As the US authorities continue to crack down on privacy protocols, former National Security Agency (NSA) employee Edward Snowden issued a warning to Bitcoin developers on the diminishing time left to enhance privacy in Bitcoin. He emphasized the need for integration at the protocol level.
In recent actions by US authorities against cryptocurrency mixers, they first sanctioned Blender.io and Tornado Cash last year. They then arrested two co-founders of the mixer Samourai Wallet last month, accusing them of facilitating over $2 billion in illegal transactions.
Under pressure from the US government, zkSNACKs, the developer of the privacy Bitcoin wallet Wasabi Wallet, announced on April 28th that it would ban US users from using its service. They further stated on May 3rd that they would shut down their CoinJoin mixing service from June 1st onwards. Following this, Wasabi Wallet will continue to 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 transfer through the joint signing of smart contracts and mixes the transactions of multiple parties, achieving a high level of privacy that is difficult to trace.
Snowden’s warning to Bitcoin developers to enhance privacy comes as a response to the continuous crackdown on privacy protocols by US authorities. Snowden, who exposed the NSA’s global surveillance program in 2013, expressed his dissatisfaction. In response to Snowden’s call, Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr requested specific ideas from Snowden, as he was unaware of any feasible protocol-level privacy solutions. However, Dashjr clarified that he is not a cryptographer.
Over the years, Snowden has been advocating for stronger privacy in Bitcoin. In 2020, he mentioned the privacy flaws in Bitcoin and highlighted the lack of necessary privacy protection measures. Snowden has praised privacy coin Zcash, revealing himself as the sixth keyholder of the Zcash private key under the pseudonym “John Dobbertin.” He believes that Zcash’s privacy technology makes it the most interesting alternative to Bitcoin.