People tell you to hold because they don't want you to drive the market down even further by selling.  The people who yell "HODL!!" are the ones holding bitcoin, so you selling in a downturn is not in their best interest.  Then there's the "misery loves company" aspect, too.

This happens not only in bitcoin but the stock market and every other market where people gather online to talk about it.  The whole thing is retarded IMO, because you don't actually make money unless you sell (just like you don't actually lose money until you sell).  

Any rational person--if they're a trader, and not someone who is owning bitcoin in order to spend it--will take his profit at some point, and some people do like to protect against further losses.  The whole HODL thing is just a war cry that I find kinda silly.  Having said that, there are a lot of people who've made a killing by following that advice...so I won't exactly call those people idiots.

I agree with OP and am concerned about the "scams attract regulators" part of the OP here, but I've been resigned to the fact that governments are bound to regulate crypto eventually--it doesn't matter so much whether every other transaction is a scam or not.  If bitcoin and other cryptos actually do catch on and attain wide adoption, that in itself is going to get the notice of regulators.  And I suspect that even if crypto doesn't get widely adopted, it's still going to get some laws made and restrictions implemented.  That's just the nature of lawmakers.  Their job is to create laws, so they will.  It sucks and I'm against it, but it's going to happen.

I don't think there's much "we" can do about the scams other than to do our best not to fall victim to them.  Unfortunately, I've seen people's greed straight up run-and-tackle their rationality and skepticism at the 1-yard line, and I expect that'll keep happening as long as crypto exists.

I'll take a look at these links here and tag fools accordingly.  I have a few minutes right now to do so.
Yes, and I have an incredibly small penis as well, body odor, a hairy ass, craterous acne, big ears, bad breath, and [insert shortcoming here].  These are all qualifications to be on DT, didn't you know this?

Edit:  OK, tagging stew is served.  That should open up a few spots in those campaigns if the managers are on the ball.

How much do you want for the 0.008BTC?  I think I have enough to cover that.  $59.75 is preev 1:1 as of this writing.

My bitcoin addy I PM'ed you, and that's a segwit one.

I'll need your PP address if you want to make a deal.
Dumbass.

Edit:  I'm at work and have to give out medications to the goonies in 20 minutes, so I won't be available for about 1/2 hour.  I'll check in afterward and before then.

Yeah, no kiddin'.  And OP, who do you suggest is going to pay for all of this warning? 

This idea is dead at birth, but for OP:  Theymos would have to approve something like this, and he's not going to do it.  It's a miracle that he took notice of the shitposting problem recently and implemented the merit system.  That's going to have to be good enough for now, and I think it will be.  I got a great feeling about all of this, and it has to do with the deafening level of squealing by the shitposters about the merit system.  It's goddamn music to my ears.

That is most definitely true and I agree with your opinion.  But even "hard" drugs like heroin should be decriminalized, IMO, and I know that stance is controversial, but my take on it is that most of the crime associated with heroin has to do with its illegality.  I could be wrong, but locking up drug addicts doesn't help solve the problem of addiction.  I work in a drug treatment facility and I don't even think we're helping 75% of them in any meaningful way.  Addiction is extremely powerful.  Addicts are basically those experimental mice that keep pressing the cocaine lever and starve themselves to death rather than take time off from the drug to eat.  You can't scare them into getting clean and you can't even reason with them if they're using.  It's very, very hard to treat.  But anyway, it's a good thing those synthetics that get sold in bodegas haven't really caught on.  Synthetics such as carfentanyl ought to be banned.
But is it actually helping anyone (society, the individual, the families) by making this stuff illegal?  I really don't think so.

They're so shitty that I neutral-tagged him as a shitposter.  Thanks to Marlboroza for bringing this stinker to my attention.  This wretch definitely does not deserve 100 merit points if he got busted down a level.  If there were justice in the world, he'd get busted all the way back to brand new--but either way, this guy is only one shitposter and I doubt he's going to be moving up the ranks to even Full Member anytime soon with the garbage he's posting.  I shan't lose any sleep over him.

Derp.  Any such quoting would be wasted on you, I think.  Plus you obviously don't understand how this system works, nor can you comprehend the simplicity of it:  All you have to do is write decent posts, stuff people are interested in reading.  Then, given enough readers, someone will give you merit points.  Yes, you are at the mercy of other people here, but that ends up being a very good thing for the forum as a whole.  There are too many shitposters here who just write the same spamola over and over--and ask stupid questions like the one you just asked without putting any effort yourself into answering them.

And what you wrote here is a good example of a shitty 3rd world post by someone trying to write in a language they don't really know.  What's the purpose of you writing this?  It contributes nothing, even if you wrote it perfectly--which you very much didn't.  Stick to the local boards.  You're never going to get merit points by writing such drivel.  You're the whole reason the merit system was created, IMO.

I respect Lauda and actmyname (and anyone else who's involved) for tagging merit abusers, but I'm not going to make that my battle.  And the reason is I think that even if shitposters and account farmers abuse the system to no end, they're still going to have a hell of a hard time ranking up.  I think what's going to happen is that account sales, especially of higher-ranked ones--are going to explode.  And that is going to be my battle, and those are the ones I'm going to tag.

I also agree that merit should be handed out to good posts, and I'm trying to do that.  I have about 110 sMerit left, and I'm giving it out to decent posters and especially members below the rank of legendary.
Aye, there's the rub.

There's nothing wrong with your account.  Perhaps if you read about how the merit system works, you'll figure out that you now need merit points in addiction to activity in order to rank up.

The hard part is earning merit, because for that you have to write interesting/important/informative posts AND you're at the mercy of other people giving you merit for those posts.  So good luck.  Yes, it's now much harder to rank up, but this is the way it's supposed to be.

Help you with what?  Either you can fucking read or you can't.  All the information you'll ever need about the merit system has already been written.  I won't even humor you with a link because I think that would be a waste of energy on my part.

If you're asking for a merit handout, why should anyone enable some pajeet to rank up when they haven't earned it?  I speak for myself here:  I'm going to give merit points to people who deserve it, not to pajeets who can't or won't make constructive posts.
Huge LOL.

If Lauda is paying off pharmacists--which people usually don't do to get drugs, by the way--I'd like to state right now that I am in no way involved in this.  Quickseller likes to jump to cunty conclusions, and he's already leveled the accusation that Lauda and I are the same person, which I have gone through the trouble to specifically deny.  QS has a very vivid imagination and also projects his own shortdicked failings onto other people, e.g., he accuses others of employing alt accounts to bolster arguments and what have you. 

Hopefully this isn't a case of him projecting his own untoward chemical proclivities upon Lauda for purposes of reputation-smearing.  That would not surprise me in the least.

I personally wouldn't give merit to OP for what he wrote.  As you said, the grasp of English just isn't there to make what he wrote interesting, even if he has a point.  I'm making an attempt to give out merit points to noobs who write good posts, but I don't see all that many in the threads I'm reading.  I shall keep searching and making that effort.

As far as the money from campaigns goes, if you're living in a 3rd world country and could actually be accepted into a campaign like Chipmixer, you could be living like a pimp.  In style and comfort.  Hell, I could live off of that kind of money and I don't live in such a country.  Not that I'd quit my job to do that.  I don't look at campaigns as a way to support ones' self at all.  To me it's just gravy--getting paid to do something I'd be doing anyway is a nice reward and something I'm extremely grateful for. 

For someone in the Philippines it'd be phenomenal, but unfortunately most posters from there and other countries in Asia have a hard time writing posts in English of good enough quality not to be considered shitposts.  You can call that racist, but it's an observation of mine.  Yes, there are some great posters from Asia, but they're few and far between. 

People want to live off of signature campaigns, and I find this to be a ridiculous proposition.  Having a real job, in one of the helping professions, is part of who I am.  Being in a sig campaign, by comparison, means very little to me.

But you said it in English, and it required him to read it, both of which he's demonstrated a problem with.   Maybe if you wrote it in Bazwakahili he'd at least have half a chance of getting the point.I'm actually starting to become OK with the level of shitposting now.  We've got the merit system in place which should take care of a lot of this.  It'll take a while, but shitposters are going to realize that there's little reward for posting garbage.

I don't know, in my opinion anyone who buys into a market while it's at its all time high really shouldn't come on a forum to bitch, cry, or even acknowledge he's done so. What did you expect, especially after seeing how volatile bitcoin is after the Mt. Gox fiasco (or maybe you weren't aware of bitcoin's history? ). 

My suggestion is to just hold on until the market rebounds, which it will.  It might take some time, and you might be in financial agony for a while, but it will.

I don't doubt that something like this could happen, but I don't see anything in this noob's post that says it did happen.  My guess is that this guy is just trolling our emotions here, and I'm not having it.  If it did happen, it's good evidence why dumbasses shouldn't play around with more money than they're comfortable losing. 

Edit: and why dumbasses shouldn't be investing in crypto, period.  Too risky for the emotionally handicapped.

OP can't write proper English, and everything is a big garbled runon sentence from him--no wonder he's complaining about how unfair the merit system is. 

Another piece of evidence that it's working.  Yes, there are going to be abuses, but overall it's going to help.  So stop bitching about it.

Boogety-garble-goo.  Argle fargle foo?

This is what you sound like to me, in a Charlie Brown kind of way when the teacher is yapping at him.  It's you people that the merit system was designed to exterminate, or at least frustrate and dissuade from the big-'ol rank up.  If you're grammar is this atrocious, you really ought not be posting in the main section.  And ideally you'd be on trial for attempted murder of the English language.  

It's tough getting merit points when you suck, isn't it?
Well, what do you want?  There's only a small group of members here who get/got really annoyed by all the shitposters who don't belong here.  Meta and reputation are the best sections by far, and you can expect the "gang" to post here frequently.

How in the world did you end up with 10 merit points with posts like this one?  If I had a merit vacuum cleaner, I'd suck all your points up.

I read this news, too, and Facebook is smart for removing all the ICO spam--because that's essentially what it is, if I'm understanding their intention correctly.  They're tired of idiots posting the ICO/altcoin garbage which is flooding everyone's feeds.  And yes, I think most ICOs are complete scams and nobody should be advertising them.

When you get a flea infestation, you have to go with the flea bomb.  That's what Facebook is doing here.  And a good part of Asia is now weeping.  So sad.