Linus Torvalds has said that cryptocurrencies are simply "a great vehicle for scams"
  • 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.
  • Rustmilian@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    6 months ago

    Really, the only crypto that comes anywhere near :

    If crypto had pivoted to freedom and prioritized mass-adoption

    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.

    • shortwavesurfer@monero.townEnglish
      0·
      6 months ago

      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.

      • Rustmilian@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        6 months ago

        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.

        • shortwavesurfer@monero.townEnglish
          0·
          6 months ago

          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.

          • Rustmilian@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            6 months ago

            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.