Linus Torvalds has said that cryptocurrencies are simply "a great vehicle for scams"
  • 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.
  • erwan@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    6 months ago

    Crypto means cryptography, stop using it to talk about cryptocurrency.

    • englislanguage@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      0·
      6 months ago

      Yeah, that headline is very misleading. Crypto(graphy) is essential for the digital world to exist whereas the other stuff is a pyramid & money laundering scheme.

      • shortwavesurfer@monero.townEnglish
        0·
        6 months ago

        So the equivalent of the population of the United States plus 40% are money-londerers. Because somewhere between five and seven percent of the world’s population uses cryptocurrency and that’s 400 million to 550 million people.

          • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
            01·
            6 months ago

            Increasing demographics might initially be attributed to a rise in the number of accounts and improvements in identification. In 2021, however, crypto adoption continued as companies like Tesla and Mastercard announced their interest in cryptocurrency. Consumers in Africa, Asia, and South America were most likely to be an owner of cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, in 2022.

            That’s functionally the nut of it. People in countries that lack a traditional western banking sector but enjoy internet access can piggyback on the network of banks with crypto-interfaces. This is more a consequence of the unregulated wing of the financial sector than an raw utility of cryptocurrency itself.

            If WellsFargo won’t ratify me as a client, but Coinbase will, I’m stuck dealing in bitcoin simply because I can’t get a credit card denominated in USD.

      • retrieval4558@mander.xyzEnglish
        0·
        6 months ago

        It’s not “misleading,” because the vast majority of people understand what the current colloquial use of crypto is.

      • erwan@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        6 months ago

        Crypto currencies doesn’t mean “hidden currency”, it means currency based on cryptography.

        • TheFriar@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          6 months ago

          They meant that choosing one possible definition and saying it’s what the word means is stupid. Words mean pretty much what everyone agrees they mean. Look at all the words that have basically flipped definitions since their inception. Just because the modern derivative of a word means something literally everyone understands but is slightly different than what it used to mean doesn’t mean the oldest answer is the correct one. Unwad your jock.