• 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.
  • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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    2 months ago

    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.

    • RecluseRamble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 months ago

      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.

      • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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        2 months ago

        Behind a value stock is a profitable company.

        The owner of a privately held company receives those profits. The owner of a value stock does not: the company profits do not transfer to the stockholder. The shares of the company do not entitle the holder to any part of the business. The “value” of those shares are only that other people want them as well.

        Without the possibility of dividends to convey the profits to the shareholders, the profitability of the company is entirely irrelevant. The only “value” of a value stock is its desirability to other people.

        • RecluseRamble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          2 months ago

          A value stock means it’s undervalued compared to its fundamentals or “cheap”. It has nothing to do whether or not the company pays dividends.

          The difference to garbage like crypto-tokens is that there actually are fundamentals - a profitable company you’re buying a share of and for a cheap price. Of course there’s risk involved but you are likely to profit from this.

          Much more likely anyway than any crypto-token gamble because there’s no value underneath, only wasted energy; and yes, also with PoS or whatever - it’s all inefficient compared to a conventional database behind the firewall of a trustworthy organization. Your trustlessness rethoric is the actual lie behind this huge scam.

          • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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            2 months ago

            a profitable company you’re buying a share of and for a cheap price.

            A company in which the owner receives nothing from the business operation is not a “profitable” company. Where the shareholders do not receive dividends, and have zero expectation of ever receiving dividends, the business operations of the company are divorced from the value of the share. From the perspective of the shareholder, there are no profits to consider.

            The actual “fundamentals” of such a share is nothing more than the faith that someone else will want to buy that share for more in the future, and the only reason that second person has to buy it in the future is the belief that a third person will buy it later.

            That is exactly the same “fundamentals” as crypto; the same “fundamentals” as a ponzi scheme.

            • RecluseRamble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              2 months ago

              This is pointless. You don’t even seem to know what profit and value are exactly, much less how the letter is increased.

              But ok, gamble away your money for worthless crap if you believe it’s the same as owning non-distributing value stock (lol). I’m not an altruistic economics teacher trying to stop you hurting yourself.

              • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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                1 month ago

                But ok, gamble away your money for worthless crap if you believe it’s the same as owning non-distributing value stock (lol).

                I can point to any number of companies whose stock has proven to be worthless crap. It is the same gamble for each.

    • AliasAKA@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      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.

      • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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        1 month ago

        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. Until the shareholders benefit from the business operations, rather than mere speculation, these stocks are not any different than crypto.

        • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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          2 months ago

          I didnt say that, money is real because its backed by a source be it government or otherwise. Having a currency has a rather obvious use case, having a liquid form of exchange to represent wealth is useful and eases things. Hell it doesnt even have to be paper or metal, it could be bullets, bottlecaps, seashells, or be rocks.