- 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.
It’s not surprising tbh. Most millionaires like Linus or tech people in general have so much money that the problems of the financial system don’t impact their lives.
Torvalds also dismissed the idea of technological singularity as a bedtime story for children, saying continuous exponential growth does not make sense.
Continuous exponential growth is actually something our financial system was DESIGNED FOR. It it makes no sense our inflationary money makes no sense.
Crypto is not going to fix the financial service, nor will it make you a millionaire.
And if it did, then that’s why you’re selling it!
Like I said, privileged people who don’t think that bitcoin is useful.
Continuous exponential growth is actually something our financial system was DESIGNED FOR. It it makes no sense our inflationary money makes no sense.
This is the most hilarious part. One system literally has exponential growth, while the other is literally created to combat this.
Crypto is a textbook example of why we as a society can’t have nice things. To many people are selfish and self serving, and not enough people are willing to ostracize those types of people from society for such actions.
Real Tragedy of the Commons situation.
It’ll be a bad day when crypto really crashes. A lot of guys in my generation have most of their savings in crypto. When they lose that money they are going to create a very big political problem for the rest of us.
A lot of guys in my generation have most of their savings in crypto.
No they do not.
It’s gambling. Why anyone would be foolish enough to invest their life savings into it is no less stupid than the trump stans dumping their savings into trump bux or that trump credit card hat was apparently going fill up with cash when trump was reinstated.
It’s all a scam that has some likelihood of coming true if all of the right occurrences line up, no matter how unlikely. Except with crypto it’s like picking a random slot machine and somehow investing everything you have on one spin. Whereas the trump stuff is like betting on roulette, but one guy is spinning the wheel and he may just put the ball down on one of the random things and make a few people rich. Or maybe it’s more like throwing all your money into the casino toilet and flushing it because you’re too drunk to realize it’s not a slot machine.
Linus is already a multimillionaire, he doesn’t need a pump and dump.
Well there are billionaires that do pump and dump. He just seem a decent human being 😃
Some people are just addicted to acquiring money.
Crypto is just a waste of resources, similar to AI
And the state
You projecting about you
I think both have their uses. A true state backed cryptocurrency used interchangeably with physical cash could be quite useful. Crypto as it is now not so much.
AI has a bunch of useful applications in medicine, manufacture, research, monitoring… But where we see it is language models, art remixes, and deep fakes.
Nah it’s literally a waste of physical resources. Crypto currency is a waste of fossil fuels. AI has its functions at least.
Proof of stake uses a load less than proof of work.
Be really good if currencies could go in and out of crypto. Could cut out a lot of middle men.
A true state backed cryptocurrency used interchangeably with physical cash could be quite useful.
What advantage does this give over a simple digital currency?
Crypto - Meh, I have digital banking and payment processing already, with easy enough international transfers. I’m good.
AI - I see the possibilities, I think we should continue to develop it even if just for the medical applications of machine learning. Right now people just like playing with it, but, privacy issues aside, I don’t think it’s a waste.
Good
He is just like me. I don’t mess with the chucky cheese token money.
Oddly enough lots of people do mess with V-Bucks for FortNite, Riotpoints for League of Legends, and/or CoD points for Call of Duty. Damn you chucky cheese money in my video games!
Read the actual forum directly if you want to extend your daily fix of other tech people’s interesting opinions: https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=217627&curpostid=217694
It’s as if this headline were written to stir discussion on lemmy.
Cryptocurrency is a useful technology that has some real-world use cases - for example, living in Russia, I use it to circumvent sanctions to donate to some of the crypto-friendly creators, pay for a VPS abroad, and I keep calm knowing I can transfer money to my relatives abroad.
However, it is obviously not the answer to how we should build the financial system. The problem is not environment, actually - many Proof-of-Stake blockchains allow to transfer crypto with minimal environmental impact - but the poor on-chain regulation (including taxation, too) and potentially excessive infrastructure, as well as little protections against malicious and fraudulent actors.
Besides, inability to control emission, while helping maintain the value of the currency over the long run, also means that many interventions that can save economy in a crisis are simply not available. And a deflationary nature is known to cause bubbles.
Russians working abroad might find cryptocurrency useful.
Exactly! My usecase is exactly the same as yours.
While massively flawed, for now it is the most viable alternative financial system we have.
And a deflationary nature is known to cause bubbles.
I mean centuries of inflationary monetary policy also caused bubbles, sooo…
Yes, but that was caused by other factors, while deflationary policy directly leads to them as it punishes spending, but rewards accumulation. As a result, everyone sits on a pile of cash, and they either don’t spend it, like, ever, grinding economy to a halt, or start buying, strongly depreciating the currency and forming a death spiral.
I am aware of the basic arguments behind inflation/deflation, and neither is good in excess.
Typically central banks targets inflation of 2% these days, but we all know the real inflation for necessities is far higher (>4%). Inflation disproportionately affects the poorer - rich people have the fast majority of their wealth “stored” in stocks or real estate, which rise in valuation as people rush into these markets to protect the little they have. I’d argue that inflation rates are artificially pushed far higher then is sustainable, simply because those who decide are the same people who benefit the most.
I consider a low but predictable inflation rate about 1% ideal (0-2% is acceptable short term variation) for the following reasons:
- No one has to worry about debasing/devaluing your currency by injecting more supply.
- Nobody “passively” gains wealth by sitting on it.
- If you want to keep your wealth, you have to take some risk and use it.
- Inflation rate is not so high, that you need super high risk investments to keep up, making it more accessible to small players.
- Large player can not as easily game the market by skimming of value from the lower to upper middle class.
Yes, this idea is not without risks. But the way I see it the forced “we have to improve value by 2% every year” exponential grow can only go on so long before we (humanity) hit the finite limits of this planet.
Absolutely! Inflation has to be lower, that’s for sure. I’d even argue that the need for inflation is more of a feature of a capitalist economy.
Having to force spending/investment is only important as long as the very economy is built around overconsumption and private investment.
We can absolutely live with a more or less stable currency if we focus on sustainability and put the people first. Money should return to be the means to just get what we need, and we should stop building the economy around creating artificial demand.
Lets see, cryptocurrencies involve tech bros, finance bros and lots of money. I am not surprised it is on its way to become the most disgusting money making scheme in the world.
There are two types of people: those who had their money stolen by the government and those that did not.
I only like two cryptocurrencies.
Nano: free transactions, each wallet runs it’s own blockchain, so it’s got no negative impact on the environment.
Monero: allows for anonymous transfers
Then you like Bitcoin too, since it pegs them.
No, because I’m not a trader. It’s not all about the exchange rate for me, but about the utility of the coin.
Most coins exist because other coins exist. Nano and Monero not necessarily.
BitCoin was the progenitor of those projects and rapidly gained value after strong usage (aka utility) and the ensuing scarcity. So you like BTC?
No, because one transaction uses as much energy as a normal household in a year. Or something like that.
Omg we’re cryptocurrency twins. I hold exactly these two for the same reasons
Isn’t Nano the one where they distributed the coins by CAPTCHA, but there was a central party that verified all these CAPTCHAs? They could just have given themselves 51% of the coins for free.
Initial distribution was through a captcha-protected crypto ‘faucet’. The faucet is still up. Did the developers keep a large part of the coins themselves? I’ve never heard that.
There’s no way to audit that.
I ask this sincerely, what have you personally needed an anonymous currency for?
I like it as a way to donate to creators without revealing my identity. It comes close to handing over cash.
You could also use it to pay for a VPN, but since the VPN provider sees your original IP address anyways, I don’t think that’s useful.
Another use I can think of is paying for a domain and registering it with fake info. Registrars require pretty sensitive information, and apparently can check if it is real by comparing it to the info tied to a card used to pay, which crypto eliminates.
Wish there were more XMR-accepting registrars though.
One time phone numbers are another good thing, to avoid the ever increasing tracking we are all exposed to.
The obvious one is buying drugs. I don’t feel like arguing the morality of doing that but anonymous money is definitely useful for that.
I read somewhere that someone was using anonymous currencies to buy life saving medicine from “non traditional” markets because they were much much cheaper. Let me see if I find the article
Well, that might be the only form of payment they take, and so you’ve got to use it I suppose. But the anonymous part really isn’t a huge factor here.
I would be a little cautious of buying “non traditional” medication from someone who doesn’t want a paper trail.
Unless you mean drugs, and then yes a paper trail is bad haha.
Haha no drugs in that article at least. I can’t find it but I think it was either for diabetes or asthma
My preferred lemmy instance is funded with xmr.
I used Monero to pay for my domain and VPS while under sanctions and thus cailed by the mainstream payment system. And in daily life I use pretty much only cash.
Also the phrasing of this implies some “nothing-to-hide” mentality. Would I be in danger if I paid for my stuff with a KYC method? Not really, I connect to my VPS and request my domain daily from home, their existence is not secret. Do I benefit from the transaction being anonymous? Still yes, the less data you trust the third parties with, the better. Same as to why I encrypt my chats even though they are mundane. Just because they are nobody’s business.
nothing-to-hide
In most civilized countries the law is “innocent until proven guilty” - and if I (and the vast majority of people) are innocent, why the fuck is tracking a thing?
I hate the word “inventor”
I hate the word, “pejorative”.
The vast majority of the crypto world failed to understand one key concept, money is not the value for which goods/services are exchanged, it is the value by which they are exchanged. People do not have a use or value for money beyond what it can be exchanged for, if no one is willing to exchange for it, it has no value.
Crypto only had value as a currency if people would accept it for goods or services, and the only thing people ever accepted it as payment for, in any meaningful capacity, were illegal goods and services. The value beyond that was purely based on a speculative ideological assumption that people would abandon the traditional banking system for a new system that they couldn’t buy anything with.
I don’t know much about crypto but this doesn’t seem right?
Didnt it hit an all time high recently? All while no one is using it to buy anything anymore?
A coin is worth what someone will pay for it, and people are paying lots because they think it will be worth more later.
It has no inherent value or utility.
Not sure if has hit all time high, but I doubt it. But even if it did, the reason why it did is pretty simple. It’s unregulated and a scam. So, get a bunch of sociopaths and let them target people, get them to invest in crypto and then they will be able to sell their own imaginary money to these people for real money. This is how it works in its most raw form. Someone invents monopoly money, convinces someone gullible that it’s the future and sells the people the monopoly money for real cash.
Of course there’s a whole bunch of obuscation and hype talk to hide what’s really happening, so it’s not immediately obvious to those people.
Muddying the waters is also the small group of true believers who really think that it’s only matter of time when the monopoly money is going to take over and via the power of magical thinking completely fix capitalism and the rich bastards who have money instead of them.
So the signal to noise ratio is pretty bad for really seeing what is actually going on.
Which is EXACTLY the same as all other fiscal vehicles. Except in the case of USD, the group of sociopaths you describe are the elected representatives of USGOV. What defines money as real, Vs not real? The fact that it’s backed by the central bank? Is that actually a good thing and positive for anyone? Decentralised finance as a concept is a good thing. Sometimes it takes a little froth for something to take hold. I’ll bet there were a bunch of people who said similar things about trading shares and futures trading. You can argue that both of those things are ultimately scams. They are legitimised only due to the fact they make capital. Crypto makes capital. And it’s now easy to swap between fiat and crypto.
I LOL at OSS people who say that a government backed crypto currency is a good thing. Explain how monolithic control of finance is good for everyone. Please
Ok, no, Crypto in any form is bad. But unregulated is not an improvement.
Also, money has always since the very beginning been monolithic control finance, the first money were printed by kings. There just were a lot instability with the coins.
The other options are not to have capitalism at all, go back to bartering, or reach the hallowed myth of post-scarcity.
You are ignoring the huge number of crypto, or to be more specific, Blockchain projects that have inherent utility. There are many, and few will survive but some assuredly will. I do believe in DePIN as a concept, and I think it’s likely the immediate future. And it’s not the only buzzword that does actually have potential. Quantum computing seems like Fusion to me. Always a mere decade away, with only a few insurmountable problems to solve.
Decentralised does not mean without governance. Many of the newer lesser known tokens are governed by the projects they are used for. This, I believe, is a good thing, Each project returns us closer to a world where currency is linked to tangibles. And the control remains with the communities that built them.
Imagine being a business that trades with other nations, and the collapse of the government in the country you operate in results in a once profitable business losing 100x the value of the product over night.
It’s harder for that to happen with tokens linked to the businesses that offer a good or service.
How are we now linking crypto to anti capitalism? It’s quite the opposite and it’s nothing to do with a post scarcity world ideal. I do believe that crypto currency will return finance to something that is closer to the people that use them, and provide a means to involve people more widely, give them a stake, if you will, in the policy surrounding them.
Any centralised regulations need to focus on preventing fraudulent systems. And they are innumerable, which is how we end up with statements like Linuses. I suspect you’ll find this comment ages like Bill Gates and his infamous statement about networking.
That is not true, for the vast majority of the history of money it was based on a commodity that was valuable in its own sense. It is only in the last century that we have begun experimenting with currencies that are not pegged to the value of a commodity.
Cryptocurrencies derived their value from being a network of users (metcalfe’s law) so they are more like a commodity money. Thing about something like Meta, which has a valuation in the trillions despite its physical assets not be worth nearly that and its functionality as a website being easily replicated on an alternative platform. The users are what is valuable.
for the vast majority of the history of money it was based on a commodity that was valuable in its own sense.
True, but using grain or tools as a currency would make the modern financial system pretty much impossible. Even for simple banking, you need something small and light like gold or currency notes.
What if it was so small and light it was only electrons? And what if it accrues its value from the energy expended to create it? Maybe using some sort of cypher to ensure anyone could verify it? Idk maybe we’re onto something…
then again it still syphons value to the top so maybe not…
What if it was so small and light it was only electrons?
You mean, like how it is now?
And what if it accrues its value from the energy expended to create it?
You want more climate change? Also, value comes only from what someone else is willing to exchange for it.
Maybe using some sort of cypher to ensure anyone could verify it?
Why should anyone else be able to know anything about a transaction between A and B?
Gold is a commodity and you can create a currency that is backed by a commodity so you aren’t actually trading the commodity itself.
Yes, gold is a commodity, but when used as currency it is acting as a medium of exchange and not as a commodity. Same with pieces of paper with the sign of the reserve bank governor, or data on a computer’s memory. The gold, paper and hard disc all have intrinsic value, but when used as currency they are assigned an arbitrarily higher face value.
When you have commodity money, the value of the money is derived from the value of the commodity. You don’t get to assign arbitrarily higher values to the money because the market determines the value. But yes, all speculative assets typically have a higher extrinsic value compared with their intrinsic value but I don’t believe that has anything to do with it being a medium of exchange or not. That is just supply and demand.
