Linux Inventor Says He Doesn’t Believe in Crypto
u.today
- Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, does not believe in cryptocurrencies, calling them a vehicle for scams and a Ponzi scheme.
- Torvalds was once rumored to be Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, but he clarified it was a joke and denied owning a Bitcoin fortune.
- Torvalds also dismissed the idea of technological singularity as a bedtime story for children, saying continuous exponential growth does not make sense.
You are viewing a single comment
Right, his talk about how he's not very good at computers is pretty funny. I don't understand the crypto hate on Lemmy. Although I guess I don't understand a lot of why things are hated here. I guess crypto is too close to capitalism maybe? Freedom is frowned upon here.
Crypto is hated because it’s an MLM for terminally online people.
It gains value because people want it and people want it because it gains value is both a perfect description of cryptocurrency and scams.
How does this working into Foreign Exchange? This also sounds a lot like trading USD to PESO like my aunt does...
This describes pretty much all moneys.
Cryptocurrencies have a lot of problems, but being a medium of exchange without intrinsic value is not one of them.
People generally don’t trade currencies as commodities or treat them as investments. When the same people promising crypto is totally a currency actually start treating it like a stable currency to exchange for goods and services and not an investment or commodity to be traded, I might revisit it. For now, the evangelists refuse to walk the walk.
A metric shit ton of people use currencies as investments. Forex trading is pretty big and been around a long time.
I said generally. Your parents who get paid in local currency for their job are not trading in foreign currencies. The fact that rich people can find ways to squeeze more money out of just about anything isn’t a win for cryptocurrencies.
The main test is to give cryptocurrency to my grandparents and they should be able to figure that out and do their grocery shopping. I pity the people having to explain how to use cryptocurrency to my grandparents at the cash register.
Kind of the same idea as explaining how tap your card/phone or credit cards work though.
Not really. "Take your card out of your wallet, and instead of putting it in the machine and typing your pin, you just tap it against the screen"
Vs "well, ok. I set up a wallet for you. No it's not a real wallet, it's on your computer. Anyway, your wallet has this huge long code that you can't remember, so keep it safe, because if you lose it you lose all your money, ok? Right, well before you buy anything, you'll need to register with an exchange, there are a number of exchanges, like XYZ, so sign up with one of those, then — wait what do you mean you don't know how? Just give them your email and whatever else they need.... you don't know your email address? Christ on a bike. Ok we'll sort that out soon — anyway, back to the exchange... go onto their site and trade your cryptocurrency (the weird money in your wallet... no not your real wallet, grandad, your computer wallet), now you need to wait a while for the transaction to happen and you to receive your money. Now you can go to the shop and pay by card. Amazing, isn't it? And it'll only get better when everywhere accepts [coin], I'm sure that'll happen any day now!"
"Bank pays seller on your behalf and then you pay the bank" vs however the fuck you want to explain the clusterfuck of crypto
My parents do this regularly. There are many Latino American families who regularly exchange USD to PESO and vise versa.
You have obviously have not heard of forex and the vast quantity of money that flows through it on a daily basis if you think currencies are not traded as commodities, nor have you heard of places like Argentina or Turkey apparently if you don't know currencies are treated as investments.
There are many many scams in cryptoworld but there is no need to throw out the baby with the bath water as it were. Crypto can and is being used as valid alternative to fractional reserve issued currency; the thriving and resilient darknet proves it so.
I don't think that's how the typical guy/gal you'd bump into on the street uses their bank balance.
I appreciate and applaud anything that can even attempt to separate state and money. That will imho be the best thing for humanity since the separation of state and religion.
I look forward to the day VISA and MASTERCARD become obsolete! Please save my aunt's small business from predatory transaction fees. ♥
I have no like of transaction fees but... you know they exist in the cryptocurrency world right? And that they're generally higher? Those transactions take work and aren't done out of charity.
Compares transaction speed of credit card vs buttcoin
Lmao
Buttcoin is pretty slow. To my understanding many other coins have already evolved past Bitcoin's slow ass speed.
Or gold, or any other precious metal, or any other currency really for that matter….
Tangible items can have utility in the real world, where cryptocurrencies can never be anything more than numbers on a display.
Gold can be used in electronics, and I get that people are mad that currencies are just something we all mutually agree have value, but generally speaking powerful governments back those up. Cryptocurrency is backed up by people promising it’s totally gonna be a real currency any second now. Please ignore that crypto can wildly fluctuate in value which generally a horrible thing for a currency to do.
You could very well make the argument that ultimately crypto is backed by energy, which is something we all agree has value. Without energy, you can't go to work, heat or cool your house or anything like that. If you believe that electricity is fundamental for society, then by extension, crypto is backed by the most fundamental force that there is even bigger than a government.
Crypto is just evidence energy was used. It’s not stored energy.
Oh, but it is, because you could exchange it for something else. As an example, I can take mine and go exchange it for groceries.
You can also use it to... pay for that energy you just used... Hooray!! /s
I've recently been hearing a lot about mining, consuming energy that either would not exist otherwise, or would be wasted. For example, places in Africa can build like a hydroelectric power station, but don't have the money to run lines far enough for all the energy from the power station to be used, so they give most of it to a crypto mine and let the residents use the rest. If the residents ever need more power, then the crypto mine can shut down temporarily or slack off on their usage in order to provide the residents with more power.
You know what else they could do? Store it... in batteries... which are reliable for long term storage... and aren't nearly as volatile... and use it on stuff that generates more value per watt consumed... For example, batteries can be used to power homes and businesses, which can help to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and improve air quality e.g. improving quality of life which generates a shit load of value. Batteries can also be used to provide backup power in case of a blackout, which can be essential for critical infrastructure such as hospitals and data centers. I just don't see how most crypto currency can compete in this space... maybe something highly power efficient? But even then the value is extremely volatile.
Also consider that many peoples (me) would like to move from the older cryptocurrencies that needs lots of power to run (proof of work) and try to advocate for newer proof of stake models.
To my understanding proof of stake models have dramatically lower power requirements.
Yes, but they are also quite a bit easier to take over and destroy because governments can just print their fiat and buy up a large amount of that currency and then kill the network.
Hard disagree here, I literally cannot access a cryptocurrency without power but I can absolutely pay cash to buy some water during a power outage.
Sure you can. There's absolutely nothing stopping somebody from putting a private key on a piece of paper and loading money onto it and spending it physically as long as the private key has not been exposed. Kind of like those Amazon scratch-off gift cards. And just to prove my point, take a look at this.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Casascius_physical_bitcoins
Yes I’m sure the 7-11 cashier would love for me to try this.
Depends on who the 7-11 cashier is. If they are really smart, they would gladly take your crypto and pay for your items with their fiat. You are not going to get big places using it first. You are going to get little places using it first. The Amazon's and 7-11's and Walmart's of the world will come later. And trust me, they will come. There's a natural tipping point apparently, where when 5% of the world population uses something, the other 95% generally soon follow, because it's more useful. Crypto has already hit that 5% mark.
Any day now bruh, trust me
Except that's not what "backed by" means. It consumes energy. You can never exchange cryptocurrency to get the energy that it consumed back.
Have you tried running a cryptocurrency miner during the dead of winter? It makes your electricity bills quite a bit lower. That's for certain.
I haven't seen an exchange where I can trade in Crypto for kilowatt-hours.
Coinsbee.com allows you to purchase debit cards, which you can then use to purchase kilowatt hours.
Translation: actual currencies can be used to purchase energy, but cryptocurrency cannot.
What you're saying is precisely like saying "I know a guy that trades turnips for money. Therefore turnips are a great currency that you can buy anything with."
Thank you Nagus for your financial insights.
The only currency I give a damn about is gold-pressed latinum, damn it!
Sure, you can't buy energy with crypto directly yet. But that would make total sense for a power company to accept crypto in the future.
If it made sense they'd be doing it, no?
Not yet, the government has their regulatory screws too deep into them, so they can't innovate like that.
Where are these laws that state energy companies cannot accept crypto as payment?
I don't know of any laws specifically against them accepting it, but I think it's probably demand-based because only about one-fourth to one-fifth of US citizens use crypto currently. I think that number will grow over the years.
Haven’t multiple governments accepted it as real currency at this point? The arguments are valid, but fall flat when you actually look into each.
Hell diamonds are valuable because of artificial scarcity, so that’s a wrench in every precious metal argument….
Yeah, El Salvador, people from there told me quite recently that it's not at all what the government propaganda is trying to sell. Nobody uses Bitcoin and it is only accepted by a few state institutions. As for Venezuela, we had Petros for a while, now the shitcoin has been completely phased out and discontinued since nobody but a few oligarch used it to launder money.
The only two countries that accept bitcoin as a legal tender are noted powerhouses El Salvador and the Central African Republic… not exactly world leaders.
No, no major government has completely adopted cryptocurrency as legal tender. El Salvador became the first country in the world to do so in September 2021, but there have been significant challenges :
Cryptocurrencies are still considered too volatile and risky by most governments for everyday transactions.
And crypto is more stable than some governments' real currency. It's been a life saver for some people.
It's also a lot faster for transactions than normal banking when sending money to people in other countries.
It's still in the early days... like email in the late 80s / early 90s. It should get better, but there's so much crap and scams out there right now. It's still very much the wild west. It's like Wall Street on acid.
EDIT: people downvote but don't say what was wrong. Awesome.
They downvote the truth and/or facts when they are contrary to the hive mind.
The circlejerking and hive mind on Lemmy is shockingly worse than Reddit somehow. Not what I ever expected.
Well you're talking about a technology that can obsolete VISA and MasterCard and their predatory transaction fees!. There's a lot of money riding on cryptographic currencies taking off or not.
Taking on Visa and Mastercard is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to things like smart contracts.
Okay, go buy some of Rudy Giuliani's gold then. Enjoy.
Gold is actually used as a critical component in the creation of computers and other vitally important industries.
If crypto had pivoted to freedom and prioritized mass-adoption, it would have been great. Instead, almost everyone who invested got more people to buy in, dumped it, and got their payday. So yes, very much like capitalism.
Really, the only crypto that comes anywhere near :
Is Monero. Unfortunately, it falls short when it comes to mass-adoption. Still, it's just as volatile as any other crapto-currency, so using it as an investment vehicle is a bad idea. It seems almost like crapto-currency is fundamentally incompatible with stock market style investments.
I agree with you. I think people are using it wrong. It's a currency for a reason. It's meant to buy and sell goods and services. I should be able to buy a house with it. I should be able to buy a car with it. I should be able to go to the doctor and pay the doctor with it or buy some eggs from the farmer's market with it. But instead, people want to treat it like a stock market thing. And that's not what it was designed to be. It was designed to be an ultimate check on the government's authority to steal from their citizens through inflation. And anybody who tells you different is either a damn liar or has an agenda.
Unfortunately that's just not how most crypto currency is designed. Really, most crypto currency are essentially an extremely volatile private bank with a user-federated money printer.
Most are just an obfuscation of global inflation and yet still highly influenced by governments.
Allowing governments to track the transactions makes crypto basically just a crappy version of credit cards.
I completely agree. Most cryptocurrency is a stupid mess and I would never ever get involved in it. That word most is the keyword, though. That implies that there are some that are actually valuable for their own sake. And I believe that to be Monero, which is why I personally use it. Monero does not allow the government to see your finances at any time and so they absolutely hate it and try to demonize it at every chance they get.
Completely agree. By obfuscating the blockchain transactions, monero is essentially digital cash (at least when it comes to monero-to-monero transactions); what craptocurrency is supposed to be. That's why governments hate it so much, it's hard to tax transactions they can't see and it's hard to regulate something you can't control or track. That's why governments opted to ban it outright.
Still, the whole "being used as a stock market" is a problem for monero too. To a lesser degree than other cryptos, monero still was heavily impacted by the crypto bubble-pop. Monero has a lot of technical merit, unfortunately it's being soiled by the failure of competing cryptos.
You don't get into Monero for mad gains, which is what people don't seem to get. They are in cryptocurrency for number go up, and I absolutely despise them for it. Monero is growing in adoption, even with the government adversity towards it. It is still growing. In fact, a decentralized exchange called Haveno just launched last Tuesday which will make it completely impossible to ever actually kill Monero's Fiat 2 Monero Exchange
Got some sources? Sounds interesting.
https://monero.town/post/3143272
From your source :
👆
👇
💾
Haveno is the base software where Haveno-reto is the live network based on it. Currently they have to fork it and put keys directly into the source code to be able to change networks, although that should be fixed in a future update.
DED
I would like to introduce you to my friend Monero. It actually gets used as a currency and has people who believe in human freedom using it, which is why the government's hate it so much and purposely try to get it delisted from as many exchanges as they possibly can because they do not want normals like us to have it.
I have a long day of paying rent, then buying groceries, coffee, and fast food tomorrow. If you can detail how I will accomplish that with Monero, I am on your side. And keep in mind, "expensive, inconvenient currency-switching" may work for me, but it won't work for most people. Be realistic.
https://coinsbee.com, https://monerica.com.
I have personally been purchasing my groceries every month with Monero for a year and a half now since January of 2023. I also actively search out companies that take Monero and purposely buy from them whenever possible.
Shitcoins yes, bitcoin no. If you fell for Craig Wright's scams you'd fall for any other kind of scam also.
the idea of crypto on its not bad on its own, its just there are a lot of bad actors agressively trying to prop up the value of some arbitrary crypto without actually selling a good or service in order to make a quick buck.
at least teams like the one behind Axie Infinity offered a product/service. Most don't, which is the problem.
if your marketing essentially has to relate to other people buying into buying it, then theres a big problem.
Which is primarily the reason that I will only use Monero. It actually offers something that other cryptocurrencies do not. And that's privacy. If you need to see which crypto to buy or use, look at the government's efforts. The government has Wall Street accepting Bitcoin and put in people's retirement accounts. Why? Because they can control it. Where with Monero, they're trying to purposely get it delisted from every single exchange they can possibly get away with. Why would they be so willing for you to have Bitcoin? But not willing at all for you to have Monero? Simple. Because with Bitcoin, they can see everything you spend at all times and see your balance at all times. Where with Monero, they can't control it and they know it. Monero is what Bitcoin people thought they bought.
Because it went from being a novel decentralized payment method, into a speculative asset, and finally a Wall Street commodity.
Yes, I know there are projects where that core ethos is still relatively intact, but those aren't what come to mind whenever people publicly discusses "crypto".
I hate it in part because its adherents seem intent to relearn all the mistakes of the free banking era and constantly evangelize long-debunked economic theories. It’s like the goldbuggism of libertarian cranks of yore.
Also, for Bitcoin specifically, the extra demand for electricity raises rates for nearby residents. It’s essentially a transfer of wealth from ratepayers. A lot of them are in Texas and if you think Texas has “excess capacity,” then explain why they literally pay bitcoin miners an absurd amount not to mine when there’s a cold snap or heat wave.
I could go on about fraud and money laundering but I think being dumb as shit and raising electricity bills is plenty reason to hate it.
I dislike crypto for the grift but also that people had repackaged it as a form of DRM in NFT's, it became commercialisation in the extreme promoting materialism.
Also Cryptos relation to libertarianism makes it very off putting.
If you were not living in a powerful first world country, you would like it a hell of a lot more. It is such a luxury to not have to constantly be worried about your currency collapsing. In places like Turkiye, crypto is massively popular because their currency is constantly devaluing. There are many countries like this that many Americans and Europeans seem to forget even exist.
It probably won't be too long until even the spoiled nations will want to be able to hold value somewhere that isn't free falling as well. The US is now paying more to service their debt than they are to the military. Not everyone can afford to hold their wealth in real estate and successful businesses.
Please get fucked on assuming where i live and inturn my life style.
If capitalism died we wouldn't have first world countries feeding on third world countries. Crypto won't help with this issue, you will still have american companies drilling oil out of third world countries paying workers fuck all, sweat shops will still need to be somewhere too and the capitalist would prefer it away from they're first world country. If anything crypto will only shield the exploiters but at least the libertarian can be happy whilst getting fucked by daddy bazos.
Read my comment again, you entirely missed the point. This has nothing to do with anything you pointed out. I guarantee you don't live In a poor country because there isn't a chance that you would have no idea how much they are benefiting from bitcoin. I'm sorry you're so offended, but you were your ignorance so prominently that it isn't hard to see at all. I'm also in the 1st world, but I desire to understand the whole picture enough to be able to tell. Use your anger over something you know nothing about as a guide of where to educate yourself.
I saw the point you where trying to make, diminishing my knowledge in the matter due to your presumption of my privileges.
Then railroading off with how its good as poor countries are forced to invest in these schemes.
Do you know much of rune scape gold farming? Gold farming in rune scape was very profitable. Westerners would pay slave wages to poor countries to play and farm in run scape working 60 hours, this was eventually broken up which also didn't lead to a good outcome as a large community lost the financial structure they depended, essentially chewing up and spitting out the disadvantaged.
Similar instances have popped up since crypto where again it has created a work force built on shaky ground which doesn't just exploit but creates a dependency on something liable to fail.
So again no crypto will not fix third world problems as it allows for massive exploitation.
Oh my. Hold your horses buddy. Nobody is forcing poor people to buy bitcoin. People are just faced with a choice, they can hold their value in fiat currencies that corrupt governments are printing like crazy, or they hold their value in a decentralized currency that nobody has control over and nobody can print on a whim. Just because you feel like you missed out on a good investment and so you are bitter towards an entire growing industry doesn't matter at all to people who are using it to escape corruption.
It really isn't nearly as complex or evil as you think it is. It really is just a way for people who have repeatedly been screwed over by corrupt politicians to escape corruption. It's just a matter of time until more and more people around you realize the same, and eventually you will join in, albeit a bit late due to your ignorant bitterness. You do yourself no favors by being against something simply because you don't take the time to understand it.
like nobody is forcing the poor to drink dirty water or go without food..
you make a lot of assumptions. next you'll be calling me a basement dweller.
capitalism isn't evil, guns aren't evil, physical currencies aren't evil, they are instead an easily manipulated vehicle that intern can be used for evil. crypto has proven itself with the sheer amount of scams to be easily manipulated. i don't see crypto as complex, i have followed it since 2013 and have a good understanding of encryption and decentralized systems as well as economics.
the main reason i don't like or see use for crypto is that i am a socialist, crypto goes against core socialist economic values. it also pollutes as the oil cost is high, it promotes commercialization, its abusive to human psychology with fomo, it feeds into libertarianism.
Poor people all over the world are less poor because they have used bitcoin to escape predatory devaluing fiat currencies. Go check out much of Africa, much of South America, Turkey, Georgia, and Southeast Asia. There are literally people eating better food and drinking cleaner water thanks to the fact that they can maintain their hard-earned value with bitcoin.
Nobody said capitalism is bad. Nobody said guns are bad, I have no idea why you would feel the need to conflate issues. I get that you can read headlines, but dig a bit deeper, and you will actually be able to argue from thought-out stances. The crypto oil thing was a scare tactic that got thoroughly disproven many years ago. Mining is rapidly ushering in the transition to renewable energy sources. It is also preventing waste of energy that would just dissipate.
The information is out there. It's just up to yourself to put in the work to educate yourself. I don't mean run around trying to find anything that will agree with your original hunches or whatever to try to guard your ego. I mean, look at it with fresh eyes and be willing to expand your view after critically analyzing the situation without bias. It is actually a good thing to be capable of arguing from both sides so that you are able to honestly weigh the situation. Right now you are just spewing old headlines that you once saw and not even attempting to make a coherent argument.
It will only help you to educate yourself. It's not nearly as daunting as it seems. The next step is to quit trying to defend a stance that you don't understand and to spend some time researching and asking questions. If you had understood what bitcoin was in 2013, then you would be in a much different situation than you are in right now.
Speaking about guns, capitalism and currency were to give examples, and thus context. And if you can show me evidence that crypto has improved so many live in impoverished counties, maybe a crypto GDP study I would love to see it.
I speak of gas prices as I had mined bitcoin and monero and know for a fact that my GPU was 100%, my electricity bill went up. and the crypto miner I repaired PC components for would have a repaste job every few months.
Bitcoin Brought Electricity to Countries in the Global South
Cryptocurrency Adoption in Developing Countries
Bitcoin Spurs Major Renewable Projects From Ocean Thermal To Hydro
BTPI will research relationship between Bitcoin and financial freedom
A great way to really understand just how much Bitcoin and maybe some stablecoins are impacting the lives of people in poorer nations is to just go and talk to people. Spend a few weeks in Tbilisi or similar places and just walk around and talk to average people. Bitcoin is so popular amongst the average people there that many random little shops are even selling socks or Tshirts with the Bitcoin icon on them. So many lives have been saved, and the people there genuinely love Bitcoin.
There is a huge difference between crypto and Bitcoin. There are many shitcoins that try to pretend to be the next Bitcoin or whatever, but literally 99.9% of them are absolute garbage. Luckily, they are drying up and blowing away. For people who this stuff really matters for, they are able and willing to look deep enough to see the benefits of Bitcoin and are much less likely to fall into the BS traps of CyberCoin or whatever.
It is often the uneducated outsider that hasn't lived the horrendous harm of horrible government currencies that are so vehemently opposed to Bitcoin. It just screams privilege, like when some spoiled trust fund kid gets mad at homeless people because they won't just go home. When people are struggling to not drown and they find a life raft, they simply don't care if people in yachts tell them it looks tacky.
If you genuinely want to give this a fair shake, then Google things like "bitcoin encourages renewable energy after:2023" or "Bitcoin adoption in poor countries after:2022". Get recent information and be open to having your mind changed. Bitcoin threatens the imbalance of power, and this is why there is a push to get people in powerful countries to not think deeply about how much it is helping the less fortunate right now. It's just a matter of time though. Knowledge naturally spreads.
Exactly. These people seem to have no idea what they're talking about and or flip flop on issues. As an example, they flocked to open source software. The minute a billionaire bought the company they previously used, because in open source software, they finally see that no billionaire can buy it and control it like they can a closed source system. But yet, oh no, we can't have open source money. That doesn't make any sense.
Open source isn't a buzz word that brings people flocking over, its a definition of key features. Shit products can still exist in that space.
I’m genuinely struggling to understand what this sentence means. Is it badly worded or am I just brainfarting?
Oh, sorry. I was using voice dictation to type that and it put a period in the wrong place. That is not the beginning of a nuisance. I was intending to say that they flock to open source software the minute that a billionaire buys the thing they were using because they realize that a billionaire can't buy open source software.
Oh, that makes sense.
I think “open source money” is a great idea and I’m sure many here do too, but as others pointed out in the replies, cryptocurrency has a lot of issues at the moment for that to be viable.
Also, a lot of the hate probably comes from all the people shilling for it and the whole “get rich with this!!!” narrative around it.
Yeah, I'm not in it for those get rich quick reasons and I despise people who are. I am in it for the tech and the potential to increase human freedom around the world.