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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • I don’t think you know what a ponzi scheme is. A ponzi scheme is a situation where a business pays it’s previous investors with the money from it’s new investors… In a fairly launched crypto currency there is no business or other central entity distributing the coins so there is nothing to invest in and no one to pay you back. The only think you can “invest” in is the network itself and the only thing you can “invest” is the work of your computer to secure the network for which you will be rewarded with some coins. Every other good store of value in the world works the same. In order to obtain gold or silver you have to pointlessly dig in the ground searching for some useless metal whose only worth comes from it’s scarcity and being difficult to obtain. In that sense if crypto currencies are a ponzi scheme then so are silver, gold, diamonds, €/$/£ (paper or digital), stocks and everything else whose value doesn’t come from it’s intrinsic qualities.

    If you don’t want to dig in the ground/use your computers work you can pay someone else to do it or just buy the metal/coin from them if they already acquired it. But if it’s so useless why would anyone spend their time, effort or intrinsically valuable things (like food, fuel, tools etc.) to acquire it? Because while it’s basic qualities don’t make it a good source of energy, food, heat, light, shelter, security, comfort, entertainment… non of the things we as humans value, they do make it an ideal candidate for a store of value a unit of account and a medium of exchange. That’s why people valued this metals for millennia and continue to do so. They don’t have value on their own, but in the context of the societal system we live in their intrinsic qualities make them invaluable. The value of gold, cash etc. came from it’s place in that system, crypto currencies are in many aspects an improvement on those intrinsic qualities that make gold and cash valuable so it’s only natural that they will replace the aforementioned in many areas of life.




  • Is there any benefit to it over nostr though? You’d have to link your public key to your account(s) and store a backup of your private key in addition to your regular login/password just to get a more fragmented and less seamless version of nostr. A lot of people already have issues figuring out how fediverse works with multiple instances and all… now they’d have multiple accounts with different credentials to keep track of on top of a meta login/password (pub/priv key). With nostr you only have 1 login/password (pub/priv key) to everything, it’s just long and you can’t change it. At least I think that’s how it works, I don’t really use twitter/nostr/mastodon type of sites.




  • That’s just not true. Monero, litecoin, bch… transactions cost less than a penny. No one uses bitcoin for illegal things anymore (it’s tracable and forever on the blockchain, people use monero instead) but if they were wouldn’t that mean bitcoin is useful for exchanging goods?

    I use crypto for a bunch of legitimate things like paying for my VPN, phone bill, donating to foss projects etc.

    I use it because it’s more private, faster and more convenient for me. I can always have it with me, use it from any place, any time, for anything I want with no hidden fees and no one can seize, freeze, track or control my money. If you think that thoes things are valueable only to criminals you must have lived under some 1st world rock for a while.


  • I use crypto to privately pay for my VPN, phone bill, to donate to foss projects. I sold some digital items online for crypto. I use it because it’s faster, more private (if done correctly) and convenient than using a credit card or bank transfer. No one can seize, freeze, or control my crypto. I can donate, pay or get paid on my own terms with no middle man. If visa, mastercard, banks or fintech companies generate value then so does crypto.






  • Distro doesn’t really mater that much, desktop environment (de) is a more important choice for a new user.

    Comming from windows you might like cinnamon, mate, kde plasma or gnome with ArcPanel and Dash to Dock extensions. There’s also lxqt and xfce for low spec systems.

    You can install any de on any distro but if you are new to linux you might want to stick with the default one.

    If you want cinnamon or mate go with linux Mint.

    For gnome ZorinOS looks decent. I think it comes with wine already set up to make running windows programs easier. If you have an nvidia gpu Pop!_OS comes with nvidia drivers but you’ll probably want some gnome extensions like ArcMenu and Dash to Panel.

    Before installing any distro you should try them out in a live usb mode or a virtual machine.

    Personally I started with Cinnamon Mint but it had issues with my multi monitor set up and poor gaming performance so now I’m on gnome Pop!_OS with ArcMenu and Dash to Panel on desktop and lxqt lubuntu on laptop.

    I switched from windows about a year ago and now I’m absolutely certain I’m never comming back. The first 2 weeks or so are the most difficult because you feel like you have to learn a brand new skill every time you do something basic that would take you 30 seconds in windows but once you have everything set up and are more familiar with how things are done on linux it will feel completely natural.

    Good luck on your linux journey, I hope you see it through. :)