- 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.
Tangible items can have utility in the real world, where cryptocurrencies can never be anything more than numbers on a display.
Gold can be used in electronics, and I get that people are mad that currencies are just something we all mutually agree have value, but generally speaking powerful governments back those up. Cryptocurrency is backed up by people promising it’s totally gonna be a real currency any second now. Please ignore that crypto can wildly fluctuate in value which generally a horrible thing for a currency to do.
You could very well make the argument that ultimately crypto is backed by energy, which is something we all agree has value. Without energy, you can’t go to work, heat or cool your house or anything like that. If you believe that electricity is fundamental for society, then by extension, crypto is backed by the most fundamental force that there is even bigger than a government.
Crypto is just evidence energy was used. It’s not stored energy.
Oh, but it is, because you could exchange it for something else. As an example, I can take mine and go exchange it for groceries.
Hard disagree here, I literally cannot access a cryptocurrency without power but I can absolutely pay cash to buy some water during a power outage.
Sure you can. There’s absolutely nothing stopping somebody from putting a private key on a piece of paper and loading money onto it and spending it physically as long as the private key has not been exposed. Kind of like those Amazon scratch-off gift cards. And just to prove my point, take a look at this.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Casascius_physical_bitcoins
Yes I’m sure the 7-11 cashier would love for me to try this.
Depends on who the 7-11 cashier is. If they are really smart, they would gladly take your crypto and pay for your items with their fiat. You are not going to get big places using it first. You are going to get little places using it first. The Amazon’s and 7-11’s and Walmart’s of the world will come later. And trust me, they will come. There’s a natural tipping point apparently, where when 5% of the world population uses something, the other 95% generally soon follow, because it’s more useful. Crypto has already hit that 5% mark.
Any day now bruh, trust me
Except that’s not what “backed by” means. It consumes energy. You can never exchange cryptocurrency to get the energy that it consumed back.
Have you tried running a cryptocurrency miner during the dead of winter? It makes your electricity bills quite a bit lower. That’s for certain.
I haven’t seen an exchange where I can trade in Crypto for kilowatt-hours.
Coinsbee.com allows you to purchase debit cards, which you can then use to purchase kilowatt hours.
Translation: actual currencies can be used to purchase energy, but cryptocurrency cannot.
What you’re saying is precisely like saying “I know a guy that trades turnips for money. Therefore turnips are a great currency that you can buy anything with.”
Thank you Nagus for your financial insights.
The only currency I give a damn about is gold-pressed latinum, damn it!
Sure, you can’t buy energy with crypto directly yet. But that would make total sense for a power company to accept crypto in the future.
If it made sense they’d be doing it, no?
Not yet, the government has their regulatory screws too deep into them, so they can’t innovate like that.
Where are these laws that state energy companies cannot accept crypto as payment?
Haven’t multiple governments accepted it as real currency at this point? The arguments are valid, but fall flat when you actually look into each.
Hell diamonds are valuable because of artificial scarcity, so that’s a wrench in every precious metal argument….
Yeah, El Salvador, people from there told me quite recently that it’s not at all what the government propaganda is trying to sell. Nobody uses Bitcoin and it is only accepted by a few state institutions. As for Venezuela, we had Petros for a while, now the shitcoin has been completely phased out and discontinued since nobody but a few oligarch used it to launder money.
The only two countries that accept bitcoin as a legal tender are noted powerhouses El Salvador and the Central African Republic… not exactly world leaders.
And crypto is more stable than some governments’ real currency. It’s been a life saver for some people.
It’s also a lot faster for transactions than normal banking when sending money to people in other countries.
It’s still in the early days… like email in the late 80s / early 90s. It should get better, but there’s so much crap and scams out there right now. It’s still very much the wild west. It’s like Wall Street on acid.
EDIT: people downvote but don’t say what was wrong. Awesome.
They downvote the truth and/or facts when they are contrary to the hive mind.
The circlejerking and hive mind on Lemmy is shockingly worse than Reddit somehow. Not what I ever expected.
Well you’re talking about a technology that can obsolete VISA and MasterCard and their predatory transaction fees!. There’s a lot of money riding on cryptographic currencies taking off or not.
Taking on Visa and Mastercard is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to things like smart contracts.