The infamous US whistleblower – Edward Snowden – criticized CBDC’s potential impact on the financial network. He labeled them as a “perversion of cryptocurrency” and a “cryptofascist currency,” as they could grant a lot of power to the governments and leave less freedom to the people.
CBDC – ‘a Cryptofascist Currency’
The computer programmer who worked as a subcontractor for the National Security Agency (NSA) – Edward Snowden – opined strongly against the potential use cases of central bank digital currencies. In a recent note called “Your Money and Your Life,” he opposed the belief that a CBDC will be the representation of the digital dollar, explaining:
“I will tell you what a CBDC is NOT – it is NOT, as Wikipedia might tell you, a digital dollar. After all, most dollars are already digital, existing not as something folded in your wallet, but as an entry in a bank’s database, faithfully requested and rendered beneath the glass of your phone.”
Snowed further explained on Twitter the main disadvantages of central bank digital currencies:
“A CBDC is a perversion of cryptocurrency, or at least of the founding principles and protocols of cryptocurrency – a cryptofascist currency.”
He added that launching the financial tool would put the government “at the center of every transaction,” meaning less ownership of money from the general population and thus less freedom.
As an example of his statement, Snowden pointed out China. There, the total ban on everything crypto, alongside the release of the digital-yuan, is intended to “increase the ability of the State to impose itself in the middle of every last transaction.”
Snowden And BTC
The 38-year-old American, who now resides in Russia because of his issues with the US government, has been both a critic and an admirer of the leading cryptocurrency throughout the years.
He interacted with bitcoin after embezzling numerous classified documents from the National Security Agency, such as proof of mass government surveillance, espionage, computer hacking, and phone tapping. Snowden admitted he used BTC to help him reveal the stolen information:
“The servers that I used to transfer this information to journalists were paid for using bitcoin.”
In March this year, Snowden stated that the digital asset’s operational structure has many disadvantages, especially when it comes to “financial privacy:”
“Bitcoin sucks in many ways, such as financial privacy.”
Last week, though, he praised bitcoin’s stability, saying that the Chinese ban only strengthened it. Thus, he joined the party of people who believe that the harsh stance on crypto in the most populated country is a huge opportunity for further progress of BTC.
Featured Image Courtesy of Politico
