Linux Inventor Says He Doesn’t Believe in Crypto

AnActOfCreation@programming.dev to Technology@lemmy.world – 1579 points – 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.
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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.