Snowden I own more bitcoin than anything else—but

[sheenshane]

I don’t really think that privacy has to be fixed here and I don’t think that the fungibility of the cash offers is missing in Bitcoin.
In Bitcoin, the value you spend is indiscriminate to the extent that it is way beyond cash.

Cash will be traced, and soon once the financial institutions summons the person who owns it, they will then question the personality of him/her and ask where did they earn that cash.  Like who the hell would say cash can stop indiscrimination?

IMO, it might the only agenda of this guy and why he publishes these statements is the frustration he has when he lost his cryptocurrencies.  Just my two cents!

[grabpopcorn536]

If Bitcoin is anonymous, they will be boycotted by the authorities as they do with Monero, Dash ...

And yet, the boycott achieves very little. It is still very easy to buy, spend, trade, use, and sell Monero, all without touching a centralized exchange. (Incidentally, Dash is not private.) Even if every government in the world banned bitcoin tomorrow and every centralized exchange shut down, bitcoin would still be able to fulfill its primary purpose of being decentralized, peer to peer money.

Bitcoin's core value comes from decentralization. The blockade of centralized institutions only hinders the global release of Bitcoin. This will cause Bitcoin to rise in price more slowly and demand to rise more slowly.

[seoincorporation]

He is right about the privacy coins, they are great but they need the right markets to be traded, and if they get delisted then is like closed doors for those ones who are searching for their privacy. And it already happens with Monero, we saw how it gets delisted from a lot of exchanges.

It would be nice to have more information about how he lost them in the boat accident.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I don’t really think that privacy has to be fixed here and I don’t think that the fungibility of the cash offers is missing in Bitcoin.

I disagree. The privacy of bitcoin could be improved and the fungibility is under threat. We already see centralized exchanges and service freezing accounts, deeming some coins to be "tainted", and blacklisting some addresses. We are now seeing mining pools which are refusing to mine "tainted" transactions. Bitcoin's fungibility needs addressed.

He is right about the privacy coins, they are great but they need the right markets to be traded, and if they get delisted then is like closed doors for those ones who are searching for their privacy. And it already happens with Monero, we saw how it gets delisted from a lot of exchanges.

If you are buying and using Monero because you are truly interested in the privacy it can bring you, then you aren't using centralized exchanges which require KYC in the first place. You are trading peer to peer on exchanges such as Bisq or LocalCryptos. Whether or not centralized exchanges choose to delist the coin is completely irrelevant in terms of the coin still functioning, and delisting is probably beneficial in terms of privacy because if they don't list it then they stop trying to use blockchain analysis to deanonymize it and trace transactions.

[riiiiising]

you can read it from his twitter account ---> https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1391035543773929473

the worst part of cryptocurrency transforming into dragon-level wealth is witnessing good people emotionally devolve into dragons themselves: so intellectually paralyzed by the fear that everyone they see threatens their hoard that they lose sight of the world beyond their cave.
1) This is such a profoundly misleading TL;DR of a privacy-focused talk that it's hard to call it anything but intentionally deceptive.

2) To the extent I own crypto (unless and until it has been lost in boating accidents), I own more bitcoin than anything else—but

3) Bitcoin's disastrous privacy is the "missing stair" of cryptocurrency. Every expert understands it's a problem, but—as experts—they themselves know how to compensate for the risk in their own personal interactions with Bitcoin, and therefore feel no urgency to actually fix it.

4) Privacy coins are great, but they're too small and too easy to smother via regulatory actions like de-listing from exchanges. Only Bitcoin has immunity-via-dominance to delisting. It adopting privacy-by-design instantly normalizes financial privacy. Ultima Ratio Cryptum.

The central property of cash is fungibility—meaning a dollar spent by a plumber is honored equally to one spent by a sex worker: they are indiscriminable. Adversarial chain analysis of Bitcoin's public ledger reduces its fungibility over time. Only privacy guarantees fungibility.

Snowden believes that privacy is what guarantees replacability, just as it does to cash. I see that many people who use Bitcoin have become more interested in prices and their fluctuations than decentralization or privacy, which is the essence of the value of it.

+1 and nothing to add! Rest assured it is only the minority who still cares for privacy and decentralization. Most holders just set up their accounts and leave their crypto on exchanges. Most of them are secure, but it's not like they care about understanding the technology, the advantages it brings about and its weaknesses. Having the IRS hire hackers to get access to hardware wallets is a good reason to better educate yourself and create a secure setup for yourself.

[buwaytress]

How hard would it be to introduce code updates that would enable Bitcoin to use zk-SNARKs, ring signatures, mimblewimble technology or something totally new?
Everything I heard so far is some projects that re using sidechains like zCash Sidechain or mercury wallet but nothing on main chain, and of course we always have coinjoins that have some limitations, and mixers like Chipmixer.

Well, I guess Taproot is the one we're all waiting for (as you can see above discussions) as the first big step towards privacy, not the most technical person so don't shoot me if I get it wrong but I think there's already ongoing signalling for consensus for the soft fork that'll activate it (hence Snowden's rant) -- similar to how SegWit got introduced. It started out as a proposal, so I guess BIPs are still your route to do what you want.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Well, I guess Taproot is the one we're all waiting for

Taproot doesn't automatically make your transactions more private though. If anything, the first people switching to taproot will experience a privacy decrease, since they will be in the minority and it will be trivially easy to identify which outputs are change since they will be the ones not being sent to a taproot address. Taproot will bring an automatic privacy improvement for things like multi-sig which use taproot instead, but for standard transactions taproot adds very little.

Look how long it has taken segwit to reach mass adoption and for all exchanges and services to support it. 4 years and we still aren't there yet. It will be years before taproot reaches mass adoption, and it will be years before useful privacy enhancing methods and services are built utilizing the improvements taproot brings.

[buwaytress]

Well, I guess Taproot is the one we're all waiting for

Taproot doesn't automatically make your transactions more private though. If anything, the first people switching to taproot will experience a privacy decrease, since they will be in the minority and it will be trivially easy to identify which outputs are change since they will be the ones not being sent to a taproot address. Taproot will bring an automatic privacy improvement for things like multi-sig which use taproot instead, but for standard transactions taproot adds very little.

Look how long it has taken segwit to reach mass adoption and for all exchanges and services to support it. 4 years and we still aren't there yet. It will be years before taproot reaches mass adoption, and it will be years before useful privacy enhancing methods and services are built utilising the improvements taproot brings.

I think it's expected (the same way it was expected for Coinjoin I believe, which would actually expose the early contributors).

Agree that it's taken a really long time for Segwit compatibility (never mind native) -- I'm still only using one service that's completely switched to native Segwit, and it's not even the one I use the most.

Bring back to the necessity argument, I guess. Until and unless it's direly needed, people won't be obliged to upgrade.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Until and unless it's direly needed, people won't be obliged to upgrade.

Privacy has never been more needed. With the government and exchanges blacklisting addresses, with blockchain analysis companies working for the FBI, CIA, and others, and now with mining pools censoring transactions from "tainted" addresses, we need more people using the privacy tools we currently have available, and we need new and better ones to be developed rapidly.

Don't get me wrong, once we get things like taproot powered swaps and payment channels up and running I'll definitely be using them, but most people won't. Censorship is a massive threat to bitcoin and we need more people to take their privacy seriously.

[Alucard1]

All of the things that Snowden has said are true, Bitcoin is now a good asset for investment, the higher the risk, the higher the profit that you may have, bitcoin now is really different before, as what Satoshi Nakamoto's intention for creating this bitcoin which is for alternative currency for fiat currency and for an online payment transaction, it is now more useful for investment, no other assets that can be better to bitcoin in terms of investment. Bitcoin is the only one that can make you secure your life in the future once you hold it for a long term.

[aysg76]

The recent investment in Bitcoin by large population is just because of profits associated with it and that's why exchanges trade volumes have increased these days as investors find crypto more lucrative than stocks and fiat but the main thing is they are ignorant of the technical working behind Bitcoin and how they can use this decentralised coin for their privacy and freedom.The community decide how they want to perceive particular assest and at current they have recognised Bitcoin as financial assest or say alternative to other investments with higher returns.This can be seen from Dogecoin investment also as memecoin is pumping and declared most profitable altcoin this year but why ?Just because investors want to have profit on seeing price rise without realising that it has no potential to grow and will soon crash leaving them hopeless.People really need to understand the true usage of Bitcoin and how transaction works based on consensus mechanism secured by miners.Snowden is right on his part because he is depicting sad truth about Bitcoin growth.

[riiiiising]

All of the things that Snowden has said are true, Bitcoin is now a good asset for investment, the higher the risk, the higher the profit that you may have, bitcoin now is really different before, as what Satoshi Nakamoto's intention for creating this bitcoin which is for alternative currency for fiat currency and for an online payment transaction, it is now more useful for investment, no other assets that can be better to bitcoin in terms of investment. Bitcoin is the only one that can make you secure your life in the future once you hold it for a long term.

Snowden clearly said that Bitcoin is dangerous because it is only pseudonymous and the perfect tool for spying agencies to gather information. The complex problem to solve here is that everybody using it needs to understand that by exposing yourself your also expose others that you interact with. Everybody has to take care and be cautious about how they are using it or everybody will be exposed.