Edward Snowden: The whole point of the blockchain is in trust

Former NSA employee Edward Snowden expressed some interesting thoughts about the blockchain in a recent interview. 

According to Snowden, the main reason for introducing the blockchain into government organizations and business is trust. 

"Imagine an old database where any entry can be changed just by typing over it and clicking save. Now imagine that entry holds your bank balance. If somebody can just arbitrarily change your balance to zero, that kind of sucks, right? Unless you've got student loans. The point is that any time a system lets somebody change the history with a keystroke, you have no choice but to trust a huge number of people to be both perfectly good and competent, and humanity doesn't have a great track record for that. Blockchains are an effort to create a history that can't be manipulated," said Snowden.

The blockchain technology is to create undeniable evidence of a transaction between two parties. All changes are recorded in real time and remain on the blockchain. Anyone can access the change history at any time.

"The reality is that blockchains can theoretically be applied in many ways, but it's important to understand that mechanically, we're discussing a very, very simple concept, and therefore the applications are all variations on a single theme: verifiable accounting. Hot," Snowden said.

He also noted that it is unlikely that large technology companies like Facebook or Google will switch to the blockchain technology in the near future, however, over time, the distributed registry technology will be used everywhere. In addition, the former NSA agent emphasized his admiration for Bitcoin transactions, describing them as "unbiased", which gives additional confidence in the technology.