Who gives a ratt's ass about Vitalik or EOS?  You?

Let's attempt to pump the credibility of Gavin, who essentially got booted (or demoted) from Bitcoin based on his crazy ass devolution into proclaiming that fraudster Craig Wright was Satoshi....   What a bunch of bullshit that showed that Gavin's true colors were not in the interest of bitcoin and had digressed way too far, and showed him as a kind of naked that had to be purged of his bitcoin powers.




I cannot see you giving up on your own bitcoin bashing, any time soon.

Gavin, is that you?

I am far from any kind of technical expert in these matters, but I do read about what other people say and sometimes attempting to distinguish various kinds of sidechains.  

Some peeps (like Bob just asserted) maintain that LN is just another kind of sidechain, and other peeps try to make the matter more complicated by attempting to imply differences that may or may not be meaningful since there are all kinds of variations that could be considered or be built in terms of sidechains - including the possibility that someday, perhaps a large majority of whatever alts are left in the crypto ecosystem and still valuable would serve as some kind of sidechain to bitcoin.

So, yeah pegging a bitcoin value on the sidechain and serving as a kind of "federated side chain" seems to be something that LN is if you have to have a kind of exact number of bitcoins that go in and later come out.  There may be other ways of either federating or giving value to other tokens in sidechains, but I would imagine that any side chain that does not federate value in terms of bitcoin value, would run the risk of being accused of engaging in a kind of fractional reserve banking (which would be frowned upon unless it is kept in a kind of strict control that is auditable or reasonably knowable.. but still possibly down a slippery slope of engaging in a fractional reserves practice).



I see that V8 is quick to the draw, and the linked article does provide some decent outline, too.  Thanks V.   

Your "guess" is just that.  You can read through posts from theymos that articulates some of the goals, and you can see discussions of goals, frequently goals are not articulated as mandates.. so there can be some subjective interpretation about meaning and there can be shifting of the goals.  Again, it is your job to describe and to show evidence about what you believe are the goals and or what they should be based on evidence and reasonable inferences.  You seem to have a tendency to try to shift some kind of burden onto me when you are the person who is criticizing deficiencies in the system and what you propose changes, such as abolishing such system.




I have no duty to answer your question(s), and I gave you responses that are sufficiently responsive and not evasive.  I did my part.  It's on you, now, to do some work, rather than getting caught in the weeds of irrelevance regarding alleged (and seemingly concocted) deficiencies in my response(s).


NOT.. another thing in your imagination.  I am just saying that you are failing and refusing to prove your case.  I am not engaged in any active defense of the merit system as you seem to want to present the matter in such a way in order to shift the burden of presentation and evidence from me to you.  Why don't you get a grip and take responsibility for the substance of your own presentation rather than continuing in irrelevant distractions?  Are you able to or competent enough in such direction?


I don't need to know, but even with my not knowing, I seem to know more than you, and I am not even presenting a case, like you are... go figure?


Yeah right... use your imagination to come up with fantasies that are unlikely to be true... and even when there is decent evidence to the contrary... You are making a lot of "progress" here is your supposed "forward thinking" - which increasingly is seeming a bit backwards from my perspective.


Yes.. If you create a strawman argument with made up facts, then it is much easier to win in that argument..


Repetition and made up.


Merely because goals might be unclear to you does not mean that either there are none or that theymos, for example, cannot figure out if he perceives progress.... which I am not even going to go along with your seemingly completely made up conjecture that there are no goals... 


The only one who seems to be guessing around here is you, and the more I read your bullshit, the more I am concluding that you are not even attempting to be genuine.. you are just making up shit, which is also a kind of trolling.

I personally believe that it would be helpful (and more transparent) if the full histories of member merit sending/receiving would be accessible, rather than merely the past 120 days.

Cancelling this merit system has about a snowball's chance in hell of happening, so if you are hoping for that kind of an outcome, you are likely barking up the wrong tree.

Modification or tweaking of the merit system might happen, but instead of wishing for modification and tweaking, it could be a better pursuit to just figure out ways to work within the new merit system, if you are trying to earn merits, then attempt to post good and even better.  If you don't care about earning merits and you just want to read the forum posts, then you are free to do that too. This merit system does not stop you from reading posts.

At this particular moment, if I sold all my BTC holdings, I would be at least 8x up (perhaps even a bit more) in terms of fiat value from my total amount invested over the past 4.5 years.  To me, the amount of appreciation feels pretty decent, relatively speaking, and especially compared to my other investments.  One of my best performing other investments over time is a 401k that is invested into a variety of different kinds of index funds for more than 20 years, and that fund is not even close to 8x the amount that I invested, even if I consider some of the matching funds of the employer as appreciation to me, the fund might be considered having a return around 3.5x, at best...

Exactamente, Athanz.... Under this current merit system by design, merit spreading throughout the forum, including to the lower ranks will be based upon perceptions of merit worthiness of the merit senders rather than some kind of random chance...   Let the chips fall will they will...     

I would not characterize my post as trolling, but is merely a thread status comment/assertion (perhaps somewhat emotionally based?).  

I will leave the predicting of BTC prices and bottoms to folks who feel inclined to make such assertions...   which is not within the preferences of this cat at this moment.

By the way, I feel that I am fairly adequately prepared for BTC price movements in either direction, so I don't have any strong feelings about actual numbers in either direction... instead, for me, I would rather play these kinds of matters day by day, and perhaps on certain days I may have stronger feelings than others regarding the extent to which one area of support or resistance will be broken.. but price bottoms and tops remain a moving target and a range, rather than a number (until it becomes a number, which is the past rather than the future).

I do have stronger feelings that the bottom is NOT in, in recent days, as compared with my feelings from a few weeks ago...but whatever.... It does not really matter what I think or how I feel at this particular moment because the BTC price is going to do whatever the fuck it does, and nobody knows, and guessing remains a stab in the dark that may end up being lucky without really telling the reader anything meaningful except expectations of the poster...

Call me party pooper if you will, but I must proclaim that on a personal level (psychological and financial) it remains prudent for me to attempt go with the flow and hope for the best and prepare (somewhat without getting preoccupied by fringe scenarios) for the worst... which for my own sanity does not tend to involve ascribing any specific seemingly random shot in the dark numbers.    

I am not bothered by your supposed expertise, and in fact, I would appreciate reading a post from you that actually were to demonstrate expertise rather than reading your mere claiming of such expert status and/or abilities.

Looks correct to me.


Of course, if you say that the solution is simple, then that should be read at face value.  If the solution is not simple, then you should not make that kind of assertion, otherwise you are merely exaggerating the essence of what you are attempting to describe.
 


I am not going to try again.  Let's stick to the topic.  You are the one that seems to be trying to assert that the merit system is broken or inadequate, so the burden is on you to prove your points.  I don't have any burden here.  I said what I was going to say on that particular point, and I have no further point to make... otherwise, we are just getting caught up in the weeds and off topic to some other irrelevant subject matter.
 


I am glad that you are "concerned for Bitcointalk," but the fact of the matter is that you seem to be creating a false emergency and even presuming that there is something broken or going in the wrong direction... so if you start with badly formulated presumptions, then you are likely to go down the wrong path.



Again.. you are presuming what indicators matter, which is largely facts that are not in evidence.  In other words, you cannot presume facts to be present and true, and then make your conclusion based on assumed facts.  Makes little to no sense.


O.k. Again, you are grading something, but we are not even being presented by you what are the facts, exactly, merely the conclusion.  In essence, the grade is based on your opinion only.  What good is that going to do?
 


Well, if you look at theymos's op post, he describes factors that he considered when making the initial merit distribution which was in essence was current rank, activity level and activity within the year preceding the initial distribution.  He subsequently modified his initial distribution to give a higher level of hero members (from  500 to 1000) who had reached at least 778 activity level at the time of the initial distribution.


dialectic process just means that you do something and then you see what happens and attempt to learn from what happens to incorporate your learning into the process.  


Well, I would imagine that there is an attempted measurement of account farming and shit posting, so these kinds of measures might not be precise to verify whether the merit system implementation is causing movement in the preferred direction.  Furthermore, there could be issues with merit sources not spending their smerits or engaging in borderline abusive use of their source merits that might need to be measured to decide whether to change merit source incentives.   Some behaviors are going to be easier measured than others, and there could even be some considerations about changing the measurement tools based on kinds of behaviors that are detected.
 


You repeated yourself without any further justification of your position (that recommends 2 merits to rank up .. oh my, I have a hard time keeping a straight face, here...    ).



O.k. fine.  You provided some further specifications regarding levels to which you consider some random smerit distribution to be put into practice.  It could be possible that theymos could implement such a system by either algorith or manually from time to time.  I don't see anything stopping him from doing it, besides the fact about whether he believes such a distribution (or system of distribution) would help to achieve any objective or to seem to come with a cost that is greater than any benefit that it could expect to achieve.  I tentatively believe that he would conclude that such a randomness would be counter-productive in terms of various goals and measures that he is attempting to achieve through the direction of the merit system that he has already chosen to implement.
 


In OP and perhaps in one or two other subsequent posts by theymos that came soon after January 24.


Yes, really.  Appeals to status and/or authority tend to NOT be very convincing assertions, as I already attempted to explain in my earlier response related to this matter.


I think that I have said enough.  It is up to you to fix your arguments and your presentation, if you want to continue this argument or just keep your arguments and justifications the same.



Again, I have no burden to prove my points.  You are the one making assertions about the merit system being inadequate or broken, so you have the burden of production of evidence and persuasion by logic.  If you think that my criticisms of your previous assertions are inadequate, then just continue to make them.. that is your choice, and I am just telling you that I am not convinced... but who the fuck cares what I think because I am neither theymos or anyone who has his ear.  I am merely another member responding to what I perceive to be your mostly nonsubstantiated points.



Yes.   You sufficiently responded to my assertion, which was that you are making claims and spouting out opinions without data.... so you can say any fucking thing that you want, but it is not going to carry much weight if it is not based on facts, merely opinion.  Furthermore, you are trying to make light of the idea with your dumbass "Al Gore" proclamation and suggest that it is not possible to provide evidence, when it is within your grasp to provide at least some evidence for your claims... rather than just meandering out there with "pie in the sky" fantastical claims.


I don't think so.  I understand the difference between the two words, and I am purposefully choosing which words to use.  In other words, there is no accident with my word choice, even though you seem inclined to want to get caught up in the weeds and to get off topic by suggesting that I don't understand my own word choice?  Go figure?   In essence, I am merely using different words to explain a concept.  Have you ever heard of the fallacy "appealing to authority" or "appealing to status?"     In part, you have been engaging in such a fallacy to pump up your own skills and experiences in order to commit a logical fallacy to expect that we should give you a break because you are a supposed expert.


Who gives a ratt's ass?  If you are such an expert, then show it with substance rather than describing your supposed resume and then failing to deliver actual evidence to support your assertions.


Yes.  You have admitted several times that you are assuming data that you do not have, and you are not really providing any substitute data to support your arguments either.    Sometimes when there is not enough data, then you can take data that you know and make reasonable inferences from the data, and you are not even doing that... admittedly, you have nothing but pure opinion and speculation.


O.k. fair enough if you are merely referring to the merit system in general and without personal motivations.  So, yeah, perhaps I was off topic to suggest that you could focus yourself a bit better and perhaps earn some merits.

I have also addressed your contention that you are striving to have a better forum, and some of those goals seem to be whatever is articulated by theymos to be a better forum, which is to cut down on farmed accounts and shit posts, which seems to be helped by the merit system.  Your assertion that the masses of the public is scared away seems to be a feature rather than a bug, and there is insufficient evidence in your claim that "good people" are being excessively screened out.



I care about what you have to say, but you have not really said much, it seems.


Maybe this is the essence of your claim that somehow I am personally biased, so I am expending so much energy to respond to you in order to defend this system?  But again you are attempting to assert biaseness from me, and I have no burden to defend the system... all I am doing is responding to your ongoing lack of criticism and failures/refusals to meet your own evidentiary and logical burdens as the one who is proposing that the merit system is inadequate.



your devolving further and further down the rabbit hole of nonsense with this remark.


Get a fucking grip!!!  The merit system has changed.  The previous standards caused peeps to rank up under the old standards.  The new system sets new standards.  Your assertion that you wished that the old system were in place is water under the bridge.  I doubt that theymos is going to throw the whole new merit system out and go back to the old system, so you are wishing for a matter that seems highly unlikely and it does not even matter very much about what we say about it... what matters is evidence of whether the new system is moving the forum closer or further away from its objectives, and you have not provided any evidence beyond nearly pure complaining... complaining in and of itself is not evidence.



more argument that does not have evidence in support of it, no?


Great!


Any of us is free to go to those other places if we want, so does not seem to be a problem if some members of the public chose to go to those other places.  It seems to me that there was some issues with the forum regarding too many peeps coming here, but maybe since the price of bitcoin and other cryptos have gone down, then perhaps that influx of new members has gone down too, merely based on BTC and crypto price dynamics?

I did do a quick glance through the previous posts that you made on the topic (the ones that you linked above), and I see that I gave you two merits for your very first post on the topic (at least the one you linked here), and part of the reason that I merited you was because the topic was still new, yet you still seem to want to linger on such a topic that really seems to be beyond your control and your level of influence.

This is not about me attacking your or trying to denigrate you, but for some reason you want to assert that you have some kind of expertise on the topic, and I doubt that anyone gives a ratt's ass about your expertise because the ideas that you present should be convincing within the post, and belaboring people with a string of your earlier posts seems to be more of a distraction about you rather than about the substantive strength of your ideas.  Furthermore, the fact of the matter remains that this whole fucking merit matter is discretionary with theymos.  He can do whatever the fuck he wants, and then attempt to measure whether it is having the desired effects in terms of quantity and quality of users and quantity or quality of posts.  So your non-substantiated assertions about the quantity and quality of posts is likely to have little to no resonance with theymos.. even if you repeat your little to no substantiated assertions 1,000 times or subsequently attempt to substantiate points that you have failed to make clearly and concisely in earlier posts on the topic.

On the other hand, maybe you will get lucky and theymos will decide to consult with you on the topic because you bring so much insight, but the way your presenting the matter, I doubt such a consultation is likely to occur... I could be wrong, but based on what I have read so far from you on the topic, I doubt it.



I don't see how it matters whether you use the word "failure" or you use the expression "lack of great success."  The point seems to be that you have not provided evidence to show such measures, such as a decline in membership or a decline in the quantity of posts or some other measuring indicator that either theymos would agree to being important or that he has asserted to be important to him.



I think that part of the point that I was attempting to make was that your merely repeating the same criticisms over and over (maybe you added to your criticism, perhaps?) does not add up to convincing evidence, and your repeating the same thing over and over might tend to undermine rather than bolster your asserted position about the matter.  Maybe others will consider such a matter differently, but that was largely what I was asserting there.


Again, you are not providing evidence, and many of us who comment on this topic are humble enough to concede that 1) we do not necessarily know all the variables that are being considered by theymos, and 2) acknowledge that a considerable degree of discretion remains in the hands of theymos regarding whether or not to tweak or how much time he needs to see how things play out.  Your assertion remains unsubstantiated that "play out" rises to the level of taking unnecessary risk or that irreparable damage is being done to the forum.


You are pretty much conceding that you do not have evidence.. and your main evidence remains your opinion, which is not a very strong way to support an argument.


If you had the data, then you would "run it"..  O.k.. great.


I don't have anything against you or anyone else.  I have just been responding to the assertions that you made in your posts.  Even though you might be an "expert", your posts don't seem to demonstrate such alleged expertise... but hey that is just my opinion, so you don't need to take my opinion seriously, and you can keep making your argument(s).  Good luck.

What is your evidence, beyond pure wishful thinking and some desire to pump some other crap coin?

Isn't what you are asserting the same theme that has been repeated time and time again in regards to the supposed impending death of bitcoin, that ends up being just a non-substantiated attack on bitcoin and/or an attempt to pump some other garbage alt coin and/or ICO?

Yes.. If you think that the matter is simple, then you are engaged in oversimplification.

If you have been "saying since almost day 1," then likely you are neither attempting to look at the matter objectively or to attempt to see how matters play out.



I will grant to you that the passage of 6 months does allow a greater ability to assess the situation, but concluding that the implementation failed seems to be both wishful thinking and failure/refusal to account for actual facts.


It is a fair enough assertion that there might not be enough distributed merits; however, the whole implementation of the merit system began with a front loading of merits - and what I mean is that active accounts received an initial distribution of merits that was based on activity level and then rank.

Since the behavior of members after the implementation of the merit system was not completely known, there has been a dialectic process that would allow for the assessment of member behavior after the initial distribution and the behavior of merit sources, too.

I don't doubt that theymos is continuing to assess the extent to which the actual behavior is playing out as a failure or a success, and likely the assessment is going to come out somewhere in the middle rather than your seeming presumption that the system has been a failure and that some goals have not been reached.


First of all if ranking up seems too difficult based on the playing out of this new merit system (and that is a BIG "if"), then perhaps tweaking the ranking up requirements could be a path forward, yet I highly doubt that something like 2 merits is even  within the realm of realistic (unless we are considering the matter in terms of comedy).


You could be correct that either merit sources need to be increased and/or their receipt of smerits.  There could be some advantages to random distribution, but I am thinking that theymos would not want to go anywhere near "random" distribution because "random" distribution would likely bring back some account farming and shilling problems that were intended to be addressed and reduced by the merit system that was adopted and implemented.


I think that activity level was always part of the consideration for which members would receive merit source status, but a central aspect of the whole new system is to move away from pure activity level for ranking up, so it is difficult to figure out what you are getting at exactly, Forward_Thinking, with regard to your suggestion here.




Good for you.  But merely because you have experience in the field does not mean that you are the smartest person in the room, nor does it mean that you have presented ideas that are compelling for someone like theymos... even though in the end, it is possible that theymos might recognize some value in some of your suggestions  - but seems that you got some of the presumptions wrong too, which seems to undermine a degree of any value that may have been present in some of your suggestions.


The place is dying on the vine?  Do you have some actual statistics for this rather than your supposed anecdotal life experiences?


O.k.  Fair enough that you have additional experiences beyond your Forward_Thinking account, but again seems to be an unnecessary appeal to status, when your presented ideas remain lacking.  No?


Again, you are making an anecdotal assessment regarding what bitcoin talk is becoming, so if you have some more convincing statistic or links then that might be helpful to support your point.  I will agree with you that your voice does not count for too much if you are not generating many merits and you retain low rank; however, if you make really good points backed by evidence, then that could help you to become more convincing and perhaps even cause some members to send some merits in your direction.


I don't even feel any kind of need to look at any of your other posts, because you have presented enough not backed up points within this one post.


You could be correct that there is a bit of a move towards weeding out some of the nonsense of the public while retaining value of already good members and allowing new members from the public to rank up.  Such a move towards screening members or causing more requirements does not completely remove the public aspect of the forum because regular peeps and even low ranking members are completely free to read posts and to post in a large majority of the forum.  Of course, the more access that you want to higher ranking members and the greater credibility that you want, then you need to figure out ways to contribute sufficient value that causes inspiration from other members to send you merit(s).  

You are not a lost cause, yet, Forward_Thinking.  If you figure out ways to improve your post quality, and maybe not to harp so much on negative forum administrative things and go out into the forum and perhaps talk about bitcoin or some other topic that is of interest to you and contribute some value, then maybe after the passage of some time, other members will begin to recognize your various contributions to the forum and to send merits into your direction. Good luck.

Regarding this merit system matter, I am sure that theymos is going to continue to assess how it is playing out and to figure out the extent to which he believes it needs to be tweaked here and there.  It is likely that tweaks need to be made, as you suggest, but they are likely not either obvious nor simple as your post seems to argue.

Faulty logic to be considering the "ease" of these kinds of BTC price falls in dollar terms rather than in percentage terms. 

Accordingly, currently $2k is much more difficult to achieve, as compared to when BTC prices were in the $14k to $19k range... and even more so difficult to achieve a $2k and especially $4k drop when the price has already fallen 70% from its top.  I am not saying that such drop cannot or will not happen, but such a drop is far from a "given" or "easy."  Gonna take a lot of bear whale coins or spreading of FUD in order to scare normies out of coins to achieve such additional BTC price drop objectives.

O.k.  Perhaps, I am quibbling with you a bit stronger than necessary, but to me, it seems a major problem to frame matters as if $4k or $3k or $2k is inevitable, when you are most likely giving it as the most likely of the possible events.  Maybe we divide all the possible events up based on knowable factors, and you come with 20% as the highest of the probabilities, which is showing $2.5k.. and when you talk about it, it comes off as if you are saying it is inevitable.

So, quibble I must, and this is a didactic process, anyhow, since neither of us claims to really know, and we are just going back and forth regarding scenarios that we believe to be more or less likely.


I could be mistaken, but I recall in a previous post that you said something about having a mission to inform people about a more bearish scenario that is not being presented, and therefore, I concluded that you had a kind of mission to protect people from themselves... 

Actually, I participate so much in this forum in order to sort out my own ideas, and sometimes it helps to type them out and to get challenged on them.  Incidentally, each of us are likely to learn from such an interactive process, as long as we are interacting rather than just spouting out our own views... even if also, sometimes, there may be times in which the comments from others will cause us to become more rigid in our own views.



Even if the price has decent odds of going to $3k, it remains an unsound practice to sell now for the reasons that you mention below, but also anyone who sells now, needs to be really kicking themselves in the ass and considering that they fucked up in failing/refusing to sell at earlier times.  Furthermore, if anyone considers selling now, it would be wise to consider proportionality.  So if such hypothetical person would have been in the practice of selling 100%, then instead selling 50% or some smaller proportion based on a few considerations, including the consideration that the whole situation is a fuck up and they may lose a lot of money by selling now rather than merely holding and/or figuring out ways to buy more if the price were to go down more.


Yes, these are all sound reasons, and I would presume that you sold some decent amount already (or refrained from buying) at higher prices.  Actually, Majormax are you considering buying any BTC at any of the low BTC price points that you contemplate as being decently likely?  $4k?  $3k?  $2k or some other price point(s).. or are you playing it by ear?  Surely, you have already asserted that strong indications of bottom or conclusions of buying opportunities would be increased depending on HOW any additional price drop were to occur... for example, if it were to happen quickly and with high volume in the near term future, or if what you perceive to be a more likely scenario or drawn out downward movement pains over the coming year or two.

You sound like a weak hand when you are seriously contemplating those kinds of moves.

Accordingly, it seems that we are not going to be ready to resume up until you (and similar peeps) dump a few more corn. Surely, I would prefer sooner rather than later, but I understand these dynamics can take a while to play out and seems that maybe the sufficient pain to cause sufficient weeding of weak hands comes at $5k - or a bit below that? 

I agree with what you are writing here, except for your seeming attempt to get peeps to sell now (persuade? or protect?  of course, you would assert that you are attempting to "protect" poor little naive BTC HODLers) and asserting that there is "plenty of time to get back in."

I agree with your overall sentiment; however, I personally think that it is erroneous to get caught up on strict scenarios of "not selling any BTC until x price." 

You can actually profit more and support the BTC ecosystem by engaging in a practice that causes you to sell more than you would have... so for example, you had planned to buy $1,000 worth of BTC every time the BTC price drops $1k, but instead you revise your plan to buy some larger amount, such as $1.5k for every $1k drop in BTC price.  Thus you have authorized yourself to engage in additional speculation that causes you to stock up $500 extra in BTC for every $1k drop, and therefore you have any of those extra BTC that you could thereby feel free to sell at any price higher than your purchase price (including fees, of course), and you may chose to sell at 10% intervals or some other reasonable range that suits you.. and those are over-leveraged BTC, so you therefore, you have no problem in selling them and generating yourself a bit of extra income. 

Of course, with any kind of over leveraging you have to be careful to remain within your means.. and don't go too far and expect that you could get trapped for an extended period of time and not be able to sell the extra BTC because of additional and unexpected downward BTC price movement.

This thread sucks.

I thought that whenever there is "serious discussion" about bottoms, then those kinds of "serious" discussions need to be accompanied by pics.  So far, not even one pic in this thread.  Big disappointment.