The fact is that these are mostly old members, so you need to dig very deep, considering that members with such badges are mostly inactive for a very long time. Sometimes an old topic appears on the surface in which members with such badges can be found.

One of the examples is this very topic -> NSA and ECC and this one -> Thoughts on type safety and crypto RNGs

Only when you think about how stupid it is to say something like "Bitcoin is dead", we realize how stupid those who persistently say it really are. Bitcoin is not a living being that someone can take its life, and not even technically kill it in the sense that it will disappear at some point - but that only shows how some people do not understand what real decentralization is.

The only difference between those who publish such news is that some are really stupid to understand, and the others understand very well but are paid to write nonsense.

Why do you think that someone can give you a precise answer to that question? We can speculate as much as we want, but it will not make us any smarter to come up with an answer that could be considered precise in the sense you expect. Scenario A is that something positive will happen that will push the BTC price up, and scenario B is that something negative will happen that will keep the price below $30 000.

Anyway, expecting a big bull run in the year before the halving has so far turned out to be an unrealistic option, but no one is stopping you from hoping, you can even write a letter to Santa Claus to make your wish come true

People should know that most of the so-called stablecoins are not stable or secure in the way they think, and someone has already posted a link to a topic that makes it clear that most stablecoins can be frozen regardless of the wallet they are in. Now the question arises whether someone will take a risk and keep stablecoins, or will take a risk with fiat currencies, which for me are still safer in the sense that they are backed by states and central banks (with some exceptions, of course).

Any way you look at this question is a matter of risk assessment, I would still choose some fiat like Swiss Franc or Euro much more than any centralized stablecoin.

I have nothing against what you are doing, probably many people will like your book, but it would be nice if you did not create a new topic every time you visit the forum, but that you have the whole discussion in one place. It will soon be 1 year since you announced your project, and I see changes in the strategy - no more altcoins for donations

If the forum administration would go in that direction, then they could also remove the Bitcoin discussion, in which realistically at least 70% of the content is completely useless and meaningless - and what about the Altcoins boards that spammers took over a long time ago, or maybe Gambling boards?

What we need are quality solutions that will prevent the creation of alt farms, but we certainly won't achieve that by closing one board at a time, because as long as there is financial motivation for ranking accounts on this forum, there will be those who will in all possible ways try to use it.

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I noticed that too, and I can say that it is almost a unique phenomenon on the forum - to get merit for a post that was created even several years ago and is in some megathread is sometimes quite surprising. Of course, it would be unfair not to mention another excellent merit source (@DdmrDdmr) that is known for large distributions of merits, and very often for posts that it has already awarded in the past.

Even today, many people would be surprised to find out who the richest people in the world are, and they are certainly not people about whom hundreds or thousands of articles are written every day. These are people (or families) whose wealth was not created in a short period of time (several tens of years), but who acquired that wealth over centuries, and it is not measured in billions, but in trillions of $.

These are people who, unlike some others, do not need and do not want media attention, and the so-called richest people are for them children playing with change.

There are also some sig campaigns that pay up to $200+ (even $250 per week), which means that theoretically it would be possible to earn 1 BTC in a little more than 2 years if the monthly amount was around $1000. Of course, considering that it is not forbidden to have alt accounts and participate with them in different sig campaigns, I think that some earn 1 BTC much faster than others.

The OP is definitely not in that position because he doesn't have a sufficient rank to begin with, and I believe he doesn't have enough knowledge either. But that is no reason for him not to try to go in that direction as well, if he becomes active on the forum, he will surely learn a lot, and he will be given the opportunity to earn something along the way.

Then I was partly right, because it seemed to me that he had a different badge, and I'm pretty sure that one of those old and experienced members had a Bitcoin-Qt core developer badge.

I am not aware that such a contest has ever existed, and the only logical explanation is that the admin made it as a small recognition for some members who deserve it for a certain contribution in the development of Bitcoin.

The link to their list is in Forum ranks/positions/badges under Badges.

I was convinced from some other discussions that the purchase of BTC occurs only when the ETF is approved and when their clients express interest in such an investment. But let's say you are right, is there some amount of BTC for the purpose of proving that they as a company are ready to offer such an ETF?

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You are right, and I remember it as a somewhat strange coincidence that has already become a rule, which only confirms that Saylor and his company have almost no effect on the price. If someone else like Mr. If Mars or Bezos bought the same amount of BTC and announced it publicly, I'm sure the price would jump by at least 15-20% within a few hours, and at least 25% in the next few days.

I would not agree with that assumption, because even though this may have been the case in the beginning, now these investments are less and less (if we look at the amount of BTC purchased) and have almost no influence on the price of BTC. Likewise, Saylor is not one of those who knows (or wants) to hit the dip, but buys when they have enough cash, regardless of the price.


Exactly, if you want to buy a lot of BTC without affecting the price (which is desirable if you plan further investments), then use the OTC method and a company that will do it for you. An example of how it was done by Microstrategy with the help of Coinbase:



Where did you get that information from? BlackRock is only exposed to BTC as a shareholder of Microstrategy, and why would they buy BTC if their spot BTC ETF has not been approved yet?

I don't know how accurate these data are, because although 2.2 million BTC does not seem too much compared to almost 19.5 million BTC mined, it still shows that there are still those who do not understand the need for non-custodial wallets. However, I would dare to say that this number is even lower, because we all know that CEX always manipulates numbers in order to show liquidity, so it is a similar story as in the case when speculating about how much BTC is actually irreversible or currently lost.

What is certain is that the number of BTC that are on CEX is decreasing over the years, which is really good news and I hope that it is not only related to the fact that we are still in a bear market.

I do not think that the futures BTC ETF is more risky than the spot ETF, because with the former, the risk is lower in that the fund does not contain actual BTC, that is, the fund does not buy BTC in order to issue shares in the fund based on it, which is the case with the spot ETF. The spot ETF has additional risk because it is exposed to the risk of buying and storing BTC, although the SEC probably has some other reasons for taking such a negative view.

In addition, if we go into conspiracy theories a little, then we could conclude that the SEC wants to approve the first such ETF to someone who is still much closer to the government than to any other company. From this we can draw the conclusion that the most likely candidate to receive approval is BlackRock.

Perhaps because we should not give additional arguments to those who use it to portray Bitcoin as one of the great threats to our environment, no matter how meaningless it is if we take into account the facts from all relevant research. Those who mine BTC of course do it for profit, but I believe that they should always strive to use clean and renewable energy sources, although even these energy sources are not something that does not leave an impact on the environment.

The less oil, methane, coal and similar fuels associated with Bitcoin, the better for all of us in the long run.

I voted NO for the reason that I think there are other ways that could solve that "problem" without going to a complete ban on merits in that thread. I personally like how the rules are set in Serious discussion, which means that you only need to limit which ranks can participate in that thread, and if that rule were set to Senior + rank in WO, I believe that such discussions would not be necessary.

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For those of us who are not merit sources and are not very popular on the forum, such a source of merits really means a lot, because be sure that every sMerits I received from you and other members of WO ends up as a reward for what I consider a useful and quality posts.

If only it were that simple, but for those who buy Ledger HW for the first time, using Ledger Live is mandatory for the initial setup of the device, and for those who have been using it before if they want to upgrade the firmware or add/upgrade any coin app. In addition, regardless of which software you use with the device, you still connect to the Ledger servers for every incoming/outgoing transaction, which means that you still take certain risks, at least as far as privacy is concerned.

For anyone who can afford it, it would be wise to find an alternative, or to pretend that nothing has happened and will not happen.

Fortunately, the OP has plenty of time to move in that direction, although I doubt he would ever succeed in it, considering that he very often asks this kind of pointless type of question instead of looking for the answer himself.

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If we talk about some forum contests, it seems to me that the winner keeps the badges permanently, and the others get them temporarily, while for some other badges the status is permanent.

@gmaxwell has a badge called "Bitcoin expert" and there is no doubt that it is something permanent, although I have to admit that @achow101 seems to have had a badge in the past that I can't see now (Bitcoin-Qt core developer). It is possible that (like some other things) badges can be removed on request.

If it is true that Ledger still (after all) has a large number of users, then we can conclude that the majority of their users are actually unaware of everything that happened in the past and what we learned a few months ago. Basically, it doesn't matter to them that their personal data is hacked and publicly available to anyone who abuses it, nor that the company seems to have the ability to access confidential information on the devices it sells and to share it with third parties (including the authorities).

Whether the reason is that someone is unaware of the risks or doesn't understand the risks, the fact is that the amateurism and crazy moves of that company (from a risk perspective) sound an alarm that everyone should take seriously.

There are many of you who live in some of your illusions and wait for something to happen, regardless of whether you even think about what moment you are in and align your expectations with that. Expecting some kind of bull run in the year before the halving literally shows a misunderstanding of the fundamentals of Bitcoin, especially when it comes to the price of the same.


Why would the price of 1 BTC be approximately $69k by the end of this year, will the good fairies or Santa do some magic to make it happen?I think that it is possible that this is not the last dip, and that means that it will certainly not be easy for some of you who are obviously on unknown ground in the expectation of reaping the fruits of your investment.