trust.

“Imagine an old database where each record can be corrected simply by clicking on it, entering new data and clicking save”. Now imagine that this record holds your bank balance, and anyone can reset it. Disgusting, right? Of course, if you do not have loans. The idea is that if the system allows someone to change the data and history at any time, then you will have to trust a lot of third-party people, hoping that they are good and competent. Moreover, humanity has no way to track it. Blockchain creates a story that cannot be changed”, said Snowden.

The blockchain technology is to create undeniable evidence of a transaction between two parties. All changes are recorded in real time and remain on the blockchain. Anyone can access the change history at any time.

“Blockchain can be used in many applications, but you need to understand that this is a very, very simple concept. And all applications revolve around a single idea - a testable record”, Snowden said.

He also noted that it is unlikely that large technology companies like Facebook or Google will switch to the blockchain technology soon, however, over time, the distributed registry technology will be used everywhere. In addition, the former NSA agent emphasized his admiration for Bitcoin transactions, describing them as “unbiased”, which gives additional confidence in the technology.

“Bitcoin transactions cannot be stopped or returned without the overwhelming number of network members. For example, if Bank of America does not want to process payments such as I, then with their influence they can do it. Or a teenager from Venezuela may not get paid from Paris for any work in web development due to control over currencies, and cryptocurrency will make it possible. Bitcoin may not be real money, but it is really free money”, concluded Snowden.

Note that earlier Snowden criticized the Bitcoin blockchain publicity:

“When we talk about which cryptocurrencies are interesting to me, I will repeat: ZCash is most interesting to me now because of its security and privacy. It is truly unique”, he said then.

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