The Ponzi scheme person might have believed that Snowden was a Russian intelligence asset and not a whistleblower. In which case they thought Snowden would have gone along with the scheme for self enrichment. But they were wrong.

> person might have believed that Snowden was a Russian intelligence asset

I guess the question is how someone might be delusional enough to believe that.

The US government has gone to great pains to try and make people believe that.

I literally cannot think of a worse choice

Maybe Matt Levine?

He'd probably charge too much

has Matt Levine previously sacrificed his entire life for the cause of truth and justice?

No, but unlike Snowden, Matt Levine isn't stupid. Remember, Snowden thought that PRISM was an illegal government surveillance program that let the NSA look at anybody's internet communications. This was not supported by the documents Snowden leaked and, completely unsurprisingly, turned out to be false.

The organizers of this presentation probably thought that Snowden could be similarly duped here, and many of his fans are conspiracy theorists who bought Greenwald's reporting without asking the obvious questions it raised, so they would be easy marks. More recently, Ryan Cohen applied the same idea by selling NFTs to GameStop's cargo cult investors waiting for a MOASS that will never come. You would have to be bonkers to think you could pull the wool over Levine's eyes on a financial scheme, and even if you were to pay him enough to look the other way, his readers aren't the type who would fall for a crypto-scam.

He supports crypto, so why not other schemes?

Ego, mainly.

And a high risk / very high reward ratio.

If he pulls this off, he will get a lot of money.

If not, he will lay low for a while and come back with a new scheme.

Basically, no real negative for the guy, as he would have made a ton of money in his previous scam.

Desperation may be the alternative explanation.