Bitcoin Forum

If you want to be a merit source:

 1. Be a somewhat established member.

2. Collect TEN posts written in the last couple of months by other people that have not received nearly enough merit for how good they are, and post quotes for them all in a new Meta thread. The point of this is to demonstrate your ability to give out merit usefully.

I still standby that charts can only help you if you are experienced with how the markets work.  I am convinced that people don't in a general sense even understand the relation of USD/BTC/Altcoins and how the markets fundamentally operate and move. Technical analysis in my opinion basically is just zones or areas to look at it and apply it to the fundamentals, experience, market conditions, etc and making a sound decision off of all of these.   If nothing else, technical analysis is great discipline because the biggest mistake I see new traders making is they buy at the wrong times (which is awful because in trading this is seriously the only thing you have pure control over is when you buy a coin and at what price and what position it is in), and sell way too late or way too early, and they have no idea or inkling of what this looks like.  Traders, in general, cannot detach from their love of their coins, and don't have the discipline to sell even if it might continue going up, or sell at a loss to avoid disaster because they're just too busy being human and in euphoria.   So  EVEN IF NOTHING ELSE, trading on fibonacci zones or following just the "ABC" Elliott Wave correction theory where you don't buy into a correction until an established bulltrap.. or if there's a TK death cross or we're wicking hard on these moving averages with nowhere to fall to...then even if its not working correctly will most likely stop and give people some rules and things to look for so they don't base their decision purely on greed and emotion, and I almost guarantee that 9 out of 10 people would do better (even if the success of the technical analysis is purely coincidental on making them avoid emotional trading).  Technical Analysis isn't the key to trading... discipline and knowing how the markets work is... but the catch is technical analysis is needed to help form disciplinary habits.

Full nodes do not always relay, or always receive transactions if they have this setting turned off. The operator of a node can use the "blocks only" setting to only receive new blocks, and is a way to reduce bandwidth. There can also be instances when a miner will receive transactions to consider including in their blocks from not-full nodes, such as their websites, or from SPV clients (light nodes) if the miner's node is an electrum server for example.

A full node is one that validates each block in full, including that transactions included in said block contain valid signatures and have not previously been spent (are not double spends).

The decision between running a full node and a SPV client (a "light node") depends on the end user's value of security and privacy. A full node will use more resources, such as bandwidth, computing power, memory and hard drive space, and a SPV client will have incrementally lower security and privacy, but I am not aware of any thefts of coin that were stolen/lost because the end-user was using a SPV client.  

There is no accurate measure of how profitable the project will be. Demand vs supply dictates everything. But if the project is really good and people start to recognize it, then there is a high chance that it can be profitable if you are an early adopter.
Take an example of Bitcoin; it took some years for it to gain value, the main player was the rise in its demand over the years.

So here are the key aspects;

• What problem does the project tackle using the blockchain?
• What blockchain based solution does it have in place?
• How unique is the solution offered from other solutions provided by other projects before
• Is the solution offered feasible?
• How experienced are the team members when it comes to the blockchain technology
• Is the project adoptable?
• Is the project in line with the regulations?
  e.t.c
  

Note: Am emphasizing blockchain technology in my points because it's the newest kid on the block and would love to see it prosper

That said, There are so many articles online which could help you to identify if a project is just scam or legit. I will share a few links here, you can do more research online.
- 10 Ways How to Spot a Scam ICO (https://www.coinschedule.com/blog/how-to-spot-scam-ico/)
- How to Identify Cryptocurrency and ICO Scams  (https://www.investopedia.com/tech/how-identify-cryptocurrency-and-ico-scams/)
- 10 keys for evaluating Initial Coin Offering (ICO) investments (https://cryptopotato.com/10-keys-evaluating-initial-coin-offering-ico-investments/)

You can also visit the scam accusations (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=83.0) board and you get to see and learn how some members identify scam projects

Basically you won't get paid anything until you manage to convince a number of people (victims) to invest in the scheme. After all, its from them the actual money is coming from... That's how you recognize them. Most won't let you quit right away (after you invested) and give you a refund. I knew one that allowed refunds but only for 24 hours.., i guess to comply with local laws (somewhere, often NOT your country, but some fiscal paradise).

The very early ones to enter and leave might be the only ones able to cash something, but it depends on the life of the MLM. I read some estimations say about 8% can profit, so 8 in 100 people will gain at the expense of the other 92 who will lose all.

How long they last? Until someone or group finds out and convinces enough people its a scam; then it bankrupts. Similar to a bank run (and fractional reserve banking is similar to a Ponzi scheme). Basically it lives and dies by word of mouth.

IF its a business that uses some MLM style marketing, but the main income comes from selling actual products or services, then you should research further. If you are selling soaps and get a commission for each one sold but you also manage to recruit people to sell them and earn like 1% of their cut for each sale they do, its still the soap that is making most of the profit, not the people joining to work under you and expand your network.

Sometimes they are very clever and blurry the lines, its not always easy to recognize. You might think they are earning their main profits with another (actual) business when in reality they are doing pure MLM. Sometimes they happened to have another business but secretly isn't doing well, or they buy an actual business (possibly failing) and try to combine it with MLM to give it a decent facade.

It depends on the demand of the coin if many investor wants to buy the coin the higher thr price it will get, so to make sure that there will be a new investor or buyer the developers and team should achieve all the accomplishment and continue to expand and upgrade the project.

It's also important that the project has a unique concept and unique solution to an existing problem using a blockchain technology (or the likes)

An exposure to the community might affect the price as well so a bounty would help since there's a lot of niches here in the forum but it it's still depends on te project whether there will be an investors or none.

To conclude this, a unique and promisable project would increase it's investors and the value of coin as well.

I feel like a lot of people fell victim to this over exuberant buying that started in December and fell into this trap.thanks for being honest and I'm glad you see where your mistakes came from...you were emotional trading and thats okay .. its better to learn now than when your stack is much larger come 2-3 years from now.

First and foremost, December/January were not normal.. alts aren't typically allowed that sort of long leash while BTC goes sideways for so long..  John Mccaffee and tons of youtubers promoting "hot coins" that constantly pump abused the noobs even more (along with attracted people they could make tens of thousands over night, which to be fair I'm sure did happen if people didn't get greedy and took profit).... a lot of people didn't understand the correlation of alts vs btc and just viewed BTC as something that has small gains or goes down while all alt coins go up constantly for 100% + gains per day.. us long term traders are also responsible as much as the fomo'ing noobs.. we abused new traders and stuck them with big bags, then double and triple dipped on the gains through the BTC fud as they sold it all back to us.. we all deserve this correction cycle for different reasons, and hopefully everything is coming back to normal.  The moral of the story can be learned all around.. old players/whales and noobs both need each other.. we both have our role to play in a responsible healthy market where we are all successful and hopefully across the board we all learned from our December/January craze mistakes.  

Couple of notes based off of your points...

1) I think past charting would show that January definitely slumps, but past doesn't always predict the future.. instead of waiting to buy til January.. maybe look to dump alt positions to safe havens in late December...

2) To expand on not selling at a loss, just always be greedy with BTC.. hodling btc will lead to you double dipping on success if btc price fuds out.. you can flee to USDT to buy lower then at the lowest price buy alts that have also bled out..  

Extra input:  Picture trading as more of a positional rotation.. where you have 3 faces.. one has BTC mooning.. one has BTC going down.. and one where BTC is going sideways.... BTC mooning is best to be in BTC.. BTC going down is best to be in BTC so you can move to USDT easily as a shelter.. and BTCs going sideways as alts moon...  The point is alts in two of the three positions are potentially two trades out of position.. where as the worst position you can be in with BTC is your value goes sideways.. this is very important because alts will have 70-80% where BTC will do better but during that 20-30% of times alts do better you can easily double up.. investments have to be a rotational thing if youre buying in at higher prices. its not safe in any of the three positions except hodling btc.. and even that AT TIMES (although limited) is too conservative.   You want to be able to multiply position and make money even in down markets, and the only way to do so is to play the position game.. and even if primarily hodling you're going to need atleast 30-50% of your portfolio in BTC to cost average alt coins slippage or mistakes. I know some people put very little value on BTC or ETH and just want to support alt coins but the market will catch up with you and you will be left losing satoshi value when your alts go into the wrong position and even if you make USD overtime you will lose value as compared to just hodling BTC.

I can't stress enough to learn the BTC relationship to alts.. its not only something you have to understand.. but you have to have BTC's chart open all the time just to monitor.. its THAT important.
 

The person who holds this private key holds ownership. In cases where we use various wallets and exchanges to store our crypto tokens, this private key is with them. We just have access to those tokens via a username/email id and password to that wallet or exchange. This is risky since the ownership is not with us. Most of the times the exchange wallets are on the internet and such wallets are called Hot wallets. Hot wallets pose a maximum security risk since they are connected to the public internet while those stored no a “cold wallet” are not.

best ways to keep cryptocurrencies safe

1. Safety from Phishing Scams
The most common kind of scam is a phishing scam where a hacker sends emails or directs the user somehow to a fake site where the user enters their password. This password is received by the hacker. Be careful of the sites you open, check their security certificate and do not open emails from unknown sources.

2. Keep your device safe
Another common method of hacking is to install some kind of malware on your phone or computer and then steal sensitive data as it is being entered by the user. The device that you use for trading cryptocurrencies should be kept free of any kind of unknown programs and with an anti-virus at all times.

3. Keep private keys with you / Do not store on exchanges
Do not store your crypto tokens on exchanges. They get hacked all the time. Centralized exchanges do not provide you with your private keys. This means the crypto is stored in their wallets – hot or cold. And if they were to get hacked, you lose your tokens.

4. Enable two-factor authentication
5. Avoid public Wi-Fi

Read the complete article here: https://coinswitch.co/news/10-best-ways-to-keep-your-cryptocurrencies-safe-in-2019

Falling for scams such as this happens when people let their greed get the better of them,and they become enthusiastic over earning through what they never signed up for,once you receive a random email without actually signing up for anything it's most probably fraudulent and you should be wondering how your email was gotten and not how to maximize the supposed opportunity.
We've had head ups such as this and numerous warnings over time but the gullible will hardly read and put all this safety measures into practice.
Once one is simply focused on Just earning without safety,then that is being greedy and it has repercussions

Okay.  Let me explain something here.
When you borrow 200,000$ from the bank to buy a home, they don't actually give you a briefcase with 200,000$ cash in it. In fact, they don't even have to have any money in their vaults to loan it to you. What they do is they write down that you owe them 200,000$. It's just an entry on their ledger.

And the guy you buy the house from, he doesn't get 200,000$ in a briefcase either. The bank just adds that amount on their ledger.

I'm not even joking here. This is actually written into law and it's called fractional reserve banking. A.k.a. the ability for the bank to loan out 200$ when they only have 10$ in their vault.

This is why your bank will give you a really hard time if you try to cash out a large enough sum of money. They'll say you could be a suspected terrorist or drug dealer. And they will try really hard to make you change your mind. In fact, here in Canada, it's actually illegal to walk around with that much cash in your wallet or in your car.

The bank won't have a problem with you if you try to deposit a million$ in cash. But if you try to withdraw just 10,000$ out of that million, you might be a terrorist.

Banks are actually terrified of the idea that everybody suddenly decide to withdraw their money in cash. Simply because they don't have it. And so they would have to tell you you can't withdraw your money. This is called a run on banks. When the banks are not capable of giving you the money you deposited in your account.

Now take this idea over to your investment broker. When you call him up and you tell him you want to invest some of your money in gold, he never actually sends you a gold bar for you to keep under your pillow. What he will do is give you paper gold. That is, he will give you a gold certificate with a serial number on it. And he will tell you that this is the serial number of your gold bar.

And he will tell you that your gold is stored safely in a vault somewhere. And every month he will charge you a small fee for your gold storage. Now the average Joe might think he owns a gold bar but he doesn't. Possession is nine tenth of the law. In other words, ,if you don't hold it in your hand, you don't own it. So the only thing that the average Joe owns is a piece of paper, an IOU for a gold bar, nothing else.

But what your broker doesn't tell you is that he is selling the same paper gold to 10 or 20 other people. So an other 20 other people are walking around thinking they own the same gold bar as you do. And most interestingly, they all pay monthly storage fees for that same gold bar.

Now, naturally the average Joe thinks that the more people invest in gold, the more the price will go up. But in fact, with paper golf, the more people invest in gold, the more worthless it becomes.

After all, gold is valuable because it's rare. Not everyone  is able to walk around with a gold bar in their coat. So that's why it's so expensive to own gold.

But if everyone is walking around with a gold certificate in their coat, than suddenly gold doesn't look like it's so rare and valuable anymore.

The more you buy gold certificates, the lower the price of gold will get.

Some people call this a form of fractional reserve banking. Others call it rehypotecation. And yes, it's legal too.

Do you see now why I don't think Wall Street and banks getting involved in Bitcoin is a good idea?

Your bank and your broker will never give you actual keys for your coin. They'll just give you a Bitcoin certificate.

Bitcoin is the revolution against greedy crooked bankers and brokers. It's not supposed to be one of their tools for profit and control.

You don't have to know much to start using LN already. The easiest way (not the safest) is to use a custodial wallet.

For example: bluewallet.io (https://bluewallet.io) (iOS and Android apps)

You top it up with a small amount of Bitcoin and can immediately send and receive lightning payments.
By default it uses a third party LND installation, meaning it's already capable of sending/receiving payments because it's well connected.

You can set it up to use your own LND hub instead.

There's also Bitcoin Lightning Wallet (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lightning.walletapp&hl=en_US) for Android which is quite good.

Give these apps a go (using small amounts of Bitcoin). That's how you get the ball rolling. It won't get rolling if everyone just sits there hoping for the thing to resolve itself on its own.

HTH

[....
My trust score is 17: -0 / +7.
....

You deserve a crack at it dude, you are plenty active enough

-snip-

1. Many of the presented exemplary posts apparently deserving merit are verging on shit posts. The latter ones are garbage and have minimal if not zero value.

I would have to agree regarding the last few posts cited in the OP.

I would suggest that Coolcryptovator find 5 more posts that are deserving merit to replace the last half of his application.

If a merit source gave merit to any of the last 5 or so posts, people would probably be (rightfully) criticizing him.

I would suggest that Coolcryptovator find 5 more posts that are deserving merit to replace the last half of his application.

The support from Tman pushed me over the edge into opposing openly the application.

Updated OP with new reply,
Really I didn't look for high quality post, if always we look for high quality post then good poster/normal poster couldn't upgrade their rank. However, I have updated OP since few users already criticizing. Lets wait for admin respond.  


it can't be a behavior of quality poster and trusted users. You proof yourself untrustworthy with this statement. This really political opinion. Don't forget, being merit source will not bear any benefits for me, I just want to help others especially newbies.

Bump for visibility

I approve this merit source application!

I would consider your removal from merit source more appropriate.