You better believe it--I remember 2016-17 when bitcoin was exploding people's brains all over the world.  The forum had an influx of new accounts, alt accounts, you name it, and they were all trying to get into signature campaigns regardless of whether they met the qualifications or not. 

It was a crazy time (don't know if you were around back then), and all of those new accounts led to a lot of very low-value posts.  That was the bad part.  A lot of people weren't interested in discussion so much as plopping down as many shitposts as they could during their waking hours.

Sure man, it's a free forum and you can ask DT members to tag cheaters all you like--as long as you provide sufficient evidence, because if you don't you're just going to get ignored.  The way OP did it in this thread was perfectly acceptable, but it's up to individual DT members as to whether they want to tag cheaters, scammers, or whoever.  DT members aren't some unified group that works together; it's just a bunch of members who happen to have high trust ratings, and not all of them are scam busters.

You can certainly do it yourself if you catch someone cheating, though if you're not on DT the member probably won't even notice they've been tagged.  Some years ago I wasn't on DT but had tagged a whole bunch of members for buying/selling accounts.  The day I made it onto the DT list my inbox was flooded with requests to remove the feedback I'd left, because it now carried more weight and those members' trust scores showed up red.

TL;DR: Tag 'em yourself, but try to get at least one DT member to back you.

I agree, and I think OP did the right thing here--he wants negative trust with some oomph to it, if you know what I mean.  The sad fact we all know is that not all negs are created equally; DT negs will change a member's trust score and display the bright red color to members who don't have a customized trust list.  Asking DT for help and presenting solid evidence was the right way to go.

Unfortunately these look like junk accounts that could easily be replaced, because they're just being used for bounty (cheating) activities.  So the owner likely isn't shedding any tears that his reputation is destroyed or anything like that.  It's always so much more fun when members with real reputations get busted for shady shit and bukkake'd with DT red.

I'd like to second that request, as I'm not going to see it on Newegg unless it's linked to here, and there's no need to click away from the forum when the text of the review could easily be included here--and I'm also interested in your review, philipma1957.  It sounds like you've got a nice thing going with either Newegg or their sellers.  I'm actually surprised when I hear things like you receiving free tech for honest reviews.  From what I've seen in the Youtube community, I was under the general impression that "influencers" had to stick to a tight script when doing *fake* reviews.

Then again, Newegg isn't Bitcointalk isn't Youtube, but I'm still a little shocked that a manufacturer would take the chance that a reviewer like yourself might tear their product to pieces.

I've seen the SecuX before, and I was just immediately turned off by its shape.  I do realize that pleasing aesthetics is way down the list of important features for a hardware wallet to have, but since Trezor and Ledger already make solid, simple wallets that are easy to use, how is a newcomer supposed to compete in the HW wallet market?  Ans: having all the features and security that Trezor and Ledger have and producing a sexier-looking device.  The SecuX looks like a woman's powder case or a stop sign.  Blech!

This part of the article describing how Grayscale's holdings are structured is confusing to me:


So they're not like a mutual fund where you can just buy and sell shares on the market?  I admit I'm not very familiar with Grayscale except for them being a large institutional holder of bitcoin, but if one is able to purchase whatever shares they're offering at a discount to bitcoin's price (if that's indeed what the article is implying), why hasn't someone done so before it made the news?  Markets are much more efficient than this seems to suggest.

On a related note, I've been wondering about companies like MSTR that hold a lot of bitcoin--and what their shareholders are thinking right about now.  I did notice MSTR's stock has taken quite a hit.  In the beginning of November, their share price was over $800, but now it's dipped below $500.  Yikes.

In my above post, it probably sounds like I'm minimizing experiences like yours, but that wasn't my intent.  Still, I think the fear is overblown and the media won't let up. 

I have to wonder how many people are visiting emergency rooms because they think they have COVID and are frightened unreasonably that they might die from it, i.e., they don't belong in any of the high-risk categories.  From everything I've read the omicron strain (not sure why they're called "variants" now, but it could be my ignorance) is more transmissible but far less lethal than the other ones.

I'd also add that I think people are being fed the wrong statistics with regard to COVID, and that's purposely being done to crank up the fear factor--and remember, I'm not a conspiracy theorist!  All I hear about is positivity rates and transmissibility, when the only statistic that should matter is death rate.  No matter how hard we try, people are going to get sick.  The government's policies should be aimed solely at reducing mortality, and even then I think society is sacrificing a lot of freedom in the name of safety and security.  That's bad.

The health care system isn't going to collapse.  There may be some strain on its resources, but again....that's what we were being told in 2020.

Again, I support skarais's application here, and I CC'ed Theymos on a response to a recent PM by skarais (hope you don't mind, but I thought it might do some good and at least wouldn't do any harm).

What's the harm of adding one more merit source, and especially one who's active on the Indonesian board?  There are probably merit sources out there who've lost their zeal for the job, ones who aren't active on any of the local boards, and some who've quit.  Why not just give skarais a chance here?  Obviously he wants to help members rank up and would probably do a damn good job as a merit source.

C'mon Theymos.  Give the guy a shot.

The Linux community is a pretty fractured one if I've heard right, and even if it wasn't I wouldn't treat their opinion about this merger as a Nostradamus-type prediction. 

What I do know is that Microsoft wants its hands in everything (which it almost does already) and that they don't give two shits about anyone's privacy--that's the part I care about most.  Having been a long-time Windows user, it's disturbing how much information they attempt to gather, and if I were just a little bit more computer savvy I'd be in that Linux community myself. 

Assuming MSFT is allowed to go through with the merger I have a hard time believing they'll just take a hands-off approach and let Activision-Blizzard continue as it was.  No doubt they'll make some radical changes for the worse, though I have no idea yet what they'll look like.  They are a ruthless company that doesn't mind breaking the law to get what they want, so if I was a gamer (which I'm not) I'd be very careful about what games I buy if and when MSFT gains control of Activision-Blizzard.  Too bad a lot of gamers don't care about privacy, especially younger ones.

I call BS on this one, and I don't care how many scientists/doctors from Harvard are interviewed.  And not for nothing, but I knew a Harvard medical school grad who turned into a disgraced neurosurgeon and "doctor feelgood" who all the opiate addicts would flock to with cash in hand to get their Percocets--which is to say that I don't trust arguments from credentials per se.

But the reason I see this bit of news as crap is because we've heard this story before--right at the beginning of the pandemic, in fact.  Remember all those stories of how the US couldn't get enough ventilators to keep up with demand and that coroner's offices couldn't keep up with the number of corpses because of COVID (I think that was in NYC)?  Well, those stories got the fear response they were out for and then quietly disappeared once the real situation turned out not to be nearly as bad as all the talking heads were saying.

You want to get back to normal?  Take some personal responsibility and just go back to normal and stop living in fear and government mandates.  They don't know anything about what's going on anyway, so why let them tell you what the facts are or what you should be doing with your life?  Unless you're 75 or older or have serious comorbidity, your chances of dying from COVID are slim to none.  And if you fit into any of those categories, then keep yourself safe but let the rest of us be free.

I'm not an anti-vaxxer or conspiracy theorist and don't mean to come off that way.  I'm curious about your statement.  If those aren't vaccines, what do you think they are? 

Dude, what country are you living in?  Seriously.

I hear conflicting reports about seemingly everything as it relates to jobs, employment, the economy, you name it.  For instance, you mentioned that the pandemic shuttered all these businesses and put people out of work, and yet here in the US it seems like people are doing everything they can not to work.  Businesses are hiring all over the place and jobs are plentiful.  The restaurants and other small businesses that closed temporarily in 2020 have been reopened for many months now, so that isn't a problem anymore.

And yet I'm still finding it hard to buy cat food and other everyday necessities because of some supply chain issue that I haven't been hearing many details about.  Are truckers out of work?  If so, why?  That's a story that never seems to get updated.

I'm tired of COVID, the hysteria surrounding it, people's reaction to it, and the government's mandates because of it.  I've unmasked and refuse to get a booster.  If governments knew what was best for them (which they don't), they would let the virus run its course and stop it with all this madness--and the media, too.  The more fear people have, the easier it is to sell advertising in newspapers and online, and the more power the government can give itself in the name of people's safety.  That's the truth.

noormcs5 bumped this thread after months of inactivity, and there was no need to, because what he wrote adds nothing to what has already been said here.  Probably the only thing he knows about crypto is how to use this site to earn money, so I'm guessing he searched for a thread he could at least write a shitpost in--which he did.

I reported this thread as being necrobumped.  True, it isn't that old but it didn't need to be resurrected.

Totally not safe, but the thing is that a lot of us were brought up with trust in financial institutions ingrained in us (or at least to the extent that your money won't disappear overnight or suddenly be locked up).  But crypto exchanges are a different beast altogether, and the level of trust you have in your local bank shouldn't be equal to that of any crypto exchange, casino, DeFi site, or whatever.  No matter how reputable those sites seem to be, that same golden rule always holds: not your keys, not your crypto.

That's good to hear.  I'm not very familiar with crypto.com, but I recognize them as being a fairly big (but new) player in the crypto biz.  It'd really suck if a site with that domain name was hacked so badly that their customers' funds were gone for good.  I bet the mainstream shithead news outlets would have a field day with that one.

Well, it's about time, don't you think?  The NASDAQ is higher than it's ever been after years of being just kind of meh.  Ever since 2008 or so, the entire stock market has been in a full-on raging inferno of a bull market.  If you've followed markets for any significant period of time, you know that that kind of performance isn't sustainable--especially with interest rates at 0%.  How long could they possibly stay that low?

I've been awaiting a crash or serious correction for a long time now, but it just never seems to come.  But it is coming, that I'm sure of.

Who knows, though?  It's not like there's reliable data for that--or if there is, I'm unaware of it.  If that was the case, I'd expect bitcoin to be soaring higher than it currently is, though I guess that assumes big investors are buying it on exchanges, which they might not be.  In fact, they could be buying derivatives or what not, which wouldn't be reflected in the reported price we see.

More likely, I think, is that investors are probably holding cash or cash equivalents, waiting to buy back into the stock market once things get a little bit cheaper.  That's usually what they do.

My newbie-helping numbers for the last two months are telling: I've gotten a lot more skeptical of new accounts, I think.  Either that or I just didn't come across any Newbies who hadn't made it to Jr. Member yet.  

Oh well, this is one of the statistics threads that I'm not gauging my merit source performance by--but thanks for keeping it updated, OP.  I'll try to be easier on the newcomers, though I probably won't see my name in the top 25 for a while.

He certainly isn't to blame, though I think he should be a bit more picky about who he sends his merits to (and that's just my opinion and isn't intended to bash Ratimov).  With so many of these new members getting banned, there's little doubt that at least some of them are repeat offenders trying to start fresh with new accounts.  That's one of the reasons why I'm very cautious about meriting noobs.

I don't know what exactly Kucoin is requiring from its customers at the moment, but as far as what you've written I'd say easier said than done.  Some of these exchanges are asking for selfies with people holding their drivers licenses and whatnot, and if you fake that and you end up part of some investigation into tax evasion or whatever....you're screwed.

Kucoin seems to work just fine KYC-less if you're only trading and withdrawing small amounts.  They asked me for KYC docs one time last year and then magically they never asked again.  To this day I have no idea what was up with that.

Hopefully Kucoin isn't going to require KYC docs from all of its customers, but I've been saying for some time that exchanges are going to be forced to do so eventually.  Some warning would be nice, though.

Props to OP for at least posting these questions, because it truly highlights my ignorance of bitcointalk history--and I've been a member now for maybe half its lifetime if my math isn't retarded.  Guess I just don't pay much attention to the finer details of the goings-on here.  Plus some of this stuff (like the newbie jail) happened or existed before my time.

I do remember when I was a lurker that there wasn't a trust system as we know it today, and there was the scammer tag system instead.  I've heard of why that "failed" but it seems like it was at least effective in putting a huge warning on someone's profile that couldn't be ignored even if one wanted to.

Not to stray off-topic, but I'm thinking one of the next bitcointalk Youtube videos ought to mention that thread and/or the threads contained within it.  There are some wild discussions and drama and certainly entertaining reading for those who've never looked at it.

I think NFTs are absolutely, utterly stupid.  Having said that, I agree with you about buying one if the funds were to go to charity (although I'm currently wearing Foxpup's sexy avatar at the moment and won't change until the Fox god gives the say-so).  

But that brings up another problem, which is the general issue of charity funds being used appropriately.  If, for instance, Foxpup were to create a series of NFT avatars for his cycling club and I were to buy one for charitable purposes, I'd want the funds to be used ASAP and not held in some pool for an indefinite length of time.  

It's actually not a bad idea, just fraught with problems.  I'd be willing to chip in if something like that were managed right.

Would anyone want to own a heavily-used avatar from a Foxpup Cycling Club member at some point down the road?  Just wondering.  If I bought one, I doubt I'd try to put it on the market--assuming NFT markets still exist a year or two from now, which I seriously question.  If they're still being bought and sold, I betcha people aren't going to be paying crazy amounts of money like they are today. 

Lol and a half at your level of enthusiasm.

Not to stray off OP's topic, but that's actually a good idea--but my guess is that future celebrants won't bother to look for that thread and will instead just start their own, especially if they haven't been on the forum that long.  Maybe if it were stickied, but even then....

OP, I was just kind of busting your balls, and I'm not looking for any thanks.  Take what I wrote as constructive criticism and not as an attempt to bash you.  You're putting in a decent amount of effort, even if your English is hard to understand, and that's a lot more than can be said for many members.  Peace.

Ha ha!  Congrats on hitting Legendary, BITCOIN4X.  I think I told you recently that I thought it was going to be a couple months before you got enough merit to rank up, but I was wrong in a good way. 

Savor the moment, the kudos, and the highest rank and then keep giving back those sMerits to members who need 'em to rank up.  You've seen how the merit system weeds out the undeserving and rewards the productive members, so you're an example to the newcomers who might think it's impossible to rank up past Jr. Member that it can be done.  Props to you, sir.

I had a good chuckle at this:


Obviously your feelings were hurt by my post made in this newbie-of-the-year thread, and it wasn't my intention to do that, but given what the thread was about I felt I had to be honest--and I was.  After reviewing that particular post of yours that I merited, I found it to be....subpar.  It isn't that I think you're a shitposter or that you aren't a valuable member of bitcointalk in the making, but someone who's going to be considered "newbie of the year" shouldn't be making any posts like this one, which is nearly incomprehensible.

Congrats on getting to Sr. Member.  That's not an easy feat these days, but why these horn-tooting threads keep popping up is puzzling to me.  The easiest explanation is that they're attempts to quickly earn merits, but someone please kick me if I'm being too cynical.