It looks as if you were a user of Bitcoin, and dropped out. Now you have returned to the fold. It would be interesting to know why you have had this change of heart, and I'm sure that discussions like this would soon earn you some merit.

I think you guys are reading more into my suggestion than I intended. I wasn't suggesting that you had to receive merits on all boards to rank up, but more that rank improvement should be harder if all of your merits were earned on a single board. The requirement to receive merits from a variety of awarders was intended to try to avoid upranking members of spamming groups, and not to create a "classist" forum.

Also, I think there should be a bit more diversity on some boards, and a bit less on others. Bitcoin discussions is one that could benefit from a bit more interest in Bitcoin as a project, and not as a free money faucet. Mining is one that could do with some attention as well. It seems to be elitist, and not newbie ( to mining ) friendly. I've made a few attempts to learn about mining as an educational exercise, and not for income, and the threads were deleted. I appreciate that discussions on setting up 1,000 ASICs on a solar farm is interesting, but it is a bit out of my income and ability ranges at the moment. Also, the mining board should come out of its cellar, and help us to understand the changes that are happening at the moment - the BCH tax on mining rewards for example, and the proposal for mining pools to allow members to select the use of blocks that they find. With China controlling over 50% of the hash rate, this change could be significant to preserve decentralisation.

You might be a good mining technician, but you should still be aware of Bitcoins role in the world economy. Without that knowledge, you won't be able to make good mining investment decisions. One advantage of BitcoinTalk used to be that it brought together various specialists for discussions, but that doesn't seem to happen as much now.

I agree with you to a certain extent, but after Junior level, then members should be capable of contributing to a variety of boards. It gets more difficult when members are solely miners, technicians, or speculators. The mix of members awarding the merits is probably more important. but maybe the bounty hunters will club together to create the mix anyway.

It seems to me that the main emphasis in the hunt for merit is the size of one's merit pot. I believe that it would be beneficial for the forum to consider the source of those merits. For example, were they all gained on one board, and if so, was the board a technical one, or an off topic or announcement one. I think the breadth of appeal of a member to others in the forum should be considered as well. Perhaps there could be a minimum number of different awarders for each rank.

Well that is why I wanted to start these discussion topics. It is really up to us to determine the content on that board ( and the moderators of course). If nobody starts any decent topic discussions, then of course there won't be any decent threads on the board. Also, if members don't take an active part in such discussions, then they will just drop away.

I don't visit the local boards, as I am primarily an English speaker, but from reading various posts, I'm starting to get the feeling taht the best discussions tend to be on the local boards. The only explanation for this that I can think of is that the English boards are clogged with spam, and this discourages decent discussions. Inappropriate moderation can make this situation worse.

With regards to the comments that the topic is too complex - These are important changes to Bitcoin, and I believe that they will improve the system. Because of this, we should all try to gain at least a basic understanding of the improvements.

Thanks for bringing this to the attention of the Spanish community. If you want to broaden your exposure, and post your topics on the English boards, then we can help you in the Fit to Talk English project. I created this to help members who don't have English as a first language create threads for the English boards in this forum. There was an active Spanish section as a result of the problems in Venezuela, but that seems to have fallen into disuse.

I think more emphasis should be given on the encouragement of discussions about Bitcoin, cryptos and global economics. At the moment, in order to gain merits, it seems that you need to discuss merits, the forum politics, and the trust system, and if you produce stats and images about this, then you get showered with merits.

It almost seems that Bitcoin Talk merits have aspirations to become a global currency. I'm waiting for someone to produce a merit mining ASIC.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5220436.0

I believe there will be a soft fork in the Bitcoin blockchain later this year. This will introduce some more improvements and efficiencies to it function. I started that thread in the hope that I could provoke some interest and debate about the changes. It is topics like this that I would like to see discussed on the more general boards like Discussion and Beginners. Apart from JackG there has been no response or interest in the topic ( thanks JackG ). I'm going to give him 5 sMerit, and maybe that will stimulate some interest.

So where did I go wrong? Is the topic too technical? Do Bitcoin Talk members not care about these changes? Should I have included more details in the OP, and not left it to readers to make the comments?

This is the first of my debate threads for members to earn merit for taking part in Bitcoin debates.

There hasn't been a significant upgrade to Bitcoin since SegWit, but I gather there is likely to be a soft fork later this year to introduce these 3 enhancements. I've already posted a thread about Schnorr signatures, and how they can improve block packing, but what about Taproot? I believe that these changes will help Bitcoin along its path to maturity and acceptance by investors. What do you think?

It's a pretty bad layout. I didn't bother to read it, as it's large text stretched across the page. I think it would have been better as a simple text message. That way people could read it quickly, and decide if it was of interest.

Current methods of payment include Gold, Silver, Cash, digital fiat, SDRs, Bills of Exchange, bearer bonds, and other instruments. Bitcoin is just the latest one to be added to the list. They all have their own use cases,strengths and weaknesses,but the 21 million cap, and the 10 min average block generation time was included by the creators to ensure that it could never become the dominant payment method.

It seems that the treasonous John Bercow is having a wobbly about the fact that he will be the first Speaker of the House of Commons who doesn't receive a peerage. I think that there will be a national outcry if he is given one. He brought the office into disrepute, and bent ( some say broke) the rules of conduct that go with the position. He seems to have done everything he can to thwart the decision of the people to leave the EU, and to mess up the country by attempting to destroy the operation of a centuries old parliamentary system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHKz9BCeOeA


Whoops - I meant to post this in Fit to Talk. Oh well, it might as well stay here for discussion ( just don't accuse me of plagiarism ).

Looks as if you are doing a good job here - keep up the good work.

btw, I added you to my trust list.

I think there is too much of an obsession with merit here. It has distorted the posting, as people try to make posts to earn merits. Maybe it is time to create bMerits which can only be awarded to posts about Bitcoin and the serious alts - no bounty promotions, scam coins, or general forum chat.

I ignore all ads that Google sends to me. Well sometimes |I click on the limks to run up their bill with Google, but I wouldn't buy anything through a Google ad.

I've been using the Brave browser fr a few months now, and I'm a verified publisher. This helps to pay for projects like the Fit to Ralk English project. There is also a Tor window built into it, and that can be useful when on public WiFi.

The trouble with all these fancy projects is that they are designed to benefit Big Pharma, and not mankind. Using fertilisers to increase crop yield reduces the health of the world population. Mother nature has spent years testing and evolving out world, and we are attempting to change it to enrich a few elite dynasties. Anyone who tries to resist this is branded with a while bunch of inappropriate labels. "Climate change denier" is one such label. We don't deny that the climate is changing, we just don't think it is caused by cows farting, and carbon dioxide. You only need to look at the health of most people these days, to realise that a lot of things are wrong. Most diets are deficient in minerals, and one cause of this is a reduction in ruminant animals ruminating. Feeding cows with artificial protein rather than allowing them to feed on self-fermented grass creates low value meat, and it breaks the natural cycles of farming, by denying the return of minerals to the soil.

We need more ruminants reared in pastures, and not synthetic protein grown on strings in artificial atmospheres.

Peter Schiff has finally admitted that it was his error that lost him his "worthless" Bitcoin. It seems that he had an account with Blockchain, and used an automatic login to access it. When they updated their software, he tried to log in using his PIN number, as he had forgotten his password, and had never written it down, It seems that he doesn't seem to know about recovery seed phrases either. So what can we learn from this?

- Make sure you keep a backup of your wallet, and associated data. You can always download the blockchain if you lose that, but you need to protect your wallet info.
- Keep a note of your recovery seed phrase, and any other passwords you may use.
- If you don't own the private keys to your wallets, then you don't own the Bitcoin in them.
- Don't try to "Schiff" the blame for your errors onto Bitcoin - it just makes you look stupid.

You have to pass through the darkness of midnight to welcome the new dawn.

Nuclear wars aren't the real threat. The real threats are the changes forced on us by those seeking global domination and wealth transfer.

Going into debt is never a good idea. If you are spending too much, then cut back on your spending. Insteaf of awarding 2-4 sMerit, then award 1-3. That way you can keep up the distribution.