this post was submitted on 20 May 2024
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  • Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, does not believe in cryptocurrencies, calling them a vehicle for scams and a Ponzi scheme.
  • Torvalds was once rumored to be Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, but he clarified it was a joke and denied owning a Bitcoin fortune.
  • Torvalds also dismissed the idea of technological singularity as a bedtime story for children, saying continuous exponential growth does not make sense.
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

“Combine all blockchains and they’d surpass credit cards”

I honestly can’t believe that’s a real argument you’re making, that’s just ridiculous. Especially given the number of rug pull scams there are with coins.

They aren’t currencies, they’re investment vehicles backed by nothing.

Block chain transactions aren’t as anonymous as you think, people can be easily revealed by looking at the wallet’s history and asking the last person you bought from “where the item was shipped to” …. Public ledger and all…

Ethereum can now process 1000 x 10 transactions. Visa currently does what, 80000 per second? Yeah it’s not quite 1/10th but….

How long until arbitrum reveals the rug pull? I’m sure it will be any day now.

Crypto is a solution to a problem nobody has. Need anonymous transactions? Here’s some cash. Need international anonymous transactions? Yeah, those are probably better being tracked anyways. And I say that as a privacy advocate. Yes, privacy matters, no international transaction privacy doesn’t.

Ya know what most “anonymous” international transactions are? Scams.

Let’s break this down to a single argument though…. Crypto is the answer to a problem nobody has. Smart contracts? For what exactly? Anonymous international transactions? What’s the need? As a society we’ve decided that some types of transactions are illegal. Yes, sometimes governments make things illegal that they shouldn’t, and authoritarians around the world make all sorts of things illegal that they shouldn’t… but for your necessities, they’ll all be available locally. And under an authoritarian enough regime, they can just inspect your mail anyways. Society requires trust, and that’s going to happen locally no matter what coin you use. It’s great that I can have a zero trust model for sending money, but it’s useless, because ultimately you still need to trust the person receiving it to do the exchange.