I'd like to point out that goldbugs are always screaming about inflation--whether there's any significant inflation or not--whereas bitcoiners tend to be a little less blindsided by their investment of choice.  Goldbugs are so in love with gold that they keep repeating the same mantra of it being an inflation hedge, that it's been around for millenia, etc., that they'll never talk about selling gold.  Ever.  I've seen this in action for the last decade on sites like coinflation.com and zerohedge, and I saw the same arguments being made in an old magazine from 1982 that I happened to pick up a few months ago....so it's just rhetoric for the goldbugs.

But yeah, I just heard the same 7.9% figure on the news this morning.  If I'm not mistaken, gasoline was included in the statistics (please correct me if I'm wrong), and I'd think that would heavily influence the reported inflation rate since unlike some of the other things in that "basket of goods" gas has skyrocketed.  Groceries and restaurant food have gone up quite a bit, but I don't think those prices have kept pace with what gasoline has been doing.  At my local gas station, it's up another 1% overnight.

Well....sometimes it's hard to tell there's merit abuse going on, but I've seen some pretty blatant examples since the whole system got started.  The issue isn't (and has never been) whether it can be detected or not, but rather if anything should be done about it by DT members.  And in the past couple of years, most DT members have taken a hands-off approach toward merit abuse cases, which mirrors Theymos's attitude.  Personally I don't have much of a problem with that, since there's too much reasonable doubt (as you've pointed out) and it's way too much of a pain in the ass sniffing these idiots out when compared to how much good it does tagging merit abusers.

Back on topic, I'm relieved to see I'm still in the top 20 at least.  I thought I'd slacked last month more than the numbers show, because it seemed like there weren't a lot of members taking me up on my offer of a monthly post review (which I'll once again offer to anyone under Legendary with <1000 merits who's reading this).  Just send me a PM asking for a review and I'll be happy to oblige.

I think some merit sources have just completely dropped out, i.e., they didn't want to be sources anymore--but who knows?  I don't think Theymos has ever made any proclamations in which he's given his reasons for removing merits sources.  He even keeps them anonymous as we all know, so there's no telling why he's removed some of them (though I think you're correct about a few of them just not distributing enough merits).  I know one or two have been nuked for merit abuse, but the last one I remember was a couple of years ago and I can't even remember his name.

Ah, I don't feel so crazy now that I know at least one other person has that picture saved on his computer!  I missed this thread when it started, but I'm glad I found it now.  That's a snapshot of a stereotypical bounty farm if anyone's wondering.

Also, I've run into messages like the one OP posted here (though not very often).  There are probably a lot of things that could be improved upon as far as the site's functionality goes, and if you've ever tried searching for anything too quickly you'll see another example of things getting overloaded where they shouldn't.

Have you got a lot of neighbors participating in bounties or signature campaigns?  Just wondering, because I know I've heard stories of entire villages supporting themselves on the proceeds of bitcointalk.  I don't know what's true and what's just a fable, but it stands to reason that with the money that can be made through them that they'd be extraordinarily popular in areas of the world where, say, 10k sats goes a long way toward paying the rent.

OP, I think it'd be highly unlikely Putin or anyone else in Russia (on the state level) would be targeting Ukrainian bitcointalk accounts.  Sure, stranger things have happened here but this forum likely doesn't even register on the radar of any Russian hackers right now.  If they want to hack Ukrainian accounts, those accounts would be ones linked to banks and whatnot, i.e., they'd have funds attached to them.  So I don't think our members from Ukraine have anything to worry about.

LOL.  Are NFTs still popular?  Based on how few new videos I'm seeing about them on Youtube, I would have guessed that fire had extinguished itself within the past few weeks or so.

Maybe, but all of those preppers who've been stocking up on nonperishable food, supplies, guns & ammo, and land don't seem to be as crazy as they did maybe a year or two ago, do they?  My point is that while money (even crypto) can go to zero, there's always going to be valuable things in times of economic or political crisis--and that's always been true.

I don't disagree that having some cash on hand is a bad idea.  Even if you don't trust fiat it's not going to lose all of its value overnight, and if you plan on buying any of those things I mentioned above, it's best not to be caught short of cash when you need it.  That said, I'm hoping this current crisis in Ukraine resolves itself peacefully and that economic armageddon doesn't strike them, Russia, or the rest of the world.  We're all interlinked more than we probably realize, but just take a look at gas prices for an example of how true that is.  If the situation worsens, we're all vulnerable to one degree or another.

Ha ha ha!!!  This is like me when I un-ignore Altcoin Discussion in order to spread some merits around; I never know what sort of gunk is going to stick to me when I leave.

Jesus, I haven't seen this thread in a long-ass time and it's a pleasure to see it's still going.  There's some funny shit in here.

Well, those who are wage slaves certainly aren't alone; I'd say most of us on the forum (and in the world) are just average people working jobs we may or may not like.  There's nothing wrong with that IMO as long as you can find happiness in life and not be killed spiritually by whatever you do for work, if you know what I mean.

And as long as wages keep pace with inflation, all is generally OK.  The problem is when they don't, and I'm not sure if the average hourly wage has increased at all since we've started to see this inflation as of late.  I agree that it's crazy to be saving money in the form of the USD (or any fiat currency), and it doesn't even matter if it's in an interest-bearing account.

Agreed; I'm not sure why OP seems to be such a fan of that particular stablecoin.  All they are essentially is a placeholder for fiat on a crypto exchange, i.e., a way to hedge against crypto volatility (usually bitcoin) for the time you have your funds on whatever exchange you're using.  But ultimately USDT still represents fiat, and I'm certainly not a fan of it.

No kidding--that's way too much money to be leaving it on any crypto exchange, even if it's one with an excellent reputation.  Cryptsy had a similar reputation right before they absconded with all of their customers' funds, and I'm sure there are at least a dozen other exchanges that have pulled the same crap over the years that I'm just not recalling at the moment.

The KYC requirement probably has to do with the amounts in question, because smaller traders don't usually have problems with Kucoin or have to submit their ID documentation for any reason.  Hopefully OP will get it all straightened out--and I suspect he will, because I don't think Kucoin is a scam exchange and they're above average as far as their customer support goes.  And OP, it would be nice if you kept the community updated on this.

Thanks for updating that.

"Paraphrasing" was never forgiven before, and I do hope that there hasn't been some behind-the-scenes policy change with Theymos and the moderators as far as that goes, because paraphrasing someone else's content is basically text-spinning, even if you don't use a bot to do it--in other words, it's still plagiarism, plain and simple.

Yeah, I'm getting that feeling as well.  With all the terrible shit that's happening in the world, there is the chance that some of the mods are dealing with real-life issues and aren't spending as much of their time handling reports.  That's just speculation, but this is a global forum with mods from all over the place.

Kind of off-topic, but have any of our regular Russian or Ukrainian members been chiming in lately?  I know there are a lot of them, and I'd like to hear what they're going through.  Should I un-ignore Politics and Society? 

About a month ago I wrote this in this thread:


At the time I think gas was going for $2.57/gallon or thereabouts, which was the price it'd been at for months.  Now I look out my window at the local gas station and a gallon of gas is going for $4.38!  That gigantic leap has happened in the past week or so (as I said in my previous post I don't track oil/gas prices), certainly it's been since the Russia/Ukraine war. 

I can't imagine this is going to get any better anytime soon, and this is going to hit a lot of innocent bystanders hard in their pocketbooks.  Not just in the US but around the world--I'd imagine in Europe it's even worse. 

That's the truth, brother.  Putin, like all world leaders, is insulated against the effects of sanctions; it's the average citizen that takes it up the butt because of stupid, stupid political decisions.

No, you're not wrong--that's how it's been for as long as I can remember, and I even recall a time when not even established members would be given a second chance.  If there's been any change as far as giving complete newbies who start off their bitcointalk "career" plagiarizing the content of others, it's news to me.  And that would be a huge step backward, IMO.

Is there any chance the mods might not have caught up to the reports on these cases, OP?  As far as I can tell, there haven't been any proclamations by Theymos and no word from the mods regarding any new policy toward leniency when it comes to plagiarism.  Rich222 was the subject of a thread I posted in yesterday, and normally a member who'd been publicly hung out to dry as a plagiarist would have been banned already, so I'm hoping he and the rest of these plagiarists get the ban-hammer soon.

No doubt it's a headache, but mods pretty much always ignored ban appeals anyway, so what changed?

Doesn't Russia have their own version(s) of FB, Twitter, and all those other social media platforms?  I was listening to the news yesterday and I could swear I hear them reference something of that nature.  It'd surprise me if Russia relied on any Western-supplied social media platform--and same goes for any country in that region.

If that isn't true and they do rely on Facebook, Twitter, and the rest then yeah I'd say that's not going to help things at all.  I don't think losing social media is the worst of their economic problems, though.  Any country could survive that, I think.  Russians have to worry about hyperinflation and the effects of all these sanctions being imposed on them by the rest of the world, effects I don't think have yet started to make themselves felt by the average Russian, i.e., any Russian who isn't one of these oligarchs they keep talking about.

We'll see, though.  I feel for the Russian people, because they're not the ones who created this insanity--and yet it's pretty much a given they're the ones who're going to feel the impact of Putin's political decisions.  Ugh.

I negged him as well.  Even with the self-moderated thread business aside, the service he's offering is basically only for account farmers who have so many alts enrolled in bounties/campaigns that they can't keep up with the posting--I can't see anyone else who'd take advantage of an offer like that, and in any case I have no doubt that if he got anyone taking him up on it that it'd be detrimental to the quality of the forum.

We've had members offering services like this before, but I haven't seen an example in quite a while (but I have the services section on ignore, so I could just be missing all of them).  Has anyone seen members offering to post for other members recently?

Ah, thank you stompix for reminding me that I'd made a post (below) about Polo7 and him possibly having alt accounts creating the same style of meaningless threads in Economics.  It just occured to me that OP is likely a new alt account--it didn't pop into my muddled brain until just now, but I see you've already made the connection.

I thought I was being polite in asking him to quit it with the threads that don't really generate meaningful discussion, and I really thought he'd gone away.  Guess not.

You got that right, although I have to say I think it used to be much more twisty-turny in previous years.  As far as Mr. "I-go-through-all-the-rules-and-regulations" goes, it always baffles me why members who break the one rule that'll get you permabanned in a millisecond draw attention to themselves with posts like that and the one in this thread.  I've seen stuff like that happen many times.

Did Rich222 get banned?

I'd be willing to bet it is.  Shitposters and hardcore bounty hunters rarely leave the forum for good, even if they're banned.  It's just way too easy to start over here, and it always has been. 

I'm not sure puppet governments are ever good, but we'll have to see how this whole thing turns out.  I do think both countries are going to get hit economically by the invasion (especially Russia, and we're already seeing that with the ruble being devalued), which just makes me wonder even more what Putin was thinking in doing what he's doing.

The radio was saying today that one ruble is worth $0.01 or something like that.  I haven't checked the history of the USD/Ruble value, but I'm assuming that the ruble is worth a lot less today than it was prior to the invasion of Ukraine.  Whatever Putin gains from this, it's sure going to cost the citizens of Russia a lot if there's serious inflation that arises in the near future.  Again I say, what a mess this is.

He has/had a Youtube channel that I think I subscribed to a while back before I gave up Google.  He's definitely a miner and posts in Meta now and then.  I don't visit the mining section often because my input would be shitposting compared to the gold that's there and would probably be deleted anyway, but he was pretty active there last I checked.

Franky1 gets more shit than he deserves IMO.  I get that he has very loud, contrary opinions on matters but I've never viewed his posts as trolling nor him as a troll.  Then again, some of the stuff he writes about is way above my head so it's hard for me to tell what the truth is sometimes (he's obviously knowledgeable about the technical aspects of bitcoin, whereas I'm not).

Good thread, OP.  There are a lot of under-recognized members here and old-timers who've stuck around for years that deserve some recognition.  Too bad Vod isn't here anymore.  He did a lot of good for the forum for a long time.

Is Polo7 from Russia?  Just asking, because him starting a thread about the ruble in late 2020 seems to indicate that it meant something personal to him (plus English obviously isn't his first language). 

I'm not quite sure what your point is here, OP.  Polo7 got one prediction right, but perhaps he saw signs as far as the weakness of the Russian ruble goes that the rest of bitcointalk wasn't paying attention to or just didn't care to comment about.  Polo7 also used to start a ton of threads in the Economics section, and most of them were just crap.  I seriously doubt he has any extensive education in economics.

Decentralized forms of money (and I'm talking about crypto here) should become more popular and adoption should increase after all of this world tension either dies down or continues to escalate--not just the situation in Ukraine but even things like the protesting Canadian truckers.  When the government can just turn off the cash spigot at will when they don't like what you're doing, well, that's a huge problem. 

I'd also say that more anonymous coins ought to be way more popular than they are, because they could be used by people who rightly fear unjust persecution by their government or whoever.  The flip side of that is that they can also be used by folks on the opposite side of the just, i.e., all those Russian oligarchs I've been hearing so much about on the news, hiding money everywhere it can't be found.  Anyway, bitcoin or even something like Monero doesn't do anyone any good if it can't be used to buy things.  Sending bitcoin to the Canadian truckers wouldn't help them if they can't use it for whatever they need to purchase--and my point is that since most businesses and say, lawyers, accept fiat exclusively, there has to be a reliable way to convert crypto to fiat without the government being able to shut it down.

Or it would be ideal if more businesses/merchants/whatever accepted crypto as a payment method.  This shit makes my head spin.  This and all the chaos going on in the world.  Anyone got a time machine going back to 1988?

I'd like to point out that nothing is as black and white in crypto as you're implying it should be, and that goes for both decentralization and anonymity.  Hell, if you want to be completely anonymous with your dabbling in crypto you'd stay off of forums and related sites altogether and not risk possibly exposing your IP address to any of them.

I'm not sure what IP address tracking and decentralization have to do with one another, by the way.  If BPIP or any of the other sites did keep a record of such, what does that centralize exactly?  And I've said this numerous times before, "decentralization" has become a sort of buzzword for a kind of idyllic state of being, but it's nothing of the sort.  Some systems work better when they're centralized, some when they're decentralized....and as far as LoyceV or anyone else knowing what your IP is, the term just doesn't apply.  Unless you can explain how it does, of course.