Technology

59598 readers

4185 users here now

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

Our Rules

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

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

1664

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

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

679 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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

[–] emergencyfood 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yes, gold is a commodity, but when used as currency it is acting as a medium of exchange and not as a commodity. Same with pieces of paper with the sign of the reserve bank governor, or data on a computer's memory. The gold, paper and hard disc all have intrinsic value, but when used as currency they are assigned an arbitrarily higher face value.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

When you have commodity money, the value of the money is derived from the value of the commodity. You don't get to assign arbitrarily higher values to the money because the market determines the value. But yes, all speculative assets typically have a higher extrinsic value compared with their intrinsic value but I don't believe that has anything to do with it being a medium of exchange or not. That is just supply and demand.

[–] emergencyfood 1 points 6 months ago

When you have commodity money, the value of the money is derived from the value of the commodity.

The value of the commodity acts as a floor, but the face value is dictated by supply and demand, and demand usually exceeds supply, driving it significantly above the floor. Take gold, for example. Gold's intrinsic values are (1) it's pretty and can be used to make decorative items, and (2) it has some applications in electronics. It can't be eaten, can't be worn, and it's too soft even to make tools out of it. Yet, its extrinsic value is huge, because it is publically seen as a good medium of exchange and so a lot of people want it.