Re: Sending merit to merit worthy posts to team members. How would you look at it?

If it's a merit worthy post, then it is deserving of merits regardless of the personal relationship with the account.
There may be a light argument on how you could have a biased view when checking out such posts, but drawing the line for where personal interest meets objective judgement would be a thin one.

I dare say a lot of users here have developed fondness for certain profiles and look out for their post to merit. This is purely based on the quality of their posts and not for any alterior motive.

I will not refrain from meriting such profiles, but I would put in an extra effort to be objective when deciding which of such posts are merit worthy.

If you don't mind my asking, how can one deduce the specific exchange an address belongs to?
I'm aware it's possible to use available blockchain activity to recognize addresses belonging to exchanges and individuals alike, but I'm not sure how to identify which particular exchange the address belongs to.

My best guess is that some exchanges have addresses which have been made public at different times.

That's one way to look at it. Some would argue that the bear market is over when the price starts spiking upwards within a short space of time, indicating that the bulls have taken over: and that market upticks does not indicate a change in the general sentiment.

How many markets would you say exists? Is it just bear and bull or there's something in-between?
Cause if it's just bear/bull, and the bear market is over, then we would be in a bull market at the moment.

I never said it was not a valid question. But the use of the word "Lemmings" in the title already shows a prejudiced view.

No, your survey is not arguing about a flaw in the merit system. It's rather about whether volunteer merit sources should have the freedom to opt out of another volunteer position in the forum

If you don't know who merit sources are, how do you know how "most" of them act?

Your views could of course be correct and there could be a sort of merit back scratching among sources, but I do not still get the correlation to default trust and a users decision to want to be excluded from it.
No system is perfect, but if you believe the merit source make up is flawed and abused, you can make an argument against that directly.

I voted "No - the merit sources should stay as it is"

I honestly do not see the correlation between both, besides being volunteer positions (especially merit sources) that users do not get any benefit from. Being a merit source does not come with extra benefit or obligation besides taking your time to find and merit deserving posts, and stay away from dubious merit activities.

Merit sources do not have to carry the mantle of Default trust and shouldn't if they don't feel up to it or interested.

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The topic title already gave away a prejudiced view from you

Putting ones savings into bitcoin?
One of the biggest deterrent of this is the volatility of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is highly speculative; someone can have $1000 worth of Bitcoin today which that reduces to $600 in a couple of weeks.
An emergency can come up at any time, and if it occurs during a down market, the person may not be able to get the complete funds to save the situation.

Secondly, the bank is still a factor here as the person would need to convert back to fiat.
If the bank can withhold savings which have been there for a while, they can definitely delay an incoming transaction and restrict the user from cashing it out.

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Advising people to put their money in "Bitcoin or crypto" could lead many to shitcoins; a large amount of altcoins are not worth investing in.

Bitcoi does not solve economic decline or inflation, so it cannot hello rescue the financial situation in Hong Kong.
Bitcoin has utility as a currency and can be used by the citizens to attain some sort of freedom and autonomy, particularly following recent news of banks in China withholding public funds.

On the national stage, Bitcoin would not have much of an impact on the countries economy and being used as a legal tender would not encourage wide spread adoption, as there are not many physical outlets accepting it.

Worldie of a strike from Luiz Diaa. The dribble, close control and the finish, were close to perfect. Now Liverpool need to find a winning goal from somewhere, to avoid starting the season with 2 draws.

Being a man down and less than 4 minutes (+stoppage time) puts them at a disadvantage, but this is football after all.

Mining is the confirmation of transactions in blocks inorder to receive the coinbase reward which is halved every ~4 years or 210,000 blocks.

Mining depends heavily on the amount/quality of equipment you can purchase to be competitive.
There is no easier or cheaper way to own bitcoins; So many variables play a part.

Bumping old threads are usually distasteful, but in this case, it fits perfectly.
Great that you discovered bisq. It's one of the most highly recommended decentralized exchanges around the forum, along with hodlhodl and is a great option for any bitcoiner who is interested in using Bitcoin the correct way.

Unrelated but it's odd how much of the early users (from before 2013) are no longer on the forum. Would be interesting to know how many hf them actually still use Bitcoin and why they left bitcointalk.

Bounty managers do not care if a user rehashes jargons on their fake social media accounts, with dozens of fake followers and then spam the project to death without even knowing what its utility is; it's no surprise they do not care much about the trust system.

Imo, the trust system has for a long time not been used at it was intended, and many joined in (giving feedbacks and flags) to attain a status symbol, rather than to keep the forum clean, leading to what we have today.

Can it be fixed?
I do not think a perfect system exists, and any which is created would be subject to how it is used, but some changes can be made to improve it.

Commonly, yes.
They control the protocol behind the project and can make decisions like burning coins/tokens or changing how it operates.
Bitcoin is different cause it is built on a consensus program, although there exists a core team which weighs in on improvement proposals.

• Run an ICO and investors exchange their coins for BTC, ETH, USD etc,
• They could allocate certain amount of coins to the team, which they can sell later,
• They could run an outright scam,
• The could also buy their coins early with the confidence that it would be more valuable if they worked hard at it.

If I understand correctly, you're asking for a section where discsuopns are kept serious and highly moderated, similar to the serious discussion and ivory tower board. But signatures are allowed regardless and it's not for a specific niche, like Development & Technical Discussions.

AFAIK, such a section does not exist and for it to, we need to have extreme levels of moderation on the existing boards. (I believe existing boards, like Bitcoin Discussions or Economics would fit the idea, if it had less spam)
Signatures normally attracts all type of posters as there are bounties/campaigns for different users, majority of which are spammers, so strict moderation would be necessary.

Welcome to the forum, hope you would have a great time here.

It's great you have a learning span already, this would make it easier for you to adequately utilize the resources available to you here on the forum. It can be a little overwhelming, with the multiple links provided here (and more which would likely be added) and thousands of posts on the forum.
Understand that no one here knows everything, so take it a step at a time.

Find your interests and best ways to learn, then leverage on that. Good Luck.

I'm keeping the discussion on Bitcoin and not cryptocurrencies, which is a general term.
Firstly, "many" people don't believe Bitcoin to be an asset at all. Only a minority percentage of the population understands and invests in Bitcoin.
Also, Bitcoin is not valuable cause its price tends to rise more than it falls, leading to an appreciating pattern; Its price appreciates cause it is valuable.
This mean that people get into bitcoin (or at least used to) cause it had qualities that attracted investors, and hence its price rose. Like any speculative asset, after the price rose remarkably, lots of people fomoed in.

Demand and supply are the two main factors of any market.

This is correct for the most part, except that a user can send a maximum of 50 smerits to a particular profile within a 30 day period (or ~1 month).

Merits were introduced to combat spam. Prior to the merit system, users just created posts and boosted their activity inorder to rank up, leading to lots of spam in the forum.
Now users have to contribute constructively before ranking up.

I'm not a miner, but I understand that the profitability of mining depends largely on your location and the availability of electricity around you.

There are also lots of other variables to consider such as; purchasing quality equipments and its maintenance, etc. Buying bitcoins on the other hand does not have extra requirements, besides maybe owning a hardware wallet or a steel backup.

The crypto market is on the downside atm, after the peak of late last year. This results in majority of coins losing most of their value, and forms part of a cycle of ups and downs.

Not all coins gain their value after dropping as 90% (and this is a conservative percent) of them are shitcoins which were built on hype. So, there's a 90% chance that the token you own would not regain its lost value.
Always do you own research, before making any investment decision

Great read. It's best that your friend got interested on their own, with the information provided.

First point to note; I assume that since they are investing for the long term (10- years), then they are not putting in money they urgently need. One should never invest amounts they cannot afford to lose, especially into a high risk asset.

Second point; How to secure the asset is more important than acquiring it.
For a purchase of that amount, your friend should definitely get a hardware wallet for cold storage. They should also preferably be privacy cautious when buying, or sending to their different addresses.
Back ups are also an important factor.

Thirdly, they should be aware of taxes regulations in their area.