"Back in 2016, six people played a key role in the creation of a cryptocurrency called Zcash. One of the six participants, who operated online under the pseudonym John Dobbertin, remained unknown—until now.

"Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency consultant and notable whistleblower, revealed himself to be Dobbertin in a leaked video from Zcash Media, a group making educational videos about Zcash.

“I saw [Zcash] being worked on by a number of trusted academic cryptographers and I thought it was a very interesting project,” Snowden said in the video, which was first reported by Forbes.

"Zcash is known as a privacy coin, because it uses zero-knowledge proofs, or cryptography that hides details—including addresses, amounts and other data—of cryptocurrency transactions. Zero-knowledge proofs allow Zcash transactions to be validated on its blockchain while keeping most aspects of the transaction invisible to the public.

"This is different from Bitcoin, for example, where addresses, amounts, and other details of transactions are openly documented on its blockchain.

“Bitcoin quite famously is an open ledger,” said Snowden in the video. He was charged with espionage by the U.S. in 2013 and granted asylum in Russia. “The problem with that is you can't have truly free trade unless you have private trade. And you can't have a free society without free trade.”