Bullshit.  I am not saying that at all.

I am making a comment about prima facie deficiencies of your hypothetical framework - and maybe I need to point out
 such deficiencies a bit more clearly, so you don't purposefully continue to add to the convolution.   

Your hypothetical clearly implies parameters in which bitcoin's only utility would be as a payment system, and we should suppose away its storage of value proposition.. therefore you are setting up as stupid-ass hypothetical that is no where near what bitcoin currently is in order to suppose some fictitious framework that supports you FUD spreading desires, perhaps? 

You are presenting false parameters in your shilling argument, tera beara... bitcoin is not merely meant to serve as a payment system, even though it may well accomplish such common use in that direction in the future, perhaps, but not necessarily in order to still have value and utility.

Yeah, if you create your own strawman, then you can more easily make some dumb -ass pie in the sky argument, that is not connected with reality.

Let me guess, the one and only sig campaign on your referral to bitcoin.com is for b-cash(trash?)?  hahahahaha

Yeah, right, go join that stupid-ass (and likely astroturf) forum for "more objective" information.  

1) number of smerits does not regenerate, unless you are a merit source (and Theymos has only designated 57 merit sources, so far),

2) you do receive 1 s merit for every two merits that you receive, so the only way that you generate more smerits, if you are not a source is if you receive merits

3) there is not really any way to stop alt accounts from merit farming, but I suppose if there are patterns found or reports made then perhaps admin may take some action to ban or suspend, perhaps?  They might receive negative trust, too.

4) merits are shown at the top of each post - below the time/date stamp.

I gave you one smerit - which is a merit for you merely based on your activity level of 48  - since we are in the early days of transition into this new system.

If someone else gives you another merit, then you will have one sendable merit (2 x 50% = 1).

Of course, you could have already known this information be reading the OP of this thread... .but I will give you the benefit of the doubt this time, and hopefully, you will make decent posts in the future in order to be able to earn the 10 merits (9 additional merits)  that are needed to rank up to "member"..    that is if you are accordingly interested in ranking up (seems like you are, since you asked the questions in your post, no?).

By the way, once you get your smerit, you can send it to someone else (which creates .5 smerits for them), or you can just wait to build up your smerits or wait to give it to a post that you feel deserves your smerit - (totally your discretion); however, as the OP stated, there is not really any benefit in hoarding smerits - and that will be additionally true if you can attempt high quality posts and continue to earn some smerits from time to time.. maybe weekly or even daily.



O.k... last one for the day that I am giving out, merely based on transitional activity level... hahahahha...

Just try posting quality posts, and perhaps you will be able to earn enough smerits to rank up to member.  I know that you are starting at zero, but perhaps after several quality posts and a few weeks you will be able to earn 10 (9 more).

You are speaking nonsense mumbo jumbo.

I perused your post a few times and your other points of your earlier post, and you really are talking in conclusions rather than backing up anything with facts.  Furthermore, even if you had some facts, it seems much too premature to be coming to many of the conclusions that you already have reached. 

For those folks who want to attempt to work within this system, there may be ways to get merit points, if they want to be able to increase their credibility or perhaps to join signature campaigns.  I was a member of the forum for nearly two years  before I added a signature campaign - but I never considered my joining of signature campaigns as a means to affect the nature of my posts - because I was already participating and posting extensively before I first joined a signature campaign. I doubt that Theymos is going to get rid of signature campaigns any time soon, because this merit system change was likely meant to be an attempt to off-set some of the abusive aspects of signature campaigns and the incentives that have developed around signature campaigns.

Are you trying to assert that $10k is going to become resistance, rather than support?  "this time"?

Yes.  One of the first things that folks have to learn to do is to attempt to live within their means, and if they have a lifestyle that causes them to spend more than they bring in, then they gots themselves problems. 

Once they figure out how to live within their means, then they can take some of that extra money and put it into bitcoin.  Whether it is $20 per month or $100 per month or some other amount that works for them, and they also should have enough of a dollar stash (or otherwise liquifiable assets), that they do not have draw from their bitcoin funds in case of an emergency - and emergencies happen, they should be part of every person's expected budget.,, planning ahead for six months can be good enough for regular peeps, but if you finances are more complicated and you have businesses that you have to cashflow, too, then you may want to budget in the 18 month territory (I'm currently floating in the 12 -18 month territory for my budgeting ahead).  Also, if you have some BIG expenses that are not reoccurring, but are projected out beyond 18month, then you minimally should be projecting your cashflow out until the time that payments on the BIG expenses are expected to hit you.

That's gay!!!!!  Not that I am arguing that gay folks have less self-control..... hahahahahahahaha     

Edit  - added on the below:


I already beat you to it in my earlier post.     

Let me see if I can say this properly:  "there are no pre-planned, coordinated attacks on Bitcoin."  They are merely opportunistic employments of similar strategies that are held by aligned folks (and perhaps even unlikely bedfellows) to magnify FUD and impact and exacerbate down BTC price movement to the maximum extent that they are able. ..and yes, they would like to obtain the help of "normal" folks too, and to get us to sell our coins on the way down, rather than buying on the way down, like we should be doing.   We agree, Torque.  We agree!!!!!   

That's the spirit d_eddie....

What if BTC prices go down to $7500, as some of the supposed TA experts are suggesting to be "inevitable" - I suppose similar to the Tera Beara talking point.... she's gonna be right.. she's gonna be right... hahahahhahaha .. perhaps.. .. perhaps NOT.   

You are just coming off as employing BIGBLOCKER and alt coin pumper talking points, no?

BTC does not have to be the be all and end all crypto currency at this exact time and to be able to satisfy all your micro-transaction needs in order to have a large number of other values, including the first time in history there has been the creation of a decentralized secure method to secure, store and transmit value (which is considerably valuable and transformative in and of itself).

Can you see the value of the various current and future use cases of bitcoin without getting caught up on some narrow use case that you personally want or that you personally wished bitcoin would have.  Who fucking cares what you personally want?  You can determine that yourself by buying and using a variety of payment methods and value storage methods and it does not need to be bitcoin to help you to accomplish your personal goals (if you cannot see a fit for bitcoin within your current situation or future projected situation).

I am not trying to denigrate you personally, because bitcoin has a lot of value beyond your projection of transaction fee or transaction time issues, no?

Now, your seemingly implied assertion that Bitcoin's seemingly currently downward price pressures and price movements are attributable to some kinds of deficiencies in bitcoin or that public opinion of bitcoin is becoming too negative, is likely overrated.  Sure, you can sell if you want or you can HODL.. or spread fear that BTC prices are likely to go down, but in the end, this seems like a buying opportunity to me, rather than a time to sell.  But do what you like, and conceptualize the situation however you like because I don't claim to have any crystal ball regarding how all of this is going to play out, even though I am continue to employ my same practice of buying as the price goes down (if it does) and selling on the way up (if it goes up).   I don't see any reason to make any significant changes based on our current situation and the current level of correction and the current level that seems to be attempting to break through buying support in the sub $10k price arena.

I like this image of scenarios in which the bear is "cooked."   

I think that you are going a bit much in your criticism; however, I do think that a fair and repeated point that comes out in your post is that some kind of initial distribution of merit based on activity level or even prorata would have been a bite even-handed.  But even given the validity of such criticism and the merit of such proposal to possibly fix the initial distribution of merit in the forum, I doubt that any of this goes so far as to reasonably imply that Theymos or any administrator or even any high ranking member would intentionally change the system in order to exacerbate unfairness, as you seem to be suggesting such kinds of bad faith.

Torque.   I gotta attempt to find some hilarity with your theme repetition.  And, surely I have some respect that you don't give up...

Nonetheless, let me make another point.  Do you know that many large news organizations already have 90% of the content of obituaries pre-written for notorious people, but merely because they engage in this practice does not mean that they have any fucking clue regarding the timing of the death of the notorious person, even though when such notorious person dies, they are able to publish their well thought out story within an hour or so of notorious person's death.   Go figure.  

Was the $800 phase in early 2014 - before the February news of the Gox closing, which really $800 phase was short lived and bouncing around in early 2014?  I don't know? 

I was buying from $1,200 in November 2013, and by the time the end of February came and we were floating around in the $600s, and I had spent well over half of my 6 months investment budget in the first three months of my investment, and by the end of my first six months, I had upped my budget by about 15% (in other words, I went a bit over budget in my buying of BTC), but yeah, there was no need to rush to buy up the "bargain BTC prices" because we then had another 6 months of buying opportunity, and then we had another year after that... hahahahaha.. .go figure.

Surely, "this time is different" ^tm.  Let's just take the most exponential component of this latest run up from $2,600 in August 2017 to $19,666.  That is a 7.5x run up from August to December - 4 months.... yet the previous uprun from $250 has taken more than 2 years.. from October 2015. 

It just seems too early to call a bear market out of this or to strongly suggest that we are going into some extended drawn out down period from here.  I am just not convinced, yet.  If we get down below $8k, or even below the supposed $7500 that so many supposed TA experts are calling, then I might start to give greater weight to those kinds of 2014 comparisons... let's see it first.   

Your sentiment is correct that he may have had good intentions... hahahhahaha... but probably not.. I know you did not use the words "probably not", but anyhow, at least you seem to see that potential side of the situation.

Generally, I like to give folks the benefit of the doubt (whether it is in this forum or in real life or otherwise), especially when there is some ambiguity., but sometimes it can be quite difficult to give any benefit of the doubt when nearly brand new accounts in this forum are seeming to expect a reward for something and they have not done anything (maybe they are amazing persons in real life, but from their activity there might be no way for us to know that) or they post in such a way that doesn't appear to have made any efforts to either clarify their point(s) or to research a bit into the matter that they are presenting or to provide an adequate context in order that the reader (or responder) does not have to research the matter in order to understand.

What are you asking for? merit? You registered less than two weeks ago, and you have two post.  The one above, and another post in which you comment in a bitcoin bubble thread.

Why don't you go out into the forum and involve yourself in various substantive Bitcoin (or crypto) topics that are interesting to you, and if you have meaningful contributions to any of the threads that you read, then you will likely earn merits in the coming months.  

If you are merely asking for merits, without any kind of substance to your post, and you think that is the way to go forward, you seem to have the wrong mindset.



Edit:      Three hours after my original post, I clicked on the above-linked post, and I see that GumboTrader deleted it.  I think that this is another sign of "issues" because I had already quoted the post (and another member did too).  Anyhow, when we are relatively new to the forum, we are going to make mistakes.  That is almost a given, and even I make mistakes (some BIGGER than others). 

Personally, I think that it is better NOT to compound mistakes such as deleting posts that have been already quoted because it is likely better to leave the mistakes or respond to the mistake or to edit the mistake rather than to delete the whole post.. but maybe that is just me?    We know that in this forum, members do have the power to delete their earlier posts, and they can exercise their deletion discretion as they wish.

Could be from the thinning of the order books, which tends to be something that happens during volatile times and considerable price movements.

If bear whales are becoming successful to get some of the buy orders off the books on one or more exchanges, then they can be successful to push the price down.  Still not a certain thing, but larger price spreads seems to be sign of a dynamic and potentially explosive market.

I did have one BTC buy order fill in the past hour based on this downward BTC price movement, yet I still have 4 more BTC buy orders in the lower $10k arena that are still pending and then another 4 more in the lower $9k arena  that would be pending on the buy side, thereafter.

Nail-biting?   What is going to happen?

I do feel about 50% more poor from out $19,666 price arena, even while I feel 10x more rich from last year.

Could not be that bad for those of us BTC HODLers who have been "in" for more than a year, correct?