Yeah, I'm doing the sums slightly differently but similar conclusion. I was initially disappointed that my idea wasn't more effective but when I think about the fact that they have actually started to pay to play I know we've got them on the back foot.

Just a thought. Why don't you put a list of 10 under merited posts together and apply to be a Merit source? Even if you don't want to, the only thing that will fix it is if someone there does that.

I really don't think that could be mistaken for Merit begging.

It is a real shame that altcoin mining section is bereft of Merit givers. I think it is partly due to it being something that people do when they are new, I spent a while doing it. The people that benefited from that bios probably didn't have any Merit to give. It's not something I have a solution to as it can only be solved by a Merit source, that has an interest, taking the time and effort to monitor that board for posts.

That's what I was thinking when wetsuit told me they started doing it. But the thing is we make a small loss on the lottery so it is +EV to them because of buying tickets with all the free-roll winnings.


We'll probably just have to make it -EV.

Too hard for me to work out as I only have a limited view of the stats. One way to get a guess would be to download the tickets file when it comes out and see all the accounts grouped together with almost the same number of tickets as they're likely to be botnets. My best guess is based on the fact there used to be 400 to 500 million tickets a week but now we're doing over a billion so I think 50% to 65% bots.

We restricted the RP redemption for 1000 lottery tickets per roll because that's what they were doing a while ago but they've switched to buying them instead. wetsuit said they're even depositing and buying tickets with the deposit to get around all the restrictions. Maybe if they have some bad luck and don't win anything that'll make think about not doing it next week.

This isn't 100% accurate because the stats are to the end of Saturday but 7 days wagering volume was 1,185BTC. That gives 237 million tickets and is a very small part of the 1.1 to 1.2 billion total.

I think it'll be a little lower than last weeks 1.3 Billion. One of the things we introduced stopped some of them but not enough. We've got other things we're working on but wetsuit has been away the last 2 weeks so it is difficult to implement them.


It's not that they're cheating the lottery, it is that they are cheating the faucet to buy the lottery tickets.

I haven't ever set any target other than having more Bitcoin at the end of each month than I did the beginning of it. That's easy to achieve as I now have several sources of income paid in Bitcoin, I just need to make sure I don't spend all of it.

If you really believe that Bitcoin has a long-term future as a form of money there isn't a reason to stop. Why save inflationary fiat money when you can save deflationary money?

Done.


I'm guessing from what you said earlier that the email you got before was when someone tried to hack it and it got locked.

You didn't post a Bitcoin address so you can't sign a message to request it is unlocked, so I don't see how you can get it back.

Did you try and use the secret question to recover it?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1206977.0

It looks to be locked rather than hacked but either way as you never posted a Bitcoin address I don't think it will be possible to recover it.

Right on schedule, it is BTCevo's regular weekly signature spam post saying absolutely nothing in barely legible English.

That's because it is funny. That thread is full of people using this forum for what it is intended. Having conversations about Bitcoin.

Do you have the Russian local on ignore? Two of the first three posts are there.

...and they'll run like that for years on end without any problems.

I think you're right about this guy not being serious though.

That's a really interesting list, thanks for the effort.

Just wanted to add a bit to the comments section.

anunymint - didn't delete his posts he was banned for ban evasion and the moderators deleted all his posts. He's a serial troll who enjoys spreading anti-Bitcoin FUD.

GameKyuubi - Doesn't have enough activity to make Hero but also deserves a mention for being the creator of the HODL meme which is where that 600 Merit comes from.

RichDaniel, saulzaents, pitipawn, identifyuser and Tukang Becak all red tagged for Merit abuse.

I'd suggest just removing the Deleted category. They are a combination of skipped user IDs when something went wrong in the signup process and accounts that were banned and deleted in the very early days of the forum before nuking became a thing.



The number seems to be highly inflated by brand new accounts that never post. Is it possible not to count an account as active until it has posted at least once?

Correct. We use Segwit to pay out withdrawals. Full Segwit support is on the todo list and as I've been using Bech32 wallets since last year I'll continue to nag wetsuit to do it.

Try listening to the advice you've already been given. Size is irrelevant. If a post disappeared and you didn't get a message saying it was deleted then that means the thread it was in was trashed. The spam megatheads you probably are posting in only exist for signature spammers to achieve their post count. Nobody reads them so nobody is going to give Merit to any post in them.


But why did you come here for advice? Why are you interested in getting Merit?

The only reason can be is that you want to gain rank so you can earn more from posting. This is a forum for Bitcoin and crypto enthusiasts do discuss the things they are interested in. Those people who come here for that purpose will have no problem getting Merit but equally, have little interest in getting it. You can discuss Bitcoin with a Jr. account as well as you can with a Legendary one. All the people that come here only to get paid to post and are obsessed with ranking up only get in the way and pollute the forum and that does bother a lot of us.

Seriously, I was CPU and GPU mining in 2012 and it doesn't harm hardware. It was a myth being peddled then and it still is now.

I think the browser mining indicates that the owner doesn't have anything to invest hence making the users pay for it with POW. It might take 24hrs to get something but it only takes a few seconds to click start and then it runs unattended. It is going to be a niche market but it is an innovative idea and it might work quite well.

We've got loads of options and we discuss them endlessly. The problem is none of them has been tried.