Linux Inventor Says He Doesn’t Believe in Crypto
Linux Inventor Says He Doesn’t Believe in Crypto
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.
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Equivocating cryptocurrency, block chain tech, and bitcoin is disingenuous to say none of that exists like fairies or Santa Claus. It exists just as much as PGP or AES or the deficit does. It's dumb to think any of that is going to launch you to extreme wealth or solve everyone's problems, but it is a good way to try to prevent governments from using that currency issuance power in ways their citizens would prefer they did not.
Even if you don't agree with the politics it is a pretty interesting technology for consensus building between potentially adverse participants. Someone with experience maintaining open source repos could at least appreciate that aspect.
it is a good way to try to prevent governments from using that currency issuance power in ways their citizens would prefer they did not.
And instead it should be hedgefunds that have that power?
There is a need for currency and someone is going to have control over the value of that currency. At least with the government you can vote the bastards out.
In the United States you cannot vote for the people who issue currencies. The Federal Reserve are a bunch of privately owned banks.
Nobody has to have control of the production of money, it is especially bad when corrupt people have the power to generate it into their pockets. I know it is hard to understand how generating money for one's self is theft from everyone with money, but it is the case, you just have to try a bit harder to wrap your head around it.
Money needs to be backed by someone for it to hold value.
If there is no control of the production of money, then everyone can produce money, making it completely useless.
Yes, if everyone can produce as much of it as they want, then it would lose value. However, someone doesn't need to back something for it to have value. The most common currency in all of history was seashells. Nobody backed the seashells. Gold has had value for a long time and still does. Nobody backs gold. The reason these things had/have value is for a number of reasons, but possibly the most important reason is what you said, that nobody can just produce as much of if as they want. This is also a fundamental reason why Bitcoin has been steadily increasing in value, nobody can produce as much of it as they want. This is a major flaw that is inherent in fiat currencies(usd, euro, lira..), they can be produced as much as somebody(governments, counterfeiters) wants.
This is very simplistic, there are other reasons that various things are good ways to hold value. Divisibility and transportability are two big ones, both which Bitcoin excels at.
At least with the government you can vote the bastards out.
In theory. In reality all parties serve the same lobbyists.
I don't think anything we've seen yet solves wealth inequality, but whether that becomes a property of a currency or not may change.
I agree voting is important for governance but what if citizens held that specific power by default instead of the government, and if the government wanted to use that power they would require asking for it? It's the same people doing the voting but for a specific measure instead of a representative. I didn't think we're there yet but that being a possibility seems hopeful.
It already exists without crypto tokens and it's called a referendum.
Different countries use it to different extents. The Swiss Country does a lot of it, for example.
But referendums are not always a good idea and are extremely prone to manipulation by the media and populism (see Brexit). Minorities are also underrepresented in referendums, which poses a real problem with these things.
Having an elected government with separation of power is definitely always better, than whatever DAOs are doing.
Equivocating cryptocurrency, block chain tech, and bitcoin is disingenuous to say none of that exists like fairies or Santa Claus.
You know good and god damned well that's not what he was saying.
I definitely made some assumptions, I'd probably do well to read a bit more and comment a bit less. No harm just down votes let me know there's plenty more to learn
Most of bad rep is generated by insufferable hype train enthusiasts we started to call cryptobros and big tech CEOs trying to capitalize on putting this edgy technology everywhere, just like with LLMs right now. Many people who escape shit states in recent years legitly use cryptocurrencies to bring their unconvertable money abroad and that's more reliable than a suitcase of precious metal bars, lol. This tech is no Jesus or Devil, it just needs to mature and overcome the initial fascination, with most bad realizations and schemes dying off. In ten years this discourse would be very different.