Edward Snowden reveals he was one of six who helped launch Zcash

It turns out the pseudonymous John Dobbertin, who was one of the six participants in the Zcash Ceremony, was Edward Snowden all along.

Cybersecurity poster boy and government surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden has revealed he played a pivotal role in the creation of privacy token Zcash (ZEC).

A video from Zcash Media featured an interview with Snowden where he outlined his involvement as one of the six individuals who had a piece of the Zcash multisignature private key to launch the project on October 23, 2016. In the video, Snowden stated:

The Zcash Ceremony saw Snowden and five other people each combine their portion of the Zcash private key to launch the project. None of the participants knew who the others were nor what portion of the key they held so as to protect their anonymity, one of the tenets of the project.

Each person’s key portion needed to be destroyed in order to prevent coins or transactions from being counterfeited in the future.

In the interview with Zcash Media, Snowden shared his enthusiasm for the project and his zeal for privacy. He said, “The problem with [Bitcoin] is you can’t have truly free trade unless you have private trade”

Todd said that he bought a new computer and installed all the required programs for the ceremony then placed the computer in a faraday cage so as to prevent any unwanted intrusions. A faraday cage is a box lined with aluminum foil, which reflects wifi signals.

He then drove to a remote area where he took a blow torch to his device in order to destroy his portion of the Zcash private key.

News of Snowden’s contribution did not have much effect on the price as ZEC is currently up 1.7% over the past 24 hours, trading at $148 according to Cointelegraph data.