• 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.
  • shortwavesurfer
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    edit-2
    6 months ago

    Buying groceries. Personally, I guess I don’t need an anonymous cryptocurrency, but why wouldn’t you have an anonymous cryptocurrency? That would be the equivalent of letting everybody in the world see your bank account and your withdrawals and deposits. And who would do that? That and while people would like you to believe otherwise, you still have a right to privacy.

    • tsonfeir@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      6 months ago

      In the case of groceries, use cash? I understand the overall privacy issue, and I don’t fall into the “I have nothing to hide so why should I care” category, but I struggle to find a real world example of where an anonymous digital currency would be required outside of illegal purchases. There are certainly “illegal” purchases that shouldn’t be illegal, depending on your area. Birth control will be a big one.

      • shortwavesurfer
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        13
        ·
        6 months ago

        The problem is that cash suffers from the same thing that digital money does being inflation by the government, whichever government you happen to live under. Ask people in Argentina or Venezuela how good cash is. The answer is it’s not. The government cannot be allowed to print money because they will abuse that power and hurt everybody.

        • redisdead@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          6 months ago

          I’m sorry, do you think inflation doesn’t apply to prices just because they are using a different sign?

          • shortwavesurfer
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            6 months ago

            Inflation occurs when governments print money and so with these cryptocurrencies, at least the good ones, the amount that is printed is known in advance and will never exceed certain boundaries. So even though the greedy people may wish to print more for themselves, they cannot do it because the system will not let them. And right now the system is perfectly happy to let them and fuck everybody else.

            • redisdead@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              4
              ·
              6 months ago

              That is such a poor understanding of how inflation works but I suppose it’s par for the course when talking to a cryptobro

              Have a nice day

        • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          6 months ago

          It instead gets inflated by crypto exchanges which have no regulations and only exist to make a quick buck.

          • shortwavesurfer
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            6 months ago

            The big difference, though, is that if a crypto exchange says that there’s more crypto than exists, they have to make good on that promise. Or they, you know, go bankrupt because they don’t actually have the money they say they have. Where would they government? That’s not the case. There are only 21 million Bitcoin available. If a crypto exchange tries to make it sound like there are more than that, then people will pull their money off of that exchange and then exchange will go bankrupt because they can’t produce the money.Also, real crypto people don’t rely on centralized exchanges anyway. They either trade peer to peer or use decentralized exchanges that can’t be manipulated like that.