Not being as tech-savvy as the rest of y'all, that wasn't my main problem with this.  I don't like biometric data being in the hands of big tech companies, because I don't trust who they're going to share that data with.  In fact, I don't trust big tech companies as a general principle (though unfortunately I'm in an abusive relationship with them that I can't seem to get out of).

The article cites the fact that many people are using passwords like "123456" and so forth.  I'm not sure if that's an argument for the implementation of biometric "passwords" as much as it is for educating people on using stronger passwords and just being more mindful of their online security in general.  But I swear, if this becomes the industry standard, you'll be seeing me in 2040 using a smartphone from 2022--and hopefully living in my campaign farm castle in utopia somewhere where the weather is nice and the women abound.  Lol.

I've done trades with members via PMs and used e-mail communications in the process, but telegram, man....you're absolutely right about it being a haven for scammers and impersonators of bitcointalk members.  I even had one of these scam accusation threads made against me because apparently someone with my forum username on telegram (apparently successfully) scammed someone who thought they were dealing with me.

And OP, I'm not going to rub salt in your wounds here; I'll just tell you I'm sorry you got scammed.  I probably wouldn't have been attentive enough to tell the difference between DireWolfM14's imposter either.  Just be more careful in the future--and that should probably go without saying.

It's funny in a really sad sort of way that a forum that does nothing about scammers and members advertising scams would give that kind of warning.  It just seems like such a....small thing to do, almost like a obviously futile and hypocritical gesture, all things considered.

Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen that before, and I get quite a few PMs.  Are the mods making a judgement call on what constitutes a phishing PM?

Nah, as mean-spirited as it is, it isn't a direct death threat.  "I'm going to kill you/have you killed" would be, but recall that Vod implored Quickseller to kill himself a while back (and someone correct me if I've got QS mixed up with OgNasty; it's been a while), and there was a discussion about the nuances of that kind of speech.  Vod certainly never got banned.

OP, the best thing you did was to block that fucker's PMs.  It's good you've got thick skin as well, because words can hurt.  Things from some random internet jagoff ought not bother people, but we're all built with different constitutions.

I'm neutral on the flag.  I think Koli was being too aggressive in asking for positive trust, but I wouldn't tag him for trust begging.  And the mean PMs and spiteful stuff doesn't warrant a tag IMO--at least not from me.

Well if scams aren't going to be moderated on bitcointalk, things should at least remain in support of free speech, no?  I've seen members do exactly what OP described before, and those threads weren't attempts to scam anyone.  Frankly I don't see anything wrong with it, though it might be frustrating for people who want to respond to whatever it is that's in the thread.  If it's important enough, you're always free to start up a separate thread in response.

That's usually the best advice for complaints like this one, where the chance of the rules changing is infinitesimally small.

Go for it, OP.  I have no idea what's going on in the Turkish section (other than what you and others have said), but my impression has been that it's an extremely tight-knit community.  Though some of the members I've interacted with in the past have been absolute bastards, that doesn't mean I don't respect their passion for bitcoin or that the section doesn't need more merits circulating in it.

As I've said in other application threads, the only problem is that there's no way to tell if Theymos is planning to add any more sources unless he makes a statement about it (or just adds them).  I really wish he would let the forum know what his plans are, because making an application thread like this takes a lot of time and effort.  Anyhow, good luck!

I'm sure it's not the first time, given that there are so many members registered who participate in campaigns and bounties (and who are lazy and/or unethical).  I thought I'd seen it all, but honestly I don't recall seeing anyone else pull this particular brand of crapola before.

I hadn't noticed the user in question doing what he did because I think he posts mainly in the gambling section (correct me if I'm wrong; I'm too lazy to check), which I stay away from unless I'm doing post reviews for people.

Good eyes on this one, OP, and you did the right thing by calling attention to AndySt and his tactics.

Yeah, I guess I could have phrased my statement better--I have no doubt there are fewer short positions now than there were when MSTR stock was a few hundred dollars higher, because at this point the less risk-averse short sellers have likely covered.  Last I checked, the stock had rebounded from yesterday's disaster, which was probably just that.

And then just now I woke up and saw that bitcoin had fallen further to $21,500.  Yikes!  I'll definitely be watching the stock tomorrow.

The above post in the context of the latest developments being discussed concerning bitcoin's massive crash and the potential consequences for MSTR is almost a non sequitur.  If you can look at me with a straight face and tell me that this is one of the times where bitcoin proved to be more stable than fiat, you ought to be a professional poker player.

Oy-fuckin'-vey!  I wonder who the major shareholders of MSTR are.  Roughly 69% of them are institutions, according to the info on my brokerage site.  And I also wonder how many of them are going to stick with owning the stock.  There's also massive shorting of it as well, which can't be helping things.

Yeah, I'm not even sure why that statistic exists--not even that it's no longer relevant or interesting, but that it was probably never interesting or relevant. 

There are a lot of features of bitcointalk that seem like relics of some era far in the past, e.g., this part of members' profiles:



Meanwhile, I've seen some very good suggestions that would probably be easy to implement go completely ignored.  It's baffling to me exactly what's going on behind the scenes.  On the bright side, I'm generally happy with websites that don't keep changing all the time (like eBay).

Oddly enough, that wasn't my first reaction to it--and you know I'm normally cynical to the point of despair.

How exactly did you discover that?  Was something written about that phenomenon recently?  I don't know about other merit sources, but I couldn't care less if members give me merits.  I've actually written a number of times that people should pass on meriting any of my posts and instead give some merits to lower-ranked members who need them to rank up.  They're useless to me aside from adding to my personal stash of sMerits, but that's unnecessary since I haven't tapped into those in many months.

OP, you sort of hinted that you weren't thanking all the merit sources.  Do you have any intel about merit sources not doing a good job?

Hey man, the whole reason I'm living in dreamland is because my current place of residence completely sucks ass like nothing you've ever seen ass sucked by--it's bad.  Right now I have no way of improving my situation, either.

Wait a sec.  When you say "four-digit salaries" are you talking in terms of USD amounts?  Because if so, I have to tell you that I remember the Yobit campaign from years back, and they paid 30k sats/post, but bitcoin was likely below $1000 at the time and unless you had 100 accounts enrolled in the campaign (lol, I'm sure some people did) there's no way you were making that much money.

I would also mention that campaigns are still around, after all.  They must be beneficial for the businesses that run them, so I'm not sure why the rates have dropped so drastically.  Do people gamble on crypto casinos less?  Are there fewer exchanges coming into existence?  Most of the bitcoin-paying campaigns from back in the 2015-18 era weren't for ICO projects, and it's not like enthusiasm for crypto has died down at all, so I don't really understand it.

Remember the days when sig campaigns paid out a certain number of satoshis per post or per week?  Back then bitcoin was probably under $15k or so (I can't remember exactly when they all transitioned to a fixed dollar amount), and people still made livings from them--but in countries where the cost of living is low.  That's the whole point of this thread, to figure out what countries in which it might be feasible to live well solely on the proceeds of sig campaigns.

Has anyone seen any statistics on pay rates over time?  I'd be interested to know how much bitcoin (or the dollar amount) could be earned per pay period in each of them throughout the years.  I suspect it's gone down a lot.

It's funny to me that in certain parts of the world, it's assumed that every white person is wealthy.  I don't know if that's considered discrimination, but it's a generalization that's just not true.  If you knew me in real life, you'd have all the proof you need of that!

Disclaimer: I know absolutely nothing about quantum computing.

However, if it was really a threat to cryptocurrency I would think that the biggest of big crashes would have happened after the first announcement.  Unless there was something new in this second one that pointed toward bitcoin being at risk because of quantum computing, I just don't see it as anything more than a coincidence.

I'm still thinking the Celsius freeze had something to do with the crash we're seeing, even if the crash started first.  I'd also point out that it's not only the crypto markets that are down a lot.  The stock market in general took a big hit today, and precious metals were even down.  This could just be a huge selloff of all kinds of investment assets.

That was my first thought after reading OP's post, and it's not the first time the thought has entered my mind.  It's not even the 10,000th.

Having bounty hunters buy a badge wouldn't solve anything.  Hell, the merit system didn't even eradicate these fucking idiot shitposting bounty hunters (although it did make things much better).  And believe me, OP, the problem and the many possible solutions have been discussed many times over the last few years.  I get that you're frustrated, but I have a feeling that this thread isn't going to lead to a new solution to the shitposting problem.

IMO asking that question after any huge one-day crash is silly.  In fact, it's always silly because it assumes you can read the future and the minds of everyone who makes up the market.  Oddly enough, that doesn't ever stop people from answering it.

I woke up this morning and my eyes almost popped out of my head when I checked preev and saw that bitcoin was at $23k.  If you'd told me it was headed that low, I probably would have told you I wouldn't be surprised--but goddammit, turns out I'm totally surprised!

Not sure if the whole Celsius thing is due to bitcoin's drop or is contributing to it, but usually when there's a major market correction like this you usually start seeing a bunch of crooks being forced out of the woodwork, and a whole bunch of other shenanigans as well.  Unless bitcoin recovers quickly, the next few weeks should be very interesting.

I'm surprised no one has bumped this thread today, or maybe it's just too early in the day.

Their stock price dropped about 23.5% since the market opened an hour ago, and I'm wondering what MSTR's shareholders are thinking as regards the company's massive bitcoin investment--or at least those shareholders who bought MSTR for reasons other than it being a bitcoin investment proxy.

True, the rest of the market is sinking today, but nowhere near as much as Microstrategy.  I get that bitcoin's price has dropped roughly 17% over the course of a day, and that that reflects on MSTR's valuation, but damn....that's gotta hurt if you own the stock.

Over the last six months to a year, I've seen prices of things increase at a rate that's alarming--and I'm generally not easily alarmed by stuff like that, since I'm a pretty frugal person by nature.  But damn, a standard-size bag of Cheetos is now well over $5, and that's more than a gallon of gas (but it seems to be a race between those two things). 

This is a problem created by the government which no doubt they're going to attempt to solve.  Unfortunately I have a sinking feeling that their solution is only going to cause more financial pain.  And without delving too far into politics, I just want to say that I'm hoping Biden doesn't get re-elected.  I do realize that inflation is a global problem and that it isn't his fault that the world is in this state, but I don't think he has any capability to lead the US out of this inflation *soon-to-be* crisis.

Wait a minute....what are you saying you dug up on me?  It kinda sounds like you got most of the information correct except for the sunshine thing, and even that isn't completely wrong.  I'm not exactly frightened by your post, but my paranoia is starting to flare up.  Lol.

All of those pics are beautiful, by the way.  I saw a tortoise last year with a metal object that some idiot crazy glued to its shell, and since the torty was still growing, the metal thing got integrated into the shell and can't be removed.  But damn, the torty in your pic looks so much bigger than the one I saw.  They're amazing creatures with very interesting body language and personalities.

That's one of the problems I'd anticipated if my signature campaign castle ends up being located in a non-English speaking country.  I'm of an age where I probably can't learn a new language with enough proficiency to speak it to the natives.  But on the other hand, my plan was to seclude myself in the castle dungeon, where my small living quarters will be and where I'll write for a living.  

Sounds like you've been thinking about this idea yourself--if you end up going through with it, I wish you luck and hope you report your progress.

Lots of typing under the glow of candlelight.

OP, I remember your giveaway thing and thought it was a bit weird at the time--and I also suspected it might get you into hot water, since it involves both the trust system and exchanging of crypto.  Those two things generally never go together in a good way.

But the feedback you got because of your statements about Fortunejack don't warrant negative trust IMO.  Granted, I haven't checked into the validity of what you wrote, but I kind of expect more from a member like Hhampuz and wouldn't have expected a feedback like the one he gave you.  His and suchmoon's were the two that showed up as being trusted when I looked at your feedback page.  Anyway, just like every other case of contested feedback that I've commented on in the past seven years, there's nothing I or the community can do to help you out (and I'm pretty sure you know that).

Don't know how much you care about all those negs you got, but maybe with time you can at least convince some of the DT members to remove them.  I've got a custom trust list and don't follow all the DT updates, so I have no idea who those members are.  Good luck to you.