Key takeaways:
- Whistleblower Edward Snowden reminds a Twitter user he was a Bitcoin early adopter and rejects he lacks knowledge on crypto
- Snowden took the opportunity to criticize random “garbage-coins” and essentially warned people not to be greedy
- Although he has issues with Bitcoin and is not a maximalist, he questions the utility of some digital currencies with large market capitalizations
Edward Snowden, arguably the most famous whistleblower, took to Twitter to reject criticism that he just recently discovered Bitcoin (BTC). A former CIA agent who went public with NSA’s unlawful tactics in combating terrorism said he was a crypto early adopter and used BTC to pay for the servers that hosted leaked documents in 2013.
Snowden documents his involvement with Bitcoin and criticizes those that hype “garbage-coins”
For years, Snowden has been a staunch advocate of blockchain-powered financial services and often reiterated his beliefs they eat away at current political and economic power structures. However, he doesn’t shy away from making his opinions heard when it comes to criticizing crypto.
For instance, in a 2015 interview, Snowden called Bitcoin “flawed,” citing privacy and security concerns as the main cons of the world’s largest digital currency. Interestingly, Snowden made his non-maximalist beliefs clear by stating, “Focusing too much on bitcoin, I think is a mistake. The real solution is again, how do we get to a point where you don’t have to have a direct link between your identity all of the time?”
On Sunday, Snowden apparently felt it was time to remind his critics he was ahead of the curve regarding blockchain technology and its potential. Irritated by the suggestion that he doesn’t know what he is talking about when speaking about crypto, Snowden replied to a Twitter user who was insinuating his understating of BTC was “flawed and superficial” just a few months ago:
“You know that whole NSA story from almost TEN YEARS AGO? I paid for the servers that made that possible… using Bitcoin.”
He went on to take aim at wealthy venture capitalists type of guys who are taking shots at Bitcoin only to drive support for digital tokens with questionable utility they “happen to own an enormous stake in.”
Snowden often criticizes memecoins and blockchain projects he feels go against the broader ethos of crypto. For instance, he warned against investing in Shiba Inu (SHIB) in late October, “If you got talked into exchanging your hard-earned savings for some new dog money because a meme said you’d get rich, please carefully consider your odds of outsmarting a market that sold to you its stake in *not even dog money but a CLONE of dog money*.”
Earlier in the year, Snowden went on an attack against central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), branding the new type of digital currency as “crypto-fascist currency” and labeling them as “perverted.” He fears the rollout of CBDCs might have enormous implications for the future of economic privacy and is afraid of how much oversight they could potentialy grant to governments.
Snowden currently resides in Russia and could face charges of unlawfully exposing NSA’s surveillance program if he returns to the US, despite the recent US federal court ruling that found NSA’s actions to be “illegal and possibly unconstitutional.”
