- 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.
You must log in or register to comment.
Crypto means cryptography, stop using it to talk about cryptocurrency.
of course linus torvalds doesn’t believe in cryptographic security, have you seen the man talk about other peoples ability to write C?
You think this man considers writing insecure code? That’s blasphemy!
remember kids, crypto just refers to cryptography, more broadly in the act of practice.
The modern tech industry needs the old Linus to pay it a visit. Too many grifts
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
Bill Joy.
Maybe Cory Doctorow?
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
Be so bold.
I feel like he’s definitely the person to sit in Schwartz’s seat.
Ballmer, for comedy relief
And coke.
Can you have one without the other?
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
John Gilmore is around
Stallman.
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.
I lack the creativity, but someone please come up with a recursive acronym for Stallman.
Asked ChatGPT
Stallman Tenaciously Advocates Liberation, Leading Movements Against Non-freedom
STALLMAN: Stallman The Almighty, Living Legend… Man… Anon… Null…
All you need to do is make the
Sstand 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).
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
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.
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.
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
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.
You are very correct, and even sadder the state of tech today is very much a result of the success of his primary exploiter
How are you asking Linus about crypto and not about the blockchain.
Crypto is just a waste of resources, similar to AI
Then why does the kernel have a crypto API?
Checkmate, Satoshi Torvalds!
I only like two cryptocurrencies.
Nano: free transactions, each wallet runs it’s own blockchain, so it’s got no negative impact on the environment.
Monero: allows for anonymous transfers
I fucking guarantee that Linus Torvalds DOES believe in cryptography. Stop calling cryptocurrency “crypto”, because “crypto” is short for cryptography, not cryptocurrency.
Linux Inventor Does Not Believe In Currency
shut the fuck up, nerd.
I hate the word “inventor”
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.
deleted by creator
For example, Visa is forcing art platforms to ban (legal) adult content or face blocking.
Only because the social pressure after the metoo charade. Visa itself was more than happy to allow these transaction before it. And once all this stigma on adult content will pass, Visa will be more than happy to allow these transactions again. They are money to them.
It has many more scams though
Actually agree, generally.
Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme basically, but it’s not the only block chain in town.
Anonymous peer-to-peer financial exchanges can actually be good.
Cooperative ledgers can be good.
Public ledgers can be good.
I totally agree with you. Cryptocurrencies have their place, and I’m going to make a serious effort to normalize use of Monero because I think it’s important to have a digital equivalent to cash for a whole host of reasons, from activists and whistleblowers being able to get support, to an average teenager trying to buy something online discretely without their parents knowing.
Privacy is important, and there should be an option for that.
That said, most cryptocurrencies don’t have privacy as a goal, and are instead pure speculation of the higher order. There are a ton of scams in the cryptocurrency space, so you need to be very carefulb when venturing too far outside the norm. Most of the value in most coins is pure hype, not utility.
I don’t buy cryptocurrencies as an investment, but I do buy Monero for actual spending.
we wouldn’t have anonymous VPN services like Mullvad
I don’t follow. Mullvad would exist regardless of cryptocurrencies existing, and you could still buy it anonymously with their cash option. Paying with cryptocurrencies is pretty cool, but it’s hardly a requirement for it to exist.
Let’s not forget that crypto also enable wide deployment of ransomwares (which was not possible due to the lack of untraceable online payment at scale), while less and less ecommerce platform allow crypto payment. If this trend continues, eventually no one would use crypto except for speculation and paying off ransom.
Even online crime often settles with gift cards though because it’s too much of a hassle to explain to the Average Joe how to setup an account and buy and transfer crypto-tokens.
Scams are not much affected by cryptocurrency existence, but ransomware existence specifically relies on crypto for scaling reason. They infect millions of computers, the ransoms are being handled automatically because it’s way too much to be handled manually with gift cards.
The internet enabled that. Are we going to get rid of the internet?
Also, crypto is for peer-to-peer transactions. E-commerce platforms were never the target anyway. And if you really need to pay with crypto on these, you still have crypto-linked debit cards, and these platforms won’t know the difference.
And quickpay integration also exists. People wouldn’t even know you paid with cryptocurrency.
The internet has far more beneficial uses than malicious uses. We currently can’t say the same with cryptocurrency due to its diminishing utility.
E-commerce platforms were never the target anyway
What’s the use of money if not for paying stuff? In the early days, a lot more shops (online and offline) accept crypto payments. These days it’s mostly vpn companies that accept them.
Paying people. And as I said, you can link crypto to a debit card to pay on these shitty platforms if you want (platforms that are bad for local business to begin with).
There is no diminishing utility for crypto. It has already been integrated to a point where you just don’t realize you can use it.
I’m a crypto-using singulatarian and I claim that. Growth is measured in subjective utility, not finite resource consumption.
There isn’t a coin out there that can process 1/10 of the number of transactions that Visa does in an hour.
Anonymous vpns would still exist, as block chain existed prior to crypto.
Visa having the power they do is definitely a problem, however buttcoin is not a viable answer.
You’re right, it’s not a ponzi scheme, it’s the “bigger idiot” scam.
There isn’t a coin out there that can process 1/10 of the number of transactions that Visa does in an hour.
Ethereum had a sharding update done recently, which boosted the maximum TPSs by 1000 times. Arbitrum claims to be capable of 40,000tps now. That’s 2/3 of visa. Combine all blockchains and they all surpass all credit cards combined.
Also, credit cards charge 1.5% - 3.5% processing fees. Ethereum L2 charge less than 0.01$, making them much cheaper than credit card transactions. https://l2fees.info/
Anonymous vpns would still exist, as block chain existed prior to crypto
No they wouldn’t. They’d be vpns directly linked to your credit card. You’re more anonymous without a VPN at that point.
You’re right, it’s not a ponzi scheme, it’s the “bigger idiot” scam.
It is a currency. It has inflation. Anything with value can become a “bigger idiot” scam. Google stocks are a “bigger idiot” scam except you also help them destroy the internet when you invest.
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.
Like…he doesn’t think it exists?
He believes in nothing!
Why does the headline say “Crypto” but then snippet says “cryptocurrencies”? Do people not realize these are not the same thing? The inventor of Linux does believe in crypto, that’s why it’s in Linux!
It’s the most annoying thing of these enthusiasts: they glorify cryptocurrencies and blockchain while glossing over the massively important and actually useful cryptography discipline in the background.
They don’t. Just like “AI” has been co-opoted to mean “algorithm”.
Large groups of humans turn everything they touch into shit.
Algorithm??? I can understand not coming up with “Artificial Intelligence”, but if “Al” is “algorithm”, then that means they think its A L, with the L lowercase. So, that means they aren’t pronouncing it “aye eye” or “aye el” they’re pronouncing it “Al”. Like the first name Al.
Which just makes me think of a reboot of Married with Children. Except it’s just Peggy surrounded by cyborgs made to look and sound like the original characters.
So now Peggy wants sex, and she says “OOOOHHHHH AAAAAALLLLLLL!!!”
Followed by a robot drinking a beer, and sticking his hands down his pants. Somehow even artificial Al looks defeated.
Username checks out
I’m old enough to remember when algorithm was co-opted to be a fancy word replacement for “computer programming” or “software”.
“Crypto” has become a widely used abbreviation for “cryptocurrency,” even though “crypto” itself refers to the general field of cryptography and its encryption techniques. This informal usage reflects how cryptocurrencies have become the most recognizable application of cryptography for most people.
Seems like it should be SSL.
To the general public?
Yes, because people were trained to look for the lock icon, though pretty much every site has it now, whether it’s something that necessitates security vs just privacy benefits. Maybe looking for the lock is outdated, idk, but it was emphasized a lot a few years ago.
You are drastically overestimating the technical competence of the general population.
In what way? And they supposedly have any clue what crypto currency actually means?
There’s a lot more publicity surrounding cryptocurrency than SSL.
Https is more recognized.
True, I wouldn’t expect people to know the terms ssl or tls. My point is, it’s a far, far more common application of cryptography than cryptocurrency.
Yes, a more common application, but not the most recognizable for most people.
I’m amazed people are acting like they think nobody has ever heard of this. I suppose it was more a 2010-2015 thing.
Its just a big money laundering scheme
