Edward Snowden spoke at the Bitcoin2019 conference and stated that's biggest flaw Bitcoin, right now, is its lack of privacy.
The cybersecurity expert stressed that privacy is extremely important and that Bitcoin's lack of it poses a threat.
Snowden said he was a former supporter of Bitcoin and that he himself used an encrypted serviceto communicate with journalists in 2013, which he paid for with bitcoin.
Threats to and from exchange platforms
Referring to regulations from banks and governments, Snowden stressed that exchange platforms must absolutely defend the privacy of their users. The security fears that if one platform does not pay attention to privacy, then they will all start to do so.
Snowden said that all the major exchanges , like Coinbase, don't really care about their users. "They only want to cover themselves. They expose you, close your account, and keep your money," he said.
He also expressed his dissatisfaction with the development of cryptocurrency financial services, as, as he says, many of them are starting to resemble banks too much.
“Something inexcusable is that you continue to develop services that try to look like banks, but the world doesn’t need more banks,” he said.
However, Snowden also mentioned the Shadow Brokers, a group of hackerswho stole NSA information in 2016 and demanded bitcoins in return.
He noted that this particular case was the beginning of a government war on cryptocurrencies.
“If it were possible to track bitcoin, then the NSA would have caught them,” he said.
“If you know exactly how the system works, you can have privacy.” Hackers can attack and leave no trace.
