I'm sure if any number (n) of us started putting our brains to work, we could come up with n^56 number of ways such a contest could be abused, and the fact is it would only take a couple in practice to make it all go to shit right away.

Bitcointalk doesn't exactly need more members just for the sake of having them.  What it needs are fewer non-contributing bounty hunters, spammers, and various idiots who are here for reasons other than to discuss bitcoin.  I'm sure as hell not going to start proselytizing to my friends in real life about what an awesome forum I belong to and that they should join.  If someone's got a genuine interest in bitcoin and wants a place to read and/or post about it, they'll find this forum.

The only people I suspect invite their friends (and family, too) to register on bitcointalk are those who want to use it as a place of employment, and that's exactly what we need less of.  Bad idea, OP.

Man, the president of El Salvador is young, just judging by his appearance.  In a way, that's great to see because he may not have been jaded by the corrupt world of politics just yet and might also have some fresh ideas (like the one being discussed here). 


That sounds enticing, doesn't it?  I honestly don't know if I would take that statement at face value, because there are always some strings attached when someone says something like that--and in addition, the part about the volcano powering the operation comes off as being a bit crazy-like.


Now that's a hell of a lot of bitcoin he's talking about there.  Makes me wonder where that bitcoin would come from, assuming things are actually paid for with BTC and not fiat.

Assuming the market for the coin you're trading is liquid enough to have your order filled within minutes/seconds.  If you're trying to buy or sell some obscure altcoin that trades in a very thin market, it could take a while--just like with penny stocks that trade OTC.

As far as the other things OP is asking about...there are tons of services that Binance and other exchanges offer.  I've looked at some on Kucoin, for example, and it's hard to know what's what and how much risk each offer entails.  I'd say that the promised return on your investment, i.e., the return the exchange quotes you, is proportional to the riskiness of the service.  Staking coins is a good way to earn income, but there are a lot of PoS coins that don't have a lot of liquidity and carry substantial risk as far as losing value while you're staking them.  So just beware of that.

This thread ought to be in the gambling section or Scam Accusations, although I wouldn't consider it a proper accusation.

What you described above could apply to pretty much any unregulated online casino in operation today.  None of them care about problem/addict gamblers or money laundering or age restrictions, and that's also true of a lot of physical casinos as well.  They're in the business of taking money from people who like to gamble (which I personally find a silly thing to do), and they know damn well that the longer you play on their site, the more they're going to take from the player. 

The casino business model has always been a shady one, whether you care to admit it or not.  Roobet, 1xbit, and all the other sites have varying degrees of trustworthiness as far as being able to withdraw your winnings, but don't kid yourselves about the inherent advantage-taking they all engage in.

There's no other logical reason I can think of for OP to be posting the crap he's been posting as of late.  Some of those posts quoted by Jawhead999 either make no sense because the English is so poor or take a position that just doesn't make sense and has the appearance of simply posting whatever in order to fulfill a post quota.  It's an old story and one we're all too familiar with.

OP, if I were you I'd be posting in your local board instead of trying to write posts in English, because not only is it apparent that it's not your first language, but you write so poorly in it that you really shouldn't even be trying to unless your command of the language improves significantly.  The members who've reported your posts and the mods who've taken action against them are all the proof you need that this is true.

Posting of PMs might be in breach of forum etiquette, but it's not against the rules (if I'm not mistaken), nor is it something someone should tag someone else for--unless, of course, that PM contained something that was agreed wouldn't be shared or has doxxing info in it, etc.

I've published PMs by shitposters begging to get their negative feedback removed before, and I probably shouldn't have done that and haven't done it since.  However, if you send a PM to anyone here, you'd do well to not write anything you absolutely wouldn't want public, because you have no idea what the receiver of the PM is going to do.  There's no right to privacy as far as those PMs are concerned, whether you like it or not.

If someone offers you some sort of illegal trade via PM, your best bet would be to report it to the mods.  If it's from an established member with a reputation, that's a bit tricky.  The community might need to know about stuff like that, depending on what the offer was.

Uh...there's that one thread I know of in Meta for undermerited members/posts, but the ones that get linked to there are usually posts made in English.  I'd love to be able to help OP out, but I wouldn't be able to read his posts.  But I thought the Indonesian board was pretty well-covered as far as merit sources go.  Maybe I'm mistaken.

I tend to agree with you there, but as far as posting on the forum and earning merits goes, knowing English and being able to write it correctly and coherently is a huge advantage, whether the discussion is high level or not.  Most merit sources frequent the English sections, and there probably aren't enough sources for each local board.

My advice is that if you can't write English very well, don't try to earn merits that way.  Many have tried, few have succeeded.

And that's about all you need to know about the other site--and I've been fooled into entering my login information there once or twice when I've forgotten that this site has the .org extension instead of .com.  Luckily I was able to change my password quickly enough such that I didn't get hacked.  Somehow I don't think the .com version is a phishing site, though, because I haven't seen tons of complaints of having accounts stolen because of trying to log into their site instead of the real one--and I'm sure I'm not the only bonehead who's done that.

But damn how I wish the .com site would just disappear (or get bought by Theymos), because it can be confusing for newbies.  Doesn't look like it's going anywhere, though, because it's been up and running for years.

They seem to be done pretty lightly, i.e., if you're caught plagiarizing or serial spamming, you're gone.  The mods just hit a button and that's it.  It's strange that those two infractions are the only ones that seem to ever result in permabans, but that's bitcointalk for ya.

I've seen maybe two cases of a permaban being overturned in all my years here.  One was ChiBitCty (don't know if I spelled the name right), and the other one was a real asshole that ran a gambling site if I remember correctly, and he made a huge stink about it.  But both were a long time ago, so that should tell you that it's rare. 

There was some talk a while back about maybe instituting a signature ban instead of an all-out forum ban for isolated cases of plagiarism, but I don't think that discussion went anywhere.  IIRC there was a lot of support for that, and I supported some leniency myself (in certain cases).  But to implement any changes on the forum takes Theymos's consent, and he's rather slow in giving it.

I'm replying to myself here, but I wanted to follow up on what I wrote a couple of weeks ago--gas prices in my area have actually gone down somewhat, because that same gas station now has a gallon at $3.38.  There's probably not much to read into that, since oil/gas prices fluctuate just like every other commodity, and I don't think there's a downward trend as of yet.

And hey, I also remember when gas was at or above $5/gallon here in the US back in 2004 or so (it was so long ago that I don't remember the exact year(s) gas was that high, but I'm pretty sure I'm in the ballpark).  When you compare where we're at now to back then...whew.

More of a problem is getting my hands on everyday supplies like pet food.  The supply chain issues are no joke, regardless of whatever's causing them.

No, it's definitely not proof.  It's more like evidence that could be something or might not be--but props to OP for at least looking out for cheaters, because we all know they're in the walls of bitcointalk like termites.

The merit sending does look a little bit odd, and I wouldn't be shocked to find out that the members involved are alts or are part of a bounty farm, and I'll always have a fondness for this pic:



There's a lot of money to be made in bounties (and in having a ranked-up account), so no doubt there's merit abuse happening.  Whether it's happening with the members named in the OP I'm not sure, but it's definitely something to keep an eye on.

How the hell are you supposed to explain your relationship with another user, assuming it's not an alt account?  If you tell Nitrogensports that you have no idea what they're talking about, I doubt that'll satisfy them, and if there is some kind of relationship between you and Mr. 5210473, then it's also not going to end up well for you. 

Are you using a VPN, by any chance?  I've heard theories that if two people are connected to the same VPN server and have the same IP address (I don't know much about how that works or if it's possible), you can be flagged as being the same person on gambling sites.  I believe I read a scam accusation recently where that was suspected.

I'm surprised no one has chimed in on this yet.  Hopefully someone will, but I'm not sure how much help you're going to get, OP.

That's the main problem, absolutely, but I do think those supply chain issues are playing a part in this--for whatever reason, be it that people aren't taking jobs in that supply chain or logistical issues or what have you.  It's damn hard right now to buy cat food at the grocery store in any quantity that my kitties like, so something's definitely wrong with moving product from manufacturer to store shelves.  Demand has probably been driven up as people have started to hoard everyday things (like the aforementioned cat food), which would obviously contribute to prices going up.

But as I said, I agree that the major culprit has been the government and their reckless fiscal policies.  Joe Biden didn't start all of this in the US, nor was it one single politician or even one country.  It's been an ongoing nightmare since at least 2008.

Yeah well, the music is going to stop abruptly (and probably soon) and after that, everyone will be scrambling for jobs.  Better secure employment now before the job market dries up if you're currently unemployed.

Sorry to see you go out of business this way, OP.  I know you were a very small exchange, but you were one of the only ones to list Curecoin (and thanks to DaveF and you for making that happen), which is a coin I've supported as well as the project underlying it for some time.

Has Shorelinecrypto ever made claims like this without backing them up?  I haven't read through this entire thread, but as far as I know there haven't been any scam accusations against them, and the owner seems to be an honest, decent guy.  Plus even with the hack and closure, people are not reporting that they're not getting their coins back, so I wouldn't be too hard on him.  The bottom line is that the exchange is closing down, and enough notice has been given to the customers to get their funds out--and that's way more than a lot of other exchanges have done when they've shut down.

Aw shit....it's way too early in the morning, and I gave OP merits that I shouldn't have (although he did obviously put some effort into his post).  Gimme a pass on this one, my people.  Not enough caffeine flowing through the circulatory system yet I'm afraid.

Aside from OP's reputation, has anyone looked into his claims?  Judge the accusation on the facts, not the accuser's past--it's hard to do sometimes, but it's the logical step, right?  I'd do it myself, but I'm off to get a triple venti something-or-other that will hopefully wake my ass up.

You have a valid point there, and while I don't disagree with your stance that the forum ought to take more of an active role in tackling scammers, I just don't think that's ever going to happen while Theymos is in charge.  This topic has been brought up in various forms in many threads over a number of years, and nothing has ever changed--not even the responses, which I've always called excuses.

There's a practical problem with moderating scams, of course, but I see other forums do it all the time with no chance of appeal or anything like that.  Apparently that's not how Theymos wants to run bitcointalk, so people on DT and other concerned members have to deal with it ourselves by tagging scammers, creating threads about them, and everything else.  Welcome to bitcointalk, different from other forums by a mile.

That's a bullshit statement, and I'm calling you out on it.  The forum absolutely could do a lot about scams; it chooses not to.  What you wrote I consider the "party line".

I don't know, man....Google improved upon other search engines and blew them all away within a relatively short period of time, which is why they are where they're at now.  Bitcoin may have grown significantly as an investment of choice for a lot of new people since its inception, but so far blockchain technology hasn't been adopted by the masses or integrated into anything useful in everyday life as far as I know--and you'd think that with all of those ICO projects that got introduced circa 2018, there would have been some progress in that area.

So while it's nice that there are some angel investors trying to help blockchain startups, I wonder if they're just betting on anything and everything, hoping that there's a winning lottery ticket somewhere in the mix.  That's basically what those investors do anyway, but with this I'm not sure there's anything that's going to be nearly as successful as Google or Facebook. 

I wouldn't call them a scam--more like government and bank-sanctioned usury, which is generally illegal if you're not a big financial company charging outrageous interest rates.

But am I against them?  Yes, personally.  And they're not for everyone, and certainly not for people who don't know how to manage money well.  For people who are financially responsible, they can come in handy in case of emergencies and will help those folks build up their credit scores.  The problem (at least as I see it in the US) is that a lot of people want to live way beyond their means, and credit cards seem like free money to them since they don't have to pay off the entire balance at the end of the month.  Thus I see people complaining about credit card debt constantly--because they've maxed out their cards and likely have a few of them, too.

So ultimately I think they can be good or they can be bad; it all depends on whose hands that credit card is in.  I wouldn't want to see a time when they weren't available to people, because they do have benefits as I said...but you have to be very careful with them, because interest rates are so high, and there are probably fees associated with your card that you're not aware of unless you dug into the fine print.

Yep, especially after the Game Stop stock debacle happened and drew a lot of people's attention toward Robinhood (or it could have been their massive advertising campaign and/or zero-fee trades). 

But if I were a stock trader, there's no way in hell I'd use Robinhood after what they did, which was to capitulate to the government and freeze Game Stop stock trading.  They're run by a bunch of amateurs and they don't even have a customer service telephone number.  If you need to call them for whatever reason, you can forget about it.

As far as crypto and Robinhood goes, I'd also look elsewhere for my needs--especially if I was looking to buy and hold and not actively trade.  "Not your keys, not your coins" has already been referenced, and for a damn good reason.  If you've got your coins in your own wallet, you aren't at the mercy of a 3rd party, no matter how trustworthy they seem to be.  Things can change in a heartbeat, and why give up all that control over your crypto?  Isn't that kind of the point of owning it in the first place?

I don't think I've looked at Press in well over 4 years, and honestly I forgot that section even existed until just now.  Lol.  And to think that I get 99.9% of my crypto news from this forum.  You'd think I'd leave a section like that un-ignored, but nope.  It ought to be one of the best ones, but just like Bitcoin Discussion it's turned into a travesty of what it's supposed to be.

Not having seen what's going on in Press, I can't attest to how spammy it's become as of late, but I tend to believe Leo when he says it's pretty bad. 

That's unfortunate, and why is it that this forum, with all the money it has at its disposal, can't afford to pay a sufficient number of moderators to keep boards like Press and all of the other spam pits clean and shiny?  If a mod has gone inactive, I'm pretty sure there are at least 3-5 members who'd jump at the chance to be a mod--and I'd imagine that Theymos has a mental list of members he'd consider, so why are sections allowed to go unmoderated?  I just don't get it.