Edward Snowden, well-known for exposing the U.S. National Security Agency’s massive surveillance agenda back in 2013, said bitcoin’s central flaw may not lie in its transaction rate limitations, but in its public ledger.
Speaking to an audience through webcam at the Blockstack event in Berlin, he gave, for the first time his views on digital currencies, specifically Bitcoin. While agreeing that bitcoin will be around for a long time, Snowden said he doesn’t think “Bitcoin will last forever.”
“Everybody is focused on the transaction rate limitations of bitcoin being its central flaw, and that is a major one,” he said, adding that, actually, “the much larger structural flaw, the long-lasting flaw, is its public ledger.”
Talking of his personal preferences in terms of digital currencies, Snowden said: “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.”
