I wish there was more information sharing on this. During the 2017 boom cycle, a lot of people in India lost money on fake projects like MCAP, Bitconnect etc. I am sure this is continuing albeit at a much smaller scale now.
I personally stay away from all this. Yet, we all know how tier 2 cities are replete with those MLM, Ponzi schemes. When the scammers find that there is enough hype for cryptocurrency again, they will not shy from exploiting people's greed.

The reward drop is a phenomena for the BCash and Craig Wright' indulgence coin too. That does not take the matter in favor of them. The fees that will love to LN does not limit the settlement fees for On-chain transactions.

In a scenario where LN is the norm for micropayments, higher value on-chain transactions will still serve as fee source for miners.


That is the sanest advice for people who are new to seeing cryptocurrency as an investment opportunity.

Okay. So you want to arrange matches between people. Assuming that your matchmaking algorithm does a great job, would blockchain be useful for this.
If its on blockchain let us assume that their won't be real world identities but some pseudonymous ones. Do people want to have a public record of all their past relationship transactions (that sounds so wrong, yet, let us continue) visible to any potential future matches? Do people like to have their past visible with selective input of what they choose to put on it? (Facebook).

I don't think any one application answers both these questions. I think blockchain would be smashing for such an application. You'd need to find a way to score people on different matchmaking parameters based on what they go through in this blockchain of relationships. I'd say its not half bad an idea.

For the first part of question, a random group of miners CAN collude but only at the expense of rendering their expensive hardware meaningless. A credible threat in this direction is from Bitmain due to their pro-BCH stance. They are the only entity with an alternate network to bet on, in case they try to attack Bitcoin. That scenario is gradually getting implausible due to the ongoing diversification of mining hardware.

If you consider the threat from a nation-state, there isn't a way to do this covertly. It'll be open war and grant legitimacy to bitcoiners stand that Governments are afraid of the money properties that Bitcoin has. It'll only make people want more of it.  Why would they do it?

Still, Let us assume they people actually begin questioning the Fed and Govts over legitimacy of their monopoly on money supply. They grow tired of being constantly questioned and decide to demonstrate that bitcoin is not the answer. They will need to show it to be insecure with a double spend/ bug. This is all that needs to be done:

• Secretly takeover mining operations in China while opening up fast connections bypassing the Great firewall. Doing it anywhere outside China would take away any chance of doing this covertly.
• Whisking away all the core devs to a secret location in a way that nobody knows something is amiss...ooohh..
• Build up 65-75% of network hashrate without anyone getting to know it. This can include seized miners hardware that has been custom made in some super-secret lab. Keep in mind that the sudden surge in hashrate from the second case will be a noticeable event.
• Now that they have the hashpower, what do they do? How do they show that it is not an "attack" but a bug? How do they let all the full nodes accept their "buggy"/ "double spend" transactions without letting it be known that it is a fork.

Whatever they do next is a noticeable event, assuming that it hasn't already been caught. This is where the full nodes and the independent miners come into picture. It'll be a flurry of maddening activity with internet restrictions and cypherpunks revving up their judgement day radios to broadcast messages to each other about potential fightback. It'd be a glorious few days and in the end, they would have only proven bitcoin right.

41 -amishmanish

Thank you for the holiday spirit!

Its hard to keep trying to get people to see the other point of view. It is far too convenient to jump to the conclusion of "Customer first, yayyy". In a p2p global economy, maybe it is time for people to realize that things don't always work just one way. People working on shoestring budgets WILL take into account the whole interpersonal thing going on here. Them blocking Yahoo on chat shows this. In eastern cultures, a lot of things are decided not just contractually but even on personal relationships. You may not agree with that but that is YOUR cultural baggage. People who are actually working in such settings are definitely coming to the same conclusions..
I'd love to quote the very competent Mr. Klaassen on this for people who don't want to read the full article:

You screw someone twice over by bringing out a "bug" you already knew about, incredibly lucky or not, you can be sure as hell they won't speak to you..

Yahoo single-handedly manages some of the lowest paying services out here, and works on the principle of "Quantity over Quality" himself. It is quite pretentious that he is posturing as if he doesn't understand how these shoestring services work or how much of a hit it'd be for them by giving him another ~2K-8K USD.

Also, this'd all be so much better if the owners of this bloody casino came over and refunded his over bet amount and added something as a bug bounty.

This was new..

Was trying to get a hang of this drama, Came across @wolwoo arguing over a 50 merited post with Suchmoon raising question on his giving LTU_btc 50 merits.


This is what LTU_btc wrote:

There have been multiple instances where lot of users go without merit because their posts aren't seen by too many. LTU_btc is a fairly idenitifiable member because of the frequency of his posts. He frequently used to post in beginner sections which means he was helping out newbies. He missed being legendary compared to his peers by a pretty small margin. Keep in mind that getting legendary status was a random event above near-about 700 activity.
I think suchmoon saw that post and judged from his post quality that he was probably short changed when it came to becoming legendary. Merit sources who have huge quotas often find it difficult to spread it to all the users they would consider worthy. I think Suchmoon did it as a simple shortcut. Trying to find 10 merit-worthy posts from the thousands would be time consuming.

If he is a fairly known member, maybe he decided to grant him those merits. This is a subjective judgement that is understandable. Maybe consider LTU_btc lucky that suchmoon's eyes fell on that post. I won't say it is completely free from bias but it is what it is. Even TMAN proposed to offer a particular member 50 merits when he receives his refill. These are open instances of people knowing each other through the forum, not of people being relatives and then benefiting each other on the forum.

Your meriting a user 50 posts, and then those posts getting deleted isn't really all that convincing. This would be considered pretty shady for someone who is a DT1. Also, the fact that you accepted that those were people you knew makes it pretty bad.

Imagine if I am a merit source. If i made it a business to tell my family and friends to join and then merited their posts to up-rank them so that we could all earn more of "tokens", then that would be a pretty shitty thing to do.

---

I don't know what you think Sathoshi wanted this forum for. What we do know is that there is a certain bit of idealism in that approach. There are elements of being upright, fair and transparent. Not doing things like copying articles and then calling it "Ohh, but its not a big deal, right?" Things that may be considered street-smart don't really make the cut when judged against uprightness.

Maybe if you or these other people actually owned up to these shortcomings and mistakes rather than make excuses, there wouldn't be a need for this endless defense and excuses of racism/ national insults (LOL, seriously??).

Don't make it about the country. From what I've heard about Turkey, its a nice country. This girl I know wanted me to watch this show that had main characters Hayat, Murat. Sweet, romantic stuff. I didn't watch past 3-4 episodes but the songs are good.

Okay, I am going to do the unthinkable and try to make sense of what TOAA is trying to say here. I think he/ they/ The Swarm does say a lot of things that need to be said, albeit in a different manner. I am just going to try and see what they are saying. I am also going to try to snip some portions of their reply so it makes more sense.


The question is whether these bounty projects, which are inevitably linked to ICO scams should be allowed to formulate their own rules when they use the BCT forum as a cheap way to spread their scammy tokens?
The opinion that the forum should have certain guidelines that don't allow such scams to be free to make whatever rules they want holds some merit. Yet, this issue has been long settled on this forum. Go to the Sl no: 6 of this message here. It was settled long ago that there won't be any policing. People are free to judge.

---

Now, TOAA has come to the issue of Signature campaigns. This is where a@actmyname gave them a chance to come clean.

Although he/ they/ the swarm refused to go down the intention rabbit-hole as suggested by actmyname, the intention is that some people think they deserve to be on better campaigns and to be making more SATS here on the forum compared to a lot of others. Hell, even i think that i deserve to be on a comfortable campaign that doesn't make me post 25 shitty posts for 0.002 BTC per week. Unfortunately, and to my continued chagrin, this is where the facts come in:
We all wish that the sig campaigns chose us over those who seem to be have much lesser post quality. Yet, a majority of them don't need your content. I was rejected multiple times by pretty famous managers because of non-gambling/ low post count in the past days. I promised that I'll spew a lot of banter but to no avail. LOL.

But yeah, this is how things work in the "25 posts for 0.002 BTC". They want more eyeballs. There are many many users willing to spend more time than me here at the forum. A lot of them are doing much better work compared to me too. So the facts remain, no matter how I may "feel" about my post quality or merit history.

As far as the higher paying campaigns are concerned, I think Darkstar does a pretty unenviable and good job at removing old people and ensuring that a few better ones get the chance. There just isn't enough space at the White-house.
Some of the other high paying gambling ones maybe a bit questionable but more or less, those are awarded fairly. What maybe going on "behind the curtains" is simply conjecture and mere opinion.

Wow,Looks like the thread blew up with TOAA coming into the fray. Haven't really read yet whats going on. Just going to reply oeleo and then read.
There are accounts which maybe established but can be linked back to real world identities without too much work. You want to start some kind of p2p trading and realize that it is better to keep it completely anonymous for privacy purposes. I think in that case someone may decide to start an honest business from scratch with a new account. Those are in fact the kind of scenarios due to which the forum allows unknown alts. Like every other good thing, this is also misused. Humans!!

That is why I remain so interested in him. He is quite a persevering operator in sneaky activities.

This seems to be the topic of the day. Just a while back, i was commenting on a topic about the, ethics of having an Alt-account on the meta board..
Using bot network to upgrade ones social media has become a tool of the trade sith lot of such services on offer, even here at the services section. At social media sites where numbers can matter, like on twitter or instagram, i think it is downright unethical for someone to totally depend on these. But then it is also unethical to hire people to write a CV or SOP for you. Yet, there are services that allow this.

It is about the fact that because everyone is doing it, you cannot be left behind. Having a huge number of fake likes or followers can make an account and its content seem more important at first glance. It can be useful in getting the initial attention. Yet, the content WILL matter for long term user engagement and growth.

So I'd say if someone is going to work full time on their social marketing then using bots for an intial traction will gradually become a business tool. The trick probably is to not over do it and actually focus on content and truly organic growth.

In the intial post, OP wanted a philosophical discussion. Having alt-accounts in the forum can be in two ways:

1. Known Alts: Like Loyce/ Loyce_mobile
2. Unknown Alts: This is for those cases when, like you said in the beginning, you want to express something that you otherwise would not.

The unknown alts territory is a lot murkier. If someone wants to start trade dealings here but do not want them to be influenced by their previous presence, they may go for an Alt account, which is reasonable as long as they do not scam.

The fight is about two type of Alt-accounts. First are those who want to enroll in the "same" signature campaigns multiple times. These are not allowed as per bounty rules. Second type are those who make alt-accounts to support themselves in an ongoing argument. These are generally allegations when a recently created nesbie accounts starts using colorful/ abusive language.

There is no way to stop them and the forum doesn't try to do that. It becomes apparent to the involved parties after a certain time. Yet, when the ability to have alternate accounts becomes a business tool, then problems arise. Any discussions on Alts will remain unfulfilled without mentioning @Quickseller. The guy is a bit of an enigma and has had allegations of running Alt account networks for a long time.
I think @Suchmoon has a bit of a research on this because he had this declared in his Signature for a long time. Quickseller seems to have tempered a bit since then. He was on fire back during the ICO craze going up against Lauda et al.

Its quite a saga.

@Avikz, The speaker lineup looks quite informative. There is this Mathematics guy talking about LN. I would have loved to absorb some of that esoteric shit. Also, the trader type with crypto derivatives seems interesting. Then there is the compulsory libertarian in the mix too.

It all looks pretty interesting. There is a section where someone can even apply to be a speaker. Dude you go be our forum representative or something. We won't ask for picthres, promise..

And you are right. Planning this on a weekday is a stretch. It starts at 04:00 PM though. So maybe am early day-off can help, mumbai traffic notwitstanding. The content sound interesting enough though. Somebody please go and share the experience and vibe here.

I like the polymerbit. None of the others speak to me. So if the target for tbe groupbuy is 8. Consider +1 from me.

I could have opted for more but polymerbit is the only one resonating with me. Also, I have been too lazy in getting to the details of physical collectibles but would be interested in them much more.

हनूज़ मुम्बई दूर अस्त। Mumbai is too far off for now...

I dont think anybody should be worried about attending a technological meetup. Is it even possible to declare blockchain illegal. It is basically a set of data structures and Function calls. There is no need to associate any kind of shadiness with such a thing. I would be glad to attend if something of this sort happens in the NCR region.
Those of you around Mumbai, go attend..Share pictures..Maybe wear a guy fawkes mask if you'd prefer not to show us all how beautiful you are..LOL..

But c'mon..Go attend..

@Suchmoon.
Not a flag but negative trust rating is the persuasion tactic that I opposed. There was some bias initially and it has taken care of itself.
I too have explained my opinion enough and the points therein. Conspiracy or not, it is what it is. I'll just agree to disagree with you.

Regards..

When people say "Store" of value, they are basically talking about  putting their savings somewhere it will remain safe from:
1. Hyper-Inflation
2. Confiscation
3. Theft (Phycsical or Digital)

1.) Bitcoin doesn't lose value if your home currency gets hyper-inflated. CHECK
2.) If you are crossing the border in times of difficulty, its going to be much easier to conceal/ memorize 12 letters than try to move your self-worth in Cash/ Kind.
3.) If you take standard precautions, you cannot be phished out of your money.

Physical theft is a possibility but when things come to this, you will have to defend. NOTHING is a store of value if you fail to defend your own person. This is the "Store of Value" argument. It does not need "official announcement" or "Government approval". The "stable currencies" have their value tied to fiat. They are not going to preserve your "value/ buying power"

I want to learn how to make insults like you Sir.  I can write but I cannot bring myself to colorfully swear.

Anything to get near even half your level will be much success.

My thinking on this goes something like this. Quoting from another reply:
The website and yahoo were on very collaborative terms post launch. This could have gone many ways if they had a strategy to mitigate this. Including this being considered a "foul" or "disqualifying" move of some sort and him just getting refunded despite hitting. I said in the first reply itself, that thinking along these lines is a subjective judgement. (Like what if a newbie said the same thing?) Also, thinking from the viewpoint of the developers behind this.


Doesn't it matter that he already know that the 11K WOULD NOT pay out, Even if it showed that?? Despite that, he raised a flag on them. If its completely about being an upright user and holding the casino to "technical standards" then shouldn't we just rely on the TOS for that?

Its not like the potential win is shown beforehand. I don't know what are the implicit norms when compared with other sites. Max win does show when you hover on that ? symbol beside "bet amount".
I know its not a popular opinion. Its only natural that there is groupism. Yet, when post after post refuses to acknowledge that Yahoo as a user was well aware of this. He got paid 2K. Good for him. Yet, raising a flag like this isn't entirely justified. And IF it is for the benefit of the community, then he shouldn't make it about him getting paid. On a forum like this, people with influence should be held to better standards and, ideally, vice-versa. I have ranted about this in my earlier replies too and I get it that its more of an ideological debate. And its not just groupism that I mentioned.

It is nowhere as simple as that.

Yahoo was aware that the max winning is 2000. Despite that he "misclicked" and put in 353 USD. Imagine if you knew beforehand that the site has a bug whereby it will accept the over bets as well as display the X36 winnings.  (Which yahoo knew). What stops you from deciding to throw in a bunch of calculated risks to "exploit" the bug ad then later claim to have been wronged??

While, everyone is calmly accepting his "misclick", Nobody is looking at Roobet's viewpoint that "He already knew this would happen". He also has a lot of leverage on the forum because of the Signature campaigns. Despite that, Roobet has paid out the 2000USD. Had there been a strategy to mitigate such exploits, they may as well have simply refunded the bet amount giving an error like, "Sorry, your bet above max amount was unaccceptable".

There is a lot of directions this can go. They have paid out the 2000USD. That should be enough. I don't think he deserves a bug bounty too considering that he was an "insider" to the bug.