this post was submitted on 20 May 2024
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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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[–] [email protected] 195 points 10 months ago (9 children)

Crypto means cryptography, stop using it to talk about cryptocurrency.

[–] [email protected] 106 points 10 months ago

good luck, I'm sure this comment will change how everyone talks from now on.

[–] [email protected] 68 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Crypto means hidden, stop using it to talk about cryptography.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Crypto currencies doesn't mean "hidden currency", it means currency based on cryptography.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Do you mean to say that crypto is based on crypto? Crazy!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

They meant that choosing one possible definition and saying it’s what the word means is stupid. Words mean pretty much what everyone agrees they mean. Look at all the words that have basically flipped definitions since their inception. Just because the modern derivative of a word means something literally everyone understands but is slightly different than what it used to mean doesn’t mean the oldest answer is the correct one. Unwad your jock.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's also sometimes used as shorthand for crypto-orchidism -undescended testicles.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Ahh, so... crypto, which is based on crypto, can be used to pay for treatments to crypto.

Got it.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Is it not clear which definition of Crypto he's using?

Linus coming out against cryptography seems so unrealistically silly to me that it's not even worth considering.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago

The security of Linux 2000 will be based entirely on steganography, Linux founder announces

[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Yeah, that headline is very misleading. Crypto(graphy) is essential for the digital world to exist whereas the other stuff is a pyramid & money laundering scheme.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 10 months ago (2 children)

It's not "misleading," because the vast majority of people understand what the current colloquial use of crypto is.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago

Not the nerds on Lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

A certain irony in a synonym for "secret" being a term everyone's implicitly familiar with.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

It’s useful for buying drugs online on the dark web so I for one like it

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

All the fentanyl you can snort.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Which market are people using nowadays? I haven't kept up to speed over the last few years.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

"Have you invested in crypto?"

Do you think anyone anywhere will misunderstand this as investing in cryptographic research/development?

The mainstream usage of the word isn't always aligned with what is good for society or even the original usage of the word.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I guess I'm getting old then 😜

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

So the equivalent of the population of the United States plus 40% are money-londerers. Because somewhere between five and seven percent of the world's population uses cryptocurrency and that's 400 million to 550 million people.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Increasing demographics might initially be attributed to a rise in the number of accounts and improvements in identification. In 2021, however, crypto adoption continued as companies like Tesla and Mastercard announced their interest in cryptocurrency. Consumers in Africa, Asia, and South America were most likely to be an owner of cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, in 2022.

That's functionally the nut of it. People in countries that lack a traditional western banking sector but enjoy internet access can piggyback on the network of banks with crypto-interfaces. This is more a consequence of the unregulated wing of the financial sector than an raw utility of cryptocurrency itself.

If WellsFargo won't ratify me as a client, but Coinbase will, I'm stuck dealing in bitcoin simply because I can't get a credit card denominated in USD.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

No some of them are the marks.

But if we want to play bad faith statistics games then 5% is roughly the percent of Americans who have gone to prison.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Cryptocurrency is a currency based on cryptographic keys.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

Never heard it commonly used as a short form for "cryptography". But did hear it commonly used for "Cryptocurrency". Why not let the morons have it? Do you have a scam running that relies on "Crypto" being short for "Cryptography"? Using "cool" brevs is the mark of the amateur anyway, if someone said "crypto" to me when he meant cryptography, I'd forever judge them as a silly person.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago

Before 2010 it was almost exclusively used to refer to cryptography, outside of some even more niche fields (parts of biology, political sciences, etc)

I run /r/crypto on reddit, for cryptography, and the spam is horrendous and the flood of idiots is never ending

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You are aware that the "crypto" part of cryptocurrency is short for cryptographic, right?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Wait.. whose the moron here? Lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

That's like asking people to say kilograms instead of kilos

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Ok based upon one dude's opinion I'll purposely create a communication problem between me and anyone who ever tries to discuss this stuff with me.

Or I could just toss this opinion in the garbage...

Decisions decisions