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Linux Inventor Says He Doesn’t Believe in Crypto

  • 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.
xlash123 ,
@xlash123@sh.itjust.works avatar

I think there was a potential future where cryptocurrency could’ve actually been useful, but it was ruined by scammers, rug pullers, and of course, speculators.

I’ll still hold a little bit of Monero, since it holds the most potential for being a real currency in my opinion. But otherwise, I fully agree with the sentiment.

matjoeman ,

It’s always only going to be useful for things like buying drugs, cases where you want to skirt regulation or you really want privacy. Which is fine. It can have it’s niche. Pretending it was ever going to be more than that was a mistake.

BaardFigur ,

deleted_by_author

    •
    matjoeman ,

    I agree but at least the PoS cryptocurrencies seem to have solved the energy use problem.

    Tachikoma741 ,

    When the Wild West was around Medicine was used as a scam too. Snake Oil salesmen aren’t very nice people. But that doesn’t mean medicine is a bad idea ya know?

    I agree that there are a lot of snake oil sellers in the cryptographic currencies realm. But that world is basically the digital wild west at the moment to me. I too am waiting to see what happens.

    xlash123 ,
    @xlash123@sh.itjust.works avatar

    That’s definitely true. I’ve always liked the concept, but never bought into this hype around the speculation, which really gives it a bad name.

    That’s why I think Monero is really the way forward to a good cryptocurrency. It’s price is fairly stable and makes more sense than Bitcoin in many ways. I’d use it more if there were more vendors using it. The most I’ve done with it is buy a Mullvad subscription.

    merc ,

    The difference is that medicine, as a concept, is useful.

    locuester ,

    Is not currency, as a concept, useful? How about transfer of value over vast distances instantly? Is that not useful?

    uienia ,

    Well know you are just using circular logic. The thing is that cryptocurrencies aren’t currencies.

    locuester ,

    I hear what you’re saying. But USDC is absolutely a token on many different ledgers that represents a currency.

    I’ve been deep in decentralized finance for years as an investor and fulltime software dev. I get the whole “hur hur Bitcoin is dum” but you’re really missing the forest focusing on a tree.

    merc ,

    USDC is absolutely a token on many different ledgers that represents a currency.

    No, it is a speculative investment. If it were a currency it would be something people were using to buy things, accepting for selling things, using to pay taxes and fines, using to invest in something else, etc.

    It’s not a currency, it’s at best some kind of intermediate thing used to buy even more speculative “investments”.

    locuester ,

    Didn’t you repeat what I said? It’s a token on decentralized ledgers that represents a currency. Like a number in the database at your bank. No different than that.

    You deposit your currency at a bank, it’s a number in a database. You earn interest on your investment.

    Are you saying that is a different concept than usdc deposited into a lending market on a decentralized ledger and earning interest?

    Also, usdc is accepted places. In fact Stripe is adding it as a payment method very soon. Would that make it a currency, or does it have to reach some level of acceptance? What about PayPal balance? Currency?

    merc ,

    Like a number in the database at your bank. No different than that.

    Except that my bank stores dollars, not memecoins.

    Are you saying that is a different concept than usdc

    Yes, because “USDC” isn’t a currency.

    locuester ,

    Except that my bank stores dollars, not memecoins.

    USDC is not a memecoin. Are you aware of what USDC is? A token issued by a US company, Circle, with strict transparency and regulatory compliance. It’s no different than a number in your banks database, except it’s in your custody, like cash.

    Yes, because “USDC” isn’t a currency.

    Is your bank’s database a currency?

    Look, I get the popularity of shitting on crypto but I’m happy to teach you about the industry if you’re interested. Memecoins, ponzis, shills, shitcoins, etc is the loud obnoxious side of our industry and has no bearing on the real economics and financial system being developed.

    merc ,

    It’s no different than a number in your banks database, except it’s in your custody, like cash.

    And it’s not a real currency, it’s a memecoin.

    Is your bank’s database a currency?

    No, my bank’s database is a database, it refers to a currency that is real because it is accepted for paying taxes, fines, etc.

    but I’m happy to teach you about the industry if you’re interested

    There’s nothing you could teach that would be valuable to learn. You seem to be in on the grift, looking for another person to get in on the pyramid scheme. Good luck with that, but I’m not interested.

    locuester ,

    USDC is a memecoin? It’s $1, on a decentralized ledger. Backed by $1 in the legacy banking system. I can move 1 USDC to $1 in the legacy system nearly instantly by redemption at Circle. No different than a legacy to legacy bank wire.

    I’m not grifting - I’m attempting to make you aware that there are decentralized markets denominated in US dollars. What I’m explaining is not a pyramid scheme - I’m just informing you that there is a very widely used token on decentralized ledgers which represents exactly $1.

    merc ,

    Backed by $1 in the legacy banking system

    Yes, other memecoins used to also be pegged to the dollar, but they lost their peg, like TerraUSD and Tether.

    which represents exactly $1.

    Until it doesn’t.

    locuester ,

    TerraUSD was an algorithmic stable, not backed by any real USD. No one with a brain expected that mechanic to work. That was a ponzi, but an interesting experiment.

    Theharpyeagle ,

    The problem is that snake oil stuff was (mostly) solved not because snake oil salesmen decided to be nice and close up shop, but because regulations and laws were put in place to protect people from them.

    Likewise, we’ve seen crypto get hit with pretty much every issue that has ever afflicted fiat over the entire history of money. The only reason we’ve seen anyone get punished for it is because governments still have some jurisdiction over crypto traded by their citizens. People will say “but smart contracts!”, but the only proven way to be safe with those is to verify the code is both bug-free and not malicious, and that’s a lot to ask of someone trying to buy dog food. A lot of exploits have been executed on contracts that were marked safe by audit companies.

    I think the idea as a concept is interesting, as I don’t exactly trust the government or banks either, but I trust random black box companies and individuals a lot less.

    Tachikoma741 ,

    Like I said. It’s the wild west in that sphere right now. No rules no nothing. But I also think that even the wild west was tamed over time. Meaning I’m not sure if it will stay so unregulated forever.

    Theharpyeagle ,

    Right, but the wild west was tamed by increasing regulation, which is precisely what crypto fans want to avoid. The truth is, though, most people won’t trust crypto without some kind of centralized authority guaranteeing that their money is safe, whether that be a government or a private entity. This pretty quickly materialized with the NFT craze, which saw the vast majority of NFTs were created on the same two sites, with only the biggest names having their own domains and redundant storage for their images.

    saigot ,

    All the ‘advantages’ to crypto seem to me to really be ways of avoiding regulation (or are only advantageous without regulation)

    Tachikoma741 ,

    That may be true. To me, however, not all regulation are ethically or morally sound. I hear people in countries with corrupt governments can use these new fangled monies to avoid the regulations/sanctions put on their countries.

    The example that comes to my mind was some guy in Turkey buying medicine. I guess Turkey isn’t allowed to trade many countries because they government is corrupt? And this person was unable to get the medicine they needed in Turkey. Only way was to in port I guess? So they converted their local turkish currency to something the medicine maker would accept.

    I can’t really verify such claims but seemed like an alright “breaking of the rules”.

    jeeva , (edited )

    To me, the difference there is that the jokes about snake oil and homeopathy, healing crystals, or essential oils are roughly the same - e.g. “what do you call X that works and has been peer reviewed? Medicine.”

    So far, there has been no equivalent positive usage in the crypto sphere. Medicine, though often administered to different levels, is a good idea in itself.

    Actually, for most uses of crypto it’s attempting to muddle in and “add” value to a previous known-good thing. Is the comparison here that crypto is snake oil currency, snake oil databases, or snake oil contracts? In every case, to me, crypto is the snake oil salesman trying to sell you the brighter tomorrow - without adding anything positive, and often getting the heck out of dodge (or folding a company and moving on to, e.g. LLMs) before delivering on promises.

    Tachikoma741 ,

    Now a days we peer review medicine. As I mentioned, in the “wild west”. There’s no peer reviewing. The metaphor of the wild west was also pointing out the infancy of a technology. Another example could be how the “self driving cars” aren’t actually that self driving. However I suspect that over time even those cars will actually become peer reviewed, functional and what not.

    The example that I saw that I liked the best was video games. Just because someone sells bad video games. Doesn’t mean all video games are a scam. Ya, know?

    megopie ,

    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.

    Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

    the only thing people ever accepted it as payment for, in any meaningful capacity, were illegal goods and services

    That used to be true. Hardly any BTC is being spent on drugs nowadays. It’s not anonymous enough. However, people are buying high value items like real estate and luxury goods with BTC.

    Bitcoin is mostly being spent on electricity and new hardware.

    megopie ,

    most of the bitcoin being spent on electricity and hardware gets exchanged for actual currency before it is spent. And most of the luxury goods sales are gimmicks and limited time.

    And there is a huge amount of criminal activity with bitcoin still, they just mainly use it to launder money now as the transactions are impractically slow and costly for anything but particularly large trades.

    Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

    “The multi-chain era has had a sweeping impact on the distribution of illicit crypto volume as a whole, where Bitcoin’s share plummeted from 97% in 2016 to 19% in 2022. In 2016, two thirds of crypto hack volume was on Bitcoin; in 2022, it accounted for just under 3%, with Ethereum (68%) and Binance Smart Chain (19%) dominating the field. And while Bitcoin was the exclusive currency for terrorist financing in 2016, by 2022 it was all but replaced by assets on the TRON blockchain, with 92%.”

    TRM illicit crypto ecosystem report 2023

    Silentiea ,
    @Silentiea@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

    Bitcoin is mostly being spent on electricity and new hardware more Bitcoin.

    Ftfy

    fine_sandy_bottom ,

    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.

    NoMoreCocaine ,

    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.

    modegrau ,

    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

    NoMoreCocaine ,

    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.

    modegrau ,

    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.

    NoMoreCocaine ,

    It got the initial true push as an anti capitalist reaction, well if we ignore the scammers and gamblers. But more in the sense that “hey you got money but I don’t have any so imma make my own and be just like you”.

    Also when did I ever link it to post scarcity? I said, the only “solution” to monolithic money is either bartering or post scarcity, or abandoning capitalism in some fashion.

    Crypto is just another immutable database, except shared. It’s not a silver bullet or solution for… anything really. The validation methods are cute or terribly resource intensive and they add no real value, aside from consolidating power within the network.

    deadlyduplicate ,

    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.

    emergencyfood ,

    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.

    zazo ,

    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…

    emergencyfood ,

    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?

    deadlyduplicate ,

    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.

    emergencyfood ,

    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.

    deadlyduplicate ,

    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.

    emergencyfood ,

    When you have commodity money, the value of the money is derived from the value of the commodity.

    The value of the commodity acts as a floor, but the face value is dictated by supply and demand, and demand usually exceeds supply, driving it significantly above the floor. Take gold, for example. Gold’s intrinsic values are (1) it’s pretty and can be used to make decorative items, and (2) it has some applications in electronics. It can’t be eaten, can’t be worn, and it’s too soft even to make tools out of it. Yet, its extrinsic value is huge, because it is publically seen as a good medium of exchange and so a lot of people want it.

    shotgun_crab ,

    Crypto is just a waste of resources, similar to AI

    Ozymati ,
    @Ozymati@lemmy.nz avatar

    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.

    captainjaneway ,
    @captainjaneway@lemmy.world avatar

    Nah it’s literally a waste of physical resources. Crypto currency is a waste of fossil fuels. AI has its functions at least.

    jabjoe ,
    @jabjoe@feddit.uk avatar

    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.

    orrk ,

    again, what use does it serve over traditional banking?

    even PoS requires a lot of resources in comparison, for a system that literally exists to funnel money to a smaller group of people

    iopq ,

    I literally can’t transfer money to Kazakhstan without paying $50 for a wire.

    jabjoe ,
    @jabjoe@feddit.uk avatar

    Advantages of cash and digital, without the swings of raw crypto. Also leaving the ability to usefully manipulate your country’s currency.

    Crypto means easy, open payment systems. No gatekeepers like WorldPay.

    orrk ,

    like any true Liber-crypto-bro-tarian, your understanding of crypto is only undercut by your understanding of economics

    jabjoe ,
    @jabjoe@feddit.uk avatar

    Manipulating currency is a useful tool. If you don’t think so, that makes you more liberian than me.

    Like many here, I’m big into open source, and card payment systems are an issue. Crypto is one solution to that. Crypto has advantages, but it falls down as a currency because of blind faith in the invisble hand.

    n3m37h ,

    Still uses more than standard banking practice, sorry but FUCK CRYPTO

    jabjoe ,
    @jabjoe@feddit.uk avatar

    From what I found, and varies due to values/date, looks like a PoW transaction is about 2+ million times more energy than traditional banking. PoS is over 1000 times less than PoW, so about 2+ thousands times traditional banking. But transitional banking has other problems. For one, the market of payment is stitched up. Not like openness of a crypto currency.

    n3m37h ,

    Plus the hardware needed for each person atop the extra power useage.
    Not worth it when May already feels like Aug

    jabjoe ,
    @jabjoe@feddit.uk avatar

    Everyone has hardware enough already. Your phone is perfectly good enough. For tills it will be easier to implement. No nonsense with a card machine and things like WorldPay and whole locked down PC. The hardware and platform wouldn’t matter.

    emergencyfood ,

    A true state backed cryptocurrency used interchangeably with physical cash could be quite useful.

    What advantage does this give over a simple digital currency?

    interdimensionalmeme ,

    And the state

    DashboTreeFrog ,

    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.

    orrk ,

    Crypto is worse tho, it requires about the same amount of energy as the entire global banking network, but only serves less than a percentage of the transactions

    Sorgan71 ,

    Ai has function. Unlike crypto

    Sgn ,

    You projecting about you

    maegul , (edited )
    @maegul@lemmy.ml avatar

    It’s interesting to see Torvalds emerge as a kind of based tech hero. I’m thinking here also of his rant not long ago on social.kernel.org (a kernel devs microblog instance) that was essentially a pretty good anti-anti-leftism tirade in true Torvalds fashion.

    EDIT:

    Torvalds’s anti-anti-left post (I was curious to read it again):

    I think you might want to make sure you don’t follow me.

    Because your “woke communist propaganda” comment makes me think you’re a moron of the first order.

    I strongly suspect I am one of those “woke communists” you worry about. But you probably couldn’t actually explain what either of those words actually mean, could you?

    I’m a card-carrying atheist, I think a woman’s right to choose is very important, I think that “well regulated militia” means that guns should be carefully licensed and not just randomly given to any moron with a pulse, and I couldn’t care less if you decided to dress up in the “wrong” clothes or decided you’d rather live your life without feeling tied to whatever plumbing you were born with.

    And dammit, if that all makes me “woke”, then I think anybody who uses that word as a pejorative is a f*cking disgrace to the human race. So please just unfollow me right now.

    Ledivin ,

    It’s interesting to see Torvalds emerge as a kind of based tech hero.

    It’s just that almost everyone else that could do it ended up being fucking ghouls of people.

    Torvalds can be… brusque, sure. But he doesn’t support child labor, he doesn’t cheat on his wife, and he isn’t some crazy cult leader waging a war against workers’ rights.

    huginn ,

    he doesn’t cheat on his wife

    he doesn’t cheat on his wife so far.

    Lost_My_Mind ,

    Well, we all know he beats his wife…

    …in monopoly! Give me those brown properties!!!

    Serinus ,

    Why’s it gotta be the brown properties?

    Mercury ,

    The man loves going to brown town, what’s wrong with that?

    Lost_My_Mind ,

    They’re the cheapest to aquire, put hotels on, and they’re right at the start of the board. If you overshoot go, you’re PAYING $250 instead of recieving $200 if you land on baltic. And you, as the owner of the brown properties would either get $250 or $450 everytime.

    All for just $610 to buy both, and upgrade them both to hotels.

    Kushan ,
    @Kushan@lemmy.world avatar

    Statistically, the best properties to have are the ones just after jail. Everyone who passes go still has to pass them, while those who get sent to jail also have I pass them. The organge properties are the best, because the average dice roll is 7 and from jail that lands you right on them.

    Coasting0942 ,

    He’ll live long enough to end up on the wrong side of the polygamy rights fight. But I’d like to be surprised.

    thisbenzingring ,

    I imagine he will be an old and gray man and someone will ask him his opinion and it will probably be like

    What? Are you fucking with me? I didn’t give a shit what people did behind closed doors 40 years ago, what fuckin made you think I would care now? Are you fucking mental? Did your daddy not love you enough? Get the fuck out of here, your making my blood pressure spike…

    VerticaGG ,

    Polygamy: Mormons, etc. generally opposes womens rights.

    Polyamory: Ideally places noone above another, elevates everyone to have the healthy connections such that noone is a “3rd wheel” or more disposable. Less about “polycules” recruiting new members, and more about individuals pairing with new partners, and existing partners (initially at least) gaining a metaphor. Mileage may vary and the point is everyone’s needs are a bit different and shouldnt feel pressured to fit neatly into a nuclear box.

    Just fyi.

    rooroo ,

    The fuck is that even supposed to mean

    Coasting0942 ,

    Five guys and five gals will be arguing they have a right to share DNA amongst each other and make a single kid, giving them all parental rights. Religious right will have their scheduled stroke. Most of the population won’t care. Internet trolls will be screaming how it’s a United Nations plan to depopulate the planet.

    Or basically any legal recognition for polygamy.

    Syrc ,

    Five guys and five gals will be arguing they have a right to share DNA amongst each other and make a single kid

    …Is that even possible? I thought humans could only have exactly two parents biologically? If I didn’t misunderstand, I’m legit curious about this.

    Coasting0942 ,

    We’ve already reached two lesbians with their combined dna being carried by a surrogate (which has extra dna effects as the carrier). With further dna advancements it should be possible to mix up multiple parents dna.

    Syrc ,

    Is it this one? I’m far from an expert but it seems like they used a different part of DNA from each woman, I doubt it’s possible to go beyond 3 parents with the same method.

    huginn ,

    Polyamory isn’t cheating though.

    Cheating is, by definition, sex with another person against your partner’s will.

    RizzRustbolt ,

    Healthy relationships have ridiculous hall-passes that share at least one person in common.

    huginn ,

    It’s not cheating if it’s consensual.

    maegul ,
    @maegul@lemmy.ml avatar

    Yea. It’s almost like caring about your craft and being motivated chiefly to just make good things and fix things … aren’t terrible character traits?!?

    jj4211 ,

    Another interesting thing to consider.

    To be clear, he is rich. But he’s not crazy crazy rich, like nowhere near billionaire status.

    With that in mind, his kernel is a key component of RedHat’s, SuSE’s and Canonical whole business, with at least two of those being multi billion dollar businesses.

    His kernel is a key component of Android phones, which represent over 50 billion a year in hardware spend, and a bunch of software money on top of that.

    His kernel is foundational to most hosting/cloud services with just mind blowing billions of revenue quarterly.

    It’s used in almost every embedded device on the planet, networking gear, set top boxes, thermostats, televisions, just nearly everything.

    People with a fraction of that sort of relevance are billionaires several times over. A number of billionaires owe much of their success to him. Yet he is not among their numbers.

    Now there’s more to things than just a kernel to be sure, but across the hundreds of billions of dollars made while running Linux, there was probably plenty of room for him to carve out a few billion for himself were he that sort of person, but he cares about the work more than gaming the dollars. I have a great deal of respect for that.

    Means that while he may not always be right, but I at least believe his assessments are sincere and not trying to drive some grift or cover some insecurity about being left behind.

    sudo , (edited )

    git is a way more important contribution to the world that the linux kernel IMO. Its basically the assembly line of almost all modern software production. And Linus actually wrote most of the initial code for it. With Linux he organized the project but was almost immediately not a major contributor. He developed git in the process of maintaining the linux repo.

    RecluseRamble ,

    I disagree. Git is great but we’d have done fine with Subversion or whatever. Could you imagine the whole internet running on Windows Server though? The thought alone makes my skin crawl.

    emptiestplace ,

    You probably need to learn a bit more about VCS fundamentals if you think Subversion would’ve been fine.

    RecluseRamble ,

    Well, I don’t know what you mean, so possibly? I just briefly used SVN in a small team for about half a year and would never claim to be an expert. It’s alive and kicking though, so regardless what you say I don’t believe it’s a complete clusterfuck and a world without git would be doomed.

    emptiestplace ,

    Torvalds didn’t create git because he was passionate about version control systems, he created it because the existing solutions were not adequate.

    Git is a distributed version control system (DVCS) that facilitated a fundamental shift in how people collaborate on software projects in general. So, comparing it to SVN and downplaying the significance of Git suggests you’ve kind of missed the point.

    Edit: with you on the other thing though - fuck Windows.

    RecluseRamble ,

    Geese, then take whatever else if working in a remote location without upstream access is important to you (note that I originally wrote “Subversion or whatever”). It’s just version control, not rocket science.

    I’m a git devotee myself, love it despite its growing redundancies. But I am able to imagine a world without it and don’t tremble in fear. That’s all I said here.

    emptiestplace ,

    You’re thinking in terms of a single dev using revision control, but the person you responded to was referring to the higher level aspects of software development that git facilitates. In other words, you’ve completely missed the point.

    As for the Linux kernel, if it hadn’t come along, we’d likely be living in FreeBSD-dominated world. Or, perhaps Hurd would’ve received more attention.

    Kushan ,
    @Kushan@lemmy.world avatar

    I’m old enough to remember the SVN days (he’ll, even the CVS and…dare I say it… source safe days).

    Git is fantastic. It’s pretty universally uses because it’s the best dvcs out there and it’s free. It wipes the pants with the likes of mercurial.

    In certain industries (such as gaming) there’s still a strong hold by perforce but we can ignore that as it’s proprietary and a bit specialised.

    Anyway, as great as git is for making things easier and cleaner when dealing with distributed development, it by no means makes something impossible “possible” - it just makes it a hell of a lot easier.

    The Linux kernel on the other hand enabled a lot of impossible things. Remember back in the day there wasn’t anything free and open source in the operating system world, it was all proprietary and licensed. If you wanted to create your own operating system, you basically had no option but to spend a fortune either writing your own kernel or licensing someone else’s (and the licensing part means you cannot distribute it for free).

    The fact that the FSF has always wanted to write their own OS and never been able to achieve it without the Linux Kernel, in spite of them essentially writing “everything else” that makes up an operating system, shows just how nontrivial this is.

    emptiestplace ,

    Do you think the existence of the Linux kernel might’ve had an effect on how Hurd was prioritized? Also, FreeBSD wasn’t too far behind, chronologically.

    I’m not saying Linux is unimportant (or even less important), but I think some folks here are pretty clueless about the significance of widespread DVCS adoption.

    iopq ,

    Pijul and similar patch-based systems are a lot better. They match my understanding of independent changes combining. git does the stupidest thing and just compares states - which means it has less information to automatically merge correctly

    Ledivin ,

    lol. I’m old enough to have worked with SVN (and many others) as part of my day job, and I promise you that 99% of git users use literally the same exact workflow as they did/would have under any other VCS. Git’s fine, but it’s neither revolutionary nor important from a user’s perspective.

    iopq ,

    Free software would be just using freebsd or whatever, it wouldn’t be that different

    Zekas ,

    Can’t two things both be important in different ways? Why must we always relativise?

    iopq ,

    git is why we can’t have nice things

    There’s many better VCS, but everyone just goes on GitHub and uses git.

    I dread ever having to touch it. The CLI is unintuitive, the snapshot system is confusing, and may God have mercy on your soul if you mix merging and rebasing

    sudo ,

    Mercurial or darcs?

    iopq ,

    Pijul, actually

    sudo ,

    darcs_rs

    yogurtwrong ,
    @yogurtwrong@lemmy.world avatar

    Well, I think Linus Torvalds is one of the rare rich people who actually “deserves” being rich.

    I think the main motive behind leftism should be stopping 8 people from owning the 50% of the world’s wealth, not to distribute Linus Torvalds’ 50 million dollars which a well deserved amount of wealth for someone who created the OS which runs the modern world.

    Besides, what Linus owns is not even a droplet compared to billionaires like Bezos, Musk or Bill Gates

    jj4211 ,

    I think it’s a shining example of the ‘right’ sort of rich. Despite a significance that overwhelmingly exceeds usual billionaire level, he’s not nearly so ‘rich’ and yet he has enough to just not worry about money, but he has earned it.

    nilloc ,

    It’s a contribution thing. He contributed enough to society to deserve to not worry about money for the rest of his life. It’s rare though since we have a bunch of billionaires who skim the rewards from huge swaths of the population who also have contributed their part.

    The financialization of retirement is a huge part of the problem for the middle class (or what’s left of it, upper-lower-class is probably more accurate). We have to invest in these assholes in order to save for retirement. The harder workers in services, laborers, and fields don’t even get that.

    captainlezbian ,

    He just seems frustrated. And I respect that. I’m a nerd who’s often frustrated as well.

    IronKrill ,

    Or we could just… not glorify people we barely know and invariably be disappointed when it comes out they’re flawed some way or another.

    possiblylinux127 ,

    Its good to see some antileftism once in a while. We need some other perspectives. I didn’t think we’d get it from Linus but here we are.

    ikidd ,
    @ikidd@lemmy.world avatar

    You might want to re-read that.

    Serinus ,

    Maybe it’s just really lazy spin? I could see it as a creative tactic poorly executed by AI.

    ABCDE ,

    You don’t know what you’re on about and you cannot read.

    SoleInvictus ,

    WHOOOOSH

    bulwark ,

    I wonder what direction the Linux kernel will go once he’s gone. Obviously it will continue to go on and Torvalds should get a statue somewhere if he doesn’t already have one.

    maegul ,
    @maegul@lemmy.ml avatar

    I don’t follow thinigs closely at all, but I’m under the impression he’s already starting to kinda take his hands off of the wheel? If so, maybe that picture is emerging now, at least behind the scenes.

    Rustmilian ,
    @Rustmilian@lemmy.world avatar

    Linus hasn’t written kernel code in years at this point, however he still is the final gate keeper of what gets merged and an active code reviewer, he manages the entire direction of the project.

    As of what will happen when Linus passes, that’s already been decided. The position of projects leader will go to his most trusted project co-maintainer, which we have a good idea of who that is.

    Andrenikous ,

    For the uninformed, who is that?

    Rustmilian , (edited )
    @Rustmilian@lemmy.world avatar

    There are a few candidates, the most prominent are probably :

    • Greg Kroah-Hartman: Played a pivotal role in stabilizing the memory management subsystem and enhancing block I/O performance, both critical areas for system stability and performance.
    • Sage Sharp (formally Sarah Sharp) : Instrumental in the development and maintenance of the networking subsystem and the ARM architecture code, ensuring compatibility and efficient networking for various ARM-based devices.
    • Git Junio Hamano: Maintainer of Git, the version control system that underpins Linux development. His leadership in maintaining Git ensures smooth collaboration and efficient code management for the vast kernel developer community.

    Greg Kroah-Hartman is speculated to be the most likely candidate, but it also depends on a few factors. Like, if Linus dies suddenly vs dying slowly or just stepping down, there’d be a big difference in selection process.

    Ofc, things may change in the future and there’s many other talented developers who can be considered. Nothing is set in stone.

    Andrenikous ,

    Thanks for the details. With things heading more and more towards arm architecture I’m surprised Sarah Sharp isn’t the leading candidate. But this is all new to me so what do I know lol

    Rustmilian , (edited )
    @Rustmilian@lemmy.world avatar

    It’s not like they couldn’t be chosen, they have some serious stake in it. Consider their achievements and read the following :

    Here are some key qualities a potential successor should possess :

    • Deep understanding of the Linux kernel: Intimate knowledge of the kernel’s codebase, architecture, and development process is essential.
    • Proven leadership skills: The ability to effectively guide a large team of developers with diverse technical backgrounds and priorities.
    • Strong communication and collaboration: Excellent communication skills to bridge the gap between developers, and foster a collaborative development environment.
    • Technical merit and reputation: A well-established reputation within the Linux community for technical contributions and code quality.
    • Vision for the future: A clear vision for the future direction of the kernel, ensuring it remains relevant and innovative.

    I’d say they meet most if not all of them. All of the potential candidate’s are amazingly talented and determined individuals.

    PhlubbaDubba ,

    He did rule that Rust can be included in the kernel code a bit ago, but IIRC that’s the last big thing he did with Linux as of late.

    thejoker954 ,

    They should do something like GNU from discworld in the code.

    AFC1886VCC ,

    Chaddiest Chad to ever Chad

    grrgyle ,

    I remember this. That was a great day to be on the internet.

    Neato ,
    @Neato@ttrpg.network avatar

    That guy seems pretty rad.

    Pacmanlives ,

    Yeah, I would say he has stayed in line with Finnish politics based on how I know of them

    diffusive ,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    dubyakay ,

    Are you replying to the right comment?

    diffusive ,

    Clearly misread the tone of the comment 😃 nvm

    abbadon420 ,

    For a rant, that made complete sense. It missed all of the unhinged outcries, alternative facts and illogical reasoning we’ve come to expect of modern day rants.

    xenspidey ,

    Right, his talk about how he’s not very good at computers is pretty funny. I don’t understand the crypto hate on Lemmy. Although I guess I don’t understand a lot of why things are hated here. I guess crypto is too close to capitalism maybe? Freedom is frowned upon here.

    Ciderpunk , (edited )

    Crypto is hated because it’s an MLM for terminally online people.

    It gains value because people want it and people want it because it gains value is both a perfect description of cryptocurrency and scams.

    SchmidtGenetics ,

    It gains value because people want it and people want it because it gains value is both a perfect description of cryptocurrency and scams.

    Or gold, or any other precious metal, or any other currency really for that matter….

    Ciderpunk ,

    Tangible items can have utility in the real world, where cryptocurrencies can never be anything more than numbers on a display.

    Gold can be used in electronics, and I get that people are mad that currencies are just something we all mutually agree have value, but generally speaking powerful governments back those up. Cryptocurrency is backed up by people promising it’s totally gonna be a real currency any second now. Please ignore that crypto can wildly fluctuate in value which generally a horrible thing for a currency to do.

    SchmidtGenetics ,

    Haven’t multiple governments accepted it as real currency at this point? The arguments are valid, but fall flat when you actually look into each.

    Hell diamonds are valuable because of artificial scarcity, so that’s a wrench in every precious metal argument….

    Ciderpunk ,

    The only two countries that accept bitcoin as a legal tender are noted powerhouses El Salvador and the Central African Republic… not exactly world leaders.

    dustyData , (edited )

    Yeah, El Salvador, people from there told me quite recently that it’s not at all what the government propaganda is trying to sell. Nobody uses Bitcoin and it is only accepted by a few state institutions. As for Venezuela, we had Petros for a while, now the shitcoin has been completely phased out and discontinued since nobody but a few oligarch used it to launder money.

    Rustmilian ,
    @Rustmilian@lemmy.world avatar

    No, no major government has completely adopted cryptocurrency as legal tender. El Salvador became the first country in the world to do so in September 2021, but there have been significant challenges :

    • Volatility: Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are known for their price swings, making them less than ideal for everyday purchases.
    • Consumer protection: Concerns exist about the risks faced by Salvadoran consumers, especially those unfamiliar with the complexities of cryptocurrency.
    • Business adoption: Businesses have been slow to embrace Bitcoin due to technical hurdles and a lack of customer demand.

    Cryptocurrencies are still considered too volatile and risky by most governments for everyday transactions.

    MeekerThanBeaker , (edited )

    And crypto is more stable than some governments’ real currency. It’s been a life saver for some people.

    It’s also a lot faster for transactions than normal banking when sending money to people in other countries.

    It’s still in the early days… like email in the late 80s / early 90s. It should get better, but there’s so much crap and scams out there right now. It’s still very much the wild west. It’s like Wall Street on acid.

    EDIT: people downvote but don’t say what was wrong. Awesome.

    NotMyOldRedditName ,

    They downvote the truth and/or facts when they are contrary to the hive mind.

    SchmidtGenetics ,

    The circlejerking and hive mind on Lemmy is shockingly worse than Reddit somehow. Not what I ever expected.

    Tachikoma741 ,

    Well you’re talking about a technology that can obsolete VISA and MasterCard and their predatory transaction fees!. There’s a lot of money riding on cryptographic currencies taking off or not.

    NotMyOldRedditName ,

    Taking on Visa and Mastercard is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to things like smart contracts.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    You could very well make the argument that ultimately crypto is backed by energy, which is something we all agree has value. Without energy, you can’t go to work, heat or cool your house or anything like that. If you believe that electricity is fundamental for society, then by extension, crypto is backed by the most fundamental force that there is even bigger than a government.

    Ciderpunk ,

    Hard disagree here, I literally cannot access a cryptocurrency without power but I can absolutely pay cash to buy some water during a power outage.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Sure you can. There’s absolutely nothing stopping somebody from putting a private key on a piece of paper and loading money onto it and spending it physically as long as the private key has not been exposed. Kind of like those Amazon scratch-off gift cards. And just to prove my point, take a look at this.

    en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Casascius_physical_bitcoins

    Ciderpunk ,

    Yes I’m sure the 7-11 cashier would love for me to try this.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Depends on who the 7-11 cashier is. If they are really smart, they would gladly take your crypto and pay for your items with their fiat. You are not going to get big places using it first. You are going to get little places using it first. The Amazon’s and 7-11’s and Walmart’s of the world will come later. And trust me, they will come. There’s a natural tipping point apparently, where when 5% of the world population uses something, the other 95% generally soon follow, because it’s more useful. Crypto has already hit that 5% mark.

    TheGrandNagus ,

    Any day now bruh, trust me

    FanBlade ,

    But it’s not backed by energy.

    The energy was consumed in the process of creating the crypto, that energy no longer exists and since it doesn’t exist it can’t back anything.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Isn’t there a person that famously said something to the effect of energy is neither created nor destroyed, only modified? I want to say it was like Isaac Newton or something. Some big name anyway. So you’re not destroying the energy. You’re changing the energy into heat, which during the winter can heat your home as a subsidy to your furnace, and you are turning it into a digital representation that you can take and spend anywhere in the world.

    FanBlade ,

    Still not describing anything that indicates it backs it.

    Good news though, I did reply again so feel free to condescendingly demonstrate your intelligence again.

    TheGrandNagus ,

    I get you’re desperately trying to sound smart, but in this context, “energy” meant electricity. Because that’s what it takes to produce cryptocurrency. Not the general definition in the realm of physics study. And electricity can most certainly be created and destroyed.

    When you buy gold, you have the gold. It’s backed by the thing you have.

    When you buy cryptocurrency, you don’t have the electricity that was spent in fabricating those numbers. You don’t get sent a battery in the post. You have nothing.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    So if I have nothing, why are people willing to give me things for it?

    TheGrandNagus ,

    Again trying to sound smart. You have nothing tangible. You have numbers on a screen, and for some people that’s enough to throw money at.

    Nice attempt at moving the goalposts, btw.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Mind telling me what most people use on a daily basis because numbers on the screen seems pretty common.

    TheGrandNagus ,

    Their local currency. You know, that thing we were talking about? If you’ve forgotten you could’ve just scrolled up for a quick refresher.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Yes, but how do they interact with their local currency? Do they hold it in their hands? No, they don’t. It’s all numbers on a screen.

    TheGrandNagus ,

    You’re not understanding. Real money isn’t only numbers on a screen. It can be physical or not, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that it’s universally backed and usable.

    Crypto isn’t. It’s just numbers on a screen without the backing of government, business, or most people.

    MBM ,

    In this case the heat is something data centers spend even more energy and water on to dispose of

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Which is why Monero’s proof of work algorithm ends up being better than Bitcoin. Because for a data center with tons of computers, it makes more financial sense to do something else with the machines rather than mine. But for a home user, it makes tons of sense to mine and get the heat to subsidize their electricity bill during the winter.

    indepndnt ,

    Except that’s not what “backed by” means. It consumes energy. You can never exchange cryptocurrency to get the energy that it consumed back.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Have you tried running a cryptocurrency miner during the dead of winter? It makes your electricity bills quite a bit lower. That’s for certain.

    ccunning ,

    You could very well make the argument that ultimately crypto is backed by energy

    Crypto is just evidence energy was used. It’s not stored energy.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Oh, but it is, because you could exchange it for something else. As an example, I can take mine and go exchange it for groceries.

    Rustmilian ,
    @Rustmilian@lemmy.world avatar

    You can also use it to… pay for that energy you just used… Hooray!! /s

    shortwavesurfer ,

    I’ve recently been hearing a lot about mining, consuming energy that either would not exist otherwise, or would be wasted. For example, places in Africa can build like a hydroelectric power station, but don’t have the money to run lines far enough for all the energy from the power station to be used, so they give most of it to a crypto mine and let the residents use the rest. If the residents ever need more power, then the crypto mine can shut down temporarily or slack off on their usage in order to provide the residents with more power.

    Rustmilian , (edited )
    @Rustmilian@lemmy.world avatar

    You know what else they could do? Store it… in batteries… which are reliable for long term storage… and aren’t nearly as volatile… and use it on stuff that generates more value per watt consumed… For example, batteries can be used to power homes and businesses, which can help to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and improve air quality e.g. improving quality of life which generates a shit load of value. Batteries can also be used to provide backup power in case of a blackout, which can be essential for critical infrastructure such as hospitals and data centers. I just don’t see how most crypto currency can compete in this space… maybe something highly power efficient? But even then the value is extremely volatile.

    Tachikoma741 ,

    Also consider that many peoples (me) would like to move from the older cryptocurrencies that needs lots of power to run (proof of work) and try to advocate for newer proof of stake models.

    To my understanding proof of stake models have dramatically lower power requirements.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Yes, but they are also quite a bit easier to take over and destroy because governments can just print their fiat and buy up a large amount of that currency and then kill the network.

    SlopppyEngineer ,

    I haven’t seen an exchange where I can trade in Crypto for kilowatt-hours.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Coinsbee.com allows you to purchase debit cards, which you can then use to purchase kilowatt hours.

    TheGrandNagus ,

    Translation: actual currencies can be used to purchase energy, but cryptocurrency cannot.

    What you’re saying is precisely like saying “I know a guy that trades turnips for money. Therefore turnips are a great currency that you can buy anything with.”

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Sure, you can’t buy energy with crypto directly yet. But that would make total sense for a power company to accept crypto in the future.

    TheGrandNagus ,

    If it made sense they’d be doing it, no?

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Not yet, the government has their regulatory screws too deep into them, so they can’t innovate like that.

    TheGrandNagus ,

    Where are these laws that state energy companies cannot accept crypto as payment?

    shortwavesurfer ,

    I don’t know of any laws specifically against them accepting it, but I think it’s probably demand-based because only about one-fourth to one-fifth of US citizens use crypto currently. I think that number will grow over the years.

    TheGrandNagus ,

    So no laws them. And 25% of the US using crypto. That’s surprising. Got any proof of that? That seems remarkably high. You could even say unbelievably high.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Thank you. I’m glad you pointed out my mistake. That 25% is world use of crypto, not just US.

    cointelegraph.com/…/american-adult-crypto-use-dro…

    TheGrandNagus ,

    No they don’t lmao. Do you really believe that? That 1 in 4 people use cryptocurrency?

    LotzaSpaghetti ,
    @LotzaSpaghetti@sh.itjust.works avatar

    Thank you Nagus for your financial insights.

    TheGrandNagus ,

    The only currency I give a damn about is gold-pressed latinum, damn it!

    Serinus ,

    Okay, go buy some of Rudy Giuliani’s gold then. Enjoy.

    Lucidlethargy ,

    Gold is actually used as a critical component in the creation of computers and other vitally important industries.

    SkyNTP ,

    It gains value because people want it and people want it because it gains value

    This describes pretty much all moneys.

    Cryptocurrencies have a lot of problems, but being a medium of exchange without intrinsic value is not one of them.

    Ciderpunk ,

    People generally don’t trade currencies as commodities or treat them as investments. When the same people promising crypto is totally a currency actually start treating it like a stable currency to exchange for goods and services and not an investment or commodity to be traded, I might revisit it. For now, the evangelists refuse to walk the walk.

    Entropywins ,

    A metric shit ton of people use currencies as investments. Forex trading is pretty big and been around a long time.

    Ciderpunk ,

    I said generally. Your parents who get paid in local currency for their job are not trading in foreign currencies. The fact that rich people can find ways to squeeze more money out of just about anything isn’t a win for cryptocurrencies.

    SlopppyEngineer ,

    The main test is to give cryptocurrency to my grandparents and they should be able to figure that out and do their grocery shopping. I pity the people having to explain how to use cryptocurrency to my grandparents at the cash register.

    Tachikoma741 ,

    Kind of the same idea as explaining how tap your card/phone or credit cards work though.

    TheGrandNagus , (edited )

    Not really. “Take your card out of your wallet, and instead of putting it in the machine and typing your pin, you just tap it against the screen”

    Vs “well, ok. I set up a wallet for you. No it’s not a real wallet, it’s on your computer. Anyway, your wallet has this huge long code that you can’t remember, so keep it safe, because if you lose it you lose all your money, ok? Right, well before you buy anything, you’ll need to register with an exchange, there are a number of exchanges, like XYZ, so sign up with one of those, then — wait what do you mean you don’t know how? Just give them your email and whatever else they need… you don’t know your email address? Christ on a bike. Ok we’ll sort that out soon — anyway, back to the exchange… go onto their site and trade your cryptocurrency (the weird money in your wallet… no not your real wallet, grandad, your computer wallet), now you need to wait a while for the transaction to happen and you to receive your money. Now you can go to the shop and pay by card. Amazing, isn’t it? And it’ll only get better when everywhere accepts [coin], I’m sure that’ll happen any day now!”

    TheBat ,
    @TheBat@lemmy.world avatar

    “Bank pays seller on your behalf and then you pay the bank” vs however the fuck you want to explain the clusterfuck of crypto

    Tachikoma741 ,

    My parents do this regularly. There are many Latino American families who regularly exchange USD to PESO and vise versa.

    sazey ,

    You have obviously have not heard of forex and the vast quantity of money that flows through it on a daily basis if you think currencies are not traded as commodities, nor have you heard of places like Argentina or Turkey apparently if you don’t know currencies are treated as investments.

    There are many many scams in cryptoworld but there is no need to throw out the baby with the bath water as it were. Crypto can and is being used as valid alternative to fractional reserve issued currency; the thriving and resilient darknet proves it so.

    TheGrandNagus , (edited )

    generally

    I don’t think that’s how the typical guy/gal you’d bump into on the street uses their bank balance.

    sazey ,

    I appreciate and applaud anything that can even attempt to separate state and money. That will imho be the best thing for humanity since the separation of state and religion.

    Tachikoma741 ,

    I look forward to the day VISA and MASTERCARD become obsolete! Please save my aunt’s small business from predatory transaction fees. ♥

    TheGrandNagus , (edited )

    I have no like of transaction fees but… you know they exist in the cryptocurrency world right? And that they’re generally higher? Those transactions take work and aren’t done out of charity.

    TheBat ,
    @TheBat@lemmy.world avatar

    I look forward to the day VISA and MASTERCARD become obsolete!

    Compares transaction speed of credit card vs buttcoin

    Lmao

    Tachikoma741 ,

    Buttcoin is pretty slow. To my understanding many other coins have already evolved past Bitcoin’s slow ass speed.

    Tachikoma741 ,

    How does this working into Foreign Exchange? This also sounds a lot like trading USD to PESO like my aunt does…

    Empricorn ,

    If crypto had pivoted to freedom and prioritized mass-adoption, it would have been great. Instead, almost everyone who invested got more people to buy in, dumped it, and got their payday. So yes, very much like capitalism.

    db2 ,

    Shitcoins yes, bitcoin no. If you fell for Craig Wright’s scams you’d fall for any other kind of scam also.

    Rustmilian ,
    @Rustmilian@lemmy.world avatar

    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 ,

    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 , (edited )
    @Rustmilian@lemmy.world avatar

    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 ,

    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 ,
    @Rustmilian@lemmy.world avatar

    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.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    You don’t get into Monero for mad gains, which is what people don’t seem to get. They are in cryptocurrency for number go up, and I absolutely despise them for it. Monero is growing in adoption, even with the government adversity towards it. It is still growing. In fact, a decentralized exchange called Haveno just launched last Tuesday which will make it completely impossible to ever actually kill Monero’s Fiat 2 Monero Exchange

    Rustmilian ,
    @Rustmilian@lemmy.world avatar

    Got some sources? Sounds interesting.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    monero.town/post/3143272

    Rustmilian ,
    @Rustmilian@lemmy.world avatar

    From your source :

    Haveno & Haveno-reto (fork)…

    👆
    👇
    💾

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Haveno is the base software where Haveno-reto is the live network based on it. Currently they have to fork it and put keys directly into the source code to be able to change networks, although that should be fixed in a future update.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    I would like to introduce you to my friend Monero. It actually gets used as a currency and has people who believe in human freedom using it, which is why the government’s hate it so much and purposely try to get it delisted from as many exchanges as they possibly can because they do not want normals like us to have it.

    Empricorn ,

    I have a long day of paying rent, then buying groceries, coffee, and fast food tomorrow. If you can detail how I will accomplish that with Monero, I am on your side. And keep in mind, “expensive, inconvenient currency-switching” may work for me, but it won’t work for most people. Be realistic.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    coinsbee.com, monerica.com.

    I have personally been purchasing my groceries every month with Monero for a year and a half now since January of 2023. I also actively search out companies that take Monero and purposely buy from them whenever possible.

    Dudewitbow ,

    the idea of crypto on its not bad on its own, its just there are a lot of bad actors agressively trying to prop up the value of some arbitrary crypto without actually selling a good or service in order to make a quick buck.

    at least teams like the one behind Axie Infinity offered a product/service. Most don’t, which is the problem.

    if your marketing essentially has to relate to other people buying into buying it, then theres a big problem.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Which is primarily the reason that I will only use Monero. It actually offers something that other cryptocurrencies do not. And that’s privacy. If you need to see which crypto to buy or use, look at the government’s efforts. The government has Wall Street accepting Bitcoin and put in people’s retirement accounts. Why? Because they can control it. Where with Monero, they’re trying to purposely get it delisted from every single exchange they can possibly get away with. Why would they be so willing for you to have Bitcoin? But not willing at all for you to have Monero? Simple. Because with Bitcoin, they can see everything you spend at all times and see your balance at all times. Where with Monero, they can’t control it and they know it. Monero is what Bitcoin people thought they bought.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Exactly. These people seem to have no idea what they’re talking about and or flip flop on issues. As an example, they flocked to open source software. The minute a billionaire bought the company they previously used, because in open source software, they finally see that no billionaire can buy it and control it like they can a closed source system. But yet, oh no, we can’t have open source money. That doesn’t make any sense.

    squid_slime ,

    Open source isn’t a buzz word that brings people flocking over, its a definition of key features. Shit products can still exist in that space.

    Syrc ,

    The minute a billionaire bought the company they previously used, because in open source software, they finally see that no billionaire can buy it and control it like they can a closed source system.

    I’m genuinely struggling to understand what this sentence means. Is it badly worded or am I just brainfarting?

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Oh, sorry. I was using voice dictation to type that and it put a period in the wrong place. That is not the beginning of a nuisance. I was intending to say that they flock to open source software the minute that a billionaire buys the thing they were using because they realize that a billionaire can’t buy open source software.

    Syrc ,

    Oh, that makes sense.

    I think “open source money” is a great idea and I’m sure many here do too, but as others pointed out in the replies, cryptocurrency has a lot of issues at the moment for that to be viable.

    Also, a lot of the hate probably comes from all the people shilling for it and the whole “get rich with this!!!” narrative around it.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Yeah, I’m not in it for those get rich quick reasons and I despise people who are. I am in it for the tech and the potential to increase human freedom around the world.

    circuscritic , (edited )

    Because it went from being a novel decentralized payment method, into a speculative asset, and finally a Wall Street commodity.

    Yes, I know there are projects where that core ethos is still relatively intact, but those aren’t what come to mind whenever people publicly discusses “crypto”.

    ShittyBeatlesFCPres ,

    I hate it in part because its adherents seem intent to relearn all the mistakes of the free banking era and constantly evangelize long-debunked economic theories. It’s like the goldbuggism of libertarian cranks of yore.

    Also, for Bitcoin specifically, the extra demand for electricity raises rates for nearby residents. It’s essentially a transfer of wealth from ratepayers. A lot of them are in Texas and if you think Texas has “excess capacity,” then explain why they literally pay bitcoin miners an absurd amount not to mine when there’s a cold snap or heat wave.

    I could go on about fraud and money laundering but I think being dumb as shit and raising electricity bills is plenty reason to hate it.

    squid_slime , (edited )

    I dislike crypto for the grift but also that people had repackaged it as a form of DRM in NFT’s, it became commercialisation in the extreme promoting materialism.

    Also Cryptos relation to libertarianism makes it very off putting.

    AIhasUse ,

    If you were not living in a powerful first world country, you would like it a hell of a lot more. It is such a luxury to not have to constantly be worried about your currency collapsing. In places like Turkiye, crypto is massively popular because their currency is constantly devaluing. There are many countries like this that many Americans and Europeans seem to forget even exist.

    It probably won’t be too long until even the spoiled nations will want to be able to hold value somewhere that isn’t free falling as well. The US is now paying more to service their debt than they are to the military. Not everyone can afford to hold their wealth in real estate and successful businesses.

    squid_slime , (edited )

    Please get fucked on assuming where i live and inturn my life style.

    If capitalism died we wouldn’t have first world countries feeding on third world countries. Crypto won’t help with this issue, you will still have american companies drilling oil out of third world countries paying workers fuck all, sweat shops will still need to be somewhere too and the capitalist would prefer it away from they’re first world country. If anything crypto will only shield the exploiters but at least the libertarian can be happy whilst getting fucked by daddy bazos.

    AIhasUse ,

    Read my comment again, you entirely missed the point. This has nothing to do with anything you pointed out. I guarantee you don’t live In a poor country because there isn’t a chance that you would have no idea how much they are benefiting from bitcoin. I’m sorry you’re so offended, but you were your ignorance so prominently that it isn’t hard to see at all. I’m also in the 1st world, but I desire to understand the whole picture enough to be able to tell. Use your anger over something you know nothing about as a guide of where to educate yourself.

    squid_slime ,

    I saw the point you where trying to make, diminishing my knowledge in the matter due to your presumption of my privileges.

    Then railroading off with how its good as poor countries are forced to invest in these schemes.

    Do you know much of rune scape gold farming? Gold farming in rune scape was very profitable. Westerners would pay slave wages to poor countries to play and farm in run scape working 60 hours, this was eventually broken up which also didn’t lead to a good outcome as a large community lost the financial structure they depended, essentially chewing up and spitting out the disadvantaged.

    Similar instances have popped up since crypto where again it has created a work force built on shaky ground which doesn’t just exploit but creates a dependency on something liable to fail.

    So again no crypto will not fix third world problems as it allows for massive exploitation.

    AIhasUse ,

    Oh my. Hold your horses buddy. Nobody is forcing poor people to buy bitcoin. People are just faced with a choice, they can hold their value in fiat currencies that corrupt governments are printing like crazy, or they hold their value in a decentralized currency that nobody has control over and nobody can print on a whim. Just because you feel like you missed out on a good investment and so you are bitter towards an entire growing industry doesn’t matter at all to people who are using it to escape corruption.

    It really isn’t nearly as complex or evil as you think it is. It really is just a way for people who have repeatedly been screwed over by corrupt politicians to escape corruption. It’s just a matter of time until more and more people around you realize the same, and eventually you will join in, albeit a bit late due to your ignorant bitterness. You do yourself no favors by being against something simply because you don’t take the time to understand it.

    squid_slime , (edited )

    like nobody is forcing the poor to drink dirty water or go without food…

    Just because you feel like you missed out on a good investment and so you are bitter

    you make a lot of assumptions. next you’ll be calling me a basement dweller.

    capitalism isn’t evil, guns aren’t evil, physical currencies aren’t evil, they are instead an easily manipulated vehicle that intern can be used for evil. crypto has proven itself with the sheer amount of scams to be easily manipulated. i don’t see crypto as complex, i have followed it since 2013 and have a good understanding of encryption and decentralized systems as well as economics.

    the main reason i don’t like or see use for crypto is that i am a socialist, crypto goes against core socialist economic values. it also pollutes as the oil cost is high, it promotes commercialization, its abusive to human psychology with fomo, it feeds into libertarianism.

    AIhasUse ,

    Poor people all over the world are less poor because they have used bitcoin to escape predatory devaluing fiat currencies. Go check out much of Africa, much of South America, Turkey, Georgia, and Southeast Asia. There are literally people eating better food and drinking cleaner water thanks to the fact that they can maintain their hard-earned value with bitcoin.

    Nobody said capitalism is bad. Nobody said guns are bad, I have no idea why you would feel the need to conflate issues. I get that you can read headlines, but dig a bit deeper, and you will actually be able to argue from thought-out stances. The crypto oil thing was a scare tactic that got thoroughly disproven many years ago. Mining is rapidly ushering in the transition to renewable energy sources. It is also preventing waste of energy that would just dissipate.

    The information is out there. It’s just up to yourself to put in the work to educate yourself. I don’t mean run around trying to find anything that will agree with your original hunches or whatever to try to guard your ego. I mean, look at it with fresh eyes and be willing to expand your view after critically analyzing the situation without bias. It is actually a good thing to be capable of arguing from both sides so that you are able to honestly weigh the situation. Right now you are just spewing old headlines that you once saw and not even attempting to make a coherent argument.

    It will only help you to educate yourself. It’s not nearly as daunting as it seems. The next step is to quit trying to defend a stance that you don’t understand and to spend some time researching and asking questions. If you had understood what bitcoin was in 2013, then you would be in a much different situation than you are in right now.

    squid_slime ,

    Speaking about guns, capitalism and currency were to give examples, and thus context. And if you can show me evidence that crypto has improved so many live in impoverished counties, maybe a crypto GDP study I would love to see it.

    I speak of gas prices as I had mined bitcoin and monero and know for a fact that my GPU was 100%, my electricity bill went up. and the crypto miner I repaired PC components for would have a repaste job every few months.

    AIhasUse ,

    Bitcoin Brought Electricity to Countries in the Global South

    Cryptocurrency Adoption in Developing Countries

    Bitcoin Spurs Major Renewable Projects From Ocean Thermal To Hydro

    BTPI will research relationship between Bitcoin and financial freedom

    A great way to really understand just how much Bitcoin and maybe some stablecoins are impacting the lives of people in poorer nations is to just go and talk to people. Spend a few weeks in Tbilisi or similar places and just walk around and talk to average people. Bitcoin is so popular amongst the average people there that many random little shops are even selling socks or Tshirts with the Bitcoin icon on them. So many lives have been saved, and the people there genuinely love Bitcoin.

    There is a huge difference between crypto and Bitcoin. There are many shitcoins that try to pretend to be the next Bitcoin or whatever, but literally 99.9% of them are absolute garbage. Luckily, they are drying up and blowing away. For people who this stuff really matters for, they are able and willing to look deep enough to see the benefits of Bitcoin and are much less likely to fall into the BS traps of CyberCoin or whatever.

    It is often the uneducated outsider that hasn’t lived the horrendous harm of horrible government currencies that are so vehemently opposed to Bitcoin. It just screams privilege, like when some spoiled trust fund kid gets mad at homeless people because they won’t just go home. When people are struggling to not drown and they find a life raft, they simply don’t care if people in yachts tell them it looks tacky.

    If you genuinely want to give this a fair shake, then Google things like “bitcoin encourages renewable energy after:2023” or “Bitcoin adoption in poor countries after:2022”. Get recent information and be open to having your mind changed. Bitcoin threatens the imbalance of power, and this is why there is a push to get people in powerful countries to not think deeply about how much it is helping the less fortunate right now. It’s just a matter of time though. Knowledge naturally spreads.

    ulterno ,
    @ulterno@lemmy.kde.social avatar

    I actually considered a non-governmental, community regulated currency as a pretty good idea.

    Problem is, crypto is too ecologically expensive and wasteful to fit the bill.

    While there were some interesting ones, that actually used the processing power for something useful, most are not. So for now, I’ll just go with governmental currencies.

    merc ,

    I actually considered a non-governmental, community regulated currency as a pretty good idea.

    That goes against the entire history of currencies. Every successful currency in history has been controlled by either the state or a religion (which was effectively state-like).

    NudistWardrobe ,

    It does go against the history of currency. And most of that history tells us why it’s a good idea to democratize currency.

    It’s also an impractical idea because most governments would not be happy about it.

    ulterno ,
    @ulterno@lemmy.kde.social avatar

    most governments would not be happy about it

    How come?
    Energy production companies would be happy no?
    Shouldn’t that make at least some govt. happy?

    NudistWardrobe ,

    It’s because they can’t control it in order to adjust the economy.

    merc ,

    And most of that history tells us why it’s a good idea to democratize currency.

    No… that history tells us that currency only exists when there’s a state / religion in control. There’s no reason for currency without a state / religion. Not only would it not work, it’s also unnecessary.

    deafboy ,
    @deafboy@lemmy.world avatar

    That goes against the entire history of currencies.

    How come? Decentralized currencies were in place long before the dictators enforced their own private currencies on to all their subjects.

    merc ,

    Decentralized currencies were in place

    Uh huh… like when?

    Mango ,

    Yeah, it’s bad at being a currency. I don’t think it’s a scam or was ever intended to be. It does however suck. Currency serves convenience. Crypto sucks at that.

    Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

    crypto is too ecologically expensive and wasteful

    Only some (proof of work) crypto is ecologically expensive and wasteful.

    ulterno ,
    @ulterno@lemmy.kde.social avatar

    Oh there’s other’s? Guess I haven’t read enough.

    But how to they manage to be decentralised?

    Ispanicus ,

    Proof of stake is one method I’ve seen, but I’m sure there are others.

    ulterno ,
    @ulterno@lemmy.kde.social avatar

    Interesting, but, giving it a quick scan, some of them look like based on personal trust and others feel kinda chicken/egg-ish.
    And I may need to read it properly first, but “holdings” feels like you probably need to buy some of it first, presumably using some other currency.

    Ispanicus ,

    Yes, that’s the usual criticism. To be able to stake, you need to have currency, promoting a rich get richer kind of scheme.

    uienia ,

    As long as they use energy they are wasteful, considering they don’t provide anything constructive for that wasted energy which could have been used for better things.

    matjoeman ,

    By this argument any website is wasteful. There’s always a “better thing”.

    iopq ,

    Banks also use energy, so banks are wasteful too

    AlexWIWA ,

    The modern tech industry needs the old Linus to pay it a visit. Too many grifts

    cmbabul , (edited )

    I for one would love for Linus, probably Woz, and a third party yet to be decided(this would be Aaron Schwartz in a better world) to be given free reign to gut the whole industry and rebuild it into something isn’t wholly based on ad revenue and grift

    Edit: a bunch of good suggestions of people I need to read about for position three. If anyone can think of a digital equivalent to Marshall McLuhan I think we desperately needs input of that sort

    kelargo ,

    John Gilmore is around

    AlexWIWA ,

    Old Linus with Woz and Schwartz is a dream.

    I understand why Linus wanted to clean up his act with people he works with. That is a good and admirable thing to do. I wish he would have kept his smoke for companies though.

    swordgeek ,

    Bill Joy.

    grue ,

    Stallman.

    very_well_lost ,

    I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as Stallman, is in fact, GNU/Stallman, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Stallman. Stallman is not a man unto himself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.

    dohpaz42 ,
    @dohpaz42@lemmy.world avatar

    I lack the creativity, but someone please come up with a recursive acronym for Stallman.

    micka190 ,

    All you need to do is make the S stand for “Stallman”, and you’ll get a stack overflow before ever reaching the other letters (so you don’t need to think of a value for them).

    baatliwala ,

    Asked ChatGPT

    Stallman Tenaciously Advocates Liberation, Leading Movements Against Non-freedom

    debil ,

    STALLMAN: Stallman The Almighty, Living Legend… Man… Anon… Null…

    ArbiterXero ,

    The only possible correct answer

    No matter what crazy shit he says, give it a few years and he will be right . And I really hate that

    betheydocrime ,

    Maybe Cory Doctorow?

    cmbabul ,

    I definitely considered just saying him outright but I don’t know quite enough about him outside of a few articles I’ve read to be certain I wanted to be so bold

    everett ,

    Be so bold.

    captainlezbian ,

    I feel like he’s definitely the person to sit in Schwartz’s seat.

    mox ,

    I wonder if those three would get along. Collaborative chemistry can be an elusive thing, even if the individuals’ principles are mostly aligned.

    Either way, I’ll bet it would be interesting.

    cmbabul ,

    It’s certainly possible they wouldn’t get along, I feel like their shared enthusiasm for tech, plus the fact that Woz can get along with even the largest and stinkiest of assholes would help

    mox ,

    I’ve never met Woz, but yes, I’ve long had the impression that his humility and sincerity reach depths seldom seen in humans, let alone in tech. Sadly, I also suspect these traits have made him easy to take advantage of in the past.

    cmbabul ,

    You are very correct, and even sadder the state of tech today is very much a result of the success of his primary exploiter

    Agent641 ,

    Ballmer, for comedy relief

    100_kg_90_de_belin ,

    And coke.

    cmbabul ,

    Can you have one without the other?

    ArbiterXero ,

    Richard stallman is the only answer.

    I really hate everything he says, but so far on a lot enough timescale he has been fucking right about everything

    slaacaa , (edited )

    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 a lot like a Ponzi scheme

    answersplease77 ,

    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.

    the_doktor ,

    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.

    KevonLooney ,

    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.

    lud ,

    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.

    Isn’t that the same as investing in any currency?

    magic_lobster_party ,

    No one is investing in regular currencies. You’re supposed to use it to buy stuff.

    lud ,

    No, people absolutely do invest in currency. It’s quite a big thing actually.

    investopedia.com/…/the-basics-of-currency-trading…

    Zacryon ,

    Forex traders are shocked.

    piecat ,

    When you invest in a company, you make products and sell them to customers.

    You mean, executives with “fiduciary responsibility” take extremely irresponsible actions to “maximize shareholder profits” and gut the company that produces those products such that the product is minimally viable, borderline shit, and might even kill the end user (Boeing, Tesla, GE, etc etc). Oh and jobs and the economy are on the line too, so that’s great.

    KevonLooney ,

    All of that is way more productive than crypto because something actually gets produced. Crypto is literally only gambling and scams, plus it’s bad for the Earth. And I have nothing against gambling, it’s the fact that vulnerable people lose tons of money thinking it’s an investment.

    Plus actual gambling is way more fun.

    piecat ,

    You’re not making the gambling more productive, you’re making the production worse.

    Zacryon ,

    That’s why you need to think about the company you’re going to invest in.

    Your critique is accurate for too many companies, yes. But by far not for all.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    See, the real crypto people are not in it for the number go up. They are in it for the technology and the human freedom that it can bring. So we don’t like those people either.

    FlyingSquid ,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    Then it’s weird how they keep telling me how much money they’ve made (and even sometimes ridiculing me for choosing not to participate).

    shortwavesurfer ,

    I mean, hell, I would like you to participate too. But I understand that may not be your thing. And that’s okay. I don’t want you to participate for some number go up mad gains stock casino thing. I want you to participate because I seriously believe that Monero can help move human freedom forward by eventually replacing government money.

    FlyingSquid ,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    I don’t have a problem with government money. If the government money no longer has value, I’m fucked regardless.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    I mean fair enough just that another money could get you out of that situation before it gets that bad. If nothing else than through bribes.

    FlyingSquid ,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    Good luck bribing someone with something that requires an electronics and communications infrastructure if things get that bad. I’d keep chickens if that was your worry.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    No power or infrastructure required.

    en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Casascius_physical_bitcoins

    FlyingSquid ,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    They can no longer be purchased.

    Not exactly apocalypse-proof.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    While the ones that do exist still exist, and that’s not to say that somebody couldn’t create other things that were similar. Just as long as the private key is not peeled away, then you know it’s actually got the value it says. And you don’t need the internet to verify that.

    FlyingSquid ,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    Okay, so let’s say the country’s economy has collapsed. People are fleeing for the border. I go up to a border guard with one of those and hand it to him… do you really think he’s going to believe that has value?

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Really depends on the country. If you are fleeing somewhere like the United States, there’s about a one in four chance that it would be recognized. If you’re fleeing some other place that has had currency issues in the past, then it’s probably quite a bit higher.

    FlyingSquid ,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    there’s about a one in four chance that it would be recognized.

    That is utter nonsense. You show me where you got that figure from.

    Or do you just mean the Bitcoin symbol? Because I doubt someone would assume a metal coin had value just because it had a Bitcoin symbol on it.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    monero.town/comment/4613276

    Edit: You are right. My bad. It’s more like a one in five. Not a one in four.

    FlyingSquid ,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    I’m not sure what you think that proves about whether or not a border guard would accept a metal coin that the briber claims has a value in Bitcoin. The guard could have $100 million in a Bitcoin wallet and still say, “this is some kind of bullshit trick.” Why wouldn’t someone try to trick a border guard like that if they were desperate.

    So basically, you’d have to hope this border guard would either be one of the very small number of people (hardly a quarter of Americans) who would look at a metal coin with a Bitcoin symbol on it and decide it has value to them.

    Again, seems like chickens would be a better bet.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Well, there aren’t many of those around. So if it’s recognized, then the person would know to look for a QR code on it. And if it has not been destroyed by peeling the hologram off, then they will know it’s good. Seems like bribing a border guard with chickens would be kind of difficult. Just for the noise they would make and the space they would take up. You might be able to pass them an ounce of gold or something. That might be a possibility.

    FlyingSquid ,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    So if it’s recognized

    Yes, this is my point. It almost certainly won’t be.

    Seems like bribing a border guard with chickens would be kind of difficult.

    Put chicken in car, drive to border, take out chicken, give to guard.

    Just for the noise they would make and the space they would take up.

    So this is a societal collapse where chickens are made illegal?

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Hey, 1/5 to 1/4 arent terrible odds. Even if they haven’t used it, there’s a damn good chance they’ve heard of it. If they’ve heard of it, then they know it has value.

    FlyingSquid ,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    Again, your ‘1/5 to 1/4’ is based on people who understand what Bitcoin is, not based on people who would see that coin and think it has value. Stop being dishonest.

    You show me evidence that these metal coins, which, again, are no longer available for purchase, are something even most people who own Bitcoin know about and think has value.

    Also, I’m guessing more than 1/4 of the people who are food insecure because society has collapsed know the value of a chicken.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    That 1 in 5 to 1 in 4 is the amount of people who have actively used crypto in some form. Everybody almost has heard about it and knows it has value, even if it’s to give it to somebody else.

    FlyingSquid ,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    Yet again, that doesn’t mean they think these metal coins have value.

    Stop conflating the two. It’s dishonest.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    The metal coin has a private key embedded underneath a hologram. The private key has never touched the internet. And so if you throw it away, that value is lost forever. So the metal coin in and of itself does have value. As long as you can physically see that the hologram has not been peeled away and the private key exposed, which would be a dead giveaway, that it has been swept and is no longer of any value.

    FlyingSquid ,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    And you think you have a one in four chance of a border guard realizing that?

    Because, again, if society is collapsing, food will be insecure, and far more than one in four people know you can eat a chicken. In fact, I would say four in four people know you can eat a chicken.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Well, if the average intelligence level I see around me… They might not know a chicken is edible. LOL. However, only more serious note. It doesn’t seem like it all goes down at once. I mean, people in Venezuela have issues for sure, but they just take their money as soon as they get it and put it into something else that will retain their value. So we won’t go from an ordered stable society to Mad Max where everybody’s stealing chickens from preppers in one day. It would take years to get there.

    FlyingSquid ,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    Ah, so this is a societal collapse where you have to bribe a border guard to get out of the country but where food is secure. I see. I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works in Venezuela, so can you give an actual example of such a situation?

    shortwavesurfer ,

    At least from what I understand, Cuba.

    FlyingSquid ,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    Can you provide an example of someone getting out of Cuba by bribing a guard with a metal coin representing a certain Bitcoin value?

    Because, believe it or not, I’ve met plenty of Cubans who just got on an airplane.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Admittedly, I have very little actual information on their situation, and it’s more just hearsay. So if you’ve met them, then you would have more information than I do.

    androogee , (edited )

    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 is gonna be worth when the market rebounds?

    shortwavesurfer ,

    I actually had the same thing happen to me because I discovered Bitcoin in 2011 and dismissed it as crazy and that the governments would never let it exist. And then several years later heard about it again in a news article and was like, wait, the government hasn’t shut that down yet and started doing some reading and really understood

    stoicwisesigma , (edited )

    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 even though they hate me) so you can feel the sensation of plastic child labor alone in your bedroom? But yeah I don’t really use crypto that much personally, too many scams.

    englislanguage ,

    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.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    This is what Monero is designed to fix.

    Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

    No, given that privacy can be turned off.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    No, it can’t. It’s built into the protocol and enforced. On other currencies such as Zcash, you can turn off privacy if you wish. But on Monero, it’s not possible to opt out at all. You either have privacy or you don’t use it at all.

    dwindling7373 ,

    Or you can record yourself buying stuff holding a newspaper and your ID.

    dukethorion ,
    @dukethorion@lemmy.world avatar

    They downvote because they hate what they don’t understand, not because you’re incorrect.

    To the crypto haters, take a real 5-10 minutes to learn about Monero and see if you can apply the same hate afterwards.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Oh, I know. And for pointing that out, you will get downvoted as well.

    Dayroom7485 ,

    lol nice rage farming 10/10.

    fine_sandy_bottom ,

    The fuck is a crypto entrepreneur?

    It sounds a bit like when arbitrage entrepreneurs were hoarding toilet paper during covid.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Trust me, real crypto people hate those guys as much as you do.

    explodicle ,

    Nope you must be trying to make money off me /s

    b3an ,
    @b3an@lemmy.world avatar

    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.

    enleeten ,

    So you’re saying it’s “Hot! Hot! Hot!”

    Tachikoma741 ,

    For clarification. To my understanding, the older cryptographic currencies use an immense amount of power (Proof of Work). But newer models have solved that issue by switching to a Proof of Stake model instead.

    b3an ,
    @b3an@lemmy.world avatar

    You are correct, but that doesn’t mean they all use the same model. Apparently in the USA, it’s as much electricity as the entire state of Utah. Also apparently Texas is a big home for it:

    Locations of 52 U.S. cryptocurrency mining operations, as of January 2024

    Asudox ,
    @Asudox@lemmy.world avatar

    I agree. Every crypto except XMR seems to be only seen as an investment to make more money.

    explodicle ,

    Why XMR and not BTC? Do the privacy defaults change how it’s seen?

    Asudox ,
    @Asudox@lemmy.world avatar

    BTC is not private. XMR is actively being used mainly on the darknet because of its superior privacy guarantees. BTC is mostly sold and bought just like investments.

    amanneedsamaid ,

    BTC is solely a mode of investment, it offers no real benefits over fiat except decentralization. At least XMR is as or even more anonymous than cash, whereas Bitcoin has zero utility.

    explodicle ,

    If there was a way to use Bitcoin more privately than USD cash, would that give it utility?

    amanneedsamaid ,

    Yes. I suppose it would also have a sort of utility if it was mass adopted and therefore practically spendable for the average person, but I would argue that there is no inherent utility to Bitcoin.

    itsmect ,

    based monerochan pfp enjoyer

    timmymac ,

    They got to him

    sibannac ,

    Who is ‘they’?

    squid_slime ,

    The worm people O.o, this is what happens when we don’t look directly at the sun for 30 minutes each day

    timmymac ,

    Either you’re dumb or playing dumb. Either way, bad look.

    flop_leash_973 ,

    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.

    Telodzrum ,

    Real Tragedy of the Commons situation.

    sardaukar ,

    The “tragedy of the commons” is misunderstood and maybe not even a thing aeon.co/…/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-is-a-false-a…

    Telodzrum ,

    It’s not misunderstood and it has been debated since it was first conceived. Your link is just an essay.

    BobGnarley ,

    Stock market and Commodities were here long before Crypto and are just as if not more gamed and manipulated.

    moon ,

    I’ve literally only made millions off of crypto. Of course this is the Internet and I don’t need to verify me making shit up, but I will continue to say so because otherwise my feelings will get hurt. If you uplemmy this comment I will send you one trillion Bitcoin, real!

    thefrankring ,
    @thefrankring@lemmy.world avatar

    Linus creates kernels. Nothing to do with cryptocurrency. Tech is tech, but I wouldn’t necessarily listen to him about other things than kernels and computers. For example, he doesn’t even believe in FOSS, and he openly supports Google because of Android, Chromebooks and ChromeOS using Linux.

    Engywuck ,

    This. One could find a lot of smart people “believing” in crypto (whatever this means), while being unrelated to them, and their opinion would mean nothing as well.

    thefrankring ,
    @thefrankring@lemmy.world avatar

    Of course, Linus is a kernel expert. Not crypto. I have nothing against him. I wouldn’t listen to the US president about kernel either. If you need crypto advice, listen to a crypto expert. Not sure why my comment gets downvoted but it seems common sense to me.

    takeda ,

    If after 16 years you still have to be asked if you believe in crypto, then chances are that it is a scam.

    MataVatnik ,
    @MataVatnik@lemmy.world avatar

    Good point, I always wondered if there is a way the technology will evolve and somehow find a niche that’s unexpected. But you’re right, 16 years is a long time to be meandering.

    AIhasUse ,

    It’s such a first-world thing to not understand all the good that crypto has done. There are countless lives that have been financially saved by having a safe place to hold wealth while their countries’ fiat collapsed. It’s just a short matter of time until many first world folks understand this as well.

    Traister101 ,

    Sounds like the same shit those rare metal guys are always yapping about but with extra scams…

    AIhasUse ,

    Yeah, probably, don’t worry about it, it’s all a bit complex so probably all just the same thing, who knows. No way to tell really. You’ll be fine without digging too deep into this stuff, it’s difficult to understand.

    fine_sandy_bottom ,

    Do you think it’s weird how your own farts smell more engaging than anyone else’s?

    moitoi ,
    @moitoi@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    Evading paying taxes is a good thing? Well no.

    Cypher ,

    Even if you live under a genocidal regime?

    al4s ,

    Yes, because infrastructure, subsidies, education and social spending still need to happen and not paying your taxes will erode those things long before they stop a genocide. If you don’t care about getting in trouble with your government, there are more effective things that can be done.

    Cypher ,

    So you’re arguing it is moral to pay taxes even if you are North Korean? Interesting.

    DPRK_Official ,
    @DPRK_Official@lemmy.world avatar

    Our citizens pay taxes out of pure love and devotion to our Dear Leader. We don’t have room for your silly Western moralities.

    AIhasUse ,

    Paying taxes is one thing, and of course it is necessary. Extra value is extracted by printing more and more money. USD used to be backed by gold, but they took that away. In addition to corrupt governments extracting value by printing more and more currency, counterfeitters also do the same. Bitcoin fixes both of these issues. There is absolutely no reason why Bitcoin and taxes can’t coexist.

    Furthermore, with bitcoin we can electronically transfer exactly how much value we want to without having to trust every single vendor with our credit/debit card numbers. Have you ever had to cancel a card because of fraudulent spends? Well, millions of Americans do every year and this also doesn’t happen with Bitcoin. You send exactly how much you want to, you don’t hand indefinite access to your funds to every single vendor to sell your information or steal from you whenever they want. In the last 2 weeks I’ve had over $400 stolen from my debit card because of this idiotic system.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    This is such a good point.

    MataVatnik ,
    @MataVatnik@lemmy.world avatar

    There was promise for people in Argentina livig under extreme inflation but I never heard it go anywhere.

    AIhasUse ,

    Look closer, it’s saving lives down there.

    MataVatnik ,
    @MataVatnik@lemmy.world avatar

    I’m from Argentina, if you can pass me some articles I’d love to read them. It’s something I’ve been interested in

    AIhasUse ,

    Traditionally clever Argentinians have used USD to escape the collapsing currency, but over the last couple of years, there has been a massive shift to doing this with Bitcoin and some stablecoins. Personally, I would just go for Bitcoin, but I do understand that there is less variance with stablecoins, so they may be a bit more practical for some people. Here is an article that goes into this.

    bloomberg.com/…/bitcoin-gains-dim-argentines-doll…

    Rivalarrival ,

    For all the reasons that crypto is a scam, every “value” stock - stock which does not now, and never has any intention of ever paying dividends - is also a scam.

    TheBat ,
    @TheBat@lemmy.world avatar

    Lolok

    vaultdweller013 ,

    Its almost like both the stock market and crypto are bullshit, whoduv thunk it?

    Willy ,

    It’s almost like money isn’t real.

    vaultdweller013 ,

    I didnt say that, money is real because its backed by a source be it government or otherwise. Having a currency has a rather obvious use case, having a liquid form of exchange to represent wealth is useful and eases things. Hell it doesnt even have to be paper or metal, it could be bullets, bottlecaps, seashells, or be rocks.

    Rivalarrival ,

    Money is real in exactly the same way that zero-dividend shares are real, or that cryptocurrency is real.

    The difference is that the government can freely adjust the value of money, and anyone can create shares. Cryptocurrency can only be generated per the conditions of an algorithm.

    vaultdweller013 ,

    Yes but also no, what im trying to say is that currency is in and of itself real. Real currencies are backed by something be it metals, food, water, military, or the entire fucking economy of a region or nation. Cryptocurrency is only backed by hopes dreams and energy wasting mathematical formulas, also I can use a 20 dollar bill practically anywhere in exchange for goods I cant use a crypto wallet or some shit in many places.

    Rivalarrival , (edited )

    It is real because the people who use it believe it is real. Same goes for zero-dividend stocks, crypto, Yu-Gi-Oh cards, Beanie Babies, etc. The difference between currency and any ofbthese others is only in the number of people involved.

    You can point to government regulations for money. You can point to SEC regulations for stocks and other securities. I can point to algorithmic scarcity for crypto. And I am sure there are standards that various collector communities deem important. But, the fundamental concept value for any of these others is that the people using it believe it has value.

    vaultdweller013 ,

    Common trade goods within a barter arent necessarily a currency. Bronze wasnt a currency during the bronze age, mostly because currency wasnt invented yet. Every item you listed isnt a currency they are valuable trade goods at best, currency needs a general degree of universal acceptance, I couldnt go into say a grocery store and pay for my food with yugioh cards, beanie babies, or zero dividend stocks the same applies to crypto.

    To use these goods in a trade one must generally convert them into a useful trade form say USD. Just cause they are valuable doesnt mean anyone will use them as a currency, sure you may get the occasional place that does but yet again near universal acceptance is an important factor.

    On a similar note Russian Rubles arent a currency outside of Russia since they are worth less than monopoly money. Similarly the currency of Joshua Abraham Norton could be considered a pseudo currency in parts of San Francisco during his lifetime, mind you it was because Norton was funny and kind of a meme celebrity but hey it was accepted.

    Rivalarrival ,

    Your comments about Emperor Norton and the Ruble demonstrate my point. The value of these currencies is entirely in the minds of the people using them. None of the items I mentioned have any significant intrinsic value. Their value is to the community that uses the .

    I was not suggesting that any of these items was a currency, merely that they derive their value in the same way that currency does.

    vaultdweller013 ,

    Okay now I get what youre saying, but I will say that the Russian Ruble is backed by the Russian state which is far from doing healthy. The backing of these items is based often times on peoples opinions, but say USD is still backed by the government and more specifically the military and economy as well. Just cause its esoteric doesnt mean its not real. The backing maters not the form it takes.

    Rivalarrival ,

    There are plenty of places I can take you where your $20 bill isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. There is nothing particularly special about a dollar bill that makes it fundamentally different from any other intangible object.

    Again, the only difference is the size of the community that shares the belief. The dollar has a much larger user base than crypto. Crypto has a much larger user base than the Albanian Lek.

    RecluseRamble ,

    Behind a value stock is a profitable company. Behind crypto-tokens is a hilariously inefficient database with no application in real life.

    Gamble away your money, I’ll take the stock - or “have fun staying poor” like crypto-token morons like to say.

    Rivalarrival ,

    Behind a value stock is a profitable company.

    The owner of a privately held company receives those profits. The owner of a value stock does not: the company profits do not transfer to the stockholder. The shares of the company do not entitle the holder to any part of the business. The “value” of those shares are only that other people want them as well.

    Without the possibility of dividends to convey the profits to the shareholders, the profitability of the company is entirely irrelevant. The only “value” of a value stock is its desirability to other people.

    RecluseRamble ,

    A value stock means it’s undervalued compared to its fundamentals or “cheap”. It has nothing to do whether or not the company pays dividends.

    The difference to garbage like crypto-tokens is that there actually are fundamentals - a profitable company you’re buying a share of and for a cheap price. Of course there’s risk involved but you are likely to profit from this.

    Much more likely anyway than any crypto-token gamble because there’s no value underneath, only wasted energy; and yes, also with PoS or whatever - it’s all inefficient compared to a conventional database behind the firewall of a trustworthy organization. Your trustlessness rethoric is the actual lie behind this huge scam.

    Rivalarrival , (edited )

    a profitable company you’re buying a share of and for a cheap price.

    A company in which the owner receives nothing from the business operation is not a “profitable” company. Where the shareholders do not receive dividends, and have zero expectation of ever receiving dividends, the business operations of the company are divorced from the value of the share. From the perspective of the shareholder, there are no profits to consider.

    The actual “fundamentals” of such a share is nothing more than the faith that someone else will want to buy that share for more in the future, and the only reason that second person has to buy it in the future is the belief that a third person will buy it later.

    That is exactly the same “fundamentals” as crypto; the same “fundamentals” as a ponzi scheme.

    RecluseRamble ,

    This is pointless. You don’t even seem to know what profit and value are exactly, much less how the letter is increased.

    But ok, gamble away your money for worthless crap if you believe it’s the same as owning non-distributing value stock (lol). I’m not an altruistic economics teacher trying to stop you hurting yourself.

    Rivalarrival , (edited )

    But ok, gamble away your money for worthless crap if you believe it’s the same as owning non-distributing value stock (lol).

    I can point to any number of companies whose stock has proven to be worthless crap. It is the same type of gamble for both. Neither have any value arising from business operation. The value of a cryptocoin and the value of a zero-dividend share arise solely and entirely from investor faith.

    Arcka ,

    But what about all the real valuable assets these companies would have these days? Like the multitude of 5 year old PCs, 1990s era Hermann-Miller office furniture, the buildings and land they lease… /s

    AliasAKA ,

    Except, you know, the stock being tied to ownership in a company that sells real goods or services. Definitely problems with how stocks are traded, but they’re quite different from crypto.

    Rivalarrival , (edited )

    Except, you know, the stock being tied to ownership in a company that sells real goods or services.

    That’s the scam: without dividends, or at least the reasonable prospect of dividends, it is not tied to the company in any tangible way. Shareholders benefit only from speculation by other investors, and not from actual business operations.

    AliasAKA ,

    Almost. If you own a share of a company, you own a share of something fungible, namely literal company property or IP. Even if the company went bankrupt, you own a sliver of their real product (real estate, computers, patented processes). So while you may be speculating on the wealth associated with the company, it is not a scam in the sense that it isn’t a non fungible entity. The sole value of crypto currency is in its speculative value, it is not tied in theory or in practice to something of perceptibly equal realized value. A dividend is just giving you return on profit made from realized assets (aforementioned real estate or other company property or processes), but the stock itself is intrinsically tied to the literal ownership of those profit generating assets.

    Rivalarrival , (edited )

    Everything you just said is only true for stocks that pay dividends now, or may pay dividends in the future.

    It is not true for companies with zero intention of ever paying dividends.

    Even if the company went bankrupt, you own a sliver of their real product

    Historically, when that happens, the creditors walk away with the assets. The shareholders get nothing.

    but the stock itself is intrinsically tied to the literal ownership of those profit generating assets.

    That’s the scam. It’s not. In practice, the sole value of a zero-dividend stock is the speculative value.

    it is not tied in theory or in practice to something of perceptibly equal realized value.

    Electricity has value. Crypto value is intrinsically tied to mining costs. Even if you have access to a free source of power like your own solar panels, you have to weigh the cost effectiveness of mining against the revenue from using your panels to backfeed the grid, selling power back to the power companies.

    Because crypto is tied to something of utilitarian value, and zero-dividend stocks are tied only to the whims of investors, the stocks are actually a significantly greater scam than the crypto.

    captainlezbian ,

    Yeah I don’t believe in smartphones, I just have one. I don’t believe in crypto, I acknowledge it’s pointless.

    Willy ,

    It’s not pointless. It was invented for a very good reason. You’ll find out one day. It’s a shame it’s been co-opted the way it has.

    Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

    On the other hand, scams rarely last 16 years.

    baru ,

    No clue how long scams usually last, but famous ones easily last multiple decades, though funny how unclear if is when the scam started:

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madoff_investment_scandal?w…

    Federal investigators believe the fraud in the investment management division and advisory division may have begun in the 1970s. However, Madoff himself stated his fraudulent activities began in the 1990s. Madoff’s fraudulent activities are believed to have accelerated after the 2001 change from fractional share trades to decimals on the NYSE, which cut significantly into his legitimate profits as a market-maker.

    Alerted by his sons, federal authorities arrested Madoff on December 11, 2008.

    Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

    Madoff was hidden. Bitcoin is out in the open.

    I think “bubble” could be a better description. Bitcoins bubble pops regularly every 4 years.

    lemmytellyousomething ,

    Well, on the other hand, it’s still there after 16 years…

    roguetrick , (edited )

    Is this going to be the most replied to post on the Fediverse? 635 in 2 days and still going strong.

    Edit: since it’s now at 666 replies, please nobody make any more comments

    squid_slime ,

    Is there a way to check?

    roguetrick ,

    There’s a few with a thousand on top of all time for Lemmy. It would have to break those before it gets there. But since we’ve got a perfect storm of Linux, crypto, and anti ai discussions going, all we need is @PugJesus to make a top level comment about how not voting for Biden is voting for Trump to really push it over the top.

    PugJesus ,

    I didn’t realize I was so famous.

    roguetrick ,

    You and downpunxx are my most frequent mentions from my kbin days. Not that I particularly want to compare you.

    PugJesus ,

    Well, I do appreciate not being compared to THAT particular user, so thank you.

    squid_slime ,

    I’ve seen enough of pugs vitriolic, egotistical, disingenuous tirades for one day tbh.

    Cryptobros will take any opportunity to market their Ponzi scheme, even to people who seem adamantly opposed.

    Allero ,

    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.

    EngineerGaming ,
    @EngineerGaming@feddit.nl avatar

    Exactly! My usecase is exactly the same as yours.

    While massively flawed, for now it is the most viable alternative financial system we have.

    ahriboy ,

    Russians working abroad might find cryptocurrency useful.

    itsmect ,

    And a deflationary nature is known to cause bubbles.

    I mean centuries of inflationary monetary policy also caused bubbles, sooo…

    Allero ,

    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.

    itsmect ,

    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.

    Allero , (edited )

    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.

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