Linux Inventor Says He Doesn’t Believe in Crypto

https://programming.dev/post/14365559

Linux Inventor Says He Doesn’t Believe in Crypto - programming.dev

- 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.

I think there was a potential future where crypto could’ve actually been useful, but it was ruined by scammers, rug pullers, and of course, speculators.

I’ll still hold a little bit of Monero, since it holds the most potential for being a real currency in my opinion. But otherwise, I fully agree with the sentiment.

Eh. When the Wild West was around Medicine was used as a scam too. Snake Oil salesmen aren’t very nice people. But that doesn’t mean medicine is a bad idea ya know?

I agree that there are a lot of snake oil sellers in the cryptographic currencies realm. But that world is basically the digital wild west at the moment to me. I too am waiting to see what happens.

The problem is that most is this was (mostly) solved but because snake oil salesmen decided to be nice and close up shop, but because regulations and laws were put in place to protect people from them.

Likewise, we’ve seen crypto get hit with pretty much every issue that has ever afflicted fiat. The only reason we’ve seen anyone get punished for it is because governments still have some jurisdiction over crypto traded by their citizens. People will say “but smart contracts!”, but the only proven way to be safe with those is to verify the code is both bug-free and not malicious, and that’s a lot to ask of someone trying to buy dog food. A lot of exploits have been executed on contracts that were marked safe by audit companies.

I think the idea as a concept is interesting, as I don’t exactly trust the government or banks either, but I trust random black box companies and individuals a lot less.

Like I said. It’s the wild west in that sphere right now. No rules no nothing. But I also think that even the wild west was tamed over time. Meaning I’m not sure if it will stay so unregulated forever.
Right, but the wild west was tamed by increasing regulation, which is precisely what crypto fans want to avoid. The truth is, though, most people won’t trust crypto without some kind of centralized authority guaranteeing that their money is safe, whether that be a government or a private entity. This pretty quickly materialized with the NFT craze, which saw the vast majority of NFTs were created on the same two sites, with only the biggest names having their own domains and redundant storage for their images.