this post was submitted on 20 May 2024
1598 points (97.2% liked)

Technology

58997 readers
4585 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
  • 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.
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Empricorn@feddit.nl 36 points 5 months ago (3 children)

If crypto had pivoted to freedom and prioritized mass-adoption, it would have been great. Instead, almost everyone who invested got more people to buy in, dumped it, and got their payday. So yes, very much like capitalism.

[–] Rustmilian@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Really, the only crypto that comes anywhere near :

If crypto had pivoted to freedom and prioritized mass-adoption

Is Monero. Unfortunately, it falls short when it comes to mass-adoption. Still, it's just as volatile as any other crapto-currency, so using it as an investment vehicle is a bad idea. It seems almost like crapto-currency is fundamentally incompatible with stock market style investments.

[–] shortwavesurfer@monero.town 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I agree with you. I think people are using it wrong. It's a currency for a reason. It's meant to buy and sell goods and services. I should be able to buy a house with it. I should be able to buy a car with it. I should be able to go to the doctor and pay the doctor with it or buy some eggs from the farmer's market with it. But instead, people want to treat it like a stock market thing. And that's not what it was designed to be. It was designed to be an ultimate check on the government's authority to steal from their citizens through inflation. And anybody who tells you different is either a damn liar or has an agenda.

[–] Rustmilian@lemmy.world 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

It was designed to be an ultimate check on the government's authority to steal from their citizens through inflation. And anybody who tells you different is either a damn liar or has an agenda.

Unfortunately that's just not how most crypto currency is designed. Really, most crypto currency are essentially an extremely volatile private bank with a user-federated money printer.
Most are just an obfuscation of global inflation and yet still highly influenced by governments.
Allowing governments to track the transactions makes crypto basically just a crappy version of credit cards.

[–] shortwavesurfer@monero.town 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I completely agree. Most cryptocurrency is a stupid mess and I would never ever get involved in it. That word most is the keyword, though. That implies that there are some that are actually valuable for their own sake. And I believe that to be Monero, which is why I personally use it. Monero does not allow the government to see your finances at any time and so they absolutely hate it and try to demonize it at every chance they get.

[–] Rustmilian@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Completely agree. By obfuscating the blockchain transactions, monero is essentially digital cash (at least when it comes to monero-to-monero transactions); what craptocurrency is supposed to be. That's why governments hate it so much, it's hard to tax transactions they can't see and it's hard to regulate something you can't control or track. That's why governments opted to ban it outright.

Still, the whole "being used as a stock market" is a problem for monero too. To a lesser degree than other cryptos, monero still was heavily impacted by the crypto bubble-pop. Monero has a lot of technical merit, unfortunately it's being soiled by the failure of competing cryptos.

[–] shortwavesurfer@monero.town 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

You don't get into Monero for mad gains, which is what people don't seem to get. They are in cryptocurrency for number go up, and I absolutely despise them for it. Monero is growing in adoption, even with the government adversity towards it. It is still growing. In fact, a decentralized exchange called Haveno just launched last Tuesday which will make it completely impossible to ever actually kill Monero's Fiat 2 Monero Exchange

[–] Rustmilian@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Got some sources? Sounds interesting.

[–] shortwavesurfer@monero.town 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] Rustmilian@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] shortwavesurfer@monero.town 0 points 5 months ago

Haveno is the base software where Haveno-reto is the live network based on it. Currently they have to fork it and put keys directly into the source code to be able to change networks, although that should be fixed in a future update.

[–] Stalemate5849@thelemmy.club -1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)
[–] shortwavesurfer@monero.town -3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I would like to introduce you to my friend Monero. It actually gets used as a currency and has people who believe in human freedom using it, which is why the government's hate it so much and purposely try to get it delisted from as many exchanges as they possibly can because they do not want normals like us to have it.

[–] Empricorn@feddit.nl 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I have a long day of paying rent, then buying groceries, coffee, and fast food tomorrow. If you can detail how I will accomplish that with Monero, I am on your side. And keep in mind, "expensive, inconvenient currency-switching" may work for me, but it won't work for most people. Be realistic.

[–] shortwavesurfer@monero.town 0 points 5 months ago

https://coinsbee.com, https://monerica.com.

I have personally been purchasing my groceries every month with Monero for a year and a half now since January of 2023. I also actively search out companies that take Monero and purposely buy from them whenever possible.