As the US authorities continue to crack down on privacy agreements, former NSA employee Edward Snowden issued a warning to Bitcoin developers on the dwindling time left for Bitcoin to strengthen privacy and the need for integration at the protocol level.
While facing pressure from the US government, the privacy Bitcoin wallet developer zkSNACKs, the company behind Wasabi Wallet, announced on April 28th that it would ban US users from using its service. Then, on May 3rd, zkSNACKs stated that it would shut down its CoinJoin mixing service starting from June 1st. Afterward, Wasabi Wallet will function as a regular Bitcoin wallet service.
CoinJoin is one of the oldest mixing services developed for Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). It initiates a multi-party transaction through a jointly signed smart contract and mixes the transactions of multiple parties together, achieving a privacy effect that is nearly impossible to trace from the outside.
Edward Snowden, a former NSA employee who exposed the US global surveillance program in 2013, expressed his dissatisfaction with the continuous crackdown on privacy agreements by US authorities. Following the closure of ZkSnack’s CoinJoin mixing service, he posted an article this week calling on Bitcoin developers to urgently add privacy features at the protocol level.
In response to Snowden’s call, Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr stated that he had not heard similar remarks from Snowden before and hoped that Snowden could provide specific ideas because he was not aware of any feasible protocol-level privacy solutions. However, Dashjr emphasized that he is not a cryptographer.
Over the years, Snowden has been warning Bitcoin developers about the need to strengthen Bitcoin’s privacy. As early as 2020, he mentioned the privacy flaws of Bitcoin and the lack of necessary privacy protection measures. Snowden has also praised privacy coin Zcash, revealing that he is the sixth holder of the private key for the pseudonym “John Dobbertin” who created Zcash. He believes that Zcash’s privacy technology makes it the most interesting alternative to Bitcoin.
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