• 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.
  • slaacaa@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Holy shit, the crypto bros are really triggered by this, out in full force in the comments. If the only argument you can bring for crypto is that you make/made money on it, that sounds awfully like a Ponzi scheme

    • bean@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I mean not to mention the ridiculous amount of electricity it uses, and heat generated. but hey it’s low priority even though every year lately is the hottest in record.

    • the_doktor@lemmy.zip
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      2 months ago

      It is a Ponzi scheme. Very clearly one. How that garbage is legal, I will never know. I could have gotten into crypto from the ground floor eons ago and made tons of money but I didn’t because I knew it was illegal and figured the whole thing was going to collapse as soon as governments found out about it. Imagine my shock when most legitimized the damn thing. Still wouldn’t bother even if I could go back and do it again knowing the brain dead, money-greedy idiots are going to legalize a literal Ponzi scheme because I have values and morals.

      • androogee (they/she)@midwest.social
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        2 months ago

        How many people got in early, made some money, lost it all getting scammed or just making bad choices, and will spend the rest of their lives chasing that dragon? How many drunks are at some bar right now talking about how much money they could have made if they had waited to sell, or how much their nft portfolio should be worth in a fair world?

      • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        Yeah, it’s relatively easy to make good money in crypto if you understand investing. There are a lot of things that are illegal in regulated securities markets that are not yet illegal with crypto.

        I intentionally don’t invest in crypto, because it doesn’t produce anything. Any money you make is just taken from another investor, usually because they don’t know what they’re doing. When you invest in a company, you make products and sell them to customers. Something is created and rarely are people cheated.

        The people investing in crypto are intentionally cheating uninformed investors in a way that is not possible in regulated securities markets.

    • answersplease77@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Fully agree. I think there exist both good and scammy-bubble types of blockchain and crypto. Crypto can be a scam, memecoin rugpull, ponzi scheme, …etc, but it can also be the peer-2-peer decentrilized self-custody borderless international currency of people away from governments manipulation, inflation, banks and middlemen, which is something that has its own advantages and negatives as we’ve seen it with criminals, tax evation and money laundering, but also used by people fleeing war zones after their banking come down and escaping trumbling government fiats. However, it also needs regulations and the protections of world governments to work but also claims to want governments and regulations off.

      To clarify my position honestly, I think blockchain programming is here to stay but today 99% of it including BTC could be the scammy bubble type and does not represent or have most of the therotical advantages of the bitcoin’s original white paper which I listed above.

    • StoicWiseSigma@lemmings.world
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      2 months ago

      Alright, as a crypto entrepreneur myself, I’ll bite and try to break down exactly what the appeal of crypto is. But b4 I do I would appreciate some updoots since I have a new account. Anyway, crypto, it’s a way to do transactions anonymously. You know how when your wife frequently accesses your bank account to meticulously track every offbrand sex toy you get on temu (at least mine does, filing a divorce at the time of writing, just trying to keep custody of the kids) so you can feel the sensation of child labor alone in your bedroom? But yeah I don’t really use crypto that much personally, too many scams.

      • englislanguage@lemmy.sdf.org
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        2 months ago

        Cryptocurrencies in general are not anonymous. There might be exceptions, but all I’ve seen is pseudonymity. And an eternal backlog of every transaction ever, i.e., if your identity gets revealed for a single transaction, it will get you revealed for every transaction you ever did.