Ahh, fair point. The robot is right again! Doing a search over the last few weeks yields quite a lot of results, as well as a couple of bounty spammers with "Leo" in their name who are posting on a near-daily basis. Oh well, scrap that idea then.

Oh haha, I totally missed the fact that OP was given red trust by Alex_Sr for being an account farmer.

That explains the completely nonsense accusation with no evidence whatsoever. Good to see that all OP has achieved is making things worse for himself. These idiots never learn.

Piggy - any plans to implement more than one alias? In addition to sometimes getting "oeleo", which is currently set up as my alias, I'm also starting to get some users refer to me as "Leo" as well. Would be super helpful to be able to receive notifications for both.

Of the accounts you've linked, most of them are within the top 250 merit receivers of all time (including DdmrDdmr who is number 2), so if Alex_Sr is guilty then so are about 100 other people who merit these accounts. Two of the accounts you've listed (inhoneer and Akond) haven't received a single merit from Alex_Sr ever.

I'm not entirely sure what you are trying to prove here?

Wait, I thought LoyceV was the AI around here? Maybe in this metaphor, LoyceV is the Matrix and Lauda is The Architect? Or Arcatect, if you will?

I think this could work. The Pharmacist, suchmoon, et al. are the agents sent out to do Lauda's bidding. The forum itself is The Oracle, as only it holds the future. theymos is obviously then Seraph, guarding The Oracle. Cryptohunter is Morpheus, head of the resistance, desperately searching for "The One" issue which will finally bring Lauda down.

This is great, and props to you, DabLjat, TMAN and others for all agreeing to start a fresh. I've also noticed that DabLjat has removed all the unreferenced positive feedback he had left to other members of his community, so thank you for that too.

I'm trying to follow your Russian thread, but as I don't speak Russian I'm sure I'm losing some of it in translation. It seems that the next step on the plan is to identify some outstanding Russian members who would be good additions to the DT network?

It's probably worth pointing out that peloso is trolling their thread just as much as he is trolling here; ignore him.

That's actually a very good point which has been missed so far. If you sell all your bitcoins because you need the fiat, then sure, that sucks, but you can always just buy more when you are in a better financial position. If you default on your debt or loans, then you can quite easily end up losing your possessions and get left with a horrendous credit rating that can take years or even decades to fix. Poor credit doesn't just affect things like getting good deals on mortgages or credit cards - if your credit is really bad you won't even be able to set up things like mobile phone, internet or TV contracts. Not worth it.

I'm sure many people do, and as long as the debt is low interest and you are on top of the payments, then that's fine. If you think the growth of bitcoin is going to outpace your debt interest, then it makes sense to have both at the same time. The issue is with high interest debts, especially if you are at risk of making late payments or even missing payments.

I'm going to have to disagree with you there. It doesn't take a detective to see that an ICO or project launched with a whitepaper that is entirely plagiarized or a team made up of fictitious, non-existent people isn't exactly a trustworthy project. Similarly, you don't need to actually be scammed by someone offering a return on investment of 100% a week to know that it is a scam. These kinds of things are obvious to people who have been involved in crypto for more than a few months, but newbies can and do regularly get fooled by these kind of scams.

No, giving all these scams red trust won't protect every newbie and some will get scammed, but not reaching 100% safety isn't a reason to trash the system altogether.

This is very different to what most people here would think of as "speculation", which is taking a loan to buy bitcoin or some other coin to trade with. Incredibly risky, and not recommended.

Even if your mortgage repayments are higher than they would be if you were renting, it can still be a good financial decision. If you rent for 30 years you have literally nothing to show at the end up of it except money down the drain. If you pay a mortgage for 30 years, even a slightly more expensive one, at least after 30 years (for example) you own some property, which is usually quite a good store of wealth. That's not to say you should put up with an expensive mortgage though - always shop around and haggle for the best price.

As noted by xenon131, there are very sensible and productive conversations going on in the Russian forum right now:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5096402.msg49326422#msg49326422
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fbitcointalk.org%2Findex.php%3Ftopic%3D5096402.msg49326422%23msg49326422 (English Google Translation)

They are essentially in agreement that thinks have got out of hand, and are looking to start over. They are talking about removing all the red trust they have given, deciding on a spokesman/representative, and forming a list of issues they would like addressed. It's also interesting that they have also identified peloso (who seemed to start this whole thing off) as not representative of them on the whole: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5096402.msg49329252#msg49329252.

I think it would only be fair to also remove our red trust from users like taikuri13 and xenon131, in an effort to wipe the slate clean and start again constructively.

This is very encouraging stuff:

Translation: This situation is only benefiting scammers and criminals, who are happy when we argue amongst ourselves.

Translation: Let's make a list of issues for Alex to start discussing. Let's roll back everything to 13th January and start over.

Translation: I advise everyone to a sign of show goodwill and remove their ratings.

I would commend you all for approaching this as you have done. I think your ideas are a great first step - lets wipe the slate clean, remove all our ratings on each other, and have the Russian community come up with some ideas/issues they would like addressed to bring forward. Following this, we can hopefully have a constructive conversation - after all, we are all on the same side.

I never said it wasn't a deterrent, just that it doesn't amount to dictating to others. It is a warning - if you wish to ignore said warning and trade/invest/whatever anyway, you are free to do so.

I mean, I agree with you here, but that isn't what Default Trust does. If we were banning these users and deleting their threads, then you would have a completely valid point, but I disagree that simply putting the words "Warning: Trade with extreme caution" under someone's avatar amounts to dictating to other users.

Xal0lex hasn't left a single feedback. What is the point of being on DT2 if you haven't left a single feedback? Also, just being a moderator doesn't entitle you to a DT position, as you can see by all the staff members who aren't on DT.

It's called making amends.

People buy or trade merits for this exact reason - they are shitposters who will never rank up by making a good post, so they buy a single merit or trade with their alts. They need to get to junior member to enable them to take part in some trash bounty campaign.

As Coolcryptovator says, there is very rarely proof that this one merit was bought or farmed, so there is nothing you can do about the individual users. What we need is the requirement for a signature to be displayed to be increased to 10 merit, which would make it far harder to buy or trade, and would make these spammers' merit supply dry up much more quickly. I also feel we should be more liberal with the bans for these spammers. I keep seeing the same names pop up again and again on my report list with the same one-line nonsense, but for some reason we just let them keep going.

Haha. There are ways round that in the fiat world - accounts you can open in your child's name, which you can pay in to but cannot withdraw from, and which automatically transfer to their control on their 18th birthday. You've just got to hope that in those 18 years you raise a smart kid who doesn't immediately empty the account and blow it all on a car or something similar.

There are some bitcoin wallets such as https://coinb.in/#newTimeLocked that allow the creation of time locked addresses, so you can't spend the coins before a certain date. Or maybe create a multi-sig wallet instruct a family friend or lawyer to only give the other key to your child on their 18th birthday?

Click on the writer's name for a list of the articles he has written. He is churning out 2 or 3 a day, each one shilling one or two random stocks, with very little in the way of useful information about them. All the articles have completely click-bait headlines like "3 hot dividends stocks I'd buy" and "These 2 stocks are about to crash". He's been doing this for 5 years.

It's all for advertising and page views, to try to sell people on their paid subscriptions. This kind of nonsense can be safely ignored.

He's been inactive since 2016, but claimed he still was holding all 648 of the BTC he got for selling his house. The news article stated his house was valued at $405,000, so he would have sold at around $625 per BTC, ignoring fees and all the rest of it. He said he held through the dip to $200, which would have cut his investment to $130,000, but at peak levels at the end of 2017, he would have been up to around $12 million. Wonder if he sold.

If you've got the spare cash or property to do this, and you don't care if you lose it all, then sure, go for it. If you are considering selling or remortgaging the house you are living in to buy bitcoin, you are crazy.

This is absolutely the sensible option. Replace bitcoin with stocks, shares, gold, whatever you want, and it still holds true.

In any smart financial plan, after building up a small "emergency fund" of quick-to-access fiat for paying for true emergencies like burst pipes or car breakdowns, then the next step is to pay off all high interest debt - credit cards, store credit, loans, etc. Only once your only remaining debts are things like a low interest mortgage or student loan, should you consider investing your money elsewhere. If you have a crap mortgage deal and are paying way too much, I'd pay that off first too.

Risking a guaranteed $100k fiat debt and the compounded interest payments, compared to the potential and certainly not guaranteed gain on $100k worth of BTC (and also the potential loss on BTC), it is absolutely not worth it. Cash out, pay off your high interest debts, then re-invest what you can afford to lose. If you are in debt, then you are already in a net-deficit and you don't have anything you can afford to lose.

I had no problems at all updating the firmware, but running in to the same problems, if not worse, installing apps. Currently taking up to a minute to install an app. I've put on BTC and ETH, and now only have enough space to install other BTC-based coins.

I'm not big in to alts, so it's not a big issue for me, but I can see how that would be really annoying for people who were. As you say, it seems like a big step backwards, almost as it they want people to buy their new Nano X, which says it will support 100 apps at once. This feels almost like planned obsolescence, similar to when Apple deliberately slow down their old models to force people to upgrade. I'm not impressed at all.