Which is why we ideally need to steer the conversation with the general public more towards the tangible benefits they can gain from actually using Bitcoin, rather than the fiat money they may or may not make speculating with it.

The only "reason" prices move like they do is that markets are fickle and traders are seemingly quite susceptible to hype and FOMO.  It doesn't really make a lot of sense and it's certainly not very easy to explain to the uninitiated masses in simple terms.

Unless this is your not-so-subtle way of asking for help writing some code, posting your wishlist on a forum is not going to achieve anything.  First you need some code, then you need to test it to breaking point and prove it's better than what we currently have.  Then, if people are supportive of the new code, you can start planning your fork.  Until then, you're in the same league as a kid sitting on Santa's lap hoping that a grown-up is listening.  Sorry, you're not getting a pony.

If you present arguments that Craig Parasite is satoshi, you are facilitating criminal activity.  You are an accomplice in an act of identity theft.  You are as much of a fraud as CSW himself.

You tell me.  How long is it going to take you to figure out that he's not what he's pretending to be?  How many times does he have to lie to your face before you finally figure out he's using you?  Every time you defend him, you are enabling a charlatan to defraud more people.  Does that not bother you?

At this stage, I honestly don't care if you share some ideological views with Faketoshi.  Keep pushing for larger blocks if you genuinely think that's what is best.  But stop supporting this absolute parasite attempting to coopt satoshi's identity.  You are currently complicit in his crime.

Same here.  Thank you for going above and beyond, DarkStar_, but I'd like to think all the participants here would always understand if there's something causing a delay which is beyond your control.

And, while I'm seemingly a bit late to the party, congrats iasenko!

I don't get why anyone thinks it's their business.  It's not your bitcoin, so surely the most reasonable argument to make is that it's of no concern to you where it ended up. 

Yep, there's no way back for him now.  People either already recognise him for the fraud that he is, or will soon recognise him for the fraud that he is.  It's only a matter of time before he's totally discredited, but he has literally no other choice, short of disappearing from the public eye and going into hiding, perhaps, than to keep pushing forward with increasingly implausible lies.

I'm guessing you missed this topic.  The reason we need Bitcoin is that you can only copy so much when making an altcoin.  You can't copy the userbase.  You can't copy the adoption.  You can't copy the hashrate.  You can't copy the dev talent.  You can't copy the essence of what it really is.  So you end up with a cheap copy.  That's why altcoins are cheap to use.  You generally get what you pay for in life.

When you accept that satoshi doesn't want to be found and that you are not owed the information of their identity, it ceases to be a mystery.  Respect their right to privacy.

As for Craig Parasite, he's just a run-of-the-mill identity thief.

I wouldn't say it needs any further fleshing out.  It's succinct and to-the-point.  Combined with the argument that the fork-coin clients are incapable of syncing with the chain built by the largest pool of CPU power because of the myriad consensus rules they've broken, it's a slam dunk.

The media are quite mistaken, as usual.  "China" is more than just its government.  If everyone in China was anti-Bitcoin, then the media can report that "China is anti Bitcoin".  But as it stands, that's clearly not the case.  Bitcoin does not require approval from governments in order to function, so it doesn't matter if the government of a particular nation don't like it.  The fact that all those Bitcoin users who are based in China are willing to act against the wishes of their government speaks volumes.  It means we clearly have something to offer if they're prepared to risk attracting attention from an authoritarian regime and the benefits must outweigh the potential ramifications for them.

Horseshit.  The original protocol did not require an Emergency Difficulty Adjustment.  The original protocol wasn't so weak and feeble that it wouldn't survive without breaking the original consensus rules like that.

Mess about with the formula all you like, you simply can't recreate all the vital parts that make Bitcoin what it is.

If you want to talk about your forkcoin, there's an Altcoins sub for that.  Stop defecating all over Bitcoin Discussion with your altcoin crap.

It's difficult to succinctly summarise why Bitcoin has value because it's a combination of many things all coming together as one.  It does take a while to absorb and consider all the different facets and it's likely the reason people don't always "get it" right away.  And in some cases, they sadly never understand at all.

To start off, I'm reminded of that line from 'V for Vendetta':
So firstly it's that guaranteed certainty that there is absolutely no way of undoing what has been done.  This can't be un-invented.  People are going to pursue this idea relentlessly for the rest of forever.  It can't be killed.  Throw whatever obstacles you want in our path, we're not stopping.

Secondly, it's about the underlying principles that attracted the earliest adopters.  At a time when the bitcoins being mined had a fiat value of a fraction of a cent, it had very little to do with speculation.  So what was it that drew these people in?  People saw something they liked, something they could get behind, something they could believe in.  Something that quite literally changed the world and opened up some pretty amazing possibilities.  People could recognise this from just looking at it.  Yet, for some reason, these crucially important qualities of open-source, permissionless, censorship resistant, trustlessness, limited supply, etc are normally the first thing many altcoins sacrifice, usually in favour of some lame marketing gimmick.  It's baffling.  People clearly want those fundamental things at the heart of it.

Next up is the facet that Bitcoin found its equilibrium almost instantly with an economic incentive to secure the chain.  Other chains have failed spectacularly at maintaining this alignment of incentives and have proven more profitable to attack than they have been to secure.  

The security itself is a factor as well.  And Bitcoin is still the most secure of them all.  Bar none.  No contest.  You want cheaper and faster?  You're going to have to sacrifice some security.  That's just how it is.

Then there's the workforce.  An ever-growing army of developers who work tirelessly to improve the base protocol and other devs that are focused on new layers built on top.  The fact that many contributors have done this work totally unpaid over the years speaks volumes to that second point about believing in what we're doing.  Few coins can match the raw pace of development we possess.  Fewer still can match the quality and stability of the code our devs produce.

Utility is clearly something that will help define value.  Network effects naturally increase with more users.  The more people who accept Bitcoin and the more places you can spend it, the larger our economy grows.  It's only going to become more useful over time.  This, in turn attracts yet more users.  

And, while it should go without saying because it's one of the most important parts, it's about decentralisation.  Another one of those bits that can't be replicated or cloned.  You can copy the code, but you can't copy the actual human beings who all choose THIS code.  I'm sure I've said it a hundred times before, but code means nothing if no one runs it.  

So while people can say simple things like "no one can censor or reverse your transaction", "transact with who you want, when you want", "be your own bank", etc, there's so much that goes into making those advantages possible.  It only works with all of the ingredients.    

You must be watching one of the fork-coin repositories by mistake.  Bitcoin probably has more code commits than most altcoins put together.  There are a few exceptions, but Bitcoin is generally one of the most actively developed coins.

Toddlers get pretty indignant when they're lying to your face because they don't want to get caught being in the wrong.  I see Faketoshi very much as an angry little toddler throwing a tantrum because no one believes his tall tales.

My thoughts are:  Change the topic title immediately because Faketoshi isn't satoshi.  I don't care how many clickbait websites and blog posts the scammers set up in an attempt to mislead people.

I think more forums should upgrade to look like this one.  Balls to 2020 and its mindless obsession with far too much whitespace around the edges of the page.

No distance would be great enough, I suspect.  Every single word said by a verified and real satoshi about a present-day Bitcoin would be over-analysed to death and people would try to interpret every last syllable a million different ways.  It would just be too disruptive.

Whoever wrote that is desperately clutching at straws.  There's nothing concrete in any of that and it's just wishful thinking on their part that they haven't been duped by a con-artist.  I'm sorry, but both they and you have been deceived.

Nope.  I've sent merit to 143 different profiles and not once to an unintended recipient.  Knowing that, much like Bitcoin itself, mistakes can't be undone, you double check before you send.

//EDIT:  Oh, but like DdmrDdmr said, back when the merit system was first introduced, I originally sent too little, so later revisited those posts and sent more.