If I had to guess, I'd say you're correct on that one.  Foxpup is like a robot with the timing and yet (I think) I know he's not using a bot to make them.  Anyone who boozed it up to the point of it becoming a habit wouldn't even run a campaign like he does, much less be as consistent with the payouts as he is. 

In some people, true.  But Foxpup is Foxpup and I'm not even sure if he/she/it would even identify as a person--and I respect that. 

Let the purpose of the Cycling Club remain a mystery to the uninitiated, I say.

Bounty hunters (in general) care about the merit system to the extent that it allows them to rank up, and that's about it.  I seriously doubt any of them care about what anybody else is writing, because they're not paid to read or hand out merits--and the vast majority of them are here for the sole purpose of getting paid.  There are exceptions, of course, but what I just described is the rule.  And OP, you've pretty much presented good supporting evidence for that.

Bitcoin-paying sig campaigns are harder to get into than bounties, which seem to accept any member who applies (including alt accounts).  So it stands to reason that members who write the best posts and are invested in the forum are going to flock to campaigns instead of bounties.  Plus they tend to be members who've been on the forum for a while and know that the tokens that bounties pay out are usually complete shit, and that's in addition to the risk of not getting paid at all.

Well that's been discussed ad nauseam over the years, and I'm fresh out of ideas.  Theymos could probably come up with solutions, but I think he's satisfied that the merit system has reduced shitposts significantly since its inception (and it has).

LOL....I may steal that one for use in real life; hope you don't mind--and since you won't know anyway, thanks for the borrowed wittiness.

Man, I missed this thread because I have Services on ignore.  Can someone here please give me a seriously concise TL;DR about what this discussion is about?  I'd be meritably grateful, if you know what I mean and I'd even be willing to go full furry fuzzjob if that's what you'd prefer.  Sounds like my kind of thread up in this joint.

Oh wow, that's interesting!  I don't recall that discussion about the Merit Cycling Club whatsoever, and though I haven't scanned through that entire thread yet, I don't believe I posted in it.  I didn't realize there were such questions being asked about Foxpup's club or even that Three Millionth User had popped up there.  In fact, I don't even remember anything posted by him/her.

It is very strange that the actual 3,000,000th member registered on this forum would have that name, no?  I suspect that's not a coincidence at all but was done by Theymos or someone who has influence with him.  It could just be someone who was watching closely and had damn good timing, but somehow I doubt that.

Probably, but I bet it won't be until there's another milestone as far as registered members go.  Three Millionth User has got to be someone's alt account and given that they haven't posted much since registering, I suspect that the primary account is too busy.

Edit:  I now know why I missed LoyceV's thread--I have that section on ignore.  Fortunately the thread is still running for some reason, so I'm going to un-ignore it and see about posting in it ASAP.  Thanks for linking to it, OP.

Yeah, well it's a good thing you realized it now and not later, after you would have sent them more funds that you'd likely never have seen again.  Asking for money in order to withdraw is probably in the top ten methods scammers have (with variations on the theme) and use most frequently.

Lol.  I'm not into social media sites or whatever it is that Tinder has to offer, so I've never visited their site or used the app, but I'd bet money that you're correct that the "girls" on there (at least the ones who are apparently giving out links to crypto exchanges) are really humans with dickandballs, XY chromosomes, bearded faces, and yada yada.  Guaranteed.

OP, if you're going to use crypto exchanges, don't fall for these tricks.  I don't know how old you are, but you really ought to know better than this.

Oh, snap!  That's not a good thing, is it?  But I could almost figure that out in my head just by looking at my position for last month, because I was relatively lazy as a merit source and yet still came in at #8. 

Gonna try my best to bust out the merit hose and spray it in a bunch of directions this month, though I'm probably not off to a great start.  Once again, I appreciate you updating this thread.

Yeh, must be WO.  The only other gang I know of these days is Foxpup's Cycling Club but that gang doesn't match the hats.

Lol....are you actually offering those services or just posting a hypothetical scenario for whatever reason?  If you've found a way to do the above, then my guess would be that you've found a serious bug that might be of interest to Theymos.  I'm not a programmer or hacker, so I never was interested in that bug bounty (or paid much attention to what it was all about), but it sounds like something you might profit from rather than doing those scummy things.

I'd be very interested to see if OP is able to do what he's apparently claiming he can do.  I don't know if he's just blowing smoke or what.

That's interesting--I hadn't read anything about that before, but as you said the article is from July, so I doubt that's responsible for the massive drop we've seen in the past 24 hours.  Maybe there's some info about that or something else that hasn't hit the press yet but got leaked to some whales....that's the only thing I can think of aside from this just being a general selloff. 

And yikes, what a selloff this has been so far.  I've certainly seen bitcoin do some crazy things, but it's been a while since it's been down $10k within a matter of days.  Usually I don't worry about what's causing price swings like this, but I am curious about this one because there's been no bullish or bearish news besides the COVID stuff.

Glad you followed up on this thread, because usually people who start ones like this never do--and I'm also happy you got your funds back.  This is a case of better late than never, and it could have ended up much worse than it did.  It sucks that Hotbit froze your BNB for so long, but unless I'm mistaken you're actually in a better position owning them now than you were when they were frozen.  At least that's some comfort, right?

Oh, that's a derp on me; you wrote the same thing and I missed it.

Man, you bumped this thread and the last post was from TECSHARE (RIP) and the one before his was from xtraelv, and I'm wondering where he went off to.  He was very active for a while, and then it seems like he just disappeared.

And if we're talking again about drama and flaming threads, I haven't seen many of those in a while (which makes me wonder why you bumped this thread).  Back when Lauda, Vod, TECSHARE, and cryptohunter were around, it seems like there was always at least one thread that active and full of venomous hate-spewing.  Some of it was amusing, some of it not, but what I have noticed is that there don't seem to be many factions or cliques anymore, like that whole "cult of Lauda" thing. 

I wonder how long the peace will last.

That quote you pulled was from 2018 when the merit system was brand new.  Since then--and I'm sure you're aware of this--merit abusers have rarely been tagged by DT members (though that's a judgement call for anyone on DT).  I used to give merit abusers negative feedback but stopped quite a while ago, as did a number of other DT members. 

There's just way too much proof that's required to say someone is abusing the merit system, since people can send merits for any number of reasons, and a lot of times alt accounts can't be linked with enough certainty to make it worth tagging someone.

Yes, the forum would still exist, though there certainly wouldn't be as much activity as there is at present.

But OP, you've apparently been here longer than I have, and this topic has been discussed multiple times over the years.  Why are you asking a question like this?  Did you miss all of the threads that discussed sig campaigns and the effect their removal would have on the forum?  Did you miss the conclusion that regardless of what would happen, Theymos has no plans on banning them?  Are you the original owner of your account?

Lol.  As I said, activity would decrease if sig campaigns and bounties suddenly went away--in fact, it would probably drop off a cliff since a huge proportion of members are financially incentivized to spend time here and post.  Look at other crypto forums that don't have sig campaigns (which would be all of them AFAIK).  Even if it's a popular coin, there's nowhere near the level of activity that bitcointalk has, and I don't think that has to do with bitcoin's dominance.

It's a moot point, though.  As I also said, this isn't something we have to worry about for now.

The real, real solution is to never log out, though I have to assume OP knows that and for whatever reason can't remain logged in forever.  I don't think I've ever had a problem with bitcointalk's captcha, but I'm always logged in and have had my settings that way for a long time, so it's possible I have.

Not sure if all of those bots and spammers we've had here were using Tor or not, but that captcha is definitely necessary to keep the bots away.  If it didn't exist, this forum would be the target for massive spam attacks.  In fact, I believe when I registered in 2015 there wasn't a login captcha and the problem with new accounts posting spam for health supplements and so forth was a lot worse back then.

All the rules and the enforcement of them are fuzzy at best--except for plagiarism, which I've always found somewhat baffling.  It's against the rules to offer illegal services or products, but you can post something that's obviously scammy even if it isn't technically illegal, and known scammers are free to keep being members here....and I could go on.

I think I had a thread deleted once or twice, and I never received a PM notifying me of it.  With deleted posts, I've always gotten the standard moderator PM.  OP, you probably realize both of those situations are what happens by now, so hopefully you've had your dilemma solved.  I didn't look at what you posted, so I can't comment as to why it got deleted.  A lot of times it depends on the judgement of whatever moderator received a complaint or saw a thread that they thought was inappropriate, and again that's part of the fuzziness of forum moderation here.

Royse777, I'm happy to have helped you out, as you're a good poster and an asset to the forum.  I'm also happy to see that you didn't send merit back my way but passed it on to others.  With the exception of about 3 members, I don't see posts made by the others in the list of people you've sent merits to all that often, so you're right about the merit system ideally working in a circle of sorts.  It definitely shouldn't be used between two groups of members while excluding a whole lot of others.

Congrats on hitting 2000 merits; normally I don't go for these kinds of threads, but I don't suspect you're trying to fish for merits and I know how it feels to break a new 4-digit number of merits.  Getting 2000--even if you were one of the old-school Legendaries who had the initial 1000 airdropped to them--isn't easy.

To anyone reading this who's wondering why it's so hard to earn merits, take note that it took almost 4 years for Loyse777 to get as many as he did, and he's a member who's established a good reputation on the forum and makes good posts.  So yeah...it's just hard to earn merits in general. 

Yeah, I was thinking of Kucoin when I read OP's post.  They allow you to stake a whole bunch of PoS coins, and I think most of them pay out daily, with one exception I know of being ETH 2.0, which is weekly. 

Eh, those are gambling sites and I think you'd be better off using one of the exchanges Bitcoin_Arena mentioned if you just want to stake coins on a centralized service (which I don't recommend).  It'd be much, much better if you staked coins in your own wallet and didn't entrust them to an exchange or some gambling site that could go poof overnight--it's happened before, and I'm sure it'll happen again.

Not shilling NEO, but that particular coin allows you to earn NEO GAS without even having to run a wallet 24/7.  It doesn't get any easier than that.

That whole ironic "Coming Soon" thing on the Youtube video is starting to be a little more frustrating than amusing at this point (at least for me).  I know all things bitcointalk move at the speed of a crippled tortoise, but I was fairly certain that there had been some thought and planning put into the creation of the channel and would have expected a followup video much sooner than this.

And I'm still kind of surprised that there are less than 40 subscribers, even if there's only been a preview video released.  Either a whole lot of people who might watch the channel's videos haven't seen the preview yet or there just isn't the interest in it that a lot of us thought there would be.  I'm very curious to see if the sub count increases if and when the second video gets put out.

OK, I got one here.  Maybe it's not so bad that it's good or even funny, but damn is it a shitpost and a half:


For whatever reason, the thread that post is in has attracted a lot of low-quality posters, which is too bad as it's a pretty good topic to discuss in the context of economics, i.e., where we as parents or potential parents should be steering our kids in terms of making money when they're young.  Mr. Newlifebtc above probably went well beyond whatever character quota his shitty bounty requires.  Maybe someone should tell him that he's putting too much effort into his posts.  Lol.

Runner up (from a Legendary member no less!):

There's a lot of advice I'd give my kids, but as far as the above statement is concerned, I would not encourage them to get into gaming or being a professional Youtuber or any of the online money-making stuff the younger generation is into these days.  Would I discourage gaming in general?  Hell no!  I spent a lot of time playing video games as a kid, but doing it professionally--even if it's lucrative--is a waste of your brainpower.  The world needs the younger generation to get into STEM fields and teaching and all of those other professions that actually benefit humanity in a significant way.

How much does anyone benefit from someone becoming a professional gamer/social media influencer/whatever other than the person whose career choice that is?  Answer: very little.  I see a lot of intelligence being squandered just watching Youtube videos about how people have dropped out of medical/vet/dentistry school to pursue a career as a Youtuber, and I find that utterly repulsive (and if I'm being honest, selfish).

Yes, there's a lot of money to be made by gaming or other online ventures, but money isn't everything and even those careers in gaming and related stuff aren't guaranteed to be there forever.

Mark my words: NFTs are a fad (or at least they're not going to be worth a hell of a lot in the future).  They're digital tulips that people are going out of their minds for, and once those people wake up and realize that a digital representation of art doesn't have the same value as physical art, the market is going to crash.  If you tell your kids to invest in NFTs, you're out of your mind.

990th most earned merit, and you've earned a total of 160 so far?  Holy crap, if that's true then that tells me that there really aren't that many members who are accumulating a lot of merits.  There are certainly a lot of merits being sent, but there are also tons of Jr. Member accounts with 1 merit and probably a lot of accounts with fewer than 100 that have gone inactive for various reasons.

If you're in the top 1000 merit earners with only (and I don't mean to belittle your merit earning) 160 merits, then I'd guess that most of the merits in existence belong to the profiles of a relatively small number of members.  Crazy, isn't it?

And I did take a look at BPIP, which I don't normally visit, and when I checked the list of top merit earners that does seem to be the case.