NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has warned the public that their Bitcoin transactions may not be as private as they’d like to think, potentially exposing sensitive information about their political affiliations and lifestyle to governments and other entities.
In his keynote speech at the recent Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, which he gave from his exile in Russia, he said that most of the transactions made using Bitcoin are fully exposed, even though they are not made public. He said that because all of the transactions that take place on the network are permanent, it is possible for them to be publicly verified.
Moreover, he pointed out that legacy exchanges typically share their users’ information with regulators, who he said possess significant power and can determine multiple aspects of users’ lives with their transaction histories, including everything from political affiliations to their personal preferences. This, he says, enables them to understand a person’s life without the need to obtain a warrant.
Snowden cautioned: “They know what you read, what you buy, who you send [bitcoin] to, who you support politically, like where your donations went, all of that is available to them. They can infer your thinking, they can infer your affiliations…”
He also explained how governments and businesses can track people’s digital transactions, whether it is through Bitcoin or any other type of digital payment, and exploit it using artificial intelligence to create highly detailed profiles of individuals without their consent. He added that he has been speaking out about this for a decade, but his warnings have largely been falling on deaf ears. Now, he believes time is running out.
Bitcoin conference experiencing growing political presence
This year's conference had a more political tone than usual, with presidential hopeful and former president Donald Trump appearing at the conference and pledging to remove Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler. The SEC head is a very unpopular figure among crypto proponents and is currently involved in a legal battle with the biggest regulated crypto exchange in the U.S., Coinbase.
Numerous other politicians attended, including several other Republican politicians, a few Democratic lawmakers and independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., highlighting the fact that Bitcoin is no longer considered a fringe interest group.
Referring to the heightened political representation at the event, Snowden noted: “They fight us, then they try to get us to love them.”
He also warned people to “Cast a vote, but don’t join a cult,” reminding them of the importance of being critical and independent.
“They are not our tribe. They are not your personality. They have their own interests, their own values, their own things they’re chasing. Try to get what you need from them, but don’t give yourselves to them, even if you have to vote for them," he said.
In the first speech by a major party presidential candidate at the yearly conference, Trump promised conference attendees that he will make the U.S. “the bitcoin superpower of the world.”
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