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.

So where did we end up here?  I'm assuming voting ended on the 9th, right?  Tell me if I've missed something other than the lack of enthusiasm for this contest.  The thread just seems to have died off without a winner declared.

Lol.  n0nce should have taken this thing hands-down.

I'm not sure that's the case, though I haven't checked and haven't read through this thread fully yet.  If PP is indeed still owned by eBay, I'm not sure why they decoupled in the last year.  Sellers on eBay are no longer required to accept PayPal, and I don't think most buyers use it anymore like they had to before the decoupling. 

I don't think this is just some hype announcement, either.  PayPal is probably looking to create its own stablecoin--but so was Facebook when it announced Libra, and we all saw how well that went down with the regulators.  I don't see much of a difference here; each company was attempting to make its own version of the USD, and the government didn't take kindly to that.  Even if PayPal's version succeeded, it's not something I'd take seriously as a cryptocurrency, because you can be damn sure any transactions using it would be tracked even more closely (and permanently) than any payment system that went before it.

And you know what?  That's just what the government wants--just take a look at the new regulations on taxes for eBay sellers.  I don't know who the IRS is going after, but eBay has to send sellers a 1099 form for any sales over $1000 or something like that.  Apparently it's the little sellers, because $1000 isn't a hell of a lot of money these days.  Something makes me think PayPal might just get its way with this one, and it'd put them in bed with the government 100%.

OK, that all sounds very interesting--and no doubt there's a huge need for assistance with legal fees (which are fucking outrageous)--but this concept looks, smells, and quacks like an ICO project.  And yeah, I get that this is a "tech startup" and not some fly-by-night Russian scammer creating an ANN thread in the Tokens section with a plagiarized whitepaper....but it looks like it might as well be one.

During the ICO craziness of 2017-20??, I saw a lot of ideas on paper that were claiming to use blockchain technology (or tokenization) to solve real-world problems.  Most of them were above my head, but the ones dealing with medical things showed me how goofy and utterly ridiculous the idea is for the most part.  The fact is that in any system, be it legal, medical, whatever, the glaring inefficiencies that have existed for many years won't be solved by slapping a token on it and somehow crowbarring the problem into a blockchain.

This idea does seem a bit more well-thought out, and a profit sharing project in the world of litigation does sound enticing.  I'm going to bookmark the Vice link just as a reminder, and I'll see what this startup is doing a year from now.  Were I a gambling man, I'd wager that it will have become a total failure, but we'll see.

This quote gets my hackles up, however: 
One of the many things I detest about the US legal system is precisely what that quote stated outright, i.e., that it takes money to get justice.  That's why so many poor folks get convicted of crimes--they get a public defender who doesn't give a shit about their case and convinces them to plead guilty instead of fighting it out in court.  And why does that happen?  Because criminal lawyers ain't cheap.

Thanks for the info, Hydrogen.

Damn right it's terrible--and not only inflation itself, but the availability of everyday items people need, as there's still some kind of supply chain chaos going on.  Good luck trying to buy cat food your cats will actually eat.  You'd be better off starting a mouse farm at home, and I say that only half-jokingly.  It'd be cruel to do so, but the economics would probably work out just fine.

Meanwhile, the headlines on every newspaper I see: "COVID cases spike".  Every fucking day.  It's as if the ship is sinking and the band is playing some horrible tune that isn't designed to secretly alert the crew that there's an impending disaster.  I've never seen things as bleak as this in my life, nor people acting as irrationally as they are.

Inflation is just the beginning.  Not sure if bitcoin is going to be the solution or not, but I'm hoping there is a solution, period.

I'm curious about those "bad conditions" though I'm not arguing that people are refusing to work.  I just saw an example of that tonight, where a store is closed because there wasn't enough staff to keep it open.  What are those conditions, exactly?  Being forced to wear masks?  Other COVID-related BS?

Ha ha....I'm lovin' the 3rd video.  Honestly, I'd forgotten all about those 2020 awards for the most part, mostly since I knew I wasn't going to get many votes in any of the categories.  What I found odd is that the mention of those awards included Lauda twice, a member who's long gone from the forum.

I would have loved to have commented with my username, but I'm degoogling my life and have deleted my Youtube account.  Apparently you can't create a new one without linking your phone number to it, which I'm not willing to do.  Props to Cyrus and whoever else was behind the new vid!  I'm looking forward to more.

DeFi won the 2020 award for biggest fail?  Wow, I must have lost track of time in a big way.  I thought it was still red hot back then--is there an official date of death for that whole sector of crypto or what?

Pretty much, except that it would probably be a lot easier setting up a real bank account online than it is to try to upload KYC documents with a crypto exchange.  For some reason they all seem to demand pixel-perfect photos.  I can see the need for a picture of you and your drivers license to be clear, but I know what OP is dealing with here.

Maybe at some point way in the future, Binance and Coinbase will have regional branches sort of like traditional banks do.  It's probably not likely, but it'd be convenient if there was some sort of walk-in service in major cities.  Just thinking out loud.

I'm yet another person who's wondering why OP is asking this particular question.  Hhampuz, I haven't seen you around in a long time but I'm assuming you're still managing campaigns, right?  Did you kick anybody out of any of them lately?  OP's post really looks like he's slinging mud (and it's a very poor attempt at that) because he has a grudge against you.  Since I'm pretty sure you haven't cheated anyone, that's the only thing I can think of.  And besides, if you'd scammed anyone they wouldn't start a thread like this.

I suppose we'll never hear from OP again--or at least from the alt account he used here.  The use of the term "garbage man" is also mildly amusing if you live in the US, because it's an informal job title rather than an insult.

Ha ha!  LoyceV scratched your back pretty hard for the above post, and that was nice of him to do. 

Yes, I've given you a lot of merits without you giving me any in return--and that's just the way I want it.  You're one of the few members who's taken me up on my offer of a post history review, and in case anyone is wondering, that's why you've gotten so many merits from me.  Sometimes posts just have to be pointed out to me to get me to merit them, because I often overlook them or just plain don't come across them.

You're going to hit Legendary in no time, bro.  I'd say within a couple of months.

You know, I clearly remember the start of 2021 when bitcoin was at $10k-$17k or somewhere in that range and it was starting to get some real momentum before COVID hit the world, and then it started sinking.  Amazingly, when everything was looking bleaker by the day with businesses forced to shut down and so on, it started to climb again until it eventually hit a new all-time high. 

Even before COVID, I didn't hold out any hope that bitcoin would even get close to its previous ATH in 2021--but it did.  Thus I could sit here at my keyboard and type out a prediction for 2022, but why bother?  Most likely I'll be wrong, and it's certain that nobody cares anyway. 

We're off to a weak start this year, but though that might not be a good sign, we're only a week into 2022.  There's plenty of time for bitcoin to rebound and rocket to Mars if that's what it's going to do.  I will say that it's probably going to depend at least in part on general economic conditions, because if people don't have money to play with they're not going to be buying crypto.  So far as that goes, I'm fairly pessimistic.  Interest rates could rise, inflation could skyrocket, and who knows what the jobs market is going to do. 

Whatever happens, I raise my glass to the forum and propose a toast to bitcoin and a new ATH in 2022! 

Eh....whatever.  Bitcoin dropped a significant amount in the last what, day and a half?  We weren't in a bear market two days ago, and this correction that happened may or may not mean anything about where the bitcoin market is headed.

It could be that some people got tired of waiting for the price to skyrocket and decided to cash out now (or it could have been a whale or two).  It could be anything, really.  The drop from $50k to $41.2k in such a short time frame kind of has me puzzled.  There hasn't been any bad news that I know of that would cause a panic, and there's not much else that influences bitcoin besides factors that drive demand.  Guess it'll have to remain a mystery.

Bear markets don't always start with a massive dip like this, either.  The only way we're going to know what kind of market we're really in is to wait a few months at least to see if bitcoin recovers or continues to slide.  I have my fingers crossed.

I wasn't even thinking of plagiarism in this case; after looking at the quote I just wanted to know where it came from, because I wasn't sure if I should believe GS made a prediction like that.

Bitcoin supplanting gold?  What does that even mean?  And I'm not talking about definitions, I'm wondering about how it would even be possible that bitcoin would essentially become a substitute for gold.  The comparisons between the two have been talked about for years, but they're two very different things that happen to share some similar characteristics.  Gold isn't ever going to be in danger of losing much value unless Elon Musk figures out a way to mine it on asteroids and thereby dilutes the supply.

So five years for bitcoin to reach $100k....not sure if that's going to happen or not.  Something tells me that the good times are going to be over by then (and I'm not talking about life in general; I'm talking about the bull market we've been in for over a decade), and interest rates will be higher, inflation will have eroded the value of the USD, and people will have become less inclined to speculate in risky assets.

But hey, I've been wrong many times before--especially when it comes to predicting economic conditions and the price of bitcoin.

If there are such people (and I've never heard of any), they're pretty stupid.

OP, I probably wouldn't send any videos with Michael Saylor talking about bitcoin to your friend.  I've seen a few and there's no denying he's very intelligent, but as Leviathan.007 alluded to, he's pretty much a bitcoin permabull.  Your friend would be better off watching a documentary like Cryptopia and maybe one of the other big documentaries having to do with bitcoin.  Saylor would probably buy bitcoin at any price, which I find to be a bit disturbing for someone running a publicly-traded company and buying BTC with the company's money.

Not sure what the average price he got in at, but I'm wondering if MSTR is now in the red with its bitcoin investment.

Speaking of that, you probably should suggest to your friend that he not watch youtube videos on bitcoin, because very few of them are skeptical of it or are anything other than pure hype.  If you just search "bitcoin" on YT, everything that pops up is made by people trying to sell you on get-rich-quick schemes.

I can verify that's true, which it wasn't maybe a year ago.  It's so nice not to have to log into another website just to post a single image to include in a post.

OP, you got all your answers and you're on your way to becoming a Jr. Member, which will allow you to post images.  In the meantime if you want to post with an image in it, I can quote the post for you so it'll show up if you drop me a PM.  Good luck on the forum, and may your skin be thick!

To be fair, this charity these members were running was amateur hour at best and not representative of bigger, professionally managed ones--but that's not to say that those other charities don't have their problems with money management and/or fraud, because quite a number of them have.

Honestly, I don't think this was planned as a scam from the beginning at all, and if I understand correctly they did distribute some funds/goods to needy people.  That leads me to believe that somewhere along the line having all of that bitcoin in their hands just became too much of a temptation.  The pilfering probably started small and escalated (that's an assumption based on how embezzlement cases usually progress), and by the time it got out of hand they stopped communicating anything about the charity in hopes nobody would notice.

Wow!  First of all, you deserve all the merits you got for this experiment, and you get big props from me for taking the initiative to do what you did

Second, I'm not sure what to think about the results.  You're probably correct that members who post only links to or snippets from crypto news outlets are being compensated for their work--but I'm not sure if that's necessarily unethical on the news sites' part.  It seems kind of like a newspaper outlet trying to increase their circulation via advertising, which historically they've always done.  Getting eyeballs on their articles and getting people to visit their sites by having bitcointalk members promote them seems pretty tame.

That's the bad part of all this, though I'm assuming these shills are posting in the Press section?  If I'm not mistaken, that one has been full of spammy members for a long time now, and I don't think there's been much discussion going on in it for a long time. 

Very interesting, Pmalek.  Again I applaud what you did--though I wish you'd name names.

I'm not accusing you or anyone else of being on the extreme end of those things, but wouldn't you agree that banning a member based on his opinions is just a wee bit authoritarian?  Trolls are one thing, and that's a unique case where a member isn't voicing an unpopular opinion but rather posts inflammatory stuff just to spark up a flame war--like cryptohunter and his crew, and even in his case I didn't advocate for a ban.  I made a thread asking the community to basically shun him, because if nobody replies to trolls, they tend to just go away.

And also, I agree with this:

That's the key here.  If I thought franky1 was posting about LN topics simply to piss everyone off, I'd absolutely support a ban.  But I've read his posts before, and I really think he's posting sincerely and is not trolling.

Probably it looks like I've dug in my feet on this, but I've been very sensitive as of late about speech being censored.  I linked to that video where the US government is trying to regulate what people write on Facebook, and I find that outrageous.  This world seems like it's moving toward thought policing, and if you support free speech then you have to watch out when you start thinking about appealing to an authority in order to shut down someone else's speech. 

There are other options, which I and other members have suggested.  I'd also add that Theymos probably wouldn't go for a ban on franky1, and it'd be nice if he popped in and shared his thoughts on this.

I gave you 4 merits for using the word syllogize, not necessarily because I'm agreeing with you--I just want that noted.  I appreciate the higher-level vocabulary, as I see so little of it used around here.  Now as far as providing valid arguments to rebut franky1's posts, you've probably done all you can, and again I say this: Let the community use their brains to decide for themselves which argument makes the most sense. 

At this point if you continue to argue with franky1, all you're going to get are more posts that frustrate you.  I'd suggest perhaps you take a deep breath, walk away from the keyboard for a while (or at least any thread having to do with the LN in which franky1 is posting), and regroup your thoughts.

Yes, but the moderators should not be the truth gatekeepers either.  Would you really want that?  To me that sounds very authoritarian, sort of like Jen Psaki talking about the government's "suggestions" to Facebook as to what info about COVID reaches FB users' eyes.

I'm not sure what you mean by the above--especially the second statement, although I can't remember what kind of financial shenanigans Theranos was up to.  The only thing I recall from the Bad Blood book is how they were basically lying to their partners and investors and that the workplace environment was one of paranoia and extreme micromanagement by Holmes. 

But since they did receive money from investors and weren't truthful about what they were doing with it (if I remember correctly), it makes sense that the SEC was involved.  I just don't remember any accounting trickery.

Let me tell you, that trend isn't current--or at least it isn't new.  The same thing was going on over 20 years ago when the internet was starting to explode.  Everyone was throwing money at these companies that had ideas about solving problems using the internet, and it was wild.  Now that I think about it, it was almost like the ICO market.  If you had an idea, you got money showered on you.