- 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.
It’s interesting to see Torvalds emerge as a kind of based tech hero. I’m thinking here also of his rant not long ago on social.kernel.org (a kernel devs microblog instance) that was essentially a pretty good anti-anti-leftism tirade in true Torvalds fashion.
EDIT:
Torvalds’s anti-anti-left post (I was curious to read it again):
I think you might want to make sure you don’t follow me.
Because your “woke communist propaganda” comment makes me think you’re a moron of the first order.
I strongly suspect I am one of those “woke communists” you worry about. But you probably couldn’t actually explain what either of those words actually mean, could you?
I’m a card-carrying atheist, I think a woman’s right to choose is very important, I think that “well regulated militia” means that guns should be carefully licensed and not just randomly given to any moron with a pulse, and I couldn’t care less if you decided to dress up in the “wrong” clothes or decided you’d rather live your life without feeling tied to whatever plumbing you were born with.
And dammit, if that all makes me “woke”, then I think anybody who uses that word as a pejorative is a f*cking disgrace to the human race. So please just unfollow me right now.
It’s interesting to see Torvalds emerge as a kind of based tech hero.
It’s just that almost everyone else that could do it ended up being fucking ghouls of people.
Torvalds can be… brusque, sure. But he doesn’t support child labor, he doesn’t cheat on his wife, and he isn’t some crazy cult leader waging a war against workers’ rights.
Another interesting thing to consider.
To be clear, he is rich. But he’s not crazy crazy rich, like nowhere near billionaire status.
With that in mind, his kernel is a key component of RedHat’s, SuSE’s and Canonical whole business, with at least two of those being multi billion dollar businesses.
His kernel is a key component of Android phones, which represent over 50 billion a year in hardware spend, and a bunch of software money on top of that.
His kernel is foundational to most hosting/cloud services with just mind blowing billions of revenue quarterly.
It’s used in almost every embedded device on the planet, networking gear, set top boxes, thermostats, televisions, just nearly everything.
People with a fraction of that sort of relevance are billionaires several times over. A number of billionaires owe much of their success to him. Yet he is not among their numbers.
Now there’s more to things than just a kernel to be sure, but across the hundreds of billions of dollars made while running Linux, there was probably plenty of room for him to carve out a few billion for himself were he that sort of person, but he cares about the work more than gaming the dollars. I have a great deal of respect for that.
Means that while he may not always be right, but I at least believe his assessments are sincere and not trying to drive some grift or cover some insecurity about being left behind.
gitis a way more important contribution to the world that the linux kernel IMO. Its basically the assembly line of almost all modern software production. And Linus actually wrote most of the initial code for it. With Linux he organized the project but was almost immediately not a major contributor. He developed git in the process of maintaining the linux repo.I disagree. Git is great but we’d have done fine with Subversion or whatever. Could you imagine the whole internet running on Windows Server though? The thought alone makes my skin crawl.
Free software would be just using freebsd or whatever, it wouldn’t be that different
You probably need to learn a bit more about VCS fundamentals if you think Subversion would’ve been fine.
I’m old enough to remember the SVN days (he’ll, even the CVS and…dare I say it… source safe days).
Git is fantastic. It’s pretty universally uses because it’s the best dvcs out there and it’s free. It wipes the pants with the likes of mercurial.
In certain industries (such as gaming) there’s still a strong hold by perforce but we can ignore that as it’s proprietary and a bit specialised.
Anyway, as great as git is for making things easier and cleaner when dealing with distributed development, it by no means makes something impossible “possible” - it just makes it a hell of a lot easier.
The Linux kernel on the other hand enabled a lot of impossible things. Remember back in the day there wasn’t anything free and open source in the operating system world, it was all proprietary and licensed. If you wanted to create your own operating system, you basically had no option but to spend a fortune either writing your own kernel or licensing someone else’s (and the licensing part means you cannot distribute it for free).
The fact that the FSF has always wanted to write their own OS and never been able to achieve it without the Linux Kernel, in spite of them essentially writing “everything else” that makes up an operating system, shows just how nontrivial this is.
Well, I don’t know what you mean, so possibly? I just briefly used SVN in a small team for about half a year and would never claim to be an expert. It’s alive and kicking though, so regardless what you say I don’t believe it’s a complete clusterfuck and a world without git would be doomed.
Torvalds didn’t create git because he was passionate about version control systems, he created it because the existing solutions were not adequate.
Git is a distributed version control system (DVCS) that facilitated a fundamental shift in how people collaborate on software projects in general. So, comparing it to SVN and downplaying the significance of Git suggests you’ve kind of missed the point.
Edit: with you on the other thing though - fuck Windows.
git is why we can’t have nice things
There’s many better VCS, but everyone just goes on GitHub and uses git.
I dread ever having to touch it. The CLI is unintuitive, the snapshot system is confusing, and may God have mercy on your soul if you mix merging and rebasing
Mercurial or darcs?
Pijul, actually
darcs_rs
Well, I think Linus Torvalds is one of the rare rich people who actually “deserves” being rich.
I think the main motive behind leftism should be stopping 8 people from owning the 50% of the world’s wealth, not to distribute Linus Torvalds’ 50 million dollars which a well deserved amount of wealth for someone who created the OS which runs the modern world.
Besides, what Linus owns is not even a droplet compared to billionaires like Bezos, Musk or Bill Gates
I think it’s a shining example of the ‘right’ sort of rich. Despite a significance that overwhelmingly exceeds usual billionaire level, he’s not nearly so ‘rich’ and yet he has enough to just not worry about money, but he has earned it.
Or we could just… not glorify people we barely know and invariably be disappointed when it comes out they’re flawed some way or another.
he doesn’t cheat on his wife
he doesn’t cheat on his wife so far.
He’ll live long enough to end up on the wrong side of the polygamy rights fight. But I’d like to be surprised.
I imagine he will be an old and gray man and someone will ask him his opinion and it will probably be like
What? Are you fucking with me? I didn’t give a shit what people did behind closed doors 40 years ago, what fuckin made you think I would care now? Are you fucking mental? Did your daddy not love you enough? Get the fuck out of here, your making my blood pressure spike…
Chaddiest Chad to ever Chad
I wonder what direction the Linux kernel will go once he’s gone. Obviously it will continue to go on and Torvalds should get a statue somewhere if he doesn’t already have one.
I don’t follow thinigs closely at all, but I’m under the impression he’s already starting to kinda take his hands off of the wheel? If so, maybe that picture is emerging now, at least behind the scenes.
Linus hasn’t written kernel code in years at this point, however he still is the final gate keeper of what gets merged and an active code reviewer, he manages the entire direction of the project.
As of what will happen when Linus passes, that’s already been decided. The position of projects leader will go to his most trusted project co-maintainer, which we have a good idea of who that is.
For the uninformed, who is that?
There are a few candidates, the most prominent are probably :
- Greg Kroah-Hartman: Played a pivotal role in stabilizing the memory management subsystem and enhancing block I/O performance, both critical areas for system stability and performance.
- Sage Sharp (formally Sarah Sharp) : Instrumental in the development and maintenance of the networking subsystem and the ARM architecture code, ensuring compatibility and efficient networking for various ARM-based devices.
- Git Junio Hamano: Maintainer of Git, the version control system that underpins Linux development. His leadership in maintaining Git ensures smooth collaboration and efficient code management for the vast kernel developer community.
Greg Kroah-Hartman is speculated to be the most likely candidate, but it also depends on a few factors. Like, if Linus dies suddenly vs dying slowly or just stepping down, there’d be a big difference in selection process.
Ofc, things may change in the future and there’s many other talented developers who can be considered. Nothing is set in stone.
Thanks for the details. With things heading more and more towards arm architecture I’m surprised Sarah Sharp isn’t the leading candidate. But this is all new to me so what do I know lol
It’s not like they couldn’t be chosen, they have some serious stake in it. Consider their achievements and read the following :
Here are some key qualities a potential successor should possess :
- Deep understanding of the Linux kernel: Intimate knowledge of the kernel’s codebase, architecture, and development process is essential.
- Proven leadership skills: The ability to effectively guide a large team of developers with diverse technical backgrounds and priorities.
- Strong communication and collaboration: Excellent communication skills to bridge the gap between developers, and foster a collaborative development environment.
- Technical merit and reputation: A well-established reputation within the Linux community for technical contributions and code quality.
- Vision for the future: A clear vision for the future direction of the kernel, ensuring it remains relevant and innovative.
I’d say they meet most if not all of them. All of the potential candidate’s are amazingly talented and determined individuals.
I remember this. That was a great day to be on the internet.
Its good to see some antileftism once in a while. We need some other perspectives. I didn’t think we’d get it from Linus but here we are.
You might want to re-read that.
Maybe it’s just really lazy spin? I could see it as a creative tactic poorly executed by AI.
You don’t know what you’re on about and you cannot read.
WHOOOOSH
Holy shit, the crypto bros are really triggered by this, out in full force in the comments. If the only argument you can bring for crypto is that you make/made money on it, that sounds a lot like a Ponzi scheme
Fully agree. I think there exist both good and scammy-bubble types of blockchain and crypto. Crypto can be a scam, memecoin rugpull, ponzi scheme, …etc, but it can also be the peer-2-peer decentrilized self-custody borderless international currency of people away from governments manipulation, inflation, banks and middlemen, which is something that has its own advantages and negatives as we’ve seen it with criminals, tax evation and money laundering, but also used by people fleeing war zones after their banking come down and escaping trumbling government fiats. However, it also needs regulations and the protections of world governments to work but also claims to want governments and regulations off.
To clarify my position honestly, I think blockchain programming is here to stay but today 99% of it including BTC could be the scammy bubble type and does not represent or have most of the therotical advantages of the bitcoin’s original white paper which I listed above.
It is a Ponzi scheme. Very clearly one. How that garbage is legal, I will never know. I could have gotten into crypto from the ground floor eons ago and made tons of money but I didn’t because I knew it was illegal and figured the whole thing was going to collapse as soon as governments found out about it. Imagine my shock when most legitimized the damn thing. Still wouldn’t bother even if I could go back and do it again knowing the brain dead, money-greedy idiots are going to legalize a literal Ponzi scheme because I have values and morals.
Yeah, it’s relatively easy to make good money in crypto if you understand investing. There are a lot of things that are illegal in regulated securities markets that are not yet illegal with crypto.
I intentionally don’t invest in crypto, because it doesn’t produce anything. Any money you make is just taken from another investor, usually because they don’t know what they’re doing. When you invest in a company, you make products and sell them to customers. Something is created and rarely are people cheated.
The people investing in crypto are intentionally cheating uninformed investors in a way that is not possible in regulated securities markets.
I actually had the same thing happen to me because I discovered Bitcoin in 2011 and dismissed it as crazy and that the governments would never let it exist. And then several years later heard about it again in a news article and was like, wait, the government hasn’t shut that down yet and started doing some reading and really understood
I agree. Every crypto except XMR seems to be only seen as an investment to make more money.
Why XMR and not BTC? Do the privacy defaults change how it’s seen?
BTC is solely a mode of investment, it offers no real benefits over fiat except decentralization. At least XMR is as or even more anonymous than cash, whereas Bitcoin has zero utility.
If there was a way to use Bitcoin more privately than USD cash, would that give it utility?
Yes. I suppose it would also have a sort of utility if it was mass adopted and therefore practically spendable for the average person, but I would argue that there is no inherent utility to Bitcoin.
I mean not to mention the ridiculous amount of electricity it uses, and heat generated. but hey it’s low priority even though every year lately is the hottest in record.
For clarification. To my understanding, the older cryptographic currencies use an immense amount of power (Proof of Work). But newer models have solved that issue by switching to a Proof of Stake model instead.
Trust me, real crypto people hate those guys as much as you do.
Alright, as a crypto entrepreneur myself, I’ll bite and try to break down exactly what the appeal of crypto is. But b4 I do I would appreciate some updoots since I have a new account. Anyway, crypto, it’s a way to do transactions anonymously. You know how when your wife frequently accesses your bank account to meticulously track every offbrand sex toy you get on temu (at least mine does, filing a divorce at the time of writing, just trying to keep custody of the kids even though they hate me) so you can feel the sensation of plastic child labor alone in your bedroom? But yeah I don’t really use crypto that much personally, too many scams.
I fucking hate that the crypto currency ghouls have captured the word “crypto”. When I first read this I was wondering why in the fuck would Linus not like cryptography. My brain is old and crypto will always mean cryptography.
We just got to wait it out. Gods willing, it’ll come back to meaning cryptography again.
Still waiting for the Swastika/Manji to be de-nazified. Probably not gonna see it in my lifetime, unfortunately.
Behind the Bastards had a great few episodes about how a group of indigenous Americans chose to give up their sacred symbol that looked like a swastika because of the Nazis. Pretty sad but i guess fascists ruin everything.
Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, does not believe in cryptocurrencies, calling them a vehicle for scams and a Ponzi scheme.
To be fair, that’s because Crypto is a vehicle for scams, and a Ponzi scheme.
I’m not gonna put my foot down for either side here but, to be completely fair here, so is for example the us dollar.
The line about safety regulations being written in blood? Financial regulations are written in bankruptcies.
I’m pretty sure most scams and ponzi schemes use US dollars.
Interestingly, for a currency to actually be useful, there needs to be a demand for it, something that you can only pay for in that currency. For real currencies that is normally taxes. England only accepts taxes paid in pounds, so there’s a demand for pounds from every person who has to pay taxes in England. For crypto, extortion is basically the only source of demand.
Sure, occasionally there are places that accept both real currencies and crypto currencies, but for legit businesses almost none of the revenue comes from the crypto side. But, for ransomware, etc. the hackers only accept crypto. That means there’s a demand for crypto, which means that it has some value.
My drug dealer only takes payment in crypto and I think he’s too lazy to extort anyone.
Ok, so ransomware and illegal goods, that is the demand for crypto.
It’s mostly a threat to the state’s tax revenue and power.
No, no it isn’t.
It is a threat to the finances of any crypto user:
Is this going to be the most replied to post on the Fediverse? 635 in 2 days and still going strong.
Edit: since it’s now at 666 replies, please nobody make any more comments
Is there a way to check?
There’s a few with a thousand on top of all time for Lemmy. It would have to break those before it gets there. But since we’ve got a perfect storm of Linux, crypto, and anti ai discussions going, all we need is @[email protected] to make a top level comment about how not voting for Biden is voting for Trump to really push it over the top.
I didn’t realize I was so famous.
You and downpunxx are my most frequent mentions from my kbin days. Not that I particularly want to compare you.
Well, I do appreciate not being compared to THAT particular user, so thank you.
Crypto means cryptography, stop using it to talk about cryptocurrency.
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.
The security of Linux 2000 will be based entirely on steganography, Linux founder announces
Crypto means hidden, stop using it to talk about cryptography.
good luck, I’m sure this comment will change how everyone talks from now on.
If after 16 years you still have to be asked if you believe in crypto, then chances are that it is a scam.
Good point, I always wondered if there is a way the technology will evolve and somehow find a niche that’s unexpected. But you’re right, 16 years is a long time to be meandering.
It’s such a first-world thing to not understand all the good that crypto has done. There are countless lives that have been financially saved by having a safe place to hold wealth while their countries’ fiat collapsed. It’s just a short matter of time until many first world folks understand this as well.
Sounds like the same shit those rare metal guys are always yapping about but with extra scams…
On the other hand, scams rarely last 16 years.
No clue how long scams usually last, but famous ones easily last multiple decades, though funny how unclear if is when the scam started:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madoff_investment_scandal?wprov=sfla1
Federal investigators believe the fraud in the investment management division and advisory division may have begun in the 1970s. However, Madoff himself stated his fraudulent activities began in the 1990s. Madoff’s fraudulent activities are believed to have accelerated after the 2001 change from fractional share trades to decimals on the NYSE, which cut significantly into his legitimate profits as a market-maker.
Alerted by his sons, federal authorities arrested Madoff on December 11, 2008.
For all the reasons that crypto is a scam, every “value” stock - stock which does not now, and never has any intention of ever paying dividends - is also a scam.
Behind a value stock is a profitable company. Behind crypto-tokens is a hilariously inefficient database with no application in real life.
Gamble away your money, I’ll take the stock - or “have fun staying poor” like crypto-token morons like to say.
Except, you know, the stock being tied to ownership in a company that sells real goods or services. Definitely problems with how stocks are traded, but they’re quite different from crypto.
Except, you know, the stock being tied to ownership in a company that sells real goods or services.
That’s the scam: without dividends, or at least the reasonable prospect of dividends, it is not tied to the company in any tangible way. Shareholders benefit only from speculation by other investors, and not from actual business operations.
Crypto is just a waste of resources, similar to AI
Ai has function. Unlike crypto
You projecting about you
I think both have their uses. A true state backed cryptocurrency used interchangeably with physical cash could be quite useful. Crypto as it is now not so much.
AI has a bunch of useful applications in medicine, manufacture, research, monitoring… But where we see it is language models, art remixes, and deep fakes.
A true state backed cryptocurrency used interchangeably with physical cash could be quite useful.
What advantage does this give over a simple digital currency?
Nah it’s literally a waste of physical resources. Crypto currency is a waste of fossil fuels. AI has its functions at least.
Proof of stake uses a load less than proof of work.
Be really good if currencies could go in and out of crypto. Could cut out a lot of middle men.
again, what use does it serve over traditional banking?
even PoS requires a lot of resources in comparison, for a system that literally exists to funnel money to a smaller group of people
I literally can’t transfer money to Kazakhstan without paying $50 for a wire.
Advantages of cash and digital, without the swings of raw crypto. Also leaving the ability to usefully manipulate your country’s currency.
Crypto means easy, open payment systems. No gatekeepers like WorldPay.
like any true Liber-crypto-bro-tarian, your understanding of crypto is only undercut by your understanding of economics
Manipulating currency is a useful tool. If you don’t think so, that makes you more liberian than me.
Like many here, I’m big into open source, and card payment systems are an issue. Crypto is one solution to that. Crypto has advantages, but it falls down as a currency because of blind faith in the invisble hand.
Still uses more than standard banking practice, sorry but FUCK CRYPTO
From what I found, and varies due to values/date, looks like a PoW transaction is about 2+ million times more energy than traditional banking. PoS is over 1000 times less than PoW, so about 2+ thousands times traditional banking. But transitional banking has other problems. For one, the market of payment is stitched up. Not like openness of a crypto currency.
Plus the hardware needed for each person atop the extra power useage.
Not worth it when May already feels like AugEveryone has hardware enough already. Your phone is perfectly good enough. For tills it will be easier to implement. No nonsense with a card machine and things like WorldPay and whole locked down PC. The hardware and platform wouldn’t matter.
Crypto - Meh, I have digital banking and payment processing already, with easy enough international transfers. I’m good.
AI - I see the possibilities, I think we should continue to develop it even if just for the medical applications of machine learning. Right now people just like playing with it, but, privacy issues aside, I don’t think it’s a waste.
Crypto is worse tho, it requires about the same amount of energy as the entire global banking network, but only serves less than a percentage of the transactions
Smart man!
Linus creates kernels. Nothing to do with cryptocurrency. Tech is tech, but I wouldn’t necessarily listen to him about other things than kernels and computers. For example, he doesn’t even believe in FOSS, and he openly supports Google because of Android, Chromebooks and ChromeOS using Linux.
I think there was a potential future where cryptocurrency could’ve actually been useful, but it was ruined by scammers, rug pullers, and of course, speculators.
I’ll still hold a little bit of Monero, since it holds the most potential for being a real currency in my opinion. But otherwise, I fully agree with the sentiment.
When the Wild West was around Medicine was used as a scam too. Snake Oil salesmen aren’t very nice people. But that doesn’t mean medicine is a bad idea ya know?
I agree that there are a lot of snake oil sellers in the cryptographic currencies realm. But that world is basically the digital wild west at the moment to me. I too am waiting to see what happens.
The difference is that medicine, as a concept, is useful.
Is not currency, as a concept, useful? How about transfer of value over vast distances instantly? Is that not useful?
Well know you are just using circular logic. The thing is that cryptocurrencies aren’t currencies.
I hear what you’re saying. But USDC is absolutely a token on many different ledgers that represents a currency.
I’ve been deep in decentralized finance for years as an investor and fulltime software dev. I get the whole “hur hur Bitcoin is dum” but you’re really missing the forest focusing on a tree.
USDC is absolutely a token on many different ledgers that represents a currency.
No, it is a speculative investment. If it were a currency it would be something people were using to buy things, accepting for selling things, using to pay taxes and fines, using to invest in something else, etc.
It’s not a currency, it’s at best some kind of intermediate thing used to buy even more speculative “investments”.
Didn’t you repeat what I said? It’s a token on decentralized ledgers that represents a currency. Like a number in the database at your bank. No different than that.
You deposit your currency at a bank, it’s a number in a database. You earn interest on your investment.
Are you saying that is a different concept than usdc deposited into a lending market on a decentralized ledger and earning interest?
Also, usdc is accepted places. In fact Stripe is adding it as a payment method very soon. Would that make it a currency, or does it have to reach some level of acceptance? What about PayPal balance? Currency?
Linus is already a multimillionaire, he doesn’t need a pump and dump.
How are you asking Linus about crypto and not about the blockchain.
My hot take is this:
Crypto currency, when in its infancy, had a halfway decent concept… now? It’s a shitshow.
Crypto bros tend to argue about the main currencies, Bitcoin, etherium, etc. Meanwhile, there’s about 1000 currencies that aren’t talked about for every currency with any weight behind it.
The main problem with CC’s is that it’s all hype and confidence based. There’s nothing tangible attached to it. I often equate it, for non-cryptocurrency people, to stocks trading. Often, stock is trading above what the actual value of the stock is. Most of the time in IPOs the price of the stock immediately jumps after the stock is released, then trends along some impression of how the company is doing. If there’s a loss in confidence in the company the value of the stock drops, etc. It’s pretty simple supply and demand beyond that. If investors have high confidence in the company to profit, demand for their stock will increase, and since supply is pretty much fixed (aside from shenanigans like stock splits and whatnot), price goes up. Same goes for the inverse, low confidence leads to low demand, price goes down.
It’s similar with so-called crypto. Confidence goes up but supply is fairly stagnant, so the price goes up. Same with the inverse.
The primary difference between the two as investments, is that stocks get repaid (depending on a few factors) if the company goes under. The stock represents a monetary value for assets owned by the company, both liquid and physical assets. Crypto, however, has no such backing. If Bitcoin goes away for some reason, all you’re left with is essentially digital trash.
This is mainly true for all of the talked about cryptocurrencies. The majority of currencies are not really following the same trends. After the initial golden era of CC’s, it became a breeding ground for pump and dump schemes. Since it’s entirely unregulated, borderline impossible to regulate, and AFAIK, no such regulation exists to govern it, there’s no law against pump and dump schemes in the CC world. So it became a huge problem. We see this a lot with NFTs. Touching on NFTs for a second: if you own an NFT, all you actually own is a receipt that is an attestation or receipt that you paid for whatever the NFT is. That’s it. The content behind the NFT, whether it’s artwork or whatever, isn’t locked. It’s actually the opposite of locked, it’s publically available on the blockchain, by design. The only thing you “own” is a tag in the blockchain that says you paid for it.
Pump and dump, for those unaware, is where you artificially inflate the value of something making it seem like a really good deal so everyone buys it, raising demand and prices, then the people who generated the hype dump their investment, cashing out when the value is high, and making off with the money while the value of the investment tanks.
This is very very frequently the case with NFTs. Since it’s unregulated and entirely confidence based, the creators of NFTs will say whatever they have to (aka lie), to increase the confidence in the NFT, then sell it, and let the value freefall afterwards. They’ve even gone to the point of buying their own NFTs with dummy accounts for top dollar to have records on the blockchain that people can look up, which say it was sold for x amount in whatever cryptocurrency, to inspire others to think they’re getting a bargain when they get it for some fraction of that initial transaction. The perpetrators then sell and disappear.
Several other crypto scams like this have also happened, mostly with NFTs but also with lesser known currencies. One that I heard of, required some token to exist to perform any transactions on the blockchain. When the perpetrators were done, they deleted the token, effectively locking the currency to never be traded again. Therefore those with the now digital trash of that crypto/NFC, couldn’t sell to anyone else and they were stuck with the digital garbage data that used to represent their investment.
“Big” currencies, especially older currencies, are fairly stable in terms of confidence, but they’re still volatile, and backed by nothing more than confidence. Any “new” CCs are a gamble to see whether they’re legit at all, or just a pump and dump. The number of currencies that start high, then drop to nil and never recover, is significant.
Here’s a controversial one, Elon Musk, for all of his flaws, isn’t an idiot. He pump and dumped Dogecoin, by tweeting about it to bolster it, then divesting when it surged from his influence. I think this was pretty obvious, but I think a lot of people missed it. IIRC, he did it twice. I’m speculating, since I don’t know which blockchain wallet is his, so I can’t verify, but, he likely picked up a crapton of Doge then did his tweet, dumped when it went high, waited for it to drop again, picked up a crapload more, tweeted again, and finally dumped at another high to earn even more. Since then, doge has not been doing superb. He inspired volatility in the currency and profited from the crypto bros getting excited about it.
The evidence is there and when you look past the confidence game, and look at the numbers, it tells a story that most people don’t want to see.
It’s as if this headline were written to stir discussion on lemmy.
