In recent years, bitcoin conferences have attracted a steady stream of politicians, from Wyoming senator Cynthia Lummis to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to Vivek Ramaswamy. Presidential contender Donald J. Trump’s decision to fundraise at this year’s annual Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, Tennessee also drew increased attention ahead of the 2024 November election.

Speaking at the conference from Russia, exiled NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden issued a dire warning this weekend about the recent surge of politicians in the cryptocurrency space.

"I notice we have a lot more political representation here,” Snowden said before skeptically opining about their true motives. “They fight us, then they try to get us to love them.”

"Cast a vote but don’t join a cult,” he warned. “They are not our tribe. They are not your personality. They have their own interests. Don’t give yourselves to them, even if you have to vote for them."

Snowden was no doubt referring to Trump’s appearance at the conference, where the presidential contender pledged to remove Gary Gensler, the chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, to raucous applause. Gensler has drawn the ire of the industry for his big swings at crypto firms and so-called “regulation by enforcement.” The SEC is currently legally wrangling with multiple crypto firms, including Coinbase, America’s largest regulated crypto exchange, Kraken, and others.

At the crypto conference, Snowden also cautioned bitcoiners to recognize that the underlying power structures in the U.S. were unlikely to change even under a new administration. “As far as the average worker is concerned, whether we're talking about this election or any other in the last 20 years, a given election tends to result in what feels like a different uniform on the same cop,” Snowden said. “And that's a problem.”

"Look at the economy. There’s an increasing concentration of resources into fewer and fewer hands," Snowden added. "You play by their rules or you don’t play at all, and that should be changing."