If you blow the whistle on something then all of your resources are put into getting to the whistleblowing stage. The dedication is entirely devoted to the act,

If you blow the whistle on something then all of your resources are put into getting to the whistleblowing stage. The dedication is entirely devoted to the act, not the aftermath. All that is expected of the aftermath is a bumpy ride, the possibility of being universally despised, ostracised from society and so on. Money and the means to get by is not perceived to be such a big problem when one is fully prepared to end up in Guantanamo Bay. To some extent that is the end goal, in that respect Chelsea Manning succeeded. Snowden did pretty well getting to Russia, getting some hangers on to provide support and getting a job. The fact that he is broke is mere mortal stuff, he is waiting for his pay check to come through. As any ex-cat-1 prisoner can tell you, life on the run is the most expensive way to live. With Snowden he has had many agencies after him, all with their different approaches. Obviously the U.S. have been on his case, they tend to be good at the sigint stuff but not so good at actual spy trade craft. I would not be at all surprised if there was a British team on his case too, better able to watch him pop to the shops for a pint of milk. Then the Russians will be monitoring everything, on their home turf and able to keep watch on who is keeping watch. Not all watchers will be hostile to him, after all we are all human (Tony Blair excepted), however, none of the many folks observing him will be able to assist him. They will watch him starve rather than intervene. Presumably he is not as on-the-run as he has had to be, however, the practical implications of being completely on-the-run are more than you might think. Imagine he wants to be able to do things like sleep without being observed. That means he has to move every day, and at extremely short notice so anyone watching him does not get a head start, e.g. to bug a hotel room before he gets in there. He also has to pay cash up front just on the off chance he has lost his tail. Then the same again the next day and the day after that. Eventually he will realise that trying to escape his watchers is a fruitless task and decide it is better to take a disinformation approach. At this stage he could try to convince those behind the bugs that he has gone mad. Claiming to be the messiah, pretending to have narrowly avoided being poisoned, hearing voices - standard lunatic stuff. He might also want to go the extra mile on proving that he is no longer an existential threat to the American Way of Life, taking up a pastime such as computer gaming, putting in marathon Playstation sessions and completely ignoring the news. After a year or so of doing this he will be able to convince himself that he has his privacy back and live the normal life. Snowden probably also has had the problem of living off a good pay cheque and then having to adapt to a normal pay check, or no money at all. If you are used to paying thousands a month on accommodation, buying nice food and doing things like driving a car then it can take a while to adapt to barely having enough money to afford groceries for the next day. A mental attitude has to change, from being generous with tips to actually living off what that tip would be. That change does not happen so easily, even if circumstance forces that change to be necessary. Anyway... This talk of sending the guy a few bitcoins is far off from the reality of his situation. Sounds to me that he actually does have everything that he needs to live, i.e. a job and a few close friends. He has sorted himself out. He does not need to be beholden to charity handouts.