Hell yeah it's real.  Before I started that thread in Meta with my rules for post review requests, I was only getting a handful every month and I was accumulating earned sMerits in the hundreds and never running out of sauce sMerits.  There were long periods when I wasn't doing a great job as a merit source, or at least not as good as I wanted to.  After creating that thread, I suddenly got a ton of "targets" for merits, and I'm chronically out of both sauce and earned sMerits.  But honestly, I prefer the current situation (though it'd be better if I had enough sMerits to keep up with the requests).

Not sure what you mean exactly.  You're talking about it being hard to get rid of your sMerit stash by the last day of the month?  Didn't you create a thread that's similar to my offer?  I would think there'd be no problem whatsoever giving away as many merits as you're able to.

Yeah, that's certainly appropriate text but I was just wondering whether deceased members should get red or neutral trust on their profiles to alert the community in the event the account becomes active again.  After looking at pandukelana2712's trust page however, he's already got some negative trust for things other than the most recent loan he took out (the ones from game-protect), and I doubt those are ever going to be removed--so in this particular case, the point is moot. 

I kind of agree that mods should lock an account if there's enough evidence that the member died.  But wasn't pandukelana2712's relative supposed to repay the loan?  Is that between DarkStar_ and the relative, or was that relative expected to gain access to pandukelana2712's account in order to do so?  Just curious.

I doubt they're going to be reading this, especially if it's in English and they don't speak the language (that's just an assumption, could be wrong), and since he died a couple of years ago hopefully their grief has lessened somewhat.

I didn't know him, but obviously he made an impression on a lot of members here, and I hate to hear of any member dying--whether I liked them, didn't like them, or didn't even interact with them.  It's a large community we have here, but somehow a member's death seems to make it a lot smaller in my eyes.

Should negative or neutral tags be given in a case like this?  I can't remember what's been done in the past when a member has died, and it seems like a neutral might not be enough to alert someone that the account shouldn't be active--but it also seems unwarranted, even if the text in the feedback is just a death notice.

You know something?  I'd be willing to bet that most of these plagiarists have alt accounts waiting in the wings in case one of them gets banned for plagiarism or whatever else, sort of like naim027.  I never got the sense that newcomers were ignorant to how things work on the forum when they register, probably because they were referred here by a friend or family member who's told them all about bans, ranking up, and everything else.

So I don't think changing the ban system would help things much, even if it would normally make total sense to do so on a normal forum without financial incentives to post.

Yeah, wouldn't that be awesome?  I worked for PrimeDice, Yobit, 1xbit, secondstrade, and a whole bunch of other crypto projects/exchanges/mixers/whatever, and my references are....anonymous bitcointalk members.  Yep, that'll fly if I'm out there trying to land a job in the real world.

"Forum advertising" is such an oddly unique phenomenon.  It's certainly not a real job and yet I have no doubt whatsoever that there are many people here who support themselves with their earnings--so in that sense it really could be considered real work (but not "formal" like OP phrased it).  And man, when bitcoin was going for $50-60k you could have earned a considerable amount of money just for posting.  If you were in campaigns prior to bitcoin being that high and had saved what you earned, you could have been rich.

Not me, though.  I'm a fuckin' idiot on idiot steroids.

I don't know how I missed this thread, but I stumbled across it while doing a post history review for a member.  OP is on my ignore list, which I haven't added to in quite some time, so that sparked a suspicion in me that he's a lousy poster--and after taking a look at some of his older posts, I found ones like these:


I didn't look at anything more recent, so I don't know if OP still writes as though he's texting, but if he's seriously asking why he hasn't ranked up....c'mon, bro.  It's obvious you missed the boat in the time you had before the merit system came about, plus you're basically a shitposter.  Question answered.

Right, but what happens when what China did becomes a global thing?  It's not like it couldn't happen, even if it happened in spaced-out increments.

Maybe I don't read crypto news as much as I probably should, but I haven't heard much about solar mining farms much lately.  Wasn't there a big one operating, or on its way to be operating, in Texas?  In any case, mining does use a lot of electricity but I've seen comparisons with other things like, say, the entire banking system and bitcoin mining is dwarfed by that.

I wonder if that's because of all the GPU miners who suddenly have nothing to mine profitably.  Is eBay flooded with used GPUs, and it is difficult to buy ASIC miners right now?  Just thinking out loud, but that seems like the logical thing to do for the bigger GPU miners, because it doesn't seem like anything's going to be profitable for quite a while.

I disagree, as strenuously as one can disagree with any sentiment.  Why?  Because all of that corruption you mentioned has been going on since the beginning of mankind, and it's part of human nature.  There are laws regarding corruption in many places (not all, perhaps), and if you argued that politicians, law enforcement, corporate executives, and whoever else hadn't learned right from wrong at an early age, I wouldn't believe you.

The fact is that you can't eliminate the underlying cause, greed, at any age.  It's hardwired into us.  Hell, just look at all the drug prevention programs aimed at youth and how that's worked out.  It doesn't work, because once you tap the pleasure center of the brain, a lot of people will want more of whatever did the tapping.  Add to that youths' natural defiance of authority, and any preventative measures against drugs, corruption, or teenage pregnancy for that matter are doomed to fail.

OK, y'all know I'm no expert here but I've tried the Satochip and it basically just uses Electrum, so if you've got a private key you can import it into the version of Electrum they use (which was outdated when I used my Satochip) just like any other version.  Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's that simple.

What's not simple (or rather convenient) is having to use that card reader, but that's another story.

I'm trying to understand this part of the whole debacle--obviously naim027 was evading a ban with his alt accounts, but what was the meddling he was doing with the AnotherAlt account?  I don't have a photographic memory of all the details like some of you seem to, and though I'll go back and look at the CC thread(s), I'm hoping someone can give me a TL;DR on that.

And I'm also thinking that in light of the new information that's come out, i.e., that naim027 was blatantly ban evading with two alt accounts, that the mods ought to reconsider their decision to unban him.  That might be a wee bit off-topic, so I'll just leave it at that.

You don't need to predict anything about the ranking system--just read my posts above, because I know whereof I speak.  Back when the forum was created, I'm guessing it was no big deal and if you achieved Legendary it just meant that you'd been around long enough and posted enough to get there.  But ever since the beginning of signature campaigns, that changed.

Wait, are you saying the merit system has done more harm than good?  I can't tell if this is a misunderstanding due to language or not, but if that is what you mean I'd say that the really good posters should be well on their way to Legendary if they're not at that rank already.  I won't argue that the merit system has made it harder for everyone to rank up, but it was a necessary evil.  You weren't around in 2015-16, but you were definitely here before the merit system so hopefully you remember how bad the shitposting problem had gotten.

True....but that's always been true, has it not?  Oil and politics have been interlocked for as long as I've been aware of the two, and I'm 100% sure it's always been the case.  But what I'm not certain of is whether the world weaning itself off of oil is going to improve the situation, because energy suppliers of all types (including oil) have--and have always had--extreme levels of power and influence, and those powers are most likely figuring out how to keep their wealth and power if X becomes the new fuel standard, where X could be hydrogen, vegetable oil, solar, whatever.

I know this thread is somewhat old, but gas prices were trending downward for a while there, and now they've spiked.  If you live in an urban area, I'd consider going without an automobile if you can.  It's not only environmentally friendly but it'll have an impact on your wallet that you'll see pretty much as soon as you unregister your car/truck/whatever.  It costs so much to own and operate even the smallest of cars it's ridiculous.

OP, I don't know if you're even keeping tabs on this thread, but with a simple title like "education" and no monitoring for shitposts you've left it wide open to bounty hunter-spammers who are obviously taking advantage of a drifting thread to drop one-liners all over the place.

Please lock this up, as I think it's served its purpose.

No, it's not--but as far as I can see it might as well be, because now the data is out there for whoever wants it.

This is going to sound like I'm a complete ignoramus (arguably true), but what companies are in the chain analysis business and what do they do with the data they collect?  You're not talking about law enforcement, are you?  That question might be off-topic, but not much.  

And yikes, this whole thing has been a complete shit show from the beginning.  I wasn't even aware of Celsius until it imploded, and I was definitely surprised to learn that so many people had money invested with them.  

Yep, that's pretty shit if you ask me.  Question: what's RTP in this context?  I'm too lazy to visit the thread from which this shitty shitpost originated from, as my eyes have been exposed to too much retina-burning nonsense as of late.  "Return To Player"?

Anyone check the rest of Peanutswar's post history?  I'm wondering if it's filled with crap like the above.  There's so much of it in the two gambling sections, it's unreal.

I remember Libra, but for some reason diem is only ringing a low-volume bell in my head.  Anyway, if you're comparing those two against whatever their Metaverse turns out to be, I'm not so sure the cryptos were better ideas or not.  Maybe for Facebook, but not for the general public--but I guess we'll never know since the US government wouldn't let them get off the ground.

Am I reading between the lines correctly here?  Are you saying Meta might be pulling an Enron or something illegal of that nature, like accounting fraud, quarter-stuffing, and all that crap that corporations do to make their stock look attractive to big investors and/or line the pockets of the corporations' executives' pockets?

I honestly hadn't thought of that, since Meta/Facebook hasn't shown any evidence of doing that in the past (or at least I haven't picked up on it).  Then again, a lot of financial chicanery doesn't get detected until the house of cards comes tumbling down--just like in Enron's case.  Don't know if you're right or wrong here, but it'll be interesting to see what comes of all this money Meta is throwing into the black hole.

Just giving my $0.02 once again, but I still don't think Royse777 or any of the CC team members are or were trying to scam anyone.  I was pissed that Royse777 tried to silence criticism from yahoo62278, but other than that I don't have any issues with him.  

Regardless of him concealing his true identity with respect to the CC project, there's still the fact that he's only one member and the funds are protected by their escrow system (to the best of my knowledge).  Naim027's involvement was known right from the beginning, too.

You're right about that, and though I understand why Royse777 wanted to hide his identity I kind of figured it would be revealed one way or another.  Members here are justifiably suspicious, tenacious, and aren't stupid.  There's not a lot that can be hidden for long if they start digging.

I haven't read the whole bitlucy drama in excruciating detail, but my impression from the start is that Royse777 never scammed anyone.  If he was guilty of anything, it was making some wrong decisions based on his judgement of the information he had--and kept getting--at the time.  I gave him the benefit of the doubt, because I'm not sure how I would have acted in his shoes, and we all know hindsight is 20/20. 

Seriously.  I regret ever supporting him, and honestly I'd much prefer that permabans remain exactly that unless there are extraordinary circumstances--which, in the case of naim027, there really weren't. 

NoorulHuda, I'd say I wish you luck but I'd be lying.  I'm not sure why you haven't gotten the message yet, but if I were you I'd give up your quest to get unbanned.  I think your argument is full of shit and you certainly aren't such an important part of bitcointalk that your account needs to be restored.

Oh man, you don't know what you're missing. 

I see a lot of problems with your suggestion, with the first being the maintenance of such a thread.  There's no way any moderators are going to have time to do a job like that--nor should they when there's so much crap that needs to be swept up off the filthy floors of some sections.  But even if it were just a volunteer (or even a team of volunteers), the task seems like it'd be a never-ending one, not to mention an organizational nightmare. 

Think of how many members there are on bitcointalk.  Millions.  Who chooses which statements by which members are important enough to be quoted in a thread like what you proposed?  It almost hurts my brain to think about it, sort of like contemplating infinity for too long.

I'm not saying those lying-ass liars that lie around lying 24/7 don't need to be called out on their falsehoods, but I don't see it being done like this.  By the way I just looked at when you registered, PowerGlove, and I could have sworn you were around for a lot longer than you have been.

Well to be fair, anyone could have been behind an account with that username.  Did any of us have any reason to suspect that it was naim027?  If there was, I sure as hell missed it, though I knew it was Crypt0Soul's alt account.

If there were any DT members who gave Poker Player a neg for negging Royse777 and/or naim027 and his alts, I think they'd be making a mistake by doing so.  Not a big enough mistake to warrant an exclusion from my trust list, but this is a case where there shouldn't be any trust retaliation--Poker Player laid out his reasons, and IMO they're solid enough to justify him leaving a neg.

That said, I have no idea who's on DT these days.  Probably almost everyone posting in this thread, right?