Authorities view cryptocurrencies as an “evolving threat” to traditional financial instruments. The view was voiced by former CIA and NSA official Edward Snowden, according to Decrypt.
In an interview with Filecoin Foundation chair Marta Belcher at Camp Ethereal 2022, he said:
“I think governments are rightly perceiving the developing threat to the traditional tools they are used to, in terms of the ability to impose privacy regulations and, more broadly, private commerce.”
According to him, the US financial system operates very pervasively through anti-money-laundering measures and Know Your Customer KYC policies.
“I find it hard to believe that if they had the technical ability to easily obtain the serial number of every dollar bill that passes through their hands, they didn’t do so,” Snowden noted.
He believes that the notion of money anonymity is a thing of the past:
“When you think of Bitcoin with its public ledger, that is, a private ledger for every dollar entering the banking system. It is accessible to those who oversee finance. So it is truly private for the public, but publicly accessible for, say, the insiders.”
Meanwhile, Snowden argues that, like the traditional financial system, Bitcoin and Ethereum face privacy challenges. He drew attention to the rise of on-chain analytics, whose participants “do rather clever things,” such as “attempts to gain financial advantages.”
Despite concerns about blockchain privacy, Snowden reaffirmed his faith in the future of the technology and cryptocurrencies.
“What people who dive into the detail truly lack is an understanding of how transformative authorities’ attitudes will be as we move from these outdated technologies to future decentralized solutions,” he said.
As previously noted, Snowden has expressed a negative stance toward meme tokens such as Dogecoin or Shiba Inu. He has warned his followers against investing in the latter.