I think the difference is because of the way we look at governments here in developing countries and the way someone in say, the USA, looks at it. In a country like India, if the government decides to paint cryptocurrencies as something that are being used for "terror financing and money laundering", the perception will quickly change.
In that scenario, normal people would like to stay away from it and mass adoption will be difficult to come. While this maybe the reason why i sound eager to have the popular approval, I do get your point about "Cryptocurrency bestows you with qualitatively the most powerful type of rights one could seek: rights you can secure for yourself in an absolute way."

That's a very good point indeed. I suppose even if there is a subtle demonization drive against crytpocurrencies, maybe normal people like us should be able to represent our point of views and argue against such a branding. Because that right is not for the governments to give but for us to claim. Nice! Thanks for those views. You've changed my perception on this.

It is good that power consumption is becoming more of an issue for mining farms. This should lead us towards more efficient hardware as well as decentralize the farms a bit.

I saw that your website has increased the time limit for taken contribution to March 31st, 2018. I love the idea behind BTRIC. Will surely contribute my bit in the form of information sharing and whatever monetary contribution i can afford.

I trust you to have the past experience to say this but this sounds far from "we give up". The article says :
"FSB said more international coordination was needed to plug data gaps in monitoring the rapidly evolving but still tiny sector worth less than 1 percent of global GDP at its peak"

That sounds kindda worrisome. Its like they are waiting for the right amount of information and expertise to be able to control how things evolve. They aren't actually giving up on the prospect of regulating or interfering but just putting it off till they think its a bigger issue.

Very well put. Its hard to visualize the kind of far-reaching changes as well as reactions that the legacy banking systems/ Governments will have if they see their ability to control being compromised.
Apt point about the "leaders". It'a a pretty slim chance that they will act with good intentions on their own accord. We only have to look at the kind of mass movements that had to be organised for governments to finally ignore powerful Energy sector lobbies and take concrete steps towards climate change mitigation. This, after these movements had been going on for decades already and backed by scientific data.

I think that a time will come when as citizens, we would have to be ready to organize and demand our right to choose crytpocurrencies over Bank-backed fiats. It's probably going to be an exciting but demanding time.

From what i could see, you have only been concentrating on earning through those bloated facebook and twitter accounts. More than half of your post count consists of "Reports". You are already going to get some of those tokens for that. What more do you expect?

If you really want to earn 'merit', then first stop viewing Bitcoin and the forum solely from those money-tinged lenses.
There are lot of people running challenges and such to review your posts. Spend sometime looking for them. People are even offering merit for doing some detective work if you think your posts can't be enough. A good place to look would be Joel_Jantsen's Merit Distribution Thread (Newbies Welcome).

You may FEEL entitled to merit but with your current level of posting/ knowledge, sadly, you are not.

Any of the new members who fall for buying merit will find themselves in a vicious circle of shitposting and paying for merit.
The steps in the vicious circle are simple:
1. Not getting any merit because your post history is mainly "Quote in Quote" Reports.
2. Buy 10 merit for, say, 150$ to upgrade to Member.
3. Join as many campaigns as possible to recover the investment now.
4. Make pointless posts to complete count and again get your post history filled with Reports.
5. Back to Step 1.

For anyone willing to work on this, I suggest take a 2-week break from the campaigns. Just read and learn about bitcoins. Read the book, the core blog, the Satoshi institute website, maybe even try running a full node. Find you forte and knowledge well with which you can make substantial posts.
Otherwise, there is no use in being a cry baby. Help yourself so the forum can help you.

I had a much "better 20" a few days ago but the thread was closed. so putting a foot in through the door this time. Hope I can complete the double-ton.
Thank you for doing this.

Thanks for your response Isuru. There are a lot of people who came in for the Alts and the bounties. You have yourself admitted that you do multiple campaigns  and support them on your FB/ Twitter accounts. Can we agree that no non-celebrity, non-spam account has 5000 friends/followers?? Correct me if I am wrong. There is a bit of an image issue when someone does this. You chose this despite the fact that you are "a CS undergrad in the Best Univ. of your country". Don't you think that you are privileged enough to understand the useful from the selfish?

After the merit requirement was introduced, a lot of people were jolted from this bot-like reporting. This started the response about how the "merit system is not good enough". A lot of seemingly capable people like yourself also find themselves on this crossroad. It may take sometime to correct this image issue. I am sure it'll happen if you really intend to.

I agree. Please read again. I never said all spammers are from these countries.


Most of your better posts are in Alt-sections and sadly, as of now, the merit sources there are limited to those passing it among themselves or for ANN posts. If you see closely, Alts has been the source for most of spam in the forum over the last few terrible months. This is one reason that most people who care enough about the forum don't look for good posts in the alt-sections.

What you should really ask yourself is that how are you helping the forum, bitcoin or the cryptocurrency ecosystem in general with the knowledge, you have yourself admitted, you have (Web Dev, Ethereum Dev)?
Right now, your post history shows the corrective actions you are taking. For real intent to show through, I am afraid you'll have to be a little more consistent. Don't worry. Its only been 3 months. I am sure you have made some money already. You have a bright future ahead with your credentials. Try to think about this not through the lens of money but the underlying values and work ethic of openness and sharing. I'd highly recommend going through this website.

I think these restrictions will continue to increase for people who want to delve into cryptocurrency. The main reason being that a very very tiny percentage of the Indian crowd is actually interested in the potential for financial freedom that using something like bitcoin entails.

Most of the people who have the real deep pockets are in it for speculative gains only. They don't mind losing that money. Instead, if they were willing to invest because of the underlying reasons of loosening bank monopolies, we could see some improvement in the situation.

HDFC Bank is foremost amongst the blood-suckers who will suck you dry with their pathetic returns, credit card charges and arrogant customer support once you have fallen for the trap. They tell you which investments are right or wrong and slowly trickle off your gains and give back crumbs to the small investor.

Of course you will be better off if you DYOR before investing with them. The fact is that of the millions of customers they have, very few are financially savvy enough to choose for themselves. No wonder they don't want the majority to divert funds into bitcoin rather than their stupid schemes or simply keep it in the banks.
Banks are the ones poised to lose the most if you take out your savings and put them somewhere they can't document and keep a record of in their asset/ liability books.

For the time being, the hype has died down considerably. We can really look forward to OTC exchanges of bitcoin for cash. A small economy between the people for real that does not depend on KYC and such banking bottlenecks.

Hello deadley. I would like to know if you have first hand experience with this. Its almost impossible to get a good deal online. The prices are inflated for a long time now.

If you have recently done any deals at Nehru Place, I'll take your word and travel there to check them for myself.

You'd probably be surprised to know but there is hardly an equivalent to "Sir" in most native languages. There are of course salutations but they are mostly brotherly. Widespread use of honorifics like "Sir", "Saahab" etc. are completely imperial vestiges. "Sir", particularly, is not a shortcoming of translation tools.


That is why there is a lot scope for the locals to take the lead here and establish a truly healthy community. Its hard to believe there's no beginner's section at one of the largest community boards. I'd say again for the local members:


But this should be done as an initiative by the speakers themselves. Doing it as a translation service would probably defeat the purpose.

Haha..This actually is such a ingrained thing that if a person in, say India, was to address his boss by his last/first name (as is the norm in western work environments), he'd be met with disbelief and it'd be taken as an offense.

Blame it on imperialism. The post-independence elites in most of the eastern societies made sure that the exclusivity established by British-era (Also fondly remembered as 'The Raj era' by Anglophiles.. ) was continued to ensure a level of supremacy and control. The British themselves were inspired by the fabled pomp and grandeur of the Eastern Courts/ Durbars i guess.

The atmosphere at several MNCs out here has started to become much more liberating as addressing someone as "Sir" isn't encouraged anymore. The problem is that when dealing with any kind of public service or Govt. Machinery, you have to massage fragile egos by calling people with authority as "Sir".

Quoting views of some members on the language issue



Those views should be encouraging for any new member who wants to contribute to the forum. I am sure most users on the forum feel the same way too. There aren't many grammar nazis here. People who post useful content, even if their language isn't perfect, have always been appreciated.

It has only become a problem after the spam and repetitive threads running into 100+ pages. As a thumb-rule, those 100+ pages of repetitive bitcoin discussions is something every new member should avoid.

QS has been making shady deals on the forum for a long time now. He makes baseless accusations against people he want to bring down. Lauda on the other hand has done more than any other moderator in the past few months to try and restore some semblance of sanity in the forum.

Its hardly "senseless arguments" when long-standing, impartial members like @Vod have left feedback to QS for scammy-behaviour as far back as 2015. 

I saw your post history. Let us not continue the argument further if you don't wish to contribute something useful to the original post and its intent. Surely you could contribute a lot more if you had the motivation to.

Thanks for the corrections. Learning is a constant endeavour.


The racial overtones you refer to have surfaced on the forum very recently. A lot of people spent their time and energy in making this forum what it is. Moderating, writing FAQ's, Beginner guides and what not just to ensure that forum quality is maintained.

While most people will agree with your views on the need to cut back the name calling, I think it is simplistic to take the moral high ground on this. Its not like the people indulging in this behaviour don't know what they are doing. They are running sophisticated spamming and alt-account farming campaigns. No problems gets resolved unless you identify and accept it. The name calling doesn't fix it but does the job of calling out these people.


We'd all like the situation to be perfect with complete decentralisation of the forum but it's not feasible. We may find it ironical or amusing but unfortunately, that's where the usefulness of this realisation ends.
Completely agree with you that a lot of Bounty Managers need to get their act together. In fact, if the bounty managers were made a bit more responsible for the actions of their participants, the situation would be greatly improved.


Again, it's easier said than done. Negging someone on the basis of constant spammy behaviour should be fine. I am yet to see many examples of people being negged due to a counter viewpoint.

Zabpay has been pretty professional since the start compared to several others. They ask for all kind of KYC of course, so its not for those looking to sell bucketloads.

What it has been good at is adopting changes and adding features.
They have implemented the backward-compatible Segwith addresses beginning with 3.
They now allow trading amongst users and placing long term buy/ sell orders.

From the professionalism, I think they have a good chance of becoming a big exchange. First though, they have to work actively towards deploying a proper website with the required security with all the analysis features typical of the bigger exchanges.

They have a long way to go but are one of the most promising candidates. I hope they can stay serious about enabling blockchain technology rather than just concentrating on making their millions like most Indian startups end up doing( For example Snapdeal, Flipkart etc.).

Dear Newbie, Please don't think that someone who spouts easy to understand conspiracy theories is better than someone who gives you harder to understand technical information.

The reprimand you got is because this forum has a severe problem of newbies coming in and posting all sort of opinions as facts, especially in the technical threads. Members like nullius, who put lot of effort and knowledge into their posts try to discourage such behavior.

You are intelligent enough to make your own decision as to who to believe. If you are the kind who is not intimidated by competence and don't necessarily feel an inferiority-complex because other people know more, then you will enjoy learning from the people here.
A suggestion: Whenever you find people who put effort and share knowledge in their posts, try to check their post history out. It'll take you to interesting places.

Can you guys just settle the case with Atriz and stop responding altogether to this alia chap??

If it was anybody else, they would have been buried and forgotten by now. She knows that no trusted member would skype with her but is childishly insisting on that.
Is anybody even interested in knowing whether she is real or not?? What difference does it make to the forum?? She is another potential scammer that has been identified. Case closed. End of Line.

If she attempts another one of her sophisticated e-whoring, betting scams, people would know. Stop responding to her altogether please.

Most Americans we get to see on shows/ movies or even when they show "people walking down the streets" in movies, they are all fit and smart.

The only time you see these really fat Americans are on one of those "My 500/400 Pound life".

They are fat for a lot of reasons.
It seems they eat a lot of the addictive, calorie-rich, non vegetarian food cheaply available against the comparatively costly healthier, organic food. I have heard that a normal veg-salad will cost you much more than a full-blown Mac with Soda.
The next thing, according to stereotypes,that the average american does the most is sit on a couch and watch tailor made shows like a zombie. So they eat and sit (because not much work is required of them).

I think all the pills, medical system, adulteration etc also has a role to play.

But then they are also some of the strongest, fittest people there. There seems to be an obsession in America for bigger things. Women want bigger boobs and buts, Men want still bigger schlongs and everyone wants crazy-ass biceps.. (There was this documentary titled something like "stronger, bigger" about the bodybuilding craze and how people stuff themselves with steroids to get the pumped muscles.
This craze for more and bigger things is probably what makes them gulp down large portions.

Finally, I won't be surprised if it is found out that almost all major food companies consider the average american as a target whose per capita consumption is to be continuously increased. Commercials and more stuff. (My source here is mostly the video for "Open your Eyes" by Goldfinger"..LOL).
The companies will also go and do illegal shit to make people addicted. There was this movie "The Insider" with Russell Crowe  about use of addiction-agents in Cigarettes.

Yeah, so from an outsider perspective and judging from the movie/ contemporary culture stereotypes, those should be the main reasons..

Good post OP. You seem to be one of those who were jolted to post better after the Merit requirement. Keep getting involved in the discussion and keep learning in order to be able to contribute more.

That way we can all be better off than simply spamming for Sig Campaigns and be really involved with the community. Sending some little merit your way. 

Regarding the point about scammy ICOs these days, there is just no end to it. They are also some of the better managed scams where you cannot raise a question even if you lose the money.

The best advice would be to never invest your BTC or ETH in any of those. If you are a small investor, then simply doing some campaigns should be sufficient for you (After you have good enough idea that it maybe legit).
Investing in them a majority of your holdings is always going to backfire.

At least ask your buyer to vouch for this here in the forum.

Its also desirable to post a time-stamped picture of your material when offering such a trade..