Linux Inventor Says He Doesn’t Believe in Crypto

AnActOfCreation@programming.dev to Technology@lemmy.world – 1575 points – Linux Inventor Says He Doesn’t Believe in Crypto
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  • 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.
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Crypto means cryptography, stop using it to talk about cryptocurrency.

good luck, I'm sure this comment will change how everyone talks from now on.

Crypto means hidden, stop using it to talk about cryptography.

It's also sometimes used as shorthand for crypto-orchidism -undescended testicles.

Ahh, so... crypto, which is based on crypto, can be used to pay for treatments to crypto.

Got it.

Crypto currencies doesn't mean "hidden currency", it means currency based on cryptography.

Do you mean to say that crypto is based on crypto? Crazy!

They meant that choosing one possible definition and saying it’s what the word means is stupid. Words mean pretty much what everyone agrees they mean. Look at all the words that have basically flipped definitions since their inception. Just because the modern derivative of a word means something literally everyone understands but is slightly different than what it used to mean doesn’t mean the oldest answer is the correct one. Unwad your jock.

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Is it not clear which definition of Crypto he's using?

Linus coming out against cryptography seems so unrealistically silly to me that it's not even worth considering.

The security of Linux 2000 will be based entirely on steganography, Linux founder announces

Yeah, that headline is very misleading. Crypto(graphy) is essential for the digital world to exist whereas the other stuff is a pyramid & money laundering scheme.

It's not "misleading," because the vast majority of people understand what the current colloquial use of crypto is.

A certain irony in a synonym for "secret" being a term everyone's implicitly familiar with.

"Have you invested in crypto?"

Do you think anyone anywhere will misunderstand this as investing in cryptographic research/development?

The mainstream usage of the word isn't always aligned with what is good for society or even the original usage of the word.

So the equivalent of the population of the United States plus 40% are money-londerers. Because somewhere between five and seven percent of the world's population uses cryptocurrency and that's 400 million to 550 million people.

I doubt it

Increasing demographics might initially be attributed to a rise in the number of accounts and improvements in identification. In 2021, however, crypto adoption continued as companies like Tesla and Mastercard announced their interest in cryptocurrency. Consumers in Africa, Asia, and South America were most likely to be an owner of cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, in 2022.

That's functionally the nut of it. People in countries that lack a traditional western banking sector but enjoy internet access can piggyback on the network of banks with crypto-interfaces. This is more a consequence of the unregulated wing of the financial sector than an raw utility of cryptocurrency itself.

If WellsFargo won't ratify me as a client, but Coinbase will, I'm stuck dealing in bitcoin simply because I can't get a credit card denominated in USD.

No some of them are the marks.

But if we want to play bad faith statistics games then 5% is roughly the percent of Americans who have gone to prison.

Ok based upon one dude's opinion I'll purposely create a communication problem between me and anyone who ever tries to discuss this stuff with me.

Or I could just toss this opinion in the garbage...

Decisions decisions

Never heard it commonly used as a short form for "cryptography". But did hear it commonly used for "Cryptocurrency". Why not let the morons have it? Do you have a scam running that relies on "Crypto" being short for "Cryptography"? Using "cool" brevs is the mark of the amateur anyway, if someone said "crypto" to me when he meant cryptography, I'd forever judge them as a silly person.

Before 2010 it was almost exclusively used to refer to cryptography, outside of some even more niche fields (parts of biology, political sciences, etc)

I run /r/crypto on reddit, for cryptography, and the spam is horrendous and the flood of idiots is never ending

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