Biiiiiiiiiiiitch, what time zone do you live in?  It's too early for this shits.  I'm going to sell my account if this nonsense keeps up--anybody interested?

Well, I didn't state it outright but I'm making the assumption that I would bring all of my possessions with me to wherever it is I can wear my crown (lol).  And I'm going to make a further assumption that if I needed something like a PS5 I could buy it online and have it delivered.  Am I wrong in that assumption?  I don't know if Newegg or Amazon ships to Zimbabwe or Venezuela, but I can't imagine those countries don't have people buying stuff online.

I'd love to go to Zimbabwe, by the way.  I've read stories of the bush and its climate, and a lot of that appeals to me.

Yeah, but it'd be $1500 per week for 5 people, so $300 apiece.  I could easily spend that probably wherever the castle is located.  I don't know what country you're in (I probably forgot) but it sounds like $300/week would go a long way.

And that's the thing about living in the US.  $300/week is a pittance if you don't want to live like a bum, buying cheap food and never having enough extra to buy things you want as opposed to the necessities.  Somebody tell me where there's a castle, mansion, chateau, hacienda, whatever that can be bought for a decent price where the weather is warm at least 3/4 of the year.  Pleeeease.

Bro, people worship at the same altar in the US--just look at all the American Youtubers flashing their bling and making a killing by filming themselves speaking illiterately about inane topics.  How many people are cashing in on the Will Smith slappening right now and making bank?  Tons.

Well, it's not exactly a lie to say that crypto can and has been used for illegal activities, it's just that the argument is an appeal to stupid people who'd accept that line of reasoning as a justification for a ban on (or heavy regulation of) crypto.  Incidentally, that same argument has been made since the early days of bitcoin and I'm surprised that a world leader is still repeating it.

Yep, it's the same old story with them and it hasn't changed one bit in my lifetime as far as I know--granted, I don't live there, but I've heard the same horror stories of communist repression for as long as I can remember, so I don't think the government has changed much in decades.  Unfortunately the same is true for the US as well, though our government isn't a totalitarian one.

Also, I doubt the IT sector is going to disappear from China anytime soon.  There are way too many smart, tech-oriented people there for that to happen.

Indeed he does; the changes/additions he makes to the forum often appear to be out of the blue to those who aren't in his inner circle (and I'm not even sure he has one of those).  Back in 2019 he made merit sources out of a bunch of members who hadn't even applied, me included--and though I'd said in posts prior to that that I didn't want to be a source, I'm glad he tapped me to be one.  The merit system has turned out to be extremely important as a spam-neutering tool as well as a deterrent to account farming.  And since its inception, I've certainly calmed down a lot.

And that was my one and only concern.  Also, in your defense the fact that you didn't abandon the forum altogether says something about what it means to you--and I know it does, because you've told me as much before. 

I'm wondering about the status and number of current merit sources.  I can't help but think that some may have gone inactive since Theymos added the last batch.  On the other hand, I haven't been seeing many threads in Meta complaining about not earning enough merits, so maybe the system is functioning fine.

IMO, posting news articles here from a news site that you're affiliated with, work for, or own, is on the borderline of shilling at least.  Personally I don't have a problem with what Coinshots is doing, because I get most of my crypto news from bitcointalk and wouldn't have stumbled across that site if he hadn't posted here.  And we've seen much the same thing before--I can't remember the website, but it was the same deal with constantly posting news blurbs and links to the site.

I'm more curious about this:

Maybe I'm a bit behind, but how has any of that changed?  Have the rules around plagiarism relaxed?  And what's the state of moderation on the forum right now?  I'm wondering if Theymos needs to hire some more mods.

That's good to hear, because I'm not sure Theymos has any plans to add more merit sources anytime soon.  It'd be nice to know when the last time he accepted an application was, aside from what BlackHatCoiner mentioned (and if anyone knows, please share that info).

I've been friendly with you for quite a while, and I have no doubt that you can tell good posts from the typical shitpost written by someone posting for their bounty or whatever.  The only question I have is whether you plan on sticking around and being active enough to be an effective merit source.  You were gone for quite a while if I'm not mistaken. 

Eh?  Not sure what that has to do with someone's ability to discern post quality, but whatever.  You've got my support, Mr. gator.

Assholes like this one who's selling a whole bunch of different accounts couldn't give a crap about this forum and probably not any forum or platform.  I tagged him, but it's unlikely to do any good since he's a newbie with only 13 posts.  Thanks to OP for pointing this out, however--it's better that members like him get painted red as fast as possible no matter what effect it may have.

Ugh....reminds me of 2015.  I need to take a cold shower.

Well that's....interesting.  My first impression was that you know bitcoin has jumped the shark when a giant mega-corporation like Exxon Mobil gets into the business of mining it.  Fortunately my first impressions of things are often wrong.

If this article is true and Exxon really does get into the BTC mining business, it probably would be profitable for them.  But one problem I see is that they have so much cash they can throw at the operation that they might end up with a bit too much hashing power if they decided to go that far.  Maybe somebody with actual mining experience could set me straight on that point and tell me if I'm wrong.

As far as their choice of location, they picked a good one.  North Dakota has got to be one of the coldest states in the US.  They might have done better in Alaska, but maybe there's some tax advantage in ND.

Oh....that sounds so nice.  As I think I mentioned earlier in this thread, I talk to my local gas station owner all the time, and he's from Bangladesh.  I always ask him what the weather's like over there, and he always tells me it's hot.  It's amusing to me that he hates the cold so much in our state, as I'm sure it's much different than Bangladesh--only sort of amusing, because I've lived here all my life and I can't stand it either.

And wow, that's a very low cost of living.  You can't rent anything but a room in a boarding house for $400/month, and probably not even for that little money.  I'd say the least you'd have to spend is $500/month (depending on what state in the US you're in).  I swear, these fantasies of emigrating to a milder climate and living off the proceeds of bitcoin hustling are growing stronger by the day.  Anyone interested?

Some do, and I certainly would if I had enough money.  Unfortunately I don't, nor do I have anyone to travel with (sadly).  I'd love to check out India and the surrounding countries, and some countries in South America as well--Brazil and Belize in particular.

Damn, you're good.  I really wish I'd studied computer science or programming or some related field when I was in college.  Unfortunately I think it's way too late for me to start at this point.

And welcome back to the forum, bill gator.  Been a while, eh?  I'd been wondering where you'd gone off to (in addition to other members like TMAN and Your Point Is Invalid).  It's always nice when there's a community that's stable in its membership.

As far as your search woes go, hopefully you've found a solution that makes it easier--and I'd add that this is one of the aspects of bitcointalk that needs a serious overhaul.  I've often gotten errors just from searching too fast, and that just shouldn't happen in the present day.

It is desirable to have all of these rank-up or merit milestone posts in one thread, but unless the one thread is stickied to the first page of Reputation, it's very unlikely people are going to look for it even if they know it exists--and I doubt there's a chance the Reputation mod is going to sticky BitcoinGirl.Club's thread.

And as I mentioned in another thread I can't read anyone else's mind either, so I don't really know for sure who's trawling for merits.  But I've seen enough of that behavior over the years to know that there's a good chance it's happening when people create threads like this one.

Keep in mind that nobody ever made celebration threads prior to the merit system--or if they did, I sure as hell can't remember them.

LOL.  If I were in a lousy mood, that's probably how I would have worded my post instead of the more temperate approach I chose.

I made a prediction in that thread about how members are going to use it:

....and it didn't take long for someone to create their own horn-tooting thread, completely ignoring BitcoinGirl.Club's attempt to consolidate them.  And I don't expect adoption of that thread to pick up, no matter how many reminders he/she gives, because I'm convinced OP and members who write stuff like this:

Well, they're just hoping someone will merit their post.  Me, I rarely go for that unless I'm familiar with the member and/or have helped them out.  Apparently I gave Zilon some merits, but I can't say he's made much of an impression on me.  Zilon, I do wish you well and props on making it to Sr. Member from Newbie in the era of merits.  That's not easy for anyone to do.

I smell drama, but I haven't a clue where it's emanating from.  Then again, I haven't been doing as much reading as I typically do.  Where is all this slander you're referring to?

Also, your long history and trust score speaks for itself, so I'm not sure what the problem is (or how it's impacting you other than sullying your name).  I've never done business with you but I surely would if the opportunity arose.

This sounds like the old OgNasty vs. Lauda/Vod/whoever feud rearing its puckered head even though the old clique that generally disagreed with OgNasty and his supporters has largely disbanded.  Is that what this is?

There's nothing particularly wrong with it, but I've always viewed such threads with a jaded eye.  For one thing, it gives me an icky feeling when I see someone tooting their own horn, and for another I think most of these "I ranked up!" threads are a form of merit-phishing (and they usually succeed, too).

Having said that, I know it isn't easy to rank up anymore and that members are proud of themselves when they finally achieve the next rank.  It usually takes a long time to move from, say, Full Member to Sr. Member and that's in addition to all the good posts one has to make in order to earn enough merits to get to that next rank.  So I do understand that people feel good and want to thank the community....but I can't read anyone's mind and I've seen way too many threads where it's obvious that the OP wants merits.

In any case, as far as this thread goes, I have a feeling that it's not going to be utilized the way OP wants it to.  But we'll see.

Hey!  This thread reminds me of a couple I started a while back.  I've been a fan of e-bikes and you can see a pic of mine in this thread, and before I ended up buying it (not with bitcoin, by the way), I was looking for a way to purchase one with crypto.  They're definitely more energy efficient and much, much less expensive if you compare them to automobiles.  The only problem is that neither e-bikes nor e-scooters are practical if you've got regular, long commutes.  Fortunately for me I don't.

In my city I always see some kid zipping around on an e-bike that you don't have to pedal, which is not the kind I own.  But man, mine is fun to ride.  My legs still get a good workout; it's just that I can ride faster and hills are much easier to manage.

That would depend on how often and how far you ride it, but I'd be willing to bet that any e-bike or scooter would save you a ton of money in fuel costs alone.  Depending on those factors I mentioned and your weight, you don't have to recharge them after every ride and they don't use up a whole lot of electricity anyway.

Ha ha, not that you could even if you wanted to. 

But man, Theymos made merit sources out of members who didn't even apply back in 2019 and I'm pretty sure some of them have dropped out by now.  You'd think he'd give someone like you a shot, someone who's obviously eager to help keep the merit system functioning.  And as I think I mentioned before, you're also active on a local board and it's important to have merit sources active on as many of them as possible.  If there weren't any, there would be members trying to earn them by writing posts in broken English--and I think that was the case before the system stabilized over time.

Theymos!  Make this man a merit source!!

I believe it.  You have to think Putin would have anticipated the reaction from the US, UK, and other countries if he invaded Ukraine--he's not a stupid man by any means, and he's been the top dog in Russia for many years.  He knows how the game is played.

I talked to a couple of people about this situation, and they wondered why Ukraine's allies aren't doing more to support them, i.e., why haven't they sparked up a war with Russia....and I had to explain what should be obvious: you don't want to pick a fight with a country that has massive nuclear capability.  Sanctions and whatever else the US and the rest of Ukraine's friends are doing behind the scenes is really all that can be done.  At this point I don't think anyone really knows what Putin thinks about pushing the nuclear button.

I could barely understand what you're trying to say with that, and the parts that made grammatical sense weren't correct.  Fiat isn't "over" unless you know something the rest of the world doesn't, and I very much doubt that.  

And why in the world would we ever need paper bitcoin?  The security issues alone would preclude significant adoption, and that's on top of the lack of adoption of bitcoin as a form of money that people actually use to buy goods and services.  There's someone who's completely backward in his thinking here in this thread, and I know it ain't me.

Paper wallets are great, but I don't think there's any chance the world is going to be using them as if they were banknotes. 

JayDDee, I respect you and have no beef with you whatsoever, but did you read my OP in full?  The YT videos weren't my only source.  I linked to the store that sells the devices, and I wrote that I couldn't understand the language:


I don't think the lack of replies is any message other than a thread asking for information on something new and/or unfamiliar gets buried under a mountain of shitposts in this section, because so many bounty hunters just want to write the same thing over and over again in threads where it's easy to do so.  Peace.

Great, you asked the same question I'm asking.  Wonderful.

Tell that to the folks over at 419mining with their GekkoScience Compac F that they can't seem to keep in stock.  So no input from you about how a USB stick could be used for CPU mining, I guess.  Thanks for stopping by to take a dump in my thread.