Don't over analyse what a "quality post" is. It's simply just a topic/reply that's decently original and does actually help people in one way or another, or at least contribute to the topic. That's pretty much it. No guidelines or anything. Skills though? Well, bitcointalk is a bitcoin forum, so of course you need to have decent knowledge in bitcoin or cryptocurrencies in general; which is something that most people here are mostly missing.

Yes, indeed there are some topics/replies that didn't receive any merit. But people are overexaggerating the number of topics/replies that aren't given merit. I guarantee you that if a topic/reply is good, there's like a 95% chance that it has at least one merit or if not, then chances are that not enough people has read the topic/reply.

I personally think blockchain in general bitcoin, the technology itself and what it can do to potentially millions of people worldwide is severely severely underhyped, whereas I think bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general as an investment is severely overhyped (at least since December up to a couple of months ago). Bitcoin as an investment right now though? Definitely not so much anymore as the hype died down as the price dropped.

Not sure if I worded that clearly, but yea.

Do you have any source to prove your statement? There has been rumours in the past of Amazon planning on accepting bitcoin or some other cryptocurrency. While I don't think it's impossible for Amazon to receive bitcoin in the future, no one has given any source whatsoever as proof for the rumours.

You can also use Purse[1], and you can get discounts too! I've read decent reviews about it though I really haven't tried it myself. If only Amazon doesn't charge abysmal internetional shipping fees.

---

[1] https://purse.io/

I don't think bitcoin and the cryptocurrency markets in general are volatile due to them being decentralized. They are volatile and easy to skew in price simply because there isn't that much money into bitcoin or cryptocurrencies, compared to other very stable assets like gold. As we speak, bitcoin only has $67 billion in marketcap whereas gold’s total market value is estimated at around $7.8 trillion source[1].

---

[1] http://fortune.com/2017/12/09/cameron-winklevoss-bitcoin-multitrillion-dollar-asset/

ICOs are definitely not over and I really don't see them going away any time soon. People are just significantly more cautious and a lot smarter in picking ICOs right now, compared to before due to a lot of the ICO tokens currently worth significantly less(even going as low as -95% from all time high).

I agree. My example was probably bad and while it's not a bug to laugh about and a bug that's surely going to cause people to not touch bitcoin for a while, it's definitely not enough to sort of "kill" bitcoin. Also, looks like I need to do research on that ECC thing. Thanks.

Lastly, yes it's really quite unlikely but the chances are non-zero.

While I think that it's quite unlikely now for bitcoin to "fail", I personally think that what would cause bitcoin to fail completely is if a certain person finds a catastrophic bug and abuses it instead of reporting it to the devs. Probably a bug that can make people steal bitcoin from certain addresses or something along those lines.

I don't think so. As long as a few full nodes are running then bitcoin is fine. I also think having zero miners is very unlikely, as there's always money to be made regardless of price. Worst case scenario is just that the number of miners will significantly drop, but probably not necessarily comes down to zero miners.

Take note that while Binance is indeed a good exchange, if you're initially going to buy some bitcoin, you can't buy bitcoin using fiat money(USD, AUD, etc) through Binance. Binance is still currently only a crypto <-> crypto exchange. My pick would still be to use LocalBitcoins[1].

---

[1] https://localbitcoins.com/

Yeah. It's weird thinking that people didn't care or people weren't as impatient in the past(compared to today at least) with bull markets or price rises in general..

..or was it just me?

It's probably because ChipMixer is also earning in BTC rather than fiat; hence they compute their percentage allocations on everything(campaigns, marketing in general, etc) in BTC. I'm really happy with the dynamic amount though. I just heavily prefer receiving the 0.0375 weekly payout at December-January prices. LOL

Good for you. Campaigns in the past we're my first and only real "income" as an unemployed chap; hence I was addicted with seeing my fiat money slowly increasing weekly. 🤦

That could probably one reason. The campaigns that are paying out in crap coins now has coins that has significantly lower prices due to the market crash, hence most campaigns might not be worth it right now for people hence the decrease in activity(assuming that activity here in bitcointalk actually decreased since the crash like you said).

The bigger factor though, in my opinion, is the not-so-recent 1 merit requirement for Jr members, and also the recent endless bans on people who committed plagiarism. The forums was far more active before that new rule. The forums are definitely a lot better though; activity doesn't necessarily mean better. I'd prefer low activity but high quality rather than the opposite.

By the way, I think this topic is more fitting on the Meta subforum[1]. It'd probably be better if you moved the topic to that subforum.

---

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=24.0

Fiat currencies like the US dollar is being used in gambling in general also, does it make it bad due to that specific reason? Not really.

Also, most if not all technologies pretty much almost always has a bad side to it.

• Cars are used for better transporation but can be used as getaway vehicles for criminals
• The internet is used for various great things like storing/retrieving of information, etc, whereas it can also be used to commit crime(theft, identification theft, etc)
• Cellphones(especially the older, keypad ones), are made for better communication, whereas it also can be used to wirelessly detonate bombs

And many many more. So, for all these negative downsides of these technologies, does it really make them "bad"? I don't think so. The good things they can do heavily outweighs the bad things.

This. The scammer is only using Uphold's name to gain trust. As it was a very obvious scam to start with.

Anyway, unfortunately though.. using the address OP provided, looks like the scammer got a hold of a good amount of bitcoin: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/18h7EiyL5fJ1mY7qxnTsmxWiCYpZm8ib7x

I'm still baffled up to today how gullible people are to fall for these.

What was the price at that time? When I first got into a signature campaign I also almost automatically sold everything after every week and bought unnecessary crap. I had no idea of bull and bear markets in the past unfortunately. I was quite in disbelief when bitcoin started rallying up. Anyway, at least we now know better.

Guess how many so called "experts" also said that $5000 was the bottom?
Guess how many so called "experts" said that we would have $50,000 at the end of the year?

I'm not saying that you should sell your bitcoin, but "expert" predictions doesn't mean crap. No one knows with 100% certainty where the prices will go. Also, the article seems to be very inaccurate in the first place. Title says "Don’t sell your Bitcoins, experts warn", whereas the tweet of Phillip Nunn shown in the article isn't even related to price.

While it's definitely possible for people to somewhat control and manipulate the prices of bitcoin to a certain extent, we can't be sure of that.

Does it matter short term? Nah. Anyway, this 'problem' should be gradually fixed as time goes as the marketcap of bitcoin goes bigger(assuming the marketcap increases steadily yearly). With higher marketcap and with more money in general that's into bitcoin, the price of bitcoin will be significantly harder to manipulate and to significantly harder to skew over with big buy and sell offers.

Think about it. If a person has a list of private keys with some bitcoin on it, why would the person upload it on a website? Wouldn't it be more profitable for the hacker to steal the bitcoin himself? This makes completely no sense. If you want to make money, stop snooping around trying to find a way to earn free or easy money.

Ah.. I remember those days when bitcoin was at it's peak. I felt like a rich dude for a while and refused to spend a bit of it due to my BTC holdings being a multiple of 0.0375 that I didn't want to ruin. In second thought, I wish I spend just a bit of it.

Anyway, yea. Unless BTC crashes to triple digits or lower I don't see ChipMixer possibly adjusting the payouts just a teeny tiny bit to make it worth it for some people.

Yeap. I think it's currently legal due to bitcoin or cryptocurrencies in general being currently unregulated. Bots are being widely used among multiple exchanges, even with the top ones like Bitfinex and Binance. As with manipulation? I'm not sure. I think price manipulation isn't legal nor illegal; in the cryptocurrency space at least.

I'm definitely not a trading pro and I never claimed to be, but I think this is a way of manipulating the markets. Either that, or the person is trying to undercut the prices.

Also, this person is most likely using a bot. I imagine it's pretty tedious to add and switch up 40 offers all day.