Sort of cool, even though I’m pretty anti-political.

I’m really surprised the FEC has been so lax about Bitcoin campaign contributions. Since it’s P2P, it’s difficult for campaigns to verify the identity of the donor. Compare to credit cards — the card won’t process if the billing information is wrong. Anonymous cash contributions are limited to $50, so it’s pretty crazy to see someone dropping $4500 on a candidate with BTC. That’s nearly the maximum for both the Primary and General elections.

Not sure I follow. I'd avoid mentioning anything about Bitcoin/crypto on your tax returns, though. That's just asking to get your name put on an IRS shitlist.

When you say you didn't keep good records, why can't you get those records now? Can't you export your exchange trading records and deposit/withdrawal history? It's a bitch to go through, but it's probably possible to piece together the records.


Nope. Coinbase provides a P&L statement (although I've found inaccuracies with mine in the past). Most do not. Altcoin exchanges definitely don't, and like the OP said, that's significant because like-kind exchanges don't apply.

Here's one data point:


Mostly all from Meta or otherwise merit/forum ranking-related (i.e. meta threads in other boards). I don't see any technical threads.

Like I said, it's sort of expected that merit will be concentrated in community-oriented boards like Meta. But maybe we can be realistic about the system's limitations...

Doesn't that technically add up to 48.1% received in Meta? User stats are also disabled, so it's not clear what proportion of your posts are in Development & Technical Discussion vs. Meta. One individual anecdote also doesn't really disprove his claim that merit is concentrated in Meta and in limited social groups. From my observation, I'm guessing he's right about that, but I don't have any forum-wide statistics to point to. Has anyone scraped stats to look at the actual distribution among sub-forums?

As another anecdote: In my case, I never post in Meta. One post I made in Meta two days ago netted one third of my current merit, though it represented only ~3% of my posts since the system was added. I've definitely gotten the feeling that if you want a higher merit rating, you should 1) make a high quality but preferably an agreeable post and 2) do it in Meta. When I say agreeable I mean with regard to community sentiment. If your post is thoughtful but contrarian, it seems less likely to receive merit.


That may have been the stated intent. But is it generally true? Some meritorious posts earn merit. We can agree on that. Certainly, not all meritorious posts are even noticed, let alone merited. You have to wade through a lot of shitposting in e.g. Bitcoin Discussion to find quality posts, and regarding sMerit, I suspect that's not where peoples' energy is going.

It's natural for merit to be concentrated in Meta, too. "About the forum" sections tend to be the most community-oriented boards out there. And at its core, merit seems to function like a social media "like" button. I don't see how you can stop people from meriting posts they like or agree with, just as they do with "like" buttons. But something you find agreeable =/= quality or noteworthy or deserving of merit. Not by definition, and not by the stated intent of the system.

I'm not too concerned either way, but I think it's a tad dishonest for us to act like post quality is the only determining factor -- or even the most dominant factor -- in deciding merit. It's just not logical. There are social/psychological dynamics that are going unconsidered.

Some of them apparently work and ask for 2FA -- but a good hoaxer would include real accounts on the list. Some of the accounts show up on Haveibeenpwned, so they may have just pulled from old leaks. The fact that there's a typo on the list ("gmai.com") suggests it wasn't dumped from Poloniex's database. It could have been scraped from a phishing site, but it doesn't look like a legit hack.


Looks like an FUD attempt to me.

Regardless, that's not justified. People should think twice before sending off their KYC documents. That goes for investors, too. Bee Token and Sentinel Chain are just two recent examples of ICOs that were compromised and leaked investor KYC data. Is it worth getting your identity stolen over an ICO investment? Probably not, but maybe, if you think you'll 1000x your capital.

Is it worth getting your identity stolen over a bounty hunt? Absolutely not! People should really stop giving their ID to everyone who asks...

It's funny how the media always tries to explain price moves with news. They had a convenient catalyst here, but the market bottomed on Monday, way before the testimony took place. I don't think many people expected negative press, either. Both agency heads have been very cool-headed and hands-off regarding cryptocurrencies. ICOs are probably going to see more enforcement actions, though.

It's pretty safe to say that Roger is a scammer now. I think most of us can agree that Bcash's backers (Roger Ver, Jihan Wu, Calvin Ayre, Craig Wright) are scammers. But we also have to come to terms with a few things. For example, Bitcoin Cash =/= Roger Ver.

They have a pretty dedicated community. Sure, I think a lot of them don't understand Bitcoin's mining incentives, but that's irrelevant here. If they want to run Bcash, they should be able to. If they want to believe Bcash = Bitcoin, power to them. Bitcoin is either open source or it's not. Period.

There's nothing wrong with steering newcomers away from Bitcoin Cash. But I think lashing out at third party services is a waste of time. Coinbase has shown time and time again they are here for profit -- not to support your vision of Bitcoin. And that goes for most if not all exchanges. They're just here to make money off you. And adding more shitcoins is the best way to do that.

Don't ask for advice like this. People are just going to shill what's in their bags. I would focus on research, research, research. If you're not willing to put in the time and hard work, then the safe bet is Bitcoin. Based on the historic trend, it's always a good conservative choice.

But if you're looking for bigger gains, you need to put in the hard work. The altcoin space is rife with scams, pump-and-dumps, and vaporware. You need to get to know the space and learn to quickly filter out the scams. Successful altcoin investors read ANN threads everyday. They keep up on fundamental news, they calendar fundamental events (roadmap dates, software/feature releases). They research coins all the time -- old and new.

Find coins you like fundamentally, then analyze the supply/income generation (staking, masternodes, etc)/marketing capacity/other fundamentals. Study the charts. You should probably invest in increments -- over weeks and months, not all at once. That will help you minimize the drawdown (the unrealized loss on your holdings).

There's a learning curve and it takes some experience to get there, but you need to learn this game on your own. If you go off coin recommendations on forums and trollboxes, you might get a good call here and there, but you'll probably lose everything eventually. It'll be much more valuable for you to develop an investment strategy which works for you. I think you'll find this will pay off over and over as the years go by. Good luck.

No. It's up to Coinbase to give them to you, since they control the private keys. It seems like they won't be supporting most of the Bitcoin forks. Their position is that they may credit fork coins at their discretion, based on the "security" and "value" of the forked network.

This is what they said about Bitcoin Gold:



Basically, every fork has its own wallet. You should be very careful dealing with these wallets. Some of them are probably malware that are out to steal your coins. I've avoided claiming most of the forks for this reason. I don't trust the software.

Maybe, but there is no established legal basis. It'll be interesting to see what happens when a case like this actually goes to court. There's definitely no precedent. I mean, think about it logically: I could fork Bitcoin tomorrow. If no one adopts my fork, could you argue that exchanges are obligated to pay my fork's tokens to BTC depositors? There could be millions of forks like this. So we need clarity from the courts regarding what -- if any -- obligation exchanges have to pay out fork coins.


But does holding BTC in their custody entitle you to their private keys? We don't own/control the private keys in an exchange's wallet. They are definitely obligated to release BTC we deposited into their custody. Past that, I don't know.

Ah, so I guess the problem there isn't bytes vs. vbytes. It's that Core's fee estimation (like Electrum) is bad. Which leads me back to square one: How are people estimating their fees with Segwit? There's gotta be a better way.

Bad fee estimation must be part of the problem during periods of heavy spam and congestion.

Merit really shouldn't be this big of a deal. Why are people acting like this?

The system was intended to reward quality posters, not penalize people and turn this forum into some Orwellian shithole where everyone is snitching on each other and publicly shaming each other. The idea of a public shaming list isn't just overkill. It's downright fucked up.

And it wouldn't even work. I would just quickly dump all sMerit I have to avoid being publicly singled out, on someone like Vod, because who could blame me for that? I don't have time to worry about "Merit police."

And if you want to talk about how the system was intended to be used, then consider that people with limited sMerit may want to reserve it for truly deserving posts. There's nothing wrong with that.


Doesn't seem like a big deal. And that's why Theymos suggested that sMerit might decay in the future.

Look, I dislike Bitcoin Cash and I think its fundamentals are shitty -- highly centralized/concentrated mining, bad scalability roadmap, small community, etc. Some people like Roger Ver are marketing it deceptively. But it's just a fork of open source software. It's a live blockchain with active miners, user base and community. In my book, that's not a scam, and it's not incumbent on Coinbase to remove it.

This is all moot, anyway. If anything, Coinbase has made it clear that it's going to add coins. Expecting them to de-list BCH is only realistic if its volume drops enough to warrant it.

People often say that Bitcoin's future changes are up to the users, not some dogma like "Satoshi's vision." I agree with that. But "Bitcoin users" is a diverse set of actors, and increasingly so over time. What happens when different camps disagree about forks? Each side calls the other a "scam" and demands that exchanges de-list the other? That's not the spirit of FOSS and it's not the spirit of free markets.


Well said.

What do people use to estimate bech32 transaction fees? Electrum's fee estimation, as expected, drastically overpays. I also haven't wrapped my head around satoshis/bytes vs. satoshis/vbytes and how to figure out how much transaction size is allocated to witness data.

Usually I set very low fees since confirmation time isn't an issue. Recently, I needed to send some urgent transactions. I basically just eyeballed the Core next-block fee in satoshi/byte and reduced it by 25% to be on the safe side. Electrum told me the fee was low and to expect 25 blocks before confirmation.

But they were confirmed in the next block and I suspect I overpaid. Any ideas?

What was "Satoshi's vision" -- exactly? And how has it failed?

Today, payment channels are being integrated, just like the original client. And fees have also dropped to the point where I barely notice them. I'm paying < 5 satoshis/byte now. When I first started using Bitcoin in 2013, the recommended fee was 0.0001BTC/kB, or 10 satoshis/byte. Some clients defaulted to 0.0001BTC regardless of transaction size, and IIRC some clients defaulted to 0.0005 BTC.

Here's a trip through memory lane: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=245552.0

So, I'm paying significantly lower fees today than I was in 2013. I could probably pay even lower fees, but I haven't found a good way to estimate Segwit fees yet.


The investors ruined the vision by......using Bitcoin?

Giancarlo and Clayton's statements were already released yesterday in advance of the hearing. Their comments seem mostly positive. They seem to prefer federal oversight than state-by-state regulation, which is what we have de facto because of money transmitter laws.

From the CFTC chairman:


It doesn't sound to me like an imminent crackdown is coming. Fingers crossed that cooler heads prevail during and after tomorrow's hearing.

On what grounds? They are private companies. They have the final say-so over what their credit lines can be used for. People have complained for years that companies (especially Amex) have leveled adverse action against their accounts because of where/how they spend their money. AFAIK, there's nothing anyone can do about it.

And more than that, it makes sense to prohibit credit lines being used to buy investment assets. This is already clearly spelled out in the fine print for most installment loans. Taking loans to play the market is irresponsible, and banks want no part of it.


How do you know this is about manipulation, and not about risk analysis? January 31st was a major compliance deadline for year end 2017 reports. It's totally possible that banks have now run the numbers and seen (after the monster rally in late 2017) that enough people buy cryptocurrency on credit to affect their risk profile.

When there weren't daily $100 million dollar Tether issuances happening, it was conceivable that they were fully backed. Now that nobody can actually redeem USDT and they keep injecting huge sums of money like this, it looks like the Willy Bot.

We don't know whether USDT is fully backed or not, but the possibility it was a fractional reserve was always there. Shady business practices and third party trust come with the territory with asset-backed "crypto" like this. Their biggest problem is that even if they have all the money in the bank, the CFTC is crawling up their ass! I can't imagine this game will last very long.

Still yet, USDT is trading at $0.995. It dropped below 95 cents earlier today, but people still have confidence. Crazy!

It depends on your jurisdiction. I've seen claims from many people that their country doesn't tax cryptocurrency gains. I can't speak to those claims, but in the US, there are laws that regulate taxation on property gains. The IRS has explicitly said those regulations apply here, whether or not you sell for fiat money. I think we're all hoping to see specific carve-outs that make paying taxes on cryptocurrency gains less of a burden. But until and unless that happens, it's not safe to simply ignore the existing tax code.

The like-kind exchange carve-out was done to protect the interest of the propertied real estate investor class. We aren't in such a privileged position. Congress and the IRS doesn't give a shit about bitcoiners. They're unlikely to make this any easier on us.