If you buy through online exchanges, you will have to do it.

If you go through localbitcoins.com, you may find some seller willing to have a cash exchange without identity documents. I think this is soon going to be illegal because this will involve a financial trade and will go against RBIs KYC requirement.

Its a risk but I know people have done that earlier. Things are a lot more open right now and it is best to stick to some legit exchange asking for your KYC and buying from them.

If I may ask, why exactly are you trying to do this? Is it to evade tax or spend some ill-gotten cash you don't want to account for.
My advice, Do it the right way!

If you are genuinely concerned about privacy then earn it rather than buying it with fiat.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR THE COMMUNITY

Its great to see so many people have benefited from Bitcoin. There maybe a lot of people who have earned through Signature campaigns and appreciating alts. Ultimately, it has been btc that has helped to convert those dreams into fiat.

I guess most of the people answering here have got their fair share of support from bitcoin. Now, the next best logical think to do is to ask yourselves that what have YOU done for the community and bitcoin.

Do you KNOW what you can do to help?

Do you already help?

These are very important questions we have to answer. More and more people have to start thinking along these lines and ask themselves about how they think they can help bitcoin. I understand its no simple task. But together, we surely can come up with something more useful than repeating the same old answers in such a thread to increase post counts.

I'll be looking forward to see anybody noticing this particular post and starting a discussion on "What are you doing or suggestion on what to do to help bitcoin". Let the responses be substantive and non-repetitive.

I welcome anyone to use stuff from this reply to start a topic like this and ask for a healthy/ non-repetitive discussion on this.

A little clarification about Meriting you and other famous members:
You have more merit than you need but its so hard to not give it away when you post stuff like this. I like to think that I'll keep it for some of the lower ranked members who are making good posts.
Then I come across one of such posts and its like, Should I merit it? Would he feel bad if i didn't..LOL..Theymos replied to one of my posts and I couldn't bring myself to merit it thinking it'll look like adulation more than anything else.. I am still trying to figure out what to think of it. You can help by letting me know what you think of it.

---

I vehemently agree that we need the hardware part of the ecosystem to change for decentralization. I even have a small hope that the electricity shortages for large farms would be a step in this direction as i mentioned in a post here.  The big manufacturer right now has all the incentive to sell their ASICs in huge batches rather than to individuals.

A policy in this regard would probably accomplish this in one stroke but then we'd be asking the government/ regulator to do it for us.

Elon Musk made the rockets. How hard could it be to make ASICs? Maybe we should start some sort of open hardware project for this? This is the perfect use case for our eagerly awaited Bitcoin champions.

Also, I request that you take these and similar thought threads to the Ivory tower page. You should also collect some of your better posts so anyone can take a look at them in Serious Discussion/ Ivory tower. If you allow, I'd like to do that myself. We can include other great past discussions.

I don't think its acceptable to trade merit in any way except giving it away for good posts. Asking people to do your work in exchange for merit isn't what it is intended for.

Remove and lock this thread if you are unsure whether its allowed or not. I don't think it is.

Your repetitive excuses on that gambling script lies are:

1. Maybe I got lucky
2. I never gamble my own money.
3. I'd never put big amounts on it (Yet you started asking for a 1.2 BTC minimum, which is like 10K USD, lot of money)

nullius was one of your most well known and well-respected customers. So he gets a 200% return. (Suspicious anyone?).
Its a classic bait before the scam. My guess is that you were waiting for one of the old fellas who would commit multiple BTC. One of those who haven't bought bitcoin but got them as early adopters.

Its hard to believe you after all the blunders and half-truths (Like "he must be some other Jack")
Its hard to believe after you are linked with a series of scams from your IP and linked users, all of which is being done supposedly by your 15 y.o. brother. Must be an evil genius this brother of yours.

Your offer for skype isn't working because nobody wants to be in a potentially illegal situation with you. Its nearly impossible for you to now get out of this. Better for you to stop this and put your energies elsewhere. Maybe try to be more truthful and sincere in your future exchanges. You may earn less but you'll earn much more respect.

There are so many things wrong here. The level of distrust such incidents are sowing in the community is something that will be hard to repair.
Nobody trusts nobody else..We just had the drama of Lauda getting removed (and thankfully later reinstated) from DT because apparently, DT members of the other camp have control of additional accounts through their clever, scammy dealings.

This account Alia started out with such promise. The accusations could have been easily answered if Alia didn't think that the way to deal with accusations is by behaving like Lauda, Pharmacist or one of the other legendaries. She repeatedly tried to hide behind the association and make the OP look silly.

Instead of sincerely providing evidence, alia has woven a web of deceit around her but she continues to claim innocence. What was sad was her trying to play the emo card trying to appeal to the apparent happiness and excitement nullius showed at having found an interesting person to team up with. She tries to first guilt him into feeling bad about his behavior.


When that doesn't seem to work. She goes into this cry-baby mode.

Yes Ma'am/ Sir/ Thing/ Bot, A crime is a crime. Decent kids don't find it okay to steal a candy bar or cheat in an exam. That really is how decent people are, no matter how hard you find it to believe or understand this. It is probably one of those signs of our times, when people are so bloody confused about Right vs Wrong that the only right thing is "Whatever your heart tells". Yeah, sure.

Finally, when nothing else seemed to work, Alia decided to appeal for the protector instinct inside every man.

• "you can not only verify the way I look, you can also.."
• "about our discussion, everything"
• "I had thought I had found a genuine friend in you"
• "I am sad to have lost you"

Those are some hard hitters there. Passionate appeals that are hard to resist for any guy. Through all of this, nullius has tried all he can to get the truth out and give alia a chance. My heart goes out to him if he felt even a sliver of friendly affection for this person. Its only her own guilt (through association and otherwise) that has lead to this 4-digit negative trust.

The drama is over hopefully.

Nullius and the OP stand vindicated.

Trust in humanity shrinks further. LOL.

---

The question to be asked is, How do we trust people trying to give services through bitcoin. The whole point of a p2p currency needs trustworthy escrows. The problem is that individuals will always have a price. Its only the rarest of the rare who will not be swayed whatever the amount maybe. Public institutions on the other hand, have a much higher incentive to maintain their trustworthiness. They are much less likely to play the long-con game.

Does that mean that the whole concept of having a trading/ exchange economy with individuals as escrows/ arbiters is flawed? Smart contracts coupled with IOT based goods-delivery will be the only full-proof method. Lets try to think about that. Sidechains for smart contract and IOT for deliveries.

Its cute how people who were suckered in by BCash at ATH are now trying to create and live in their own reality..!!LOL

Did the fuming overlord tell you that the when Bitcoin supporters call it "Bcash or BTrash" , you fight back with "Classic bitcoin".. LMAO


Many users. What users? Ohh right, in the alternate reality created by your overlord who schemes and pumps his worthless, innovation-less, clone of a coin moments before appearing on talks and then points that out as "growth".


You accept that Litecoin does have a chance, with the exact same technologies (2nd Layer). But you are angry about the past and would much rather support LTC than BTC.

That then, is just your personal choice and opinion, dear sir, and i don't think that takes away anything from Bitcoin.

That proposal by Cobra was more for the centralization problem of mining than energy Usage. Its a concern as he points out that with such concentrated mining power, an entity like Jihan's Bitmain can cause major upheavals. Though, I think such a scenario is unlikely because they would also be damaging themselves.
The value of bitcoin comes from the securtiy provided by miner's POW. If they decide to shift that security then its a MAD scenario. Not much chance that it'll happen.

In my opinion, no PoW change is needed and the energy issue can, in fact, provide a corrective measure for centralization. The energy issues is beneficial in the long run. If the mining farms stop getting cheap energy so easily it will ensure that a top-end infrastructure like a 100+ ASIC mining farm will be much harder to setup. It will still not be as much of a problem for a home miner mining on, say, 1-5 ASICs.

We may well have a scenario where Bitmain will have to sell its hardware to individual home miners rather than to institutional buyers like they prefer right now. This, in a way, resolves the centralization issue mentioned by Cobra.

There are other benefits:
1. It will force innovations towards more efficient hardware.
2. Governments will have some incentive to allow mining if taxing is implemented as in the case of Iceland.
3. To ensure government interest, Mining companies will have to find ways to 'Share' their profits better. (As insisted by the Quebec authority). So trickle down effect.
4. The need for energy efficiency parameter for ASICs will force more competition in the Bitcoin ASIC manufacturing (Samsung entry) -->less centralization.

This is a great thread to know what makes a good poster and how people who really want to work will not shy away from praising expertise and competence when they see it.

Nullius' has an enviable combination of knowledge, virtue and wit. To me, He sounds like someone with a lot of real world experience. He is the best I have seen when it comes to fighting the insidious kind of trolls (Ones with better English and a knack at making insinuations while making it sound like a genuine query/ misunderstanding. For example, look at some QS classics of "damned if you don't refute, damned if you do")

I think he is a great addition to the forum's army of the warriors of light.. He shall be remembered for the role he played in thwarting the great troll attacks that dawned upon us in the early days of Lightning Testnet..

I agree with the poster who said we need a place to recognize those people here..I am typing this on a phone so the quotes and links are missing.

For those doubting on him, try filling your posts with multiple quotes and useful links. You'll know that it takes a special dedication and belief in the project to continue doing that. On suggestions that he is an alt, well, I am glad because the forum needs its champions. Nothing wrong in that.

Man you are awesome. Thanks for being here..

Look at some of the advice and opinion you have received on this:



If you are really a coder, you would get the thing about "Standing on the shoulders of giants". If your work ethic was anywhere near that of the people who have made bitcoin code, network and social phenomena possible, we would be getting valid suggestions and feedback. Maybe some real work too.

But instead you take it upon yourself to become the hypothetical CEO of a hypothetical Bitcoin LLC, completely ignoring the whole decentralization criterion. This is the best you could come up with:

• "I don't know"
• "I haven't been involved"
• "But Yo, I could totally be THE CEO"...LOL

You Sir, are a lot of hot air and no substance. And from post history, it seems you have been that way for a lot of years. What a waste of time and potential!!

There have been a lot of posts and replies on this scaling issue. For example, here is a reply. There are a few Bcash shills in the topic too.

Solving concerns of decentralization with increased block size are mostly hardware capacity dependent. Hardware capacity vs cost ration is not expected to increase in the same way as the blockchain size with a increased block size.

That is why it is logical to go for scaling through innovations like SegWit and LN. An agreed upon blocksize increase can be done when other implementations have become mature and robust enough.

Exactly. We all should feel this responsibility to contribute to the ecosystem rather than just milking others' ignorance.

People should divide their time professionally on the forum. If you want to discover alt-coins then spend some time really analyzing them. Too many scams and pump and dumps are harming the whole space.

Earlier the forum used to be a place for discussion on how to improve and make bitcoin reachable for more and more people. We should try going back to that state. Merit system is a good start.
If the newbies start focusing on learning rather than just earning, we will have a much better situation.

SCAM ALERT
Its a potential scam hiding behind proxy domains. You can't even find who registered the domain name. Always stay away from such scammers.

They are using newbie accounts to spread word at local froums.
I'd suggest you not even to click on any of those links.

Check this post for more info.

The article talks about "unregulated deposit schemes including Ponzi schemes and the ones linked to cryptocurrencies".

This regulation has been a long time in the making because of the chit-fund scams and MLM deposit type scams that cheat gullible people out of their money.
Such schemes "linked with cryptocurrencies" are your typical scams run by Indians like Amit Bhardwaj and his associates. There are lot of others going on in Tier-2 cities. Sad that when we Indians learn something new, the first thing we want to do with is to try and fool as many people as we can. LOL..Human nature probably.

The targeted deposits may also include fraudulent ICOs or maybe all ICOs.Thats the reason most Indian ICOs are being conducted from Singapore etc.

All in all, this is NOT a ban on crytpocurrencies. Even if they do, you can continue your interactions without worrying about Fiat conversion.

He seems like an old hand at the local board. (is that spanish??) Either using his own account or is probably colluding with the two other accounts in some merit trading.

His other posts in the local section include a lot of other content too.


He has been here a long time it seems. He'll be taken care of if the mods decide so.
Don't be bitter about it. The system is not getting rid of anyone if you are contributing to it. I see your post history and you had been posting 2 sentences without content.

Now you are crying about the merit system. You are the typical Jr. Member I wished to address in a previous post I made. Go read it. I suggest you find the patience to learn and contribute.
Finding spammers would also be a good way to contribute. Take a look at the link by sushanika in a reply above where such posts can be made. People are willing to help but first, you gotta help yourself.

I am a little late to join the party of people making posts about "merit". I recently saw a post asking forum members to treat the non-english speakers less harshly.

There are other constant posts about how its impossible and it will harm the forum, how the system is gamed against junior members etc. etc. A lot has been said and explained about this. There are a lot of newbies who are still trying to paint this as some form of injustice/ unfair system. When all else fails, they come up with the non-english speaker excuse.

So for those of you still confused, uncertain, angry (because you are a alt-spammer and this is troublesome to you), I will attempt explaining this disdain for the shitposters. I hope by the time I finish, you will be convinced that the disdain for the typical non-english spammer/ Bounty hunter is justified.

Lets begin with the profile of your typical bad-english spammer. This guy's profile has the following qualities:
1. Joins 10 bounty campaigns at the same time.
2. Has a fake 5000 friends facebook & 4000 follower twitter account for the above.
3. Has a FB/ twitter timeline with a deluge of ICO related posts.
4. Has a post history mainly made up of "Report submissions" or "Your idea is great sir and I think it will sure be more success buddy" kindda posts.
5. Posts in 100th page of a dead beat topic like 'Will bitcoin reach 30K?", "What did bitcoin give you?" "Is it possible to earn in ICO?"
6. Constantly uses unnecessary salutations "Dear Manager, Respected Manager, or my favorite Lauda Sir ".
7. Profusely apologises after every sentence. "Sorry if I am wrong", "Sorry again if i hurt someone". All of this with accompanied by the constant disebowelment of English is enough to irritate the hell out of most normal people.

Now, What is their not to hate in such a person??

 Some of these people have reached "Hero member" and even "Legendary" with this shit. They are all going to get whats coming for them.

But hey, you are not going to be one of them right. If you are a "poor-english", new guy here then let me give you some advice on how to become a valuable person on the forum and make it worth your while.

Step 1: Ask yourself why you are here. If you were here only for earning easy money by making referrals on the fake facebook wall then that won't be possible any more. List out things you can do to contribute to the forum as well as to bitcoin.

Step 2 Realize that nothing in life comes free. That time is over. You may still do that by scamming innocent people but that tainted money will never serve you well. On the other hand, the knowledge gained from this quest will be a strength for all your life.

Step 3 Understand what bitcoin is. Why Satoshi and the core developers spent thousands of hours on this piece of code? One of its main purpose was to enable people to directly trade with each other without worrying about third parties. This can serve well for exchange of services across borders and for exchange of goods within borders.

Step 4: If you are an ICO lover, then realize that as one of the first participants in this new phenomena, you are providing legitimacy to the future economic activity and potential gains this will generate. If you support all ICOs blindly, just to earn some worthless tokens, it will not only be a waste of your time but it also destroys the legitimacy of the better projects and makes everyone suffer.

Step 5: If your English is not good, Start with doing something valuable in your local forum. There will surely be some good users in all local forums who will help out. If there are none, then take command in a professional way of your forum. Learn about bitcoin and engage with other members like a man of knowledge. Alternatively, in your local forum, you could:

---> Translate some of the better posts from here (after taking due permission from the original poster)
---> Engage in discussion about setting up the infrastructure for bitcoin within your community. Like local groups, meetups etc.
---> Persuade people to actually care about the goal of financial access and equality for all and the importance of adoption.
---> Inform yourself about the scaling debate and be warned about the false marketing from other people making wild claims.
---> Inform yourself about Lightning Network, SegWit and encourage its usage.

Step 6 (Most Important): Do all of the above with a sense of purpose and interest rather than just money as your sole motivator. For money, get a real job. We are still far from changing the banking and economic system.

---

I will stop with some parting thoughts about some of the contentious issues regarding regionalism etc.

1. East vs. West
It is a common impression that most of the people spamming or shit-posting are from the low income countries in the eastern hemisphere. Indian, Indonesia, Thailand, Phillipines, Vietnam etc. To people from these countries, I'd say that its our own mistake that the west sees us as incompetent and lazy when we write incoherent sentences.
By showing our willingness to spend our time on making 1000 useless posts, we confirm that we are in fact useless. Its then natural to have disdain for such actions. Accusing the other person of racism then is no defence. If you really want to mount a defence, then do some real work and prove your worth.

This constant trend to use salutations  (Sir, Dear, Respected) is also a cultural difference. To you, it maybe normal to show respect to someone in a position of power over you, but as far as netiquette and western work culture is concerned, this is considered sycophancy/ ass-kissing. This is considered the hallmark of an incapable, scheming individual and not of respect. So avoid this like a plague. Instead, address people with a normal Mr./ Miss

English Sentences

I have noticed the typical sentence construction of people who are considered bad posters. They use long sentences without proper punctuation and paragraph separation. Some tips:

1. Use small sentences. 7-8 words should be enough.
2. Press "Enter" to create space between your paragraphs.
3. Decide on your content and basic point. Do not stretch it by saying the same thing over and over.

Well. That is all for now. I hope this helps someone. We are all here for learning and taking part in this new phenomena. We are still early. Imagine if you had a computer at your home back in 1995. It was a big deal for most eastern hemisphere homes I believe. But it was an opportunity to learn.

It is extremely hard for us to reach the same level of proficiency as the people who were here since the beginning. But we can try. Apart from the technical aspects, we can try to make the social and economic aspects of bitcoin be felt within our own communities for real. Not just in this virtual space and on meaningless facebook walls.

I request the old local board members in particular to take charge of their boards in a positive spirit. Lets all learn and work according to our abilities. Learning is the best form of income you can get from this forum. Your future generation and your societies will be much better served by your knowledge than by some extra money.

Well, this took long. Time for a Goodnight!

Thanks for the reply Theymos.  The decade long experience in moderating one of the most volatile and dynamic communities speaks in your post above. Your point about the Groupthink issue as well as its manipulation by "companies" is succinct and spot on.

These tools for social mobilization which were once supposed to enable the small guy to question authority have been turned on their heads.
Social Media made it possible for anyone to gain the spotlight. Unfortunately, the kind of people who exploit this feature most, usually aren't the thoughtful or productive ones. Most thoughtful and intelligent people have a certain dislike for the shenanigans involved. They'd much rather put their heads down and work than make themselves available for social media instigations and attacks.

That is why people who have a full understanding of the ideas and are willing to publicly present and defend them are so rare yet so effective. Like Andreas of course. This was one of the things that was so inspiring about bitcoin's A team. Satoshi, the core devs, your team. You were all backing an idea and finding ways to present and defend them publicly. The 10,000 BTC pizza and the other stuffs of legend here. This ingredient seems to have gone missing now.

That is what we need to revive and need our champions back for. The developers and thought leaders. For one, more activity on the core blog would be really welcome. We could all use a common source of the latest in making or conceptualization.


I totally agree that complete decentralization is not feasible. Its our own stupidity that makes us feel that we can reduce every concept to something debatable and have everyone's view on it. There will always be people who will understand concepts better and make changes faster than us. We find it hard to face up to the fact that we are not all equal when it comes to the ability to take decisions. We have always had people who guide societies and make history because they are faster and smarter. The difficult deal is finding out who to trust. This discussion ultimately devolves into one of civic and personal morality and will be too much of a tangent for now.

Team building at workplaces is an effort to let that inequality sink-in among hundred odd employees. Isn't it especially hard for the older generation that wields the ultimate power? Something of that sort is happening in society too where there are millions of us involved with our egos linked to our viewpoints. The present scenario is such that everyone with a phone and access to internet (Whatsapp and Facebook in case of my country) has a 'strong, authentic' opinion about everything. It doesn't matter that its molded by memes, slide shows and 2-minute videos with voice-overs.

A lot of this feeling is also reactive to the comparatively long sway that the intellectual elite has held in the past. Events of the recent past have convinced people that the intellectuals are no good at "making the best, the most tremendous deals". Although as the Russian troll farm story shows, this may have been supported by external and internal interests.

This makes it even more important that people with real knowledge and the ability to go a step further should step up to the challenge and raise their voices. Not to be silenced by trolls and manipulative distractors. Whatever their field of expertise maybe, you should call out stupidity and always hammer the truth in.

The merit system has definitely done some good in solving the problem of discussion-quality. Truth-finding would be difficult but its great that you are thinking and working on it. The forum definitely needs more of your inputs. Let us know if we can be of any help.

I need to learn more about how trust works. Wouldn't have wasted those 2 merits on that post if I knew the inclusion had already corrected the situation. i.e. Bringing Lauda back to DT-2.

The issue got resolved on page 9 then but its continuing till 23. I have no idea what drama happened in between. We should have some way of placing milestones of discussion on these >20 page threads.

For what its worth, I think Lauda comes across as the typical no nonsense disciplinarian. They did a lot of the dirty work when the forum was drowning in spam. Its easy to accuse her of high-handedness and take the side of the "poor, begging" users. Her one-liners reprimanding the "Lauda Sir, Please I am trying to feed my family"  results in a lot of bad blood against her and long discussions on "compassion/ empathy".

The discord against her and other active reviewers can easily be channeled to make an alts army using these dissed users.

Maybe there could be a policy of reviewing accounts negged by her or other members like pharmacist. Its not possible for one person to review them all. Other members could chip in to review them. I amwilling to volunteer if considered trustworthy. I am sure a lot of others too would. This would serve to invalidate those accusations of "reviewers not engaging with those they neg" and being high-handed.

Is it just me or are we seeing an upsurge in these "new posts" being created for discussion/ disseminating information? When such information is readily available by a google searcg or on other websites..
Exhibit A

To the OP:

I don't know if such posts should be encouraged or discouraged. In my opinion, basic information like what is a hash, block or what is mining are readily available on internet and bitcoin wiki.

Starting such topics feels like you are just looking to increase your post count as these topics have nothing new to add. Instead you should try going for some of the latest topics like LN, Schnorr Signatures, Pegged Sidechains (None of these are latest but they haven't been discussed to death already).

Finally, Your English could use some improvement. Its a pain to read so you may altogether avoid posting such introductory information by starting a New Topic.
If you think you understand a concept well enough and really want to start a topic then take care of two things:

First, keep your sentences short. 6-7 words per sentence. That makes it easier to understand. Believe me. That makes for much better posts.

Second advice I always want to give to those who have weak english but want to sincerely participate, Please...please...for the love of god, don't be constantly apologetic and unnecessarily humble while posting your opinions. Avoid the salutations of 'Sir' and 'Sorry again if I am wrong' like the plague. Those sugar coated words are a complete turn off.

Understanding bitcoin and contributing for its growth is a serious endeavor. Lets start behaving like responsible men here.

Electricity consumption doesn't really have any significant relation with number of transactions or demand. Bitcoin miners are ASIC based devices with fixed power consumption. For example, the Antminer S9 is rated at about 1300W.

Umm. This is neither a bug nor a feature. Its more like a limitation at present because of the trade-offs that have to be made between block size and decentralization.

PoW doesn't seem unfit in any way if you consider the following:

a.) Any form of alternate system like PoS or DPoS means the people with highest stake in the network can control it. Takes us back to the failings of our representative democracies.
b.) All the alternate systems claiming to be decetralized (Like IOTA ledger, Raiblocks etc.) make claims they cannot fulfill and are regularly releasing scams rather than features


I think you are trying to link Electricity consumption as you heard about the news articles about bitcoin's enormous electricity consumption. Well, Those figures are debatable and far from accurate. There was an upsurge in "Bitcoin's Environment impact" posts during that time. Here's a link where I tried to reason that the figures were inaccurate. Even if you assume that electricity consumption increased because more miners started mining bitcoin due to higher reward, that has no effect on Bitcoin price.

If you are new then a reading of Mastering bitcoin by A. Antanopoulous is recommended. There is a lot of FUD out there. You can look at some of my post history to see the kind of scenarios people come up. Happy Learning!