• 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.
  • ArbiterXero@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    “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.

    • parpol
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      6 months ago

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      • ArbiterXero@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        But none of them are REAL problems. They all have slow and albeit painful solutions, but they do work.

        “Want to send 10k anonymously”

        Who the fuck wants to send $10,000 to someone in a zero trust scenario?

        Why are you sending 10K to someone without a legal paper trail?

        The banks in China stopped giving people money because they couldn’t. You’re talking about a bank run, and these are societal issues that will still need to be dealt with. You think in a bank run, people will accept your monero?

        You’re just going to be able to survive all societal ills will your buttcoin?

        Most of these problems have already been solved and were short lived.

        A central ledger is how we process transactions as a source of truth. The only reason the largest bitcoin holder isn’t revealed is because they’ve never spent a thing. The second they buy themselves anything, their shipping address is revealed.

        You’re going to what…… buy property with bitcoin so that it’s anonymous despite your name ending up on the land registry?

        Yes, when “money” falls, and the societal collapse happens, everyone’s going to trade in bitcoin.

        Let’s bring it all together…. What are you buying with 10G where you need secrecy from everyone and are comfortable sending the cash in a zero trust environment?

        • parpol
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          6 months ago

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          • ArbiterXero@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            You’re over simplifying my statements to try and support what’s going to be a failed investment.

            Crypto allows you to send 10k internationally with zero trust. That’s insanity.

            You can’t give one reasonable use case for it.

            “You might want your salary to be a secret, until you have to report it for taxes.”

            Sooooo, secret from whom? Because your neighbour and the cops can’t see your salary already. The problem doesn’t exist, unless your goal is tax fraud. But you quickly backed out of that argument because you saw the corner you were painting yourself into.

            I totally agree that privacy is, and should remain an inalienable right, and you shouldn’t need a reason for information to be private.

            Money isn’t information in itself. Who you give it to CAN be, but cash still solves that problem, so the problem doesn’t exist…… Until you’re trying to use cash remotely, but there are no reasonable use cases for needing anonymity in international money transfers. In fact there’s a ton of safety in having banks involved. It’s not 100% secure, but nothing ever is. As opposed to throwing your monero into the wind and hoping the other person ships your illicit items.