Presumably this means the regulators are satisfied they've got sufficient funds to meet the standard bank requirements for fractional reserve.  Y'know, since people always tend to assume exchanges are full-reserve.   

I think you're all clever enough to know that fiat banks aren't full-reserve.  Maybe it's about time we stopped thinking of exchanges like that, since they're probably not.

If anyone has any viable alternatives, I'm all ears.  They're going to keep printing more from nothing.  New traders are probably being suckered in daily.  It's only going to get bigger.  Is there a way to collapse it gradually without causing an avalanche that brings the entire mountain down on us?

The only thing I can think of is some sort of educational campaign to highlight the dangers.  But I suspect the greed of traders will win out, just as it's been doing all along.  They're not going to listen to reason.

I think we should try both before we give up on the board entirely:


Notability and copy/paste are both problems in their own right.  I don't see how we can ignore one and not the other.

Smaller media sites have an obvious interest in generating traffic for themselves, so we need the notability criteria to combat that.

Forum users who can simply copy and paste some text and attribute a source so it's not classed as plagiarism have an easy exploit to make posts with basically zero effort.  We then end up with abandoned topics where no one actually has any interest in talking about the news, because no one even attempted to start a discussion.

I'm not much of a speculator, so even if it meant some turmoil in the short term, I think it's better the poison is bled out sooner rather than later.

Think of it this way, what would cause a bigger loss of faith in the markets?  Recognising it for what it is and allowing it to collapse now at $14 billion of mirage fakery, or pretending it's not a problem and waiting until it balloons to $140 billion and then blows up in our faces?  The longer we allow the charade go on, the bigger the fallout will be.

I think you've shined a spotlight on the key takeaway with this.  It makes sense that their priority would be businesses.  There's a gap in the market due to most banks refusing to deal with companies that are involved with crypto.  Businesses need a service like this.  HODLers don't.

1st - We definitely established in this topic that it did switch algos.  Has that changed now?
2nd - Also covered in the same topic.  Poolin and Antpool have switching pools and BTC-only pools.  They post about each pool in the correct section.  Switcher pools go in altcoin mining.  It's not that difficult to understand.

Said the person having to change their username every other month because they can't even maintain the confidence to stand by all the stupid shit they've said over the years.   

Looking forward to the next persona.  I think this one is already spent. 

It almost sounds like you're asking for a "participation award" where everyone gets something just for taking part.  Your ordinary rank is what demonstrates what you've contributed to the forum.  But if you have done something special or unique, that's a different story.

I don't think it's unreasonable for the people who have gone above and beyond in terms of the useful service they provide to be recognised for their efforts.  If people are building infrastructure that supports the forum and lots of users find that really helpful, it's clearly a more significant accomplishment than simply making posts on the forum.

If Bitfinex have been lying all along and Tether isn't fully backed and they're operating some sort of fractional reserve scheme, does it deserve to recover?  I can't help but think your judgement might be clouded by how much USDT I presume you're holding.  Try not to make that classic mistake where, rather than someone admits they've been conned and cuts their losses in time, they keep believing things are going to get better until they lose everything.  Because it's possible such an outcome might happen in this case.

This all looks very risky.  Anyone still trading this Tether IOU is either far braver or far more misguided than I.  Only time will tell which it is.

It's one of those cases where you want both sides to lose, heh.

I don't doubt the Attorney General's office are basically grasping in the dark, have no idea what they're actually looking for and probably wouldn't recognise it if they found it.  But at the same time, it's right that they should be suspicious of Bitfinex, who have been excessively furtive and rather shady in their dealings around the supposed "fully backed" nature of Tether.  It would be genuinely astounding to me if it turns out they really do have $14 billion USD in reserve, but something tells me they're never going to attempt to prove that's the case.  Last I heard of this ongoing farce, they'd amended their T&Cs to state that other assets may be used to back Tether, but didn't go into much further detail about what those assets might be.

I'll take this opportunity to give the usual reminder that people should only have funds on exchanges that they can afford to lose, particularly in the case of Bitfinex at the moment.  Also, if anyone currently has large sums stored in USDT, consider hedging with some other stablecoins (although, personally, they all sound as scammy and dangerous as each other to me, so I don't actually recommend holding any of them).

I'm not convinced that part solves anything.  With regard to the spammers who bump older topics with low-quality contributions, they will just find an open topic to spam instead.  I don't think they're fussy.  The only reason that sort of thing is more noticeable in the Press board is due to the relatively low number of topics compared to other sub-forums.

And for the problem I mainly perceive with the Press board, the users who create the low quality threads using it like a dumping ground for copy/pasta and then abandoning the topic, it doesn't assist with that problem either.  There's no consequence for them.  Whether the topic is locked or not doesn't make any difference to the author if they're not planning on having an actual conversation.

I think it would help if the rules were clearer.  I propose the following additions to the current rules:

1.  Official news agencies only.  No blogs.  No "cryptomedia" sites.

2.  Don't just post the article.  Include some of your own thoughts and insights about the article and/or the impact the news will have.  This will minimise the potential for low-quality posters to abuse it.

I guess in practice it's difficult to quantify.  But I'd say a fair chunk of the traditional economy is effectively meaningless movements of digital assets too.  If countries couldn't declare their respective finance sector derivatives and debt trading as part of the economy, their figures would be noticeably reduced.

At this stage, it's almost tempting to say in many instances that the meaning of the word "economy" should be changed to "largely digital trades that don't produce anything tangible".

Bottom line, participate in genuine discussion with other users.  That's how forums work.  I can't help but notice you're currently engaged with us right now having a real conversation.  You aren't copying and pasting your replies to this topic from another source, so you're clearly capable of having a conversation.  Why can't you be willing to do the same for the topics you post articles about?  Forget what I said about the quality of your articles, that's beside the point.  The real issue is that if any user is just copying content from another site and pasting it here on the forum with no unique thoughts of their own, that user will eventually find themselves banned. 

Make good quality ORIGINAL posts.  Easy.  Job done. 

Not quite, no.

It needs to be phrased more clearly, but the intent is not merely to post links to news.  That's not the point of a forum.

If someone finds a story in the mainstream media and wants to discuss the implications of that news, that's the purpose (I believe) of the Press Board.  We want insights and analysis.  Thoughtful commentary to weigh against the content of the publication. 

You can hide behind the excuse that "journalists cannot state their personal opinions", but that's not going to resolve the problem and certainly doesn't mean you can simply resume posting as you did before.  To me, that just sounds like no one in your organisation is prepared to put the effort in and you just want to copy/paste with no other participation.  That's frankly not going to fly anymore, so think again.  The community won't allow it.  Why should we not hold you to the same standard we hold other users?

Like it or not, posts in the Press board need accompanying independent commentary to be considered a valid post. 

Perhaps some form of new status like "Forum Statistician" would be appropriate?  An officially recognised number-cruncher. I can think of a few users who would qualify.

Instead of you appealing to us, can we appeal to you instead?  It would be great if you could improve the quality of your contributions to the forum.  I've seen numerous comments from other users who find your posts tedious at best.  Anyone can regurgitate the content of an article.  It takes no effort to do that.  It's not like your articles are even that well written.

It's clear you see these forums as nothing more than a free way to drive traffic to your site and boost your page impressions.  That needs to change.  You need to do better and offer up some higher quality posts.  Preferably something better than the standard set in the articles on your site.

That's not something we want to be relying on, though.  We tell people about the importance of holding their own keys and not relying on exchanges and web-wallets, but so many of them clearly can't be trusted with that responsibility.  I don't see a way around it.  Blacklisting is something that will *never* be implemented at protocol level, yet we're applauding a centralised service for effectively doing that to prevent their eejit customers from giving money to scammers.

Bitcoin is economically larger than the Czech Republic.  Have the people writing these articles stopped to consider the importance of security in maintaining an economy on that scale?

I wasn't expecting any.  It's not particularly controversial and there aren't really any coherent arguments to be made against it.