Linux Creator Linus Torvalds Scoffs at Crypto and Tech Singularity

Linus Torvalds doesn't believe the hype. The Finnish-American engineer behind Linux recently took aim at cryptocurrencies in a forum post. Blunt as ever. The 55-year-old called digital assets an "excellent vehicle for fraud." Just another Ponzi scheme, he thinks. Something that leaves "the next sucker holding the bag." He threw Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, and Easter Bunny into the same bucket of disbelief. Kind of amusing, really.

People used to whisper that Torvalds might be Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin's mysterious creator. This gossip gained steam when someone spotted a kernel update saying 'Name = I am Satoshi' back in January 2022. Nonsense, according to Torvalds. Some "jokester" played with GitHub's system to make it look like his work. "Empty noise," he called it. He seems pretty tired of these rumors.

The man isn't hurting for money though. Worth about $150 million now. Not from crypto—mostly stock options from his actual work. The Linux Foundation pays his salary to keep developing the software that powers much of our digital world.

Tech singularity? That got dismissed too. "A bedtime story for children," in his words. Like the hungry caterpillar—good for clicks and not much else. It's not entirely clear why he feels so strongly about it. The concept makes for interesting sci-fi, he admits, but endless exponential growth? Makes no sense to him. "We are seeing the limits approaching." Hard to argue with someone who's been at technology's frontier for decades.