Former employee of the United States National Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Edward Snowden, outlined potential risks associated with traditional financial institutions entering the crypto markets, including through bitcoin-based exchange-traded funds.
Speaking at the Bitcoin Amsterdam conference, he advised investors focused on price to identify real use cases for cryptocurrencies rather than looking at charts and candles.
According to Snowden, inflows of capital from traditional financial institutions could affect the bitcoin price. However, large volumes would give institutions “too much power” over the asset, and ordinary users would no longer be able to influence decisions and actions regarding the coin, the former agent says.
He noted that cryptocurrency ETF, which are becoming popular among financial firms, are in fact “taming” the market for digital assets.
Snowden also drew attention to the “lack of real anonymity” of bitcoin, which allows governments to easily track the people behind certain transactions. As a comparison, the speaker cited the situation in 2013 when he leaked top-secret NSA documents, using the first cryptocurrency to pay for servers.
The former intelligence officer criticised governments for trying to regulate the crypto industry, imposing their rules. He added that he “doesn’t care about” the opinion of SEC Chairman Gary Gensler.
Snowden advised developers and ordinary users to focus on greater anonymity for bitcoin to realise Satoshi Nakamoto’s vision.
Earlier in June 2022, Snowden said that cryptocurrencies are valuable not as an investment instrument but as a means of payment.
Earlier he told about his role in launching the privacy-focused coin Zcash.