Edward Snowden Says the Authorities See Cryptocurrencies as a Threat
The authorities see cryptocurrencies as an “evolving threat” to traditional financial instruments, former CIA and NSA officer Edward Snowden has said.
In an interview with Filecoin Foundation Chair Martha Belcher, he has said:
“I think governments are right about the evolving threat to the traditional tools they are used to in terms of being able to impose regulation on privacy and more broadly on private trade.”
The US financial network operates very “pervasively” with anti-money laundering measures and KYC policies. He has added:
“It’s hard for me to believe that if they had the technical ability to easily get the serial number of every dollar bill that passes through their hands, then they didn’t.”
Snowden believes that, like the traditional financial system, Bitcoin and Ethereum are experiencing privacy problems. He drew attention to the development of the field of on-chain analysis, in which participants “do pretty tricky things” such as “trying to get financial advantages.”
