Linus Torvalds has said that cryptocurrencies are simply "a great vehicle for scams"
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.
Isn't there a person that famously said something to the effect of energy is neither created nor destroyed, only modified? I want to say it was like Isaac Newton or something. Some big name anyway. So you're not destroying the energy. You're changing the energy into heat, which during the winter can heat your home as a subsidy to your furnace, and you are turning it into a digital representation that you can take and spend anywhere in the world.
I get you're desperately trying to sound smart, but in this context, "energy" meant electricity. Because that's what it takes to produce cryptocurrency. Not the general definition in the realm of physics study. And electricity can most certainly be created and destroyed.
When you buy gold, you have the gold. It's backed by the thing you have.
When you buy cryptocurrency, you don't have the electricity that was spent in fabricating those numbers. You don't get sent a battery in the post. You have nothing.
You're not understanding. Real money isn't only numbers on a screen. It can be physical or not, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that it's universally backed and usable.
Crypto isn't. It's just numbers on a screen without the backing of government, business, or most people.
Which is why Monero's proof of work algorithm ends up being better than Bitcoin. Because for a data center with tons of computers, it makes more financial sense to do something else with the machines rather than mine. But for a home user, it makes tons of sense to mine and get the heat to subsidize their electricity bill during the winter.