I don't think Facebook's one-day plummet is because of that, else we would have seen many other companies' stocks dropping in sync, but that isn't what happened. 

I'm also very confused as to what the real economic situation is.  You say it's weak globally, yet all around me I see businesses that can't find employees.  In addition to that, there seems to be a lot of people with an abundance of cash to spend on frivolous things such as NFTs--plus the stock market is still headed upward.  So nah, I think Facebook's stock drop has everything to do with how investors see them and their prospects for the future.  Social media is a relatively new thing, remember.  Younger members might not remember a time when it didn't exist, but I sure as hell do.  There's no telling whether FB is going to remain dominant in the space or even if they'll remain profitable.

Thanks for posting this, Hydrogen.  Since I don't follow world news, I had no idea inflation was so out of control in Argentina.  I'm not sure if what they're experiencing is considered hyperinflation or not, but I wonder if wages are at all keeping pace with inflation.  If wages aren't rising at all, there would be extreme poverty in no time--but that doesn't seem to be the case just based on what this article says.

Now that's smart, and it's something that I've thought about doing for a while now.  I do have all the toothpaste and shampoo I can use for the rest of the year, and I'll have to consider what I can stockpile.  This damn supply chain problem doesn't seem to be getting any better, however.  Where I live it's incredibly hard to find pet food as well as some other items that would be easy to stock up on.

Yeah, I wonder how long that's going to last until the new hedge becomes the Canadian dollar or some other stable fiat currency.  Also: no mention of bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency here, which really doesn't surprise me.  Too bad, because if it weren't so volatile it'd be a great alternative to their fiat currency.

They've got to be the worst news outlet I know of, aside from CNN and Fox News (which aren't news media so much as political platforms anyway).  

It actually is sort of a solution, albeit not a perfect one.  When your money is losing value by the day, it makes complete sense to spend it as fast as you can--and buying food is the number one priority, as long as it can be stored for the medium-to-long term.  What else can regular people do in situations like this?  The problem needs to be fixed by the government, obviously, but citizens need to actively protect themselves from the effects of crazy inflation.

It's because crypto is red hot at the moment (and has been since the last crash in 2017, actually) and people just want to try to discover the next bitcoin.  It's never gonna happen, but that won't stop people with money to burn from trying.  There's also this:

I'd say most of crypto investing is gambling, but if you're buying a coin that has no use whatsoever and can't be used as money....that's gambling, plain and simple.

I also think a lot of folks are watching popular crypto Youtubers and reading stuff like that Reddit post, and there's a sort of mentality that makes people want to belong to the clique that's investing in whatever the hottest coin/token is.  A lot of people are being misled, too.  Those Youtubers aren't making videos out of the goodness of their hearts; they're either earning ad revenue or they've got paid sponsorships, so they have to come up with ideas for videos whether they believe in those ideas or not.  On top of that, it's likely that many of them are just hyping coins that they've already purchased in the hopes of driving up the price.  You know, the ol' pump & dump scheme, which we've seen happen repeatedly.

I second this, OP.  I wouldn't be too worried about your trust page unless you wind up tagged by a DT member (and I haven't checked the list lately, but logfiles's trust gives you an red -1 when I see your avatar).  Lots of members have gotten brutally trolled on their trust pages and have pages full of red--though in those cases, it's never by DT members.  But my point is that nobody would really care even if they were inclined to look at your trust. 

Even bounty managers seem to overlook valid negs given by DT members occasionally, so I wouldn't worry about those two feedbacks you've got (which I suspect will probably be modified if you follow up after some time has passed with the members who gave them to you).

I think most members who join new signature campaigns/bounties do exactly that, and personally I don't fault them for it.  If a project/exchange/casino/whatever is new, it's extremely hard to do due diligence prior to joining.  By the time you've figured out if the place is legit, all the spots are taken.  Plus, isn't it better to assume that something isn't a scam until proven otherwise?  Unless it's obviously one, of course.

In addition to your point about thieves and what they'd generally be searching for, I think you've got a valid point here as well.  I don't think using a smartphone as a HW wallet would be a great idea for someone like me, who's too technologically incompetent to wipe a phone free of all the potential spying shit that's preinstalled on it. 

Otherwise, it isn't a horrible idea at all--you can hide a smartphone pretty easily, and other than the times when you want to actually use the device, it's easy to keep it offline.  Then again, why not just use one or more USB drives or even a seed phrase engraved into metal, coupled with Electrum for sending/receiving?  That seems like a much more secure option (though a lot less creative than using a phone).

I think a lot of members of this forum don't seem to understand that fact; saying bitcoin (or any cryptocurrency currently on the market) has the potential to overthrow fiat is like saying stocks, bonds, or comic books have that same potential.  It's a ridiculous statement, because crypto is primarily an investment, not a currency (although it certainly can be used as one). 

And "fiat"?  What does that mean, exactly?  Are we talking about the currencies of every single country in the world or just the USD/GBP/etc.?  In order for bitcoin to overthrow "fiat" there would have to be an economic crisis the likes of which no living being has ever seen, and if that happened I wonder if there would even be internet left to use crypto on.  Historically when one fiat currency fails, the citizens of the country in which it failed simply use another country's fiat currency, one that's more stable.  Even in Venezuela, when bitcoin was well-known and their fiat currency collapsed, Venezuelans turned to the USD as an alternative (to the best of my knowledge).

I'm definitely not bashing bitcoin, but I've heard this tune many times before and it just doesn't make sense to me.

It really isn't; it's only been in the last year or so that lower-ranked members have started to create threads tooting their own horns when they achieve a new rank.  That never used to be a thing.

But:

Goddamn!!  If I'd hit that milestone for post reporting, I'm not sure I'd be able to refrain from the aforementioned horn-tooting.  That's a lot of reports, dude!  I've been a member of the forum since 2015 and I don't even have 5000 reports in total, and there was a period in 2017-18 when I was reporting tons of posts--so props to you for helping the forum out.  You really deserve a large, brightly-colored badge under your avatar in recognition of your reporting. 

I'm sure a lot of members don't realize what it takes to keep the forum relatively free of spammers, shitposters, and other various rule breakers.  The people who report posts to the mods do so behind the scenes, and nobody would ever know to what extent they contribute to forum cleanliness if it wasn't pointed out in threads like this or when Theymos dumps reporting data ever four years or so.

So again, kudos to you, Ratimov.  Keep it up.

It isn't weird at all if those "others" (like Facebook) are pure fucking evil incarnate.  Sure, that might be my overwrought opinion, but I know I'm not alone in holding it.  Even the inception of Facebook involved deception on the part of Mark Zuckerberg, hence the lawsuit against him by the Winklevii twins--and everything the company has done since then has been geared toward gathering data on people and working with the government to censor views that differ from those in power--just check out this video for one example.  Ugh.  Personally, I'm one of those who'd be happy if FB went belly up.

Word.  I can't remember exactly when MySpace lost the face to FB (and I'm too lazy to look it up), but I think it was just before mass data collection and selling of said data became an enormous issue.  But I can't imagine that if MySpace had emerged the winner of the duel that they'd have acted any differently; selling that data is tremendously lucrative, and neither MySpace nor FB were conceived out of charitable feelings, if you know what I'm getting at.

That's a pretty big drop in price, but if you look at Facebook's 10-year price chart it really doesn't seem so bad--especially since the stock will probably recover in no time:



I'm not even sure why single day performance of any stock is newsworthy or why in a market like today's where pretty much every stock is overvalued everyone is looking for explanations.  Honestly, I'd say the S&P and NASDAQ are both due for a 26% one-day drop.  This has been the longest bull market in stocks ever if I'm not mistaken.  I remember when it started, too, right after that massive crash and subsequent recovery in 2009.  I'm sure there are a lot of younger members here who weren't old enough to care about something like that, so that's one hell of a sustained bull market!

But these kinds of markets never last forever, not in stocks, not in crypto, not in any market.  And with a company like Facebook, which hasn't been around as long as other companies with massive market caps, volatility like what we saw on Thursday is kind of to be expected.

Yeah, I was certainly surprised to see that.  I wasn't sure which way bitcoin was going to move, but the fact that it was upwards a few thousand dollars means there's likely still a lot of money to burn on risky investments--which means there's still a lot of money floating around out there.

I'd also say that the fact that OP doesn't see a lot of people at malls and shopping centers near where he lives may be deceptive.  People could be buying a lot of stuff online, and obviously that wouldn't be observed by anyone other than the people who bought said stuff.  I'm also really not sure what "liquidity drying up" means in the context of the general economy.  That phrase has meaning in trading markets, of course, but the general public not having enough cash available to them should never be a problem--especially since most transactions are done with smartphones or debit/credit cards. 

Eyyyy!!  Congrats to all the newly-ranked up members, and it's good to see there's a lot of them this time around.  I could have sworn BITCOIN4X had already reached Legendary, but I guess I was mistaken.

Merit sources must be doing their jobs well, and I'm hoping non-merit sources are doing their best to distribute merits to those in need.  The system is over three years old, so it has a decent track record but it'll fail if members hoard their sMerits (I think I've said that like a million times already, but it's a persistent fear that I have).

Once again, I'm going to offer post history reviews to any member below Legendary rank as long as they don't already have 1000 merits.  Just drop me a PM asking to review your posts and I'll be happy to do it.  I'd actually be grateful if more members took me up on the offer, because I haven't been doing as much reading in the past few weeks and so haven't handed out as many merits as I usually do.  I'm trying to improve, but it'd help if I had my attention focused on where to send merits.

I'll take OP at his word that this place (and I highly doubt there's even a place) is a scam.  I took a look at their "contact" page and saw this:



Sure, it's possible that this is an ASIC retailer based out of Minnesota in the US and that the owners have an extremely poor grasp of the English language....but it's far more likely that this is just a phishing site preying on the world's growing desire to break into the mining business.  That isn't even how you format a US address, by the way.  You'd think anyone living in Minnesota would know how to write their mailing address properly.

Not only isn't there only a single way to alleviate poverty, but blaming it on whatever currency is being used is just plain wrong, i.e., poverty isn't going to magically go away if the world switches to bitcoin or any other form of money.  The state of being poor has existed since the beginning of mankind, and there have been all sorts of measures taken to help the impoverished over the years by many different countries....and yet, poverty still exists.

The only thing that can be done is to try to limit the extent of it, and to that end I don't think our present leaders are doing much good with their reckless monetary policies, which are driving up the cost of goods and services and weakening fiat currency.  I don't see crypto as a viable alternative, though--not even bitcoin.  And why?  Because it's too damn volatile to be used as money (in addition to its other problems such as transaction fees and confirmation times).  I wish it were that simple to eliminate poverty, but it just isn't, plain and simple.

This is obviously a shady service being offered, but I have no idea what "votes" are being offered--are these for a contest or to support projects of some sort?  I'm curious, as I've never seen votes of any kind being sold here or anywhere else.  Seems very much like all those other things that can be purchased to give a false representation of something, e.g., fake reviews on Amazon, fake likes on Youtube, etc.

Who in their right mind would invest in something based on an internet community review?  I guess a lot of people do just that by listening to anonymous internet personalities on chat boards and whatnot, but this seems a bit different.  Can anyone give me a TL;DR explanation?

Well, just playing devil's advocate here, he may have meant security in another context and not necessarily security of the wallet/address itself.  By that I mean it might be an address he no longer wants to have anything to do with for whatever reason, i.e., he wouldn't want to be caught with the keys to it...again, for whatever reason.

I think the negative trust Jannn got is valid, even if it's harsh.  Those kinds of tags are exactly what Vod would leave to warn the community of a potential scammer.  It's absolutely true that an account waking up after a long period of time and immediately asking for an unsecured loan is sketchy, and if you can't sign a message from an address you staked on the forum?  Double sketchy IMO.

No, and that's one of the reasons why the inflation reports are skewed, i.e., it can "feel" like inflation is much higher than what the government is telling you.  Even consider things like stocks and bitcoin--those are both rocketing up in value (price), but they're obviously not included in the inflation numbers even though their prices are being inflated over time.

By the way, gas prices are still pretty high in my area, but they haven't gone up much (if at all) since I last posted in this thread.  I don't really keep an eye on oil prices--or even gas prices--but I'd guess that if gas were to start going for over $4/gallon, I'd be hearing about it on the news.  But even still, gas was more expensive than that back in 2004 or so, when the dollar was worth slightly less.  So $3.50/gallon is high but not record-breaking high, and I know it's way more expensive in other parts of the world.

Interesting read.  While goofing around on Youtube a few weeks ago, I came across some videos pointing out how scammy Earth2 seems to be, since people are speculating on virtual land but there's no games to be played on said land--and thus all the parcels are basically worthless, since there's nothing anyone can really do with them.

I can see how there would be value in Facebook's metaverse, but this is just insane:

That tells me that there are a lot of people with way too much crypto to play around with--or at the very least they're doing very stupid things with it.  Makes me wonder who exactly these people are who are buying up all of this virtual land.  It isn't exactly cheap.

And like I mentioned with Earth2, there could be scammy elements to some of this virtual real estate.  Figures.  With every new crypto thing, the scammers rear their grotesque heads first, preying on the newbies in the space.  I don't think that'll ever end.

I'd say these inflated prices are, though I don't think people are going to stop buying up space in FB's metaverse as long as it keeps appealing to gamers and whoever else.  Who knows, though?  I'd say it probably depends on what the economy does in the next few years.  If there's an economic downturn, I'm not sure how much money people are going to throw at virtual land.

Very cool (even though I don't qualify for one)!  I think having a badge for reporting is a great incentive to keep doing so and an excellent way to recognize members who do a lot of good for the forum in the background, without receiving the recognition they deserve.  If it weren't for people who report a good deal of shitposts, spam, and whatever else, bitcointalk would be even more of a mess than it is.  Moderators deserve props for taking action on the reports of course, but without those reports there's just no way in hell they'd be able to detect all of the nonsense.

Thanks for the show of gratitude, mprep.  You're a great moderator, even though I don't frequent the sections you handle very often.  You've also been around for as long as I can remember.

Bro, you've got an excellent merit:post count ratio, so I'd say if you were more active you'd be climbing the ranks in no time--but in general you're right, merit really isn't easy to earn unless your posts really stand out against the backdrop of zillions of uniform-length, poorly-written shitposts that make most threads unpleasant to read.

By the way, it's good that you're more of a reader than a poster, and I mean that in a positive sense.  Sometimes it seems like the members who post the most are bounty hunters or sig spammers just trying to earn money.  Nothing new there, but I think it's pretty rare that members like you who've been around a few years just enjoy reading.  When I was a lurker years ago, I found the drama aspect of bitcointalk fascinating--and lately there hasn't been much of that.  Ah well.

I'd argue that it isn't similar; using content from the web in order to take credit and thus get paid for it is blatant cheating.  And I agree with everyone that the account deserves to be tagged for the reason you mentioned, i.e., to warn other bounty managers that this person has a history of this sort of BS.  The tag also needs to be from at least one DT member, because otherwise it might not even be seen if those managers don't check all feedback in advance of accepting members.  I don't think most of them do.

No, you're not....but damn, the way you write is like littering on the sidewalk.  Do you pick those out-of-place characters and words at random or what?  Do yourself a favor and don't try to earn money by writing.  You don't have a knack for it.