• 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.
  • AIhasUse@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    If you were not living in a powerful first world country, you would like it a hell of a lot more. It is such a luxury to not have to constantly be worried about your currency collapsing. In places like Turkiye, crypto is massively popular because their currency is constantly devaluing. There are many countries like this that many Americans and Europeans seem to forget even exist.

    It probably won’t be too long until even the spoiled nations will want to be able to hold value somewhere that isn’t free falling as well. The US is now paying more to service their debt than they are to the military. Not everyone can afford to hold their wealth in real estate and successful businesses.

    • squid_slime@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      Please get fucked on assuming where i live and inturn my life style.

      If capitalism died we wouldn’t have first world countries feeding on third world countries. Crypto won’t help with this issue, you will still have american companies drilling oil out of third world countries paying workers fuck all, sweat shops will still need to be somewhere too and the capitalist would prefer it away from they’re first world country. If anything crypto will only shield the exploiters but at least the libertarian can be happy whilst getting fucked by daddy bazos.

      • AIhasUse@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Read my comment again, you entirely missed the point. This has nothing to do with anything you pointed out. I guarantee you don’t live In a poor country because there isn’t a chance that you would have no idea how much they are benefiting from bitcoin. I’m sorry you’re so offended, but you were your ignorance so prominently that it isn’t hard to see at all. I’m also in the 1st world, but I desire to understand the whole picture enough to be able to tell. Use your anger over something you know nothing about as a guide of where to educate yourself.

        • squid_slime@lemm.ee
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          7 months ago

          I saw the point you where trying to make, diminishing my knowledge in the matter due to your presumption of my privileges.

          Then railroading off with how its good as poor countries are forced to invest in these schemes.

          Do you know much of rune scape gold farming? Gold farming in rune scape was very profitable. Westerners would pay slave wages to poor countries to play and farm in run scape working 60 hours, this was eventually broken up which also didn’t lead to a good outcome as a large community lost the financial structure they depended, essentially chewing up and spitting out the disadvantaged.

          Similar instances have popped up since crypto where again it has created a work force built on shaky ground which doesn’t just exploit but creates a dependency on something liable to fail.

          So again no crypto will not fix third world problems as it allows for massive exploitation.

          • AIhasUse@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Oh my. Hold your horses buddy. Nobody is forcing poor people to buy bitcoin. People are just faced with a choice, they can hold their value in fiat currencies that corrupt governments are printing like crazy, or they hold their value in a decentralized currency that nobody has control over and nobody can print on a whim. Just because you feel like you missed out on a good investment and so you are bitter towards an entire growing industry doesn’t matter at all to people who are using it to escape corruption.

            It really isn’t nearly as complex or evil as you think it is. It really is just a way for people who have repeatedly been screwed over by corrupt politicians to escape corruption. It’s just a matter of time until more and more people around you realize the same, and eventually you will join in, albeit a bit late due to your ignorant bitterness. You do yourself no favors by being against something simply because you don’t take the time to understand it.

            • squid_slime@lemm.ee
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              7 months ago

              like nobody is forcing the poor to drink dirty water or go without food…

              Just because you feel like you missed out on a good investment and so you are bitter

              you make a lot of assumptions. next you’ll be calling me a basement dweller.

              capitalism isn’t evil, guns aren’t evil, physical currencies aren’t evil, they are instead an easily manipulated vehicle that intern can be used for evil. crypto has proven itself with the sheer amount of scams to be easily manipulated. i don’t see crypto as complex, i have followed it since 2013 and have a good understanding of encryption and decentralized systems as well as economics.

              the main reason i don’t like or see use for crypto is that i am a socialist, crypto goes against core socialist economic values. it also pollutes as the oil cost is high, it promotes commercialization, its abusive to human psychology with fomo, it feeds into libertarianism.

              • AIhasUse@lemmy.world
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                7 months ago

                Poor people all over the world are less poor because they have used bitcoin to escape predatory devaluing fiat currencies. Go check out much of Africa, much of South America, Turkey, Georgia, and Southeast Asia. There are literally people eating better food and drinking cleaner water thanks to the fact that they can maintain their hard-earned value with bitcoin.

                Nobody said capitalism is bad. Nobody said guns are bad, I have no idea why you would feel the need to conflate issues. I get that you can read headlines, but dig a bit deeper, and you will actually be able to argue from thought-out stances. The crypto oil thing was a scare tactic that got thoroughly disproven many years ago. Mining is rapidly ushering in the transition to renewable energy sources. It is also preventing waste of energy that would just dissipate.

                The information is out there. It’s just up to yourself to put in the work to educate yourself. I don’t mean run around trying to find anything that will agree with your original hunches or whatever to try to guard your ego. I mean, look at it with fresh eyes and be willing to expand your view after critically analyzing the situation without bias. It is actually a good thing to be capable of arguing from both sides so that you are able to honestly weigh the situation. Right now you are just spewing old headlines that you once saw and not even attempting to make a coherent argument.

                It will only help you to educate yourself. It’s not nearly as daunting as it seems. The next step is to quit trying to defend a stance that you don’t understand and to spend some time researching and asking questions. If you had understood what bitcoin was in 2013, then you would be in a much different situation than you are in right now.

                • squid_slime@lemm.ee
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                  7 months ago

                  Speaking about guns, capitalism and currency were to give examples, and thus context. And if you can show me evidence that crypto has improved so many live in impoverished counties, maybe a crypto GDP study I would love to see it.

                  I speak of gas prices as I had mined bitcoin and monero and know for a fact that my GPU was 100%, my electricity bill went up. and the crypto miner I repaired PC components for would have a repaste job every few months.

                  • AIhasUse@lemmy.world
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                    7 months ago

                    Bitcoin Brought Electricity to Countries in the Global South

                    Cryptocurrency Adoption in Developing Countries

                    Bitcoin Spurs Major Renewable Projects From Ocean Thermal To Hydro

                    BTPI will research relationship between Bitcoin and financial freedom

                    A great way to really understand just how much Bitcoin and maybe some stablecoins are impacting the lives of people in poorer nations is to just go and talk to people. Spend a few weeks in Tbilisi or similar places and just walk around and talk to average people. Bitcoin is so popular amongst the average people there that many random little shops are even selling socks or Tshirts with the Bitcoin icon on them. So many lives have been saved, and the people there genuinely love Bitcoin.

                    There is a huge difference between crypto and Bitcoin. There are many shitcoins that try to pretend to be the next Bitcoin or whatever, but literally 99.9% of them are absolute garbage. Luckily, they are drying up and blowing away. For people who this stuff really matters for, they are able and willing to look deep enough to see the benefits of Bitcoin and are much less likely to fall into the BS traps of CyberCoin or whatever.

                    It is often the uneducated outsider that hasn’t lived the horrendous harm of horrible government currencies that are so vehemently opposed to Bitcoin. It just screams privilege, like when some spoiled trust fund kid gets mad at homeless people because they won’t just go home. When people are struggling to not drown and they find a life raft, they simply don’t care if people in yachts tell them it looks tacky.

                    If you genuinely want to give this a fair shake, then Google things like “bitcoin encourages renewable energy after:2023” or “Bitcoin adoption in poor countries after:2022”. Get recent information and be open to having your mind changed. Bitcoin threatens the imbalance of power, and this is why there is a push to get people in powerful countries to not think deeply about how much it is helping the less fortunate right now. It’s just a matter of time though. Knowledge naturally spreads.