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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.
Donjuanme ,

It’s as if this headline were written to stir discussion on lemmy.

SolarPunker ,

Cryptos can be a useful technology in certain targeted fields but they are not the solution to capitalism, it is much more important to focus on social issues and mutual aid.

Furbag ,

I don’t believe in crypto either because it’s current value is solely derived on how much you can exchange it for real money. Outside of a few edge cases, nobody buys anything with crypto outside of the black market.

I’m sure crypto is a great solution to some finance problems related to centralized banking that I’m too lazy or dumb to care about, but I look at the energy consumption to calculate these massive chains for little tangible benefit, and the scammers and hypemen who are profiting off of other people’s hopes and desires to get rich quick on the next big boom, and I can’t help but feel like it’s an actively harmful element of society. At the very least, whatever regulations are currently in place that are attempting to reign in crypto are insufficient at reducing harm.

Sinthesis ,

Yep. When I see headlines “I made millions of dollars with Bitcoin” I giggle inside.

Wilzax ,

If Torvalds was Satoshi he would have done a lot more with those untouched bitcoin than let them sit around for more than a decade

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

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.

Veraxus ,

Thank goodness. Such a useless technology.

Scratch that… it’s not useless, because it’s great for scams and fraud. It’s actively harmful.

johny_joe_1975 ,

me too

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?

    Lucidlethargy ,

    Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, does not believe in cryptocurrencies, calling them a vehicle for scams and a Ponzi scheme.

    To be fair, that’s because Crypto is a vehicle for scams, and a Ponzi scheme.

    JackbyDev ,

    The line about safety regulations being written in blood? Financial regulations are written in bankruptcies.

    JohnnyCache ,

    I’m pretty sure most scams and ponzi schemes use US dollars.

    merc ,

    Interestingly, for a currency to actually be useful, there needs to be a demand for it, something that you can only pay for in that currency. For real currencies that is normally taxes. England only accepts taxes paid in pounds, so there’s a demand for pounds from every person who has to pay taxes in England. For crypto, extortion is basically the only source of demand.

    Sure, occasionally there are places that accept both real currencies and crypto currencies, but for legit businesses almost none of the revenue comes from the crypto side. But, for ransomware, etc. the hackers only accept crypto. That means there’s a demand for crypto, which means that it has some value.

    SatansMaggotyCumFart ,

    My drug dealer only takes payment in crypto and I think he’s too lazy to extort anyone.

    Honytawk ,

    Ok, so ransomware and illegal goods, that is the demand for crypto.

    twei ,

    do not forget unregulated crypto casinos

    interdimensionalmeme ,

    It’s mostly a threat to the state’s tax revenue and power.

    Honytawk ,

    No, no it isn’t.

    It is a threat to the finances of any crypto user:

    www.web3isgoinggreat.com

    FiskFisk33 ,

    I’m not gonna put my foot down for either side here but, to be completely fair here, so is for example the us dollar.

    StaySquared ,

    What if… crypto currency has been a psyop all along. Ultimately eliminating physical currency and government having full blown control of digital currency.

    iiGxC ,

    Use monero

    JackbyDev ,

    How? By suddenly doubling the size of the mining pool? Nah.

    Tachikoma741 ,

    The government closed the gold standard at once didn’t they? Who is to say they cannot not do the same and say physical paper money?

    JackbyDev ,

    What’s that have to do with cryptocurrency?

    Tachikoma741 ,

    Oh I’m trying to suggest that like many technologies. The infancy of it is laced with people who are scamming others. Medicine had a go about with this phase as well; and to my understanding is now widely regarded as a “good move”. Even if some dude use to sell cocaine mixed with alcohol and called it medicine because it made you feel better.

    kandoh ,

    It’ll be a bad day when crypto really crashes. A lot of guys in my generation have most of their savings in crypto. When they lose that money they are going to create a very big political problem for the rest of us.

    TheFriar ,

    It’s gambling. Why anyone would be foolish enough to invest their life savings into it is no less stupid than the trump stans dumping their savings into trump bux or that trump credit card hat was apparently going fill up with cash when trump was reinstated.

    It’s all a scam that has some likelihood of coming true if all of the right occurrences line up, no matter how unlikely. Except with crypto it’s like picking a random slot machine and somehow investing everything you have on one spin. Whereas the trump stuff is like betting on roulette, but one guy is spinning the wheel and he may just put the ball down on one of the random things and make a few people rich. Or maybe it’s more like throwing all your money into the casino toilet and flushing it because you’re too drunk to realize it’s not a slot machine.

    dwindling7373 ,

    A lot of guys in my generation have most of their savings in crypto.

    No they do not.

    amanneedsamaid ,

    When they lose that money they are going to create a very big political problem for the rest of us.

    And this will not happen 💀

    shield_gengar ,
    @shield_gengar@sh.itjust.works avatar

    I only know one 40 year old who started dumping everything into crypto (DCA, hasn’t contributed to 401k or IRA in 15 years), but he even took lower pay to work on devops in crypto.

    It’s not everyone, but they exist.

    Honytawk ,

    Nah, they are going to create a very big political problem for themselves.

    Just like how gamblers only create problems for themselves.

    Regular people didn’t dabble in crypto

    grilled_cheese_eater ,

    Good

    net00 ,

    You can just use crypto for its intended purpose and not give a shit about the whole culture around it. I frequently use it to buy gift cards not available in my country, a VPN, and pay securely without giving away all my data.

    The real issue is people coming and bastardizing the concept by trying to get rich, and treating it as some kind of gambling machine.

    He didn’t say “i don’t believe in crypto because it’s a scam” he said “I don’t believe in crypto, except on its use as a scam” so it’d be great to hear why.

    MystikIncarnate ,

    My hot take is this:

    Crypto currency, when in its infancy, had a halfway decent concept… now? It’s a shitshow.

    Crypto bros tend to argue about the main currencies, Bitcoin, etherium, etc. Meanwhile, there’s about 1000 currencies that aren’t talked about for every currency with any weight behind it.

    The main problem with CC’s is that it’s all hype and confidence based. There’s nothing tangible attached to it. I often equate it, for non-cryptocurrency people, to stocks trading. Often, stock is trading above what the actual value of the stock is. Most of the time in IPOs the price of the stock immediately jumps after the stock is released, then trends along some impression of how the company is doing. If there’s a loss in confidence in the company the value of the stock drops, etc. It’s pretty simple supply and demand beyond that. If investors have high confidence in the company to profit, demand for their stock will increase, and since supply is pretty much fixed (aside from shenanigans like stock splits and whatnot), price goes up. Same goes for the inverse, low confidence leads to low demand, price goes down.

    It’s similar with so-called crypto. Confidence goes up but supply is fairly stagnant, so the price goes up. Same with the inverse.

    The primary difference between the two as investments, is that stocks get repaid (depending on a few factors) if the company goes under. The stock represents a monetary value for assets owned by the company, both liquid and physical assets. Crypto, however, has no such backing. If Bitcoin goes away for some reason, all you’re left with is essentially digital trash.

    This is mainly true for all of the talked about cryptocurrencies. The majority of currencies are not really following the same trends. After the initial golden era of CC’s, it became a breeding ground for pump and dump schemes. Since it’s entirely unregulated, borderline impossible to regulate, and AFAIK, no such regulation exists to govern it, there’s no law against pump and dump schemes in the CC world. So it became a huge problem. We see this a lot with NFTs. Touching on NFTs for a second: if you own an NFT, all you actually own is a receipt that is an attestation or receipt that you paid for whatever the NFT is. That’s it. The content behind the NFT, whether it’s artwork or whatever, isn’t locked. It’s actually the opposite of locked, it’s publically available on the blockchain, by design. The only thing you “own” is a tag in the blockchain that says you paid for it.

    Pump and dump, for those unaware, is where you artificially inflate the value of something making it seem like a really good deal so everyone buys it, raising demand and prices, then the people who generated the hype dump their investment, cashing out when the value is high, and making off with the money while the value of the investment tanks.

    This is very very frequently the case with NFTs. Since it’s unregulated and entirely confidence based, the creators of NFTs will say whatever they have to (aka lie), to increase the confidence in the NFT, then sell it, and let the value freefall afterwards. They’ve even gone to the point of buying their own NFTs with dummy accounts for top dollar to have records on the blockchain that people can look up, which say it was sold for x amount in whatever cryptocurrency, to inspire others to think they’re getting a bargain when they get it for some fraction of that initial transaction. The perpetrators then sell and disappear.

    Several other crypto scams like this have also happened, mostly with NFTs but also with lesser known currencies. One that I heard of, required some token to exist to perform any transactions on the blockchain. When the perpetrators were done, they deleted the token, effectively locking the currency to never be traded again. Therefore those with the now digital trash of that crypto/NFC, couldn’t sell to anyone else and they were stuck with the digital garbage data that used to represent their investment.

    “Big” currencies, especially older currencies, are fairly stable in terms of confidence, but they’re still volatile, and backed by nothing more than confidence. Any “new” CCs are a gamble to see whether they’re legit at all, or just a pump and dump. The number of currencies that start high, then drop to nil and never recover, is significant.

    Here’s a controversial one, Elon Musk, for all of his flaws, isn’t an idiot. He pump and dumped Dogecoin, by tweeting about it to bolster it, then divesting when it surged from his influence. I think this was pretty obvious, but I think a lot of people missed it. IIRC, he did it twice. I’m speculating, since I don’t know which blockchain wallet is his, so I can’t verify, but, he likely picked up a crapton of Doge then did his tweet, dumped when it went high, waited for it to drop again, picked up a crapload more, tweeted again, and finally dumped at another high to earn even more. Since then, doge has not been doing superb. He inspired volatility in the currency and profited from the crypto bros getting excited about it.

    The evidence is there and when you look past the confidence game, and look at the numbers, it tells a story that most people don’t want to see.

    UnderpantsWeevil ,
    @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

    Crypto currency, when in its infancy, had a halfway decent concept

    The premise of Crypto as currency was “Lets make a currency that has a soft cap on gross volume, so nobody can ever print any more of it and its value will only rise over time.”

    Even halfway and in its infancy, it wasn’t a decent concept because

    • It presumes continued increasing cash investment (which repeated crypto crashes illustrate isn’t true)
    • It refuses to acknowledge the potential for Shitcoins

    Here’s a controversial one, Elon Musk, for all of his flaws, isn’t an idiot.

    He’s a carnival barker with a penchant for talking billionaires out of their wallets. That takes a certain kind of cunning, but its also heavily predicated on circumstance and opportunity. Had Elon Musk been born on the other side of the South African color line, he wouldn’t be a billionaire right now because Peter Thiel wouldn’t have had anything to do with him. Neither would the US military or the Wall Street banks or the East Asian automotive industry.

    He pump and dumped Dogecoin, by tweeting about it to bolster it

    The Dogecoin pump worked entirely because of the soft cap on the original Bitcoin. It wasn’t an Elon invention (Elon repeatedly failed to recreate Dogecoin magic with Shibecoin and Muskcoin and a few other shitcoins of note). Dogecoin surged as a precursor to the Stablecoin market, because you didn’t need to wait half an hour for the transaction to clear. Once you had Doge, you could trade it as a proxy for BTC.

    And this functionally became the “Central Bank printing unlimited money” solution to the problem BTC created when they objected to a central bank printing unlimited money.

    The joke about crypto is that its an object lesson in why things like the gold standard and fixed currency rates don’t work. All the natural inventions within the crypto market parallel what western financiers were doing a century ago, just with dumb cutesy nicknames and more graft.

    Skullgrid ,
    @Skullgrid@lemmy.world avatar

    The main problem with CC’s is that it’s all hype and confidence based.

    oh boy do I have some news for you about the economy

    supercriticalcheese ,

    Comparison never made much sense, everyone uses money. The same cannot be said for Bitcoin

    Skullgrid ,
    @Skullgrid@lemmy.world avatar

    everyone uses money, but “faith in the market” leads to people buying and selling or hoarding stocks, which in turn affects actual stock prices, which affects company worth, which leads to people being hired/fired, money invested or divested from companies and industries, leading to more and more effects.

    all based off “hype and confidence”. Real companies and people are affected by feelings.

    supercriticalcheese ,

    That’s faith in a business not money

    Skullgrid ,
    @Skullgrid@lemmy.world avatar

    It’s fiat currency, the value of which is determined by faith in the market and stock prices.

    You think your money has worth because it’s backed by something real? No. It has worth because people think it does.

    Edit: if everything about the USA stayed the same, but people stopped believing the USD was worth anything and started using Euros instead, the dolar would be worth nothing. It’s all based off feels.

    supercriticalcheese ,

    Again it’s because businesses make revenue, i.e. Fiat money and people trade that money and exchange it for things etc…

    WildPalmTree ,

    All very true but missing one point. Most (all?) current “regular currency” is fiat (let it be done) with no backing except tax payments and government spending. Sure, that’s not nothing but it’s also not so much something.

    Crypto, as fiat currency, has the value people ascribe to it. If it can be traded for goods and/or services, it has value. What value? Only time will tell.

    MystikIncarnate ,

    There’s a whole discussion that can be had here about the merits of most fiat currencies. My viewpoint is that the currency is essentially a “stock” note for the country. The same way stocks are a representation of the value a business has. The value of that note goes up and down (relative to other countries) as they prosper or falter financially across their entire economy.

    The fact that most currency is compared to the US dollar doesn’t and shouldn’t imply that USD is stable, instead, when they falter, all other currencies gain value, and when USD prospers, all others fall by an appropriate amount.

    There’s still some sort of backing on it, something to weigh the confidence in that currency against. It’s easier to draw that comparison between stocks because it doesn’t take as much creative thought to work out how the numbers change compared to a single fiat currency. However, I would argue that the same principles apply.

    From there we could get into the weeds with fiat currencies and national debts and whatnot; the whole global banking industry, but we get pretty far from the main topic of cryptocurrencies pretty significantly, and into the realm of whether money exists and what the concept of money actually is. That discussion would circle back to cryptocurrencies eventually in the fact that they are currencies, the many of the same ways, and in the end we wouldn’t really prove anything.

    Though, I’d like to point out that this is by far one of the best comments I’ve seen in reply to my post so far. Not that others lack merit or any reasonable discussion points, or that they are somehow not worthy of further discussion. There is a lot to say about the idea, and I don’t think anything I’ve said thus far is inherently false, nor do I think any of the replies don’t have merit, they do; but by far, this is the best discussion point so far. I commend you for your time and effort in furthering the discussion.

    technocrit ,

    Meanwhile, there’s about 1000 currencies that aren’t talked about for every currency with any weight behind it.

    Who cares? It’s an open source tech. If people want to gamble on random shitcoins, that’s not the fault of the technology.

    There are probably 10000 worthless video games for every few that are good. That doesn’t mean video games are terrible.

    Also there are scams. But there are scams with the dollar too in fact many many more. People need to be aware and defend themselves.

    It’s almost impossible for me to feel any sympathy for people who bought NFTs. Really that’s the fault of the buyer not the underlying tech.

    Sure crypto is kinda terrible but you need to consider the alternative: state paper. It suffers all the same deficiencies but even worse. Literally destroying the planet.

    Tachikoma741 ,

    To my understanding, the older cryptographic currencies are the energy consumers. Newer models have avoided the massive energy consumption. A.k.a Proof of Work vs Proof of Stake.

    drathvedro ,

    My 2c:

    Crypto, however, has no such backing. If Bitcoin goes away for some reason, all you’re left with is essentially digital trash

    It’s crypto’s weakness and it’s power is that it’s not and cannot be regulated. It acts as a protection against malicious regulations. Of course, it does bear numerous risks and should be approached with extreme caution. But I can literally remember the seed phrase and go through dozen of checkpoints and criminal neighborhoods without any risk of losing any of it, even if they rob me completely naked. It is safe as long as I’m alive and of sound mind, and probably wouldn’t really care anymore if I’m not. As far as I know, there’s nothing else in the world that could offer such a security level.

    The content behind the NFT, whether it’s artwork or whatever, isn’t locked. It’s actually the opposite of locked, it’s publically available on the blockchain, by design

    There’s not even a guarantee that the content stays up. The receipt just points to some content on some server. Or to ipfs, but ipfs isn’t magic, if there isn’t anyone on there hosting said content then it is gone. Same problem, but a lot less probable, is that if all nodes on the blockchain go offline, then the NFT itself, along with all currency, is gone.

    Pump and dump, for those unaware, is where you artificially inflate the value of something making it seem like a really good deal so everyone buys it, raising demand and prices, then the people who generated the hype dump their investment, cashing out when the value is high, and making off with the money while the value of the investment tanks

    Ideally, in a perfect world without hype and idiots, this would be a guaranteed losing scheme. Because to “dump”, you’d have to have someone who is ready to buy. If people don’t buy, then the perpetrators would have no option but to take the hit themselves. I heard this was the case when somebody managed to short logan paul’s shitcoin immediately after the pump. There should be less hype and more of that, and more frequently.

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