Edward Snowden: “Bitcoin by itself is flawed”

Edward Snowden, former CIA employee and NSA contractor, spoke about privacy and security in an interview at The Internet Engineering Task Force, an international organization of professionals concerned with the evolution of internet architecture. In particular, he shared his views on bitcoin and its flaws and weaknesses.

When asked about bitcoin anonymity, Snowden said, "Obviously, Bitcoin by itself is flawed. The protocol has a lot of weaknesses and transaction sides and a lot of weaknesses that structurally make it vulnerable to people who are trying to own 50 percent of the network and so on and so forth." 

Despite his concern for the cryptocurrency, he said that the concept of tokenization and proof of work could be combined to create "some very interesting things".

However, he added, "Focusing too much on bitcoin, I think is a mistake. The real solution is again, how do we get to a point where you don't have to have a direct link between your identity all of the time? You have personas. You have tokens that authenticate each person and when you want to be able to interact with people as your persona in your true name, you can do so."