Yeah, that is curious indeed.  It could also be that OP is fishing for merits himself.

Either way, although cases of merit abuse don't really need to have threads devoted to them since DT members probably won't take any action, I am going to start putting members like the ones reported here on PM-ignore so that they can't request post history reviews from me.  If I didn't do that, there's no way I'd remember their usernames and the details and whatnot.  

OP, I appreciate you starting this thread and for the watchful eyes.  I'm going to refrain from giving you merit simply because of that tiny bit of suspicion/paranoia I mentioned above, but if you continue to post from this account (and your posts are any good), feel free to hit me up for a review.

My, my.  What a difference a nap of a few hours makes.

I'm absolutely delighted that bitcoin is currently just over $60k as I've just discovered with my sleepy eyes.  On the other hand--and I keep saying this--the rise might be too fast to sustain, and we could be looking at a huge drop either before or after the halving.  I don't own enough bitcoin to be worried personally, but I'm always rooting for it anyway.  It's not just some doohickey with a number that goes up and down; it's a useful middle finger to the powers that be, if you know what I'm saying.  Viva la bitcoin!

The market smells to me more like people speculating about the halving rather than the halving actually having anything to do with bitcoin's rise whatsoever.  I mean is there any reason why the price should skyrocket before or after each one?  That's one thing I've never understood.

I just checked the 7-day chart for bitcoin and just the last two days alone make me a little afraid of what's coming.  You guys remember the last couple of raging bull markets?  They were great while they lasted, but price increases similar to what OP showed in that chart never last for long.  I'm going to bet that whoever's speculating, i.e., buying bitcoin, in anticipation of any gains from the halving are going to sell once they've made a profit--and then we'll see a massive dip

But what the hell do I know?  I never thought bitcoin would make it to $1k, let alone where it is now.  If only I had a time machine.

Yesterday morning I would have said that the end of the month is coming too soon for bitcoin to hit $60k--and then having just woken up and checked the price, I can see that I'm once again blown away by what the market can do.  So at this point I'd say it's not only possible but probable (but that's assuming there's not a pullback by traders taking their profits off the table).

There's going to be a big dip at some point, and I'm hoping it's not a crash.  The other day I looked at bitcoin's price chart on CMC, and it's been rising more or less steadily since the bottom in November 2022--and not only rising, but rising fast.  It's the rate of the rise that concerns me and should concern anyone else who's been around bitcoin for any significant length of time, because although we might hit a new ATH, what happens after that might not be good.

Keeping fingers and toes crossed.

Fixed that for you.

Where have you been?  That's been the new graft in the PoW shitcoin space for a while now.  None of these new coins are really trying to do anything other than provide passive income to the "developers" (who just clone coins and probably code for their website design, since they all look the same, use the same incomprehensible jargon, and don't propose to do anything that bitcoin can't do or any of the other thousands of altcoins for that matter). 

Don't mine these idiotic shitcoins, as you'll only be helping some Russian scammer buy vodka for his kids.

*Ahem*

I wouldn't go overboard with that, lest your inbox get carpet bombed with requests for nudie pics (which makes my mind wander back to the days of AOL and its nice little chat rooms, which were basically where all the perverts, degenerates, zoorasts, fetishists, and in general where a buffet of paraphilias would be served up to unsuspecting youngsters like myself.  I was simply looking for someone to play Scrabble with, I swear.

Also, I'm assuming you are of legal age, right?  That would be 18 in the US where bitcointalk originates from if I'm not mistaken.  Don't want to start any of that trouble, you know?

I can attest to this.  No further comments.

Yep, you make a solid point and no doubt that's one of the reasons why adding a de-merit system would fall flat on its face.  If I sat down for about 10 minutes, I could probably come up with a dozen or so additional reasons why it wouldn't be a good idea at all.  Right off the top of my head, I can picture all sorts of abuse by members who might be leaving the forum and decide to give a big 'fuck you' to a bunch of people (assuming they were able to under the hypothetical system).  And I think it would put members on eggshells, sort of like the fear you mentioned.

In any case, this was discussed at least one time that I know of, back when the merit system first came into existence.  The consensus was that the power to de-merit a post would do more harm than good.  And hell, it doesn't really matter what the community thought about the idea.  Theymos obviously snubbed it then, and I don't think he's likely to change his mind no matter how well laid out one's argument is. 

Uh....why wouldn't that person not be able to join a campaign somewhere down the line?  There have been, are, and probably will be campaigns whose managers either wouldn't find out about this or wouldn't care.  As to benefiting from those 50 merits, that'll certainly speed up the ranking up process as long as hashuna keeps posting and gets enough activity.  I'd be willing to bet that it would take a lot longer had he not gotten those merits, since most newbies mainly post crap.

Great catch on this one, OP.  Just to be clear:  that post absolutely did not deserve 50 merits, and it's pretty clear the Icefrag account has changed hands.  I'm going to continue to read this thread and look into Icefrag's post history if necessary to confirm what seems obvious.

Take a look on the miningpoolstats website and you'll see that there are no pools active, although it seems like it's still being solo mined and to my surprise is shown as trading around $0.08.  That's enough evidence that it's a dead coin, and even if it's not rotting-in-the-grave-dead, it's still not worth getting involved with whatsoever.

Now that we've established the morbidity of said BCD, can OP please lock the thread?

LOL, welcome to the altcoin section of our fine forum!  Usually this crap happens in the ANN section (and it's probably still happening for all I know).  In any case, I'm glad you brought this to the community's attention--and mine--because it's been a while since I've visited Altcoin Discussion and browsed around, and this thread prompted me to do that.  Just looking at the first page I can see there's some interesting discussions going on, so I guess it hasn't gone downhill in a straight line like I thought it would.

Granted, I've not yet looked at what's being posted and I'm prepared to see a bunch of one-line crapola replies, but the threads themselves look kinda-sorta promising.

You can always count on LoyceV to knock those bitches out of the park.  He is truly a Merit Cycling Club member worth his weight in gold.

It kinda does, as I have no idea why any company (aside from Microstrategy, which has Michael Saylor as its bitcoin zealot) would hold any cryptocurrency, if only because by doing so they expose themselves to incredible volatility and potential, substantial losses--or gains, of course, but my point is that it's a huge risk.

They say the crypto they're holding is for product and engineering teams, but damned if I know what that means.  And by the way, was Reddcoin ever officially linked with Reddit itself?  That was an oddball PoS coin that I'd had my eye on for years, and it seems like it never went anywhere.  Not surprising in the least, given that there are thousands of shitcoins on the market, but still.

I have no idea whether Blackjack.fun is legit or not and have no opinion as of yet, but I have to say that just because they paid you for a task does not mean they're completely honest.  I've seen plenty of very shady exchanges and services pay their signature campaign participants over the years, so you really have to look at the entire track record of whatever casino/service/etc. you're trying to judge.

And man, JackpotRacer rings a bell in my head from years back.  He's been complaining about one thing or another (or it could just be this one thing) for a long time if I recall correctly.  For some reason, I'm connecting his username with that altcoin RBIES that guaranteed a buyback price from its creators....but I haven't checked his post history yet. 

But the Speculation section is all about bitcoin's price (and IMO I'm not even sure anymore if keeping that section alive is even productive, since there's never much new there and it's all guesswork trying to predict where bitcoin's going).  I bet if a thread got started up about mining stocks, it'd get reported and the mods would either delete it or have a hell of a hard time figuring out where to relocate it.

You speak the truth, but I have to say I'd like to see more discussion about publicly-traded companies that have their business centered around bitcoin mining.  I get the feeling that most members probably don't hold any of the stocks OP mentioned--or any others--but there have to be some members who do, given how many registered users this forum has.  I've owned MARA in the past (and RIOT, too), and there's really nowhere to discuss these kinds of stocks that I know of.

Interesting, and thanks for that clarification.  Pidgin English has always kind of fascinated me, though I probably ought to learn more about its origins.

In any case, I've only seen a small handful of cases where alt accounts were linked because of very specific misspellings or other similar language issues, and while it's certainly good supporting evidence I don't think it's sufficient as proof that two or more accounts are controlled by the same member.  Just my opinion, though.

There's so much misinformation (or just plain wrong information) being circulated as to the state of the economy that you'd be better off just watching prices and noticing how many people you know have jobs.  The financial press are worse than meteorologists trying to predict the weather one week out.

And OP, glad you had a good time in London.  I've never been there, but I've been to NYC and have seen a mix of wealth and absolute poverty occupying the same streets--large cities with stock exchanges tend to have that characteristic, though being homeless in New York has got to suck, given how cold it can get.  Not sure about London.

OK, I did see that link from tyz but I still don't know whether to believe it or not.  I keep hearing mixed stories about the US economy, and yet aside from inflation everything is far better than it was just over 10 years ago.

I don't know what to believe as far as the state of the economy.  I've heard we're in a recession, and yet the stock market is soaring and aside from the tech sector I haven't heard any reports about massive layoffs or the like.  And when the hell is this crash coming?  The stock market has been in the longest bull run ever, and I know damn well that prices just can't keep going up indefinitely.

I read that article, but it isn't clear why he sold all that stock.  It doesn't necessarily mean he's got a negative outlook on Amazon; corporate executives sell their companies' stock all the time, presumably to fund their lavish lifestyles.  On the other hand, Amazon is probably overvalued, and if a crash does come I betcha that stock is going to take a beating.

I don't know about OP's assertion that yachts, cars, and art are going to get sold off in the event of a market crash.  The people who buy that stuff generally have enough dough such that they don't have to resort to selling their luxury goods, you know?

Is that true?  Bitcoin has always seemed quite resilient to news, even if it's pretty damn big news like that was.  I always figured the ATH was reached too quickly, i.e., that bitcoin was in sort of a bubble that was relatively short.  Then again, pretty much any little thing can pop a financial bubble when prices are soaring.

BTW, did bitcoin actually get to $69k?  I looked at the chart on CMC and I don't see when it got there.

Now as far as China getting back into the mining game, I'd say the more decentralization the better (except if they wind up dominating), but Jesus....right before the halving.  I assume it'll still be profitable, but whatever Chinese stopped mining when the government outlawed it couldn't be getting back in at a worse time, and that's if they're getting back in at all.

Pity party?  Appeal for sympathy from any mods who might be reading this?

It doesn't really matter why OP created this thread; it's more important that he lock it now that he's said everything he wants to.  Do the forum one final favor and do that, would you?  This is just going to turn into a magnet for all sorts of shitposts otherwise.  Thanks in advance and bye-bye.

I swear, five years ago I would ask random people I'd come into contact about if they'd even heard of bitcoin, and the majority of them hadn't.  Today I was talking to a friend who doesn't even own a computer about it (this person knows of my interest in it), and I mentioned that it was rising in price but wasn't yet at a new all-time high.  The response I got was "Wasn't it worth $1 million at one point?".

And then I see the BTC-USDT pair shown on Yahoo finance, and in the Wall Street Journal....so it's amazing that in the last few years how much bitcoin has insinuated itself into regular life and financial reporting--so this is all a very long-winded way of saying that hell yes bitcoin's going to reach $1 million!  It might not be because of the upcoming halving, but I don't have any doubt that that price level is coming.  I'd be an idiot to try to predict a time frame in which it's going to get there, so I'll just leave it at that.

No doubt some forum sleuth will post the exact reason you were banned, but as far as I know "self-plagiarism" (which isn't really a thing, just like "self-escrow"; writing your own words more than once doesn't fall under the definition of plagiarism) isn't against the rules, and even if it is I don't think it'd earn you a permaban.

Since you're apparently not even sure why you got banned, it's probably for typical forum plagiarism.  You might qualify for clemency, that's the good news, but all of these apologies and so forth are going to get you nowhere.