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Linux Inventor Says He Doesn’t Believe in Crypto (u.today)

submitted 5 months ago by AnActOfCreation@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world

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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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[–] Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

the only thing people ever accepted it as payment for, in any meaningful capacity, were illegal goods and services

That used to be true. Hardly any BTC is being spent on drugs nowadays. It's not anonymous enough. However, people are buying high value items like real estate and luxury goods with BTC.

Bitcoin is mostly being spent on electricity and new hardware.

[–] Silentiea@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 5 months ago

Bitcoin is mostly being spent on ~~electricity and new hardware~~ more Bitcoin.

Ftfy

[–] megopie@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

most of the bitcoin being spent on electricity and hardware gets exchanged for actual currency before it is spent. And most of the luxury goods sales are gimmicks and limited time.

And there is a huge amount of criminal activity with bitcoin still, they just mainly use it to launder money now as the transactions are impractically slow and costly for anything but particularly large trades.

[–] Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago

"The multi-chain era has had a sweeping impact on the distribution of illicit crypto volume as a whole, where Bitcoin’s share plummeted from 97% in 2016 to 19% in 2022. In 2016, two thirds of crypto hack volume was on Bitcoin; in 2022, it accounted for just under 3%, with Ethereum (68%) and Binance Smart Chain (19%) dominating the field. And while Bitcoin was the exclusive currency for terrorist financing in 2016, by 2022 it was all but replaced by assets on the TRON blockchain, with 92%."

TRM illicit crypto ecosystem report 2023