NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has warned the public that their Bitcoin transactions may not be as private as they'd like to think, potentially exposing sensitive information about their political affiliations and lifestyle to governments and other entities.

In his keynote speech at the recent Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, which he gave from his exile in Russia, he said that most of the transactions made using Bitcoin are fully exposed, even though they are not made public. He said that because all of the transactions that take place on the network are permanent, it is possible for them to be publicly verified.

Moreover, he pointed out that legacy exchanges typically share their users' information with regulators, who he said possess significant power and can determine multiple aspects of users' lives with their transaction histories, including everything from political affiliations to their personal preferences. This, he says, enables them to understand a person's life without the need to obtain a warrant.

Snowden cautioned: "They know what you read, what you buy, who you send [bitcoin] to, who you support politically, like where your donations went, all of that is available to them. They can infer your thinking, they can infer your affiliations…"

He also explained how governments and businesses can track people's digital transactions, whether it is through Bitcoin or any other type of digital payment, and exploit it using artificial intelligence to create highly detailed profiles of individuals without their consent. He added that he has been speaking out about this for a decade, but his warnings have largely been falling on deaf ears. Now, he believes time is running out.