A former US intelligence analyst said that, unlike fans of the crypto industry, he did not call for investing in digital currencies, but advised using them for payments.
Edward Snowden, speaking at Consensus 2022, stated that he sees more value in cryptocurrencies as a means of payment than as an investment:
“In 2013, for example, I used it to pay for servers anonymously. As a rule, I do not encourage people to invest their money in cryptocurrencies as a technology, and this is what alienates me from many people in the community.”
The president of the Freedom of the Press Foundation stood up to protect the industry from crypto-skeptics who signed a petition to the White House in an attempt to counter industry lobbyists. The signatories deliberately misunderstand the principles of the crypto industry, repeating a number of the same legacy arguments that have been made repeatedly in the past, Snowden assures:
“The letter is an argument for the status quo. There are so many ways to solve all these problems. The people who signed the letter will be able to understand.”
Snowden acknowledged the merits of the expert Bruce Schneier, who acted as one of the initiators of the petition, for his work in the field of cryptography. But Snowden called most of the signatories "committed public trolls."
Speaking about the current state of Internet privacy, Snowden said he believes a lot of progress has been made in encrypting the content of messages, but he remains concerned about metadata — the record of a message's creation history.
However, Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, believes that Bitcoin is not suitable for making daily payments due to its low scalability and negative impact on the environment.
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