Linux Inventor Says He Doesn’t Believe in Crypto
Linux Inventor Says He Doesn’t Believe in Crypto
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.
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You're free to shit on cryptocurrency all you like, but it has many use-cases where traditional banks and payment systems fall short.
Without cryptocurrencies like Monero we wouldn't have anonymous VPN services like Mullvad, and we would have a global web being forced to follow US laws despite being based elsewhere.
For example, Visa is forcing art platforms to ban (legal) adult content or face blocking. The alternative is master card and other cards that you can't get in many parts of the world, and there is no guarantee that those cards also won't start enforcing restrictions. For those places, cryptocurrency is easiest, cheapest and fastest.
Also, a ponzi scheme is something where you pay investors with newer investors' money. This is not how cryptocurrency works. People pay a tiny amount per transaction to stakers or miners that keep the network going. Anything else is purely a result of the giant surge of new investors, and once we hit a period of stability, mining and staking will be virtually the only way to "earn" money from cryptocurrency and that is completely fair seeing as you're paid to keep the network going.
Ethereum Layer 2 is cheaper than credit card transactions, by the way.
And the biggest vehicle for scams is google and Amazon gift cards.
Torvalds also dismissed the idea of technological singularity as a bedtime story for children, saying continuous exponential growth does not make sense.
No one in the cryptospace claims this.
Let's not forget that crypto also enable wide deployment of ransomwares (which was not possible due to the lack of untraceable online payment at scale), while less and less ecommerce platform allow crypto payment. If this trend continues, eventually no one would use crypto except for speculation and paying off ransom.
Even online crime often settles with gift cards though because it's too much of a hassle to explain to the Average Joe how to setup an account and buy and transfer crypto-tokens.
Scams are not much affected by cryptocurrency existence, but ransomware existence specifically relies on crypto for scaling reason. They infect millions of computers, the ransoms are being handled automatically because it's way too much to be handled manually with gift cards.
The internet enabled that. Are we going to get rid of the internet?
Also, crypto is for peer-to-peer transactions. E-commerce platforms were never the target anyway. And if you really need to pay with crypto on these, you still have crypto-linked debit cards, and these platforms won't know the difference.
The internet has far more beneficial uses than malicious uses. We currently can't say the same with cryptocurrency due to its diminishing utility.
E-commerce platforms were never the target anyway
What's the use of money if not for paying stuff? In the early days, a lot more shops (online and offline) accept crypto payments. These days it's mostly vpn companies that accept them.
Paying people. And as I said, you can link crypto to a debit card to pay on these shitty platforms if you want (platforms that are bad for local business to begin with).
There is no diminishing utility for crypto. It has already been integrated to a point where you just don't realize you can use it.
And quickpay integration also exists. People wouldn't even know you paid with cryptocurrency.
There isn’t a coin out there that can process 1/10 of the number of transactions that Visa does in an hour.
Anonymous vpns would still exist, as block chain existed prior to crypto.
Visa having the power they do is definitely a problem, however buttcoin is not a viable answer.
You’re right, it’s not a ponzi scheme, it’s the “bigger idiot” scam.
There isn’t a coin out there that can process 1/10 of the number of transactions that Visa does in an hour.
Ethereum had a sharding update done recently, which boosted the maximum TPSs by 1000 times. Arbitrum claims to be capable of 40,000tps now. That's 2/3 of visa. Combine all blockchains and they all surpass all credit cards combined.
Also, credit cards charge 1.5% - 3.5% processing fees. Ethereum L2 charge less than 0.01$, making them much cheaper than credit card transactions. https://l2fees.info/
Anonymous vpns would still exist, as block chain existed prior to crypto
No they wouldn't. They'd be vpns directly linked to your credit card. You're more anonymous without a VPN at that point.
You’re right, it’s not a ponzi scheme, it’s the “bigger idiot” scam.
It is a currency. It has inflation. Anything with value can become a "bigger idiot" scam. Google stocks are a "bigger idiot" scam except you also help them destroy the internet when you invest.
“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.
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.
Yes there are hundreds of thousands of shitcoins and rugpulls, I'm not justifying their existence, but Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano, Nano, Monero, Litecoin. These chains alone can surpass credit card max TPS. There is no argument comparing one single blockchain to one single credit card service, because the reality is it is spread out throughout all of them. You don't need more transactions per second when you can allocate these transactions to different blockchains depending on what is fastest, cheapest, safest or most private at the time.
They aren’t currencies, they’re investment vehicles backed by nothing.
They're currencies, not investment vehicles, and some of them are directly backed by government bonds and cash (like USDC).
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…
That is first of all completely untrue with for example Monero where the coins are fungible and virtually untrackable. Second of all, they're completely anonymous as long as you don't provide KYC to one of your wallets or withdraw money to a bank account that belongs to you. The biggest bitcoin holder to this day is completely unknown.
Ethereum can now process 1000 x 10 transactions. Visa currently does what, 80000 per second? Yeah it’s not quite 1/10th but….
Visa does 60k TPS, arbitrum can do 40k TPS. But also, 10000 is indeed more than 1/10 of 80000.
How long until arbitrum reveals the rug pull? I’m sure it will be any day now.
You get back to me when that happens. If you look at the tokenomics of ARB you should be able to tell how big of an impact that would have.
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
Need anonymous transactions? Sure let's send 10k by letter and see how well that goes. It would take several weeks before it arrives if the mailman didn't suddenly lose track of it. International transactions are very expensive and get arbitrarily blocked. "Solution to a problem no one has"... I literally cannot pay my student loans because my Japanese bank blocks credit card transactions to the one system the Swedish student loan agency uses for credit card payment, and sending money by bank transfer costs up to 10% of the wired money. Do you think I want to spend over 4,000$ on fees just to pay my student loans? It cost me 0.01$ to send all of that through Ethereum layer 2 in less than a minute to a family member so they instead could make the credit card payment. You think no one has any problems with traditional banking and payment because your privileged ass never had any issues. In China people couldn't withdraw any money from their banks during the evergreen ponzi. Crypto was available at that time.
Ya know what most “anonymous” international transactions are? Scams.
Most of them are trades, next are off-shore transactions, third are donations. Scammers use Amazon gift cards, not cryptocurrency, because old gullible people have no idea how cryptocurrency works.
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.
The problems:
- Banks refusing to let people withdraw their money (China, 2022),
- Visa blocking art platforms from all credit card payment until adult content is cleared from the platform (deviantart, pixiv, 2024)
- International bank transfers being buttfuckingly expensive (everyone, anytime)
- Credit card companies and banks selling your transaction history to advertising companies (US, 2024)
- Banks arbitrarily blocking credit card transactions (even very important ones such as student loan payments) because their targets aren't domestic.
- Credit card services charging 1.5% - 3.5% fees per transaction despite the actual cost being virtually none.
- VPN services keeping your credit card information, essentially linking all your activity to you specifically instead of anyone using your IP.
- Having to register an account, give your name and address, credit card info and phone number to be able to donate to your favorite content creator, then have your data be leaked among millions of other people's data in a giant data breach.
Why don't you give me a good few solutions to these problems? Cryptocurrency solves all of them at once.
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?
You can't just dismiss all those problems as not real. What are you talking about? Those are as real as any other problem, and affect lot of people. They affect me and are more important to me than what for example any quickpay service solves. And mass surveillance is one of the biggest problems of our time. Dismissing it as a non-issue is unhinged.
And stop trying to paint verything as criminal. It doesn't matter what you need to send 10k anonymously for. You could be obtaining your salary and don't want others to know how much it is or how much you've accumulated (except for when you report it yourself, ie taxes). you could be a whistleblower or reporter, or just care about privacy. One should never have to provide a reason to want privacy ever.
People would accept Monero during a bankrun. In fact, the biggest winners in the China bankrun (besides the corporations) were people who were illegally holding cryptocurrency in China.
In physical purchases, yes, your name will end up on whatever contract, but "it was paid with Monero" is the only information that will be available. Not what else you've been buying or who you got it from. And I already gave an example of where your name doesn't get linked whatsoever. Mullvad VPN. Any online service has no reason to require your personal information. Cloud storage, subscription fees, software licenses, etc. Not everything is physical packages to your door, and there are also peer to peer crypto-cash exchanges. You can absolutely buy anything anonymously even if you are a bitcoin holder.
Yes, when “money” falls, and the societal collapse happens, everyone’s going to trade in bitcoin.
I never said anything about societal collapse. You're reiterating r/buttcoin arguments against things I'm not saying.
You don't need to give a reason to want privacy. If you immediately think "that's just suspicious criminal behavior" then you're essentially using "protect the children by banning encryption in messaging applications." As argument.
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.
For example, Visa is forcing art platforms to ban (legal) adult content or face blocking.
Only because the social pressure after the metoo charade. Visa itself was more than happy to allow these transaction before it. And once all this stigma on adult content will pass, Visa will be more than happy to allow these transactions again. They are money to them.
That's not happening soon. The stigma is only getting worse in the US and non-us services are paying the price. Look at pixiv who had to IP ban American users.
It has many more scams though
I'm a crypto-using singulatarian and I claim that. Growth is measured in subjective utility, not finite resource consumption.
I totally agree with you. Cryptocurrencies have their place, and I'm going to make a serious effort to normalize use of Monero because I think it's important to have a digital equivalent to cash for a whole host of reasons, from activists and whistleblowers being able to get support, to an average teenager trying to buy something online discretely without their parents knowing.
Privacy is important, and there should be an option for that.
That said, most cryptocurrencies don't have privacy as a goal, and are instead pure speculation of the higher order. There are a ton of scams in the cryptocurrency space, so you need to be very carefulb when venturing too far outside the norm. Most of the value in most coins is pure hype, not utility.
I don't buy cryptocurrencies as an investment, but I do buy Monero for actual spending.
we wouldn't have anonymous VPN services like Mullvad
I don't follow. Mullvad would exist regardless of cryptocurrencies existing, and you could still buy it anonymously with their cash option. Paying with cryptocurrencies is pretty cool, but it's hardly a requirement for it to exist.
Actually agree, generally.
Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme basically, but it's not the only block chain in town.
Anonymous peer-to-peer financial exchanges can actually be good.
Cooperative ledgers can be good.
Public ledgers can be good.