- 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.
It’s interesting to see Torvalds emerge as a kind of based tech hero. I’m thinking here also of his rant not long ago on social.kernel.org (a kernel devs microblog instance) that was essentially a pretty good anti-anti-leftism tirade in true Torvalds fashion.
EDIT:
Torvalds’s anti-anti-left post (I was curious to read it again):
I think you might want to make sure you don’t follow me.
Because your “woke communist propaganda” comment makes me think you’re a moron of the first order.
I strongly suspect I am one of those “woke communists” you worry about. But you probably couldn’t actually explain what either of those words actually mean, could you?
I’m a card-carrying atheist, I think a woman’s right to choose is very important, I think that “well regulated militia” means that guns should be carefully licensed and not just randomly given to any moron with a pulse, and I couldn’t care less if you decided to dress up in the “wrong” clothes or decided you’d rather live your life without feeling tied to whatever plumbing you were born with.
And dammit, if that all makes me “woke”, then I think anybody who uses that word as a pejorative is a f*cking disgrace to the human race. So please just unfollow me right now.
It’s interesting to see Torvalds emerge as a kind of based tech hero.
It’s just that almost everyone else that could do it ended up being fucking ghouls of people.
Torvalds can be… brusque, sure. But he doesn’t support child labor, he doesn’t cheat on his wife, and he isn’t some crazy cult leader waging a war against workers’ rights.
Another interesting thing to consider.
To be clear, he is rich. But he’s not crazy crazy rich, like nowhere near billionaire status.
With that in mind, his kernel is a key component of RedHat’s, SuSE’s and Canonical whole business, with at least two of those being multi billion dollar businesses.
His kernel is a key component of Android phones, which represent over 50 billion a year in hardware spend, and a bunch of software money on top of that.
His kernel is foundational to most hosting/cloud services with just mind blowing billions of revenue quarterly.
It’s used in almost every embedded device on the planet, networking gear, set top boxes, thermostats, televisions, just nearly everything.
People with a fraction of that sort of relevance are billionaires several times over. A number of billionaires owe much of their success to him. Yet he is not among their numbers.
Now there’s more to things than just a kernel to be sure, but across the hundreds of billions of dollars made while running Linux, there was probably plenty of room for him to carve out a few billion for himself were he that sort of person, but he cares about the work more than gaming the dollars. I have a great deal of respect for that.
Means that while he may not always be right, but I at least believe his assessments are sincere and not trying to drive some grift or cover some insecurity about being left behind.
gitis a way more important contribution to the world that the linux kernel IMO. Its basically the assembly line of almost all modern software production. And Linus actually wrote most of the initial code for it. With Linux he organized the project but was almost immediately not a major contributor. He developed git in the process of maintaining the linux repo.I disagree. Git is great but we’d have done fine with Subversion or whatever. Could you imagine the whole internet running on Windows Server though? The thought alone makes my skin crawl.
Free software would be just using freebsd or whatever, it wouldn’t be that different
You probably need to learn a bit more about VCS fundamentals if you think Subversion would’ve been fine.
I’m old enough to remember the SVN days (he’ll, even the CVS and…dare I say it… source safe days).
Git is fantastic. It’s pretty universally uses because it’s the best dvcs out there and it’s free. It wipes the pants with the likes of mercurial.
In certain industries (such as gaming) there’s still a strong hold by perforce but we can ignore that as it’s proprietary and a bit specialised.
Anyway, as great as git is for making things easier and cleaner when dealing with distributed development, it by no means makes something impossible “possible” - it just makes it a hell of a lot easier.
The Linux kernel on the other hand enabled a lot of impossible things. Remember back in the day there wasn’t anything free and open source in the operating system world, it was all proprietary and licensed. If you wanted to create your own operating system, you basically had no option but to spend a fortune either writing your own kernel or licensing someone else’s (and the licensing part means you cannot distribute it for free).
The fact that the FSF has always wanted to write their own OS and never been able to achieve it without the Linux Kernel, in spite of them essentially writing “everything else” that makes up an operating system, shows just how nontrivial this is.
Do you think the existence of the Linux kernel might’ve had an effect on how Hurd was prioritized? Also, FreeBSD wasn’t too far behind, chronologically.
I’m not saying Linux is unimportant (or even less important), but I think some folks here are pretty clueless about the significance of widespread DVCS adoption.
Pijul and similar patch-based systems are a lot better. They match my understanding of independent changes combining. git does the stupidest thing and just compares states - which means it has less information to automatically merge correctly
Well, I don’t know what you mean, so possibly? I just briefly used SVN in a small team for about half a year and would never claim to be an expert. It’s alive and kicking though, so regardless what you say I don’t believe it’s a complete clusterfuck and a world without git would be doomed.
Torvalds didn’t create git because he was passionate about version control systems, he created it because the existing solutions were not adequate.
Git is a distributed version control system (DVCS) that facilitated a fundamental shift in how people collaborate on software projects in general. So, comparing it to SVN and downplaying the significance of Git suggests you’ve kind of missed the point.
Edit: with you on the other thing though - fuck Windows.
lol. I’m old enough to have worked with SVN (and many others) as part of my day job, and I promise you that 99% of git users use literally the same exact workflow as they did/would have under any other VCS. Git’s fine, but it’s neither revolutionary nor important from a user’s perspective.
Can’t two things both be important in different ways? Why must we always relativise?
git is why we can’t have nice things
There’s many better VCS, but everyone just goes on GitHub and uses git.
I dread ever having to touch it. The CLI is unintuitive, the snapshot system is confusing, and may God have mercy on your soul if you mix merging and rebasing
Mercurial or darcs?
Pijul, actually
darcs_rs
Well, I think Linus Torvalds is one of the rare rich people who actually “deserves” being rich.
I think the main motive behind leftism should be stopping 8 people from owning the 50% of the world’s wealth, not to distribute Linus Torvalds’ 50 million dollars which a well deserved amount of wealth for someone who created the OS which runs the modern world.
Besides, what Linus owns is not even a droplet compared to billionaires like Bezos, Musk or Bill Gates
I think it’s a shining example of the ‘right’ sort of rich. Despite a significance that overwhelmingly exceeds usual billionaire level, he’s not nearly so ‘rich’ and yet he has enough to just not worry about money, but he has earned it.
It’s a contribution thing. He contributed enough to society to deserve to not worry about money for the rest of his life. It’s rare though since we have a bunch of billionaires who skim the rewards from huge swaths of the population who also have contributed their part.
The financialization of retirement is a huge part of the problem for the middle class (or what’s left of it, upper-lower-class is probably more accurate). We have to invest in these assholes in order to save for retirement. The harder workers in services, laborers, and fields don’t even get that.
Yea. It’s almost like caring about your craft and being motivated chiefly to just make good things and fix things … aren’t terrible character traits?!?
he doesn’t cheat on his wife
he doesn’t cheat on his wife so far.
Well, we all know he beats his wife…
…in monopoly! Give me those brown properties!!!
Why’s it gotta be the brown properties?
The man loves going to brown town, what’s wrong with that?
They’re the cheapest to aquire, put hotels on, and they’re right at the start of the board. If you overshoot go, you’re PAYING $250 instead of recieving $200 if you land on baltic. And you, as the owner of the brown properties would either get $250 or $450 everytime.
All for just $610 to buy both, and upgrade them both to hotels.
Statistically, the best properties to have are the ones just after jail. Everyone who passes go still has to pass them, while those who get sent to jail also have I pass them. The organge properties are the best, because the average dice roll is 7 and from jail that lands you right on them.
Healthy relationships have ridiculous hall-passes that share at least one person in common.
It’s not cheating if it’s consensual.
He’ll live long enough to end up on the wrong side of the polygamy rights fight. But I’d like to be surprised.
I imagine he will be an old and gray man and someone will ask him his opinion and it will probably be like
What? Are you fucking with me? I didn’t give a shit what people did behind closed doors 40 years ago, what fuckin made you think I would care now? Are you fucking mental? Did your daddy not love you enough? Get the fuck out of here, your making my blood pressure spike…
Polygamy: Mormons, etc. generally opposes womens rights.
Polyamory: Ideally places noone above another, elevates everyone to have the healthy connections such that noone is a “3rd wheel” or more disposable. Less about “polycules” recruiting new members, and more about individuals pairing with new partners, and existing partners (initially at least) gaining a metaphor. Mileage may vary and the point is everyone’s needs are a bit different and shouldnt feel pressured to fit neatly into a nuclear box.
Just fyi.
Polyamory isn’t cheating though.
Cheating is, by definition, sex with another person against your partner’s will.
The fuck is that even supposed to mean
Five guys and five gals will be arguing they have a right to share DNA amongst each other and make a single kid, giving them all parental rights. Religious right will have their scheduled stroke. Most of the population won’t care. Internet trolls will be screaming how it’s a United Nations plan to depopulate the planet.
Or basically any legal recognition for polygamy.
Five guys and five gals will be arguing they have a right to share DNA amongst each other and make a single kid
…Is that even possible? I thought humans could only have exactly two parents biologically? If I didn’t misunderstand, I’m legit curious about this.
We’ve already reached two lesbians with their combined dna being carried by a surrogate (which has extra dna effects as the carrier). With further dna advancements it should be possible to mix up multiple parents dna.
He just seems frustrated. And I respect that. I’m a nerd who’s often frustrated as well.
Or we could just… not glorify people we barely know and invariably be disappointed when it comes out they’re flawed some way or another.
I remember this. That was a great day to be on the internet.
I wonder what direction the Linux kernel will go once he’s gone. Obviously it will continue to go on and Torvalds should get a statue somewhere if he doesn’t already have one.
I don’t follow thinigs closely at all, but I’m under the impression he’s already starting to kinda take his hands off of the wheel? If so, maybe that picture is emerging now, at least behind the scenes.
Linus hasn’t written kernel code in years at this point, however he still is the final gate keeper of what gets merged and an active code reviewer, he manages the entire direction of the project.
As of what will happen when Linus passes, that’s already been decided. The position of projects leader will go to his most trusted project co-maintainer, which we have a good idea of who that is.
For the uninformed, who is that?
There are a few candidates, the most prominent are probably :
- Greg Kroah-Hartman: Played a pivotal role in stabilizing the memory management subsystem and enhancing block I/O performance, both critical areas for system stability and performance.
- Sage Sharp (formally Sarah Sharp) : Instrumental in the development and maintenance of the networking subsystem and the ARM architecture code, ensuring compatibility and efficient networking for various ARM-based devices.
- Git Junio Hamano: Maintainer of Git, the version control system that underpins Linux development. His leadership in maintaining Git ensures smooth collaboration and efficient code management for the vast kernel developer community.
Greg Kroah-Hartman is speculated to be the most likely candidate, but it also depends on a few factors. Like, if Linus dies suddenly vs dying slowly or just stepping down, there’d be a big difference in selection process.
Ofc, things may change in the future and there’s many other talented developers who can be considered. Nothing is set in stone.
Thanks for the details. With things heading more and more towards arm architecture I’m surprised Sarah Sharp isn’t the leading candidate. But this is all new to me so what do I know lol
It’s not like they couldn’t be chosen, they have some serious stake in it. Consider their achievements and read the following :
Here are some key qualities a potential successor should possess :
- Deep understanding of the Linux kernel: Intimate knowledge of the kernel’s codebase, architecture, and development process is essential.
- Proven leadership skills: The ability to effectively guide a large team of developers with diverse technical backgrounds and priorities.
- Strong communication and collaboration: Excellent communication skills to bridge the gap between developers, and foster a collaborative development environment.
- Technical merit and reputation: A well-established reputation within the Linux community for technical contributions and code quality.
- Vision for the future: A clear vision for the future direction of the kernel, ensuring it remains relevant and innovative.
I’d say they meet most if not all of them. All of the potential candidate’s are amazingly talented and determined individuals.
He did rule that Rust can be included in the kernel code a bit ago, but IIRC that’s the last big thing he did with Linux as of late.
They should do something like GNU from discworld in the code.
That guy seems pretty rad.
Yeah, I would say he has stayed in line with Finnish politics based on how I know of them
Chaddiest Chad to ever Chad
For a rant, that made complete sense. It missed all of the unhinged outcries, alternative facts and illogical reasoning we’ve come to expect of modern day rants.
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Are you replying to the right comment?
Clearly misread the tone of the comment 😃 nvm
Its good to see some antileftism once in a while. We need some other perspectives. I didn’t think we’d get it from Linus but here we are.
You might want to re-read that.
Maybe it’s just really lazy spin? I could see it as a creative tactic poorly executed by AI.
You don’t know what you’re on about and you cannot read.
WHOOOOSH
Holy shit, the crypto bros are really triggered by this, out in full force in the comments. If the only argument you can bring for crypto is that you make/made money on it, that sounds a lot like a Ponzi scheme
It is a Ponzi scheme. Very clearly one. How that garbage is legal, I will never know. I could have gotten into crypto from the ground floor eons ago and made tons of money but I didn’t because I knew it was illegal and figured the whole thing was going to collapse as soon as governments found out about it. Imagine my shock when most legitimized the damn thing. Still wouldn’t bother even if I could go back and do it again knowing the brain dead, money-greedy idiots are going to legalize a literal Ponzi scheme because I have values and morals.
Yeah, it’s relatively easy to make good money in crypto if you understand investing. There are a lot of things that are illegal in regulated securities markets that are not yet illegal with crypto.
I intentionally don’t invest in crypto, because it doesn’t produce anything. Any money you make is just taken from another investor, usually because they don’t know what they’re doing. When you invest in a company, you make products and sell them to customers. Something is created and rarely are people cheated.
The people investing in crypto are intentionally cheating uninformed investors in a way that is not possible in regulated securities markets.
When you invest in a company, you make products and sell them to customers.
You mean, executives with “fiduciary responsibility” take extremely irresponsible actions to “maximize shareholder profits” and gut the company that produces those products such that the product is minimally viable, borderline shit, and might even kill the end user (Boeing, Tesla, GE, etc etc). Oh and jobs and the economy are on the line too, so that’s great.
intentionally don’t invest in crypto, because it doesn’t produce anything. Any money you make is just taken from another investor, usually because they don’t know what they’re doing. When you invest in a company, you make products and sell them to customers. Something is created and rarely are people cheated.
Isn’t that the same as investing in any currency?
No one is investing in regular currencies. You’re supposed to use it to buy stuff.
How many people got in early, made some money, lost it all getting scammed or just making bad choices, and will spend the rest of their lives chasing that dragon? How many drunks are at some bar right now talking about how much money they could have made if they had waited to sell, or how much their nft portfolio is gonna be worth when the market rebounds?
I mean not to mention the ridiculous amount of electricity it uses, and heat generated. but hey it’s low priority even though every year lately is the hottest in record.
Fully agree. I think there exist both good and scammy-bubble types of blockchain and crypto. Crypto can be a scam, memecoin rugpull, ponzi scheme, …etc, but it can also be the peer-2-peer decentrilized self-custody borderless international currency of people away from governments manipulation, inflation, banks and middlemen, which is something that has its own advantages and negatives as we’ve seen it with criminals, tax evation and money laundering, but also used by people fleeing war zones after their banking come down and escaping trumbling government fiats. However, it also needs regulations and the protections of world governments to work but also claims to want governments and regulations off.
To clarify my position honestly, I think blockchain programming is here to stay but today 99% of it including BTC could be the scammy bubble type and does not represent or have most of the therotical advantages of the bitcoin’s original white paper which I listed above.
I agree. Every crypto except XMR seems to be only seen as an investment to make more money.
Alright, as a crypto entrepreneur myself, I’ll bite and try to break down exactly what the appeal of crypto is. But b4 I do I would appreciate some updoots since I have a new account. Anyway, crypto, it’s a way to do transactions anonymously. You know how when your wife frequently accesses your bank account to meticulously track every offbrand sex toy you get on temu (at least mine does, filing a divorce at the time of writing, just trying to keep custody of the kids even though they hate me) so you can feel the sensation of plastic child labor alone in your bedroom? But yeah I don’t really use crypto that much personally, too many scams.
I fucking hate that the crypto currency ghouls have captured the word “crypto”. When I first read this I was wondering why in the fuck would Linus not like cryptography. My brain is old and crypto will always mean cryptography.
We just got to wait it out. Gods willing, it’ll come back to meaning cryptography again.
Still waiting for the Swastika/Manji to be de-nazified. Probably not gonna see it in my lifetime, unfortunately.
Behind the Bastards had a great few episodes about how a group of indigenous Americans chose to give up their sacred symbol that looked like a swastika because of the Nazis. Pretty sad but i guess fascists ruin everything.
Absolutely. That’s why I always write “crypto-tokens” instead. It’s a bit longer and more annoying to write but I feel we owe it to the respectable field of cryptography.
I’m still a student, same for me.
I still haven’t warmed up to using it for currency either, for me it’s a command on Cisco’s IOS. Which, BTW, I have to make clear is made by Cisco and make my phone write with a capital i.
I understand that the world evolves, and that languages do as well … but I do have a problem with the speed which it evolves with, as well as it seems like the ignorant use of existing terminologies, is the main evolutionary factor these days.
It uses cryptography. It’s kinda like how electro is a genre of electronic music.
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Smart man!
The modern tech industry needs the old Linus to pay it a visit. Too many grifts
I for one would love for Linus, probably Woz, and a third party yet to be decided(this would be Aaron Schwartz in a better world) to be given free reign to gut the whole industry and rebuild it into something isn’t wholly based on ad revenue and grift
Edit: a bunch of good suggestions of people I need to read about for position three. If anyone can think of a digital equivalent to Marshall McLuhan I think we desperately needs input of that sort
Maybe Cory Doctorow?
I definitely considered just saying him outright but I don’t know quite enough about him outside of a few articles I’ve read to be certain I wanted to be so bold
I feel like he’s definitely the person to sit in Schwartz’s seat.
Be so bold.
Old Linus with Woz and Schwartz is a dream.
I understand why Linus wanted to clean up his act with people he works with. That is a good and admirable thing to do. I wish he would have kept his smoke for companies though.
Richard stallman is the only answer.
I really hate everything he says, but so far on a lot enough timescale he has been fucking right about everything
Ballmer, for comedy relief
And coke.
Can you have one without the other?
I wonder if those three would get along. Collaborative chemistry can be an elusive thing, even if the individuals’ principles are mostly aligned.
Either way, I’ll bet it would be interesting.
It’s certainly possible they wouldn’t get along, I feel like their shared enthusiasm for tech, plus the fact that Woz can get along with even the largest and stinkiest of assholes would help
I’ve never met Woz, but yes, I’ve long had the impression that his humility and sincerity reach depths seldom seen in humans, let alone in tech. Sadly, I also suspect these traits have made him easy to take advantage of in the past.
You are very correct, and even sadder the state of tech today is very much a result of the success of his primary exploiter
John Gilmore is around
Stallman.
I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as Stallman, is in fact, GNU/Stallman, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Stallman. Stallman is not a man unto himself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
I lack the creativity, but someone please come up with a recursive acronym for Stallman.
Asked ChatGPT
Stallman Tenaciously Advocates Liberation, Leading Movements Against Non-freedom
All you need to do is make the
Sstand for “Stallman”, and you’ll get a stack overflow before ever reaching the other letters (so you don’t need to think of a value for them).STALLMAN: Stallman The Almighty, Living Legend… Man… Anon… Null…
The only possible correct answer
No matter what crazy shit he says, give it a few years and he will be right . And I really hate that
Bill Joy.
Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, does not believe in cryptocurrencies, calling them a vehicle for scams and a Ponzi scheme.
To be fair, that’s because Crypto is a vehicle for scams, and a Ponzi scheme.
Crypto means cryptography, stop using it to talk about cryptocurrency.
If after 16 years you still have to be asked if you believe in crypto, then chances are that it is a scam.
Good point, I always wondered if there is a way the technology will evolve and somehow find a niche that’s unexpected. But you’re right, 16 years is a long time to be meandering.
It’s such a first-world thing to not understand all the good that crypto has done. There are countless lives that have been financially saved by having a safe place to hold wealth while their countries’ fiat collapsed. It’s just a short matter of time until many first world folks understand this as well.
Sounds like the same shit those rare metal guys are always yapping about but with extra scams…
Yeah, probably, don’t worry about it, it’s all a bit complex so probably all just the same thing, who knows. No way to tell really. You’ll be fine without digging too deep into this stuff, it’s difficult to understand.
Do you think it’s weird how your own farts smell more engaging than anyone else’s?
Evading paying taxes is a good thing? Well no.
Paying taxes is one thing, and of course it is necessary. Extra value is extracted by printing more and more money. USD used to be backed by gold, but they took that away. In addition to corrupt governments extracting value by printing more and more currency, counterfeitters also do the same. Bitcoin fixes both of these issues. There is absolutely no reason why Bitcoin and taxes can’t coexist.
Furthermore, with bitcoin we can electronically transfer exactly how much value we want to without having to trust every single vendor with our credit/debit card numbers. Have you ever had to cancel a card because of fraudulent spends? Well, millions of Americans do every year and this also doesn’t happen with Bitcoin. You send exactly how much you want to, you don’t hand indefinite access to your funds to every single vendor to sell your information or steal from you whenever they want. In the last 2 weeks I’ve had over $400 stolen from my debit card because of this idiotic system.
Even if you live under a genocidal regime?
Yes, because infrastructure, subsidies, education and social spending still need to happen and not paying your taxes will erode those things long before they stop a genocide. If you don’t care about getting in trouble with your government, there are more effective things that can be done.
So you’re arguing it is moral to pay taxes even if you are North Korean? Interesting.
Our citizens pay taxes out of pure love and devotion to our Dear Leader. We don’t have room for your silly Western moralities.
There was promise for people in Argentina livig under extreme inflation but I never heard it go anywhere.
Look closer, it’s saving lives down there.
I’m from Argentina, if you can pass me some articles I’d love to read them. It’s something I’ve been interested in
Traditionally clever Argentinians have used USD to escape the collapsing currency, but over the last couple of years, there has been a massive shift to doing this with Bitcoin and some stablecoins. Personally, I would just go for Bitcoin, but I do understand that there is less variance with stablecoins, so they may be a bit more practical for some people. Here is an article that goes into this.
On the other hand, scams rarely last 16 years.
No clue how long scams usually last, but famous ones easily last multiple decades, though funny how unclear if is when the scam started:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madoff_investment_scandal?wprov=sfla1
Federal investigators believe the fraud in the investment management division and advisory division may have begun in the 1970s. However, Madoff himself stated his fraudulent activities began in the 1990s. Madoff’s fraudulent activities are believed to have accelerated after the 2001 change from fractional share trades to decimals on the NYSE, which cut significantly into his legitimate profits as a market-maker.
Alerted by his sons, federal authorities arrested Madoff on December 11, 2008.
Madoff was hidden. Bitcoin is out in the open.
I think “bubble” could be a better description. Bitcoins bubble pops regularly every 4 years.
Well, on the other hand, it’s still there after 16 years…
Yeah I don’t believe in smartphones, I just have one. I don’t believe in crypto, I acknowledge it’s pointless.
It’s not pointless. It was invented for a very good reason. You’ll find out one day. It’s a shame it’s been co-opted the way it has.
For all the reasons that crypto is a scam, every “value” stock - stock which does not now, and never has any intention of ever paying dividends - is also a scam.
Behind a value stock is a profitable company. Behind crypto-tokens is a hilariously inefficient database with no application in real life.
Gamble away your money, I’ll take the stock - or “have fun staying poor” like crypto-token morons like to say.
Behind a value stock is a profitable company.
The owner of a privately held company receives those profits. The owner of a value stock does not: the company profits do not transfer to the stockholder. The shares of the company do not entitle the holder to any part of the business. The “value” of those shares are only that other people want them as well.
Without the possibility of dividends to convey the profits to the shareholders, the profitability of the company is entirely irrelevant. The only “value” of a value stock is its desirability to other people.
A value stock means it’s undervalued compared to its fundamentals or “cheap”. It has nothing to do whether or not the company pays dividends.
The difference to garbage like crypto-tokens is that there actually are fundamentals - a profitable company you’re buying a share of and for a cheap price. Of course there’s risk involved but you are likely to profit from this.
Much more likely anyway than any crypto-token gamble because there’s no value underneath, only wasted energy; and yes, also with PoS or whatever - it’s all inefficient compared to a conventional database behind the firewall of a trustworthy organization. Your trustlessness rethoric is the actual lie behind this huge scam.
a profitable company you’re buying a share of and for a cheap price.
A company in which the owner receives nothing from the business operation is not a “profitable” company. Where the shareholders do not receive dividends, and have zero expectation of ever receiving dividends, the business operations of the company are divorced from the value of the share. From the perspective of the shareholder, there are no profits to consider.
The actual “fundamentals” of such a share is nothing more than the faith that someone else will want to buy that share for more in the future, and the only reason that second person has to buy it in the future is the belief that a third person will buy it later.
That is exactly the same “fundamentals” as crypto; the same “fundamentals” as a ponzi scheme.
This is pointless. You don’t even seem to know what profit and value are exactly, much less how the letter is increased.
But ok, gamble away your money for worthless crap if you believe it’s the same as owning non-distributing value stock (lol). I’m not an altruistic economics teacher trying to stop you hurting yourself.
But ok, gamble away your money for worthless crap if you believe it’s the same as owning non-distributing value stock (lol).
I can point to any number of companies whose stock has proven to be worthless crap. It is the same type of gamble for both. Neither have any value arising from business operation. The value of a cryptocoin and the value of a zero-dividend share arise solely and entirely from investor faith.
Its almost like both the stock market and crypto are bullshit, whoduv thunk it?
It’s almost like money isn’t real.
I didnt say that, money is real because its backed by a source be it government or otherwise. Having a currency has a rather obvious use case, having a liquid form of exchange to represent wealth is useful and eases things. Hell it doesnt even have to be paper or metal, it could be bullets, bottlecaps, seashells, or be rocks.
Money is real in exactly the same way that zero-dividend shares are real, or that cryptocurrency is real.
The difference is that the government can freely adjust the value of money, and anyone can create shares. Cryptocurrency can only be generated per the conditions of an algorithm.
Yes but also no, what im trying to say is that currency is in and of itself real. Real currencies are backed by something be it metals, food, water, military, or the entire fucking economy of a region or nation. Cryptocurrency is only backed by hopes dreams and energy wasting mathematical formulas, also I can use a 20 dollar bill practically anywhere in exchange for goods I cant use a crypto wallet or some shit in many places.
It is real because the people who use it believe it is real. Same goes for zero-dividend stocks, crypto, Yu-Gi-Oh cards, Beanie Babies, etc. The difference between currency and any ofbthese others is only in the number of people involved.
You can point to government regulations for money. You can point to SEC regulations for stocks and other securities. I can point to algorithmic scarcity for crypto. And I am sure there are standards that various collector communities deem important. But, the fundamental concept value for any of these others is that the people using it believe it has value.
There are plenty of places I can take you where your $20 bill isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. There is nothing particularly special about a dollar bill that makes it fundamentally different from any other intangible object.
Again, the only difference is the size of the community that shares the belief. The dollar has a much larger user base than crypto. Crypto has a much larger user base than the Albanian Lek.
Except, you know, the stock being tied to ownership in a company that sells real goods or services. Definitely problems with how stocks are traded, but they’re quite different from crypto.
Except, you know, the stock being tied to ownership in a company that sells real goods or services.
That’s the scam: without dividends, or at least the reasonable prospect of dividends, it is not tied to the company in any tangible way. Shareholders benefit only from speculation by other investors, and not from actual business operations.
Almost. If you own a share of a company, you own a share of something fungible, namely literal company property or IP. Even if the company went bankrupt, you own a sliver of their real product (real estate, computers, patented processes). So while you may be speculating on the wealth associated with the company, it is not a scam in the sense that it isn’t a non fungible entity. The sole value of crypto currency is in its speculative value, it is not tied in theory or in practice to something of perceptibly equal realized value. A dividend is just giving you return on profit made from realized assets (aforementioned real estate or other company property or processes), but the stock itself is intrinsically tied to the literal ownership of those profit generating assets.
Everything you just said is only true for stocks that pay dividends now, or may pay dividends in the future.
It is not true for companies with zero intention of ever paying dividends.
Even if the company went bankrupt, you own a sliver of their real product
Historically, when that happens, the creditors walk away with the assets. The shareholders get nothing.
but the stock itself is intrinsically tied to the literal ownership of those profit generating assets.
That’s the scam. It’s not. In practice, the sole value of a zero-dividend stock is the speculative value.
it is not tied in theory or in practice to something of perceptibly equal realized value.
Electricity has value. Crypto value is intrinsically tied to mining costs. Even if you have access to a free source of power like your own solar panels, you have to weigh the cost effectiveness of mining against the revenue from using your panels to backfeed the grid, selling power back to the power companies.
Because crypto is tied to something of utilitarian value, and zero-dividend stocks are tied only to the whims of investors, the stocks are actually a significantly greater scam than the crypto.
Lolok
The focus of what Torvalds said is the concept of tech singularity. TL;DR “nice fiction, it doesn’t make sense in a reality of finite resources”. I’ll move past that since most of the discussion is around cryptocurrencies.
Now, copypasting what he says about cryptocurrencies:
For the record, I also don’t believe in crypto currencies (except as a great vehicle for scams - they have certainly worked very well for the “spread the word to find the next sucker holding the bag” model of Ponzi schemes). Nor do I believe in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, or the Easter bunny.
For those who understood this excerpt as “Tarvalds thinks that cryptocurrencies dant ezizt lol lmao”: do everyone a favour and go back to Reddit with your blatant lack of reading comprehension. When he says that he doesn’t believe in them, he’s saying that he does not see them as a viable alternative to traditional currency. (He does not say why, at least not in that message.)
And for those eager to babble “ackshyually ponzi schemes work different lol lmao”: you’re bloody missing the point. He’s highlighting that a large part of the value associated with cryptocurrencies is speculation, not its actual usage. Even cryptocurrency enthusiasts acknowledge this.
I apologise to the others - who don’t fit either category of trashy people I mentioned above - for the tone. Read the comments in this very thread and you’ll likely notice why of the tone.
The vast majority of the crypto world failed to understand one key concept, money is not the value for which goods/services are exchanged, it is the value by which they are exchanged. People do not have a use or value for money beyond what it can be exchanged for, if no one is willing to exchange for it, it has no value.
Crypto only had value as a currency if people would accept it for goods or services, and the only thing people ever accepted it as payment for, in any meaningful capacity, were illegal goods and services. The value beyond that was purely based on a speculative ideological assumption that people would abandon the traditional banking system for a new system that they couldn’t buy anything with.
Its just a big money laundering scheme
Oh yeah? Then explain this!! /s
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I actually considered a non-governmental, community regulated currency as a pretty good idea.
Problem is, crypto is too ecologically expensive and wasteful to fit the bill.
While there were some interesting ones, that actually used the processing power for something useful, most are not. So for now, I’ll just go with governmental currencies.
I think there was a potential future where cryptocurrency 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.
He is just like me. I don’t mess with the chucky cheese token money.
