At the time of writing this article, the value of Zcash is, according to CoinMarketCap, $ 292.29 per currency.
Edward Snowden, one of the most controversial figures of recent times, has stepped forward to declare his support for the cryptonnet Zcash, calling it "Bitcoin's most interesting alternative."
In response to a tweet by the technologist Mason Borda, who stated that "Zcash is the only altcoin he knows designed and built by professional cryptographers on the academic side ... one really hard to ignore," Snowden replied: "I agree."
The former developer continued:
Zcash's privacy technology makes Bitcoin's alternative more interesting ... Bitcoin is great, but if it's not private it's not safe.
Snowden, known for the massive leak of classified documents he orchestrated in 2013, is a staunch defender of privacy; when asked about his opinion on Monero, a rival crypto-divinity, Snowden commented that this is an "amateur" digital coin and noted traceability problems in its technology. In fact, the former CIA consultant stressed that such design mistakes are what endanger people like him, the whistleblowers.
It should be noted that such statements fueled the rivalry between Zcash and Monero. In an avalanche of response on Twitter, developer Richard Spagni strongly defended Monero's technology, while Litecoin's creator, Charlie Lee, stated: "Right now I own Monero, but not Zcash."
The truth is that both cryptones are oriented to provide privacy to their users, but employ different paths to achieve this goal: Zcash is based on a cryptographic tool called zk-snarks, and Monero takes advantage of ring signatures and stealth addresses.
This is not the first time Snowden has praised Zcash's properties, since in June last year, during a videoconference panel in Berlin - part of an event known as "Upgrade the Internet" - the The United States referred to the asset as an effective solution to the risks of surveillance in Bitcoin's public transactions registry.
Zcash was born from the Zerocoin protocol, which began as a layer of anonymity for Bitcoin until it became an independent cryptoneon. Its founder is Zooko Wilcox, a computer security researcher, who went into this world inspired by the writings of David Chaum, the inventor of digital coins like ecash and Digicash - even the concept of digital money itself, as it exposed in a acclaimed article of 1982, in which also introduced the so-called blind signatures. In fact, in the 1990s, Wilcox worked at Digicash.
Source: CoinDesk.
Image: Wikimedia Commons.