I hope OP is just a gamer and is using a gamer phrase.  Is that the case, OP?  PrimeNumber7 is right, you can't "farm" merit here, only earn it by making posts that stand out amongst all the crap.

Why is it important to you to rank up, anyway?  Your signature doesn't look like it's advertising, so are you looking to get into a campaign or something?

OK, your post has forced me to make the decision to not merit any posts by Magicalking or KingsDen.  Magicalking is obviously a plagiarist, KingsDen has been accused of it, and I believe both accounts are controlled by the same person anyway.  In addition, they're both obsessed with getting merits, and to be honest neither one of them consistently makes good posts.

Sorry you two, you're cut off.  And maybe Magicalking will get banned, who knows.

If that were true then OP is fucked, but I don't believe for a minute that his bite of rice depends solely on income generated through bounties.  He probably still lives with his parents and is just participating in them to get some extra crypto to gamble.  If he's independent, then I would question what he was doing prior to joining the forum.  Admittedly that was 4 years ago, but either way nobody should depend on bitcointalk for their living.  That's a strategy for failure, not success.

Absolutely agree with both statements, and I'm not a mod either but if he was banned for plagiarism, I can tell you his chances of getting his account restored are zero.  You have to be highly valued by the community to pull that off, and OP is basically a nobody.

I mean, look at this post:

That's as generic a shitpost as you can get, so I say good riddance.

Theymos et al. typically move at the speed of a crippled snail, so the missing of the self-imposed deadline shouldn't be all that surprising.  We could all speculate as to why that deadline was missed, but who knows?  I'm just hoping it won't be that much longer, because I'm excited about the channel.  Even if it's not perfect (which I'm almost certain it won't be), I'll still be a subscriber and watch every video that's put out.

Hear, hear.  The upswing in bitcoin's price certainly is a welcoming distraction from the absence of bitcointalk's Youtube channel--but I'll still be waiting with eager anticipation for its release.

You can tell when an article was written by a member of the younger generation, as they use new terminology to describe very old things (like scams in this case) like they just discovered them.  Drives me nuts.

Anyway, this is what happens when there's way too much money floating around in people's hands.  You get NFT manias, ICOs, shit like Earth2, where idiots speculate on digital plots of land with no purpose or real value, and prices of everything inflating like it was the 1970s all over again.  I just hope it doesn't become like Weimar Germany.

Hate to say it, but those fools who got scammed in this Evil Ape thing got what they had coming to them.  It's economic Darwinism in action, where money flows from people who don't know what to do with it to people who know how to get it (by whatever means).  Hopefully they learn a lesson from this episode.

I'm surprised you haven't seen me offer that to members before, because I've written it in quite a few threads over the course of a number of months.  I encourage lower-ranking members (below Legendary at least) to PM me, asking me to review their post history in search of any posts deserving of merits.  I'm happy to do it, and it gives me a way to distribute a lot of merits in a short amount of time, which I think of as an efficient means of doing my merit source "job".

Right, and as you and Philipma1957 have pointed out, there's reason to think that at least one of them (Magicalking) isn't a newcomer to bitcointalk.  It's possible he was a lurker, but I find that to be unlikely simply for the fact that very few new members do that anymore.

Well, I wouldn't put it past a pair of alt accounts to do that, especially if they were greedy enough for merits.  I've had alt accounts PM me within short periods of time before, though those cases had nothing to do with post history reviews.  Some members just think others wouldn't notice a thing like that.  It's not about them being dumb; it's about them thinking I'm dumb, or at least that I haven't seen 10,100 varieties of bullshit in my time on the forum and don't have my BS-detecting antennae up all the time.

Sarcasm noted and internally chuckled at.  But the thing is that I don't want to deny two members any merits I think they might deserve, but nor do I want to have my goodwill taken advantage of.  That's why I'm looking for any evidence that these accounts are connected, so I can know one way or the other what's really happening.

Fuck it, that was a good post, hence the merits given.

They wouldn't get tagged for admitting that, but it'd be a hit to their reputation--whether deserved or not, because it's generally accepted here that most people who only post on bitcointalk for money don't put in much effort.  There are exceptions to that, of course, but they're just that--exceptions, not the rule.  I'd say OP is probably one of those exceptions, because he's worked his way up to Full Member during the merit system era, and he hasn't even made a ton of posts (relatively speaking, of course).

Congrats to you, OP.  I don't care for these self-congratulatory threads in general, because they strike me as merit-fishing attempts (which is why I'm not meriting your post, btw), but you deserve an addaboy.

I want to revisit this post by nutildah, which was preceded by this post by philipma1957:



The thread is locked and I'm too tired and lazy to quote the posts properly.  But the jist of it is that both nutildah and philipma1957 accused KingsDen and Magicalking of being alt accounts, and after that it seems like it was just forgotten about.  The reason why I've started this thread is because I got requests by both KingsDen and Magicalking via PM for post history reviews, and they came about 2.5 hours apart.  I'm reluctant to post the PMs here, so I'll just add that both started off their request with "sir" and both used the world "humbly".

I'm happy to do post history reviews, but there's no way in hell I'm doing it for a pair of alt accounts.  Does anyone have solid evidence that these two accounts are connected?  I'd like to hear opinions, thoughts, anything, including what Magicalking and KingsDen have to say about this.

Thank you, I was going to point that out myself.  I'm not sure if OP understands the difference or just wrote the wrong term (repeatedly).  Oh, and I'm a believer in the efficient market hypothesis myself, to an extent.  There are times when the market can be very, very irrational and valuations can either be inflated or less than the true value.  That's what makes Warren Buffett such a good investor.

If you take a look at most stocks right now, you'll see that they're trading at P/Es that are extremely high.  That indicates to me that they're not good investments right now.  Some of them may represent great companies, but you have to buy their stock at the right time, when it's close to its real value (or undervalued).

And with crypto, who the hell knows what the real valuation should be for any of them?  Your guess is as good as anyone else's.  I think the crypto market is probably the best example of an efficient market, because a coin is worth exactly what the market says it's worth at any given point.

That topic should definitely be discussed, because it's of great importance to cryptocurrency, but I'm not sure it should be in P&S.  That thread is in Bitcoin Discussion, and I think it's appropriate there and is probably the best section for it, as more members will likely see it there.  I'm pretty sure more members visit Bitcoin Discussion than P&S (and man, I hope that's the case).

I disagree that dehumanizing speech is a call to violence or that it would necessarily lead to violence--at least not on an internet forum like this one.  If I said something like "You shitposters are just monkeys", that's dehumanizing, right?  But that isn't going to lead to violence.  How about "The white man is the devil"?  I've heard that so many times, I've lost track.

I do agree with you about actual calls for, or threats of, actual violence.  The law has a very definite opinion on that as well.

Since OP didn't explain how he was going to convert crypto to fiat, it's hard to say whether converting his TRX to a coin with a lower withdrawal fee would have helped him, but I certainly see your point.  We'd kind of have to know which exchange he was using to withdraw fiat and whether a LTC-->fiat conversion is possible on it.

But yeah, 0.0009BTC is a pretty high fee, and personally I think it's excessive.  Obviously whatever exchange that was is making a profit from that, because it doesn't take that much to send bitcoin right now with a reasonably high network fee.  OP might have tried exchanging that TRX on the altcoin marketplace section.  I don't know how many trades happen there, but I'm pretty sure that he would have saved money had he found someone to trade with.

I thought about doing that recently, and perhaps I should.  I haven't seen a merit giveaway thread in a long, long time, and the last one was by actmyname if I'm not mistaken.  The only issue I have is that the members who post in them don't read the requirements, don't understand that I wouldn't just be giving merit away for shitposts, and that if I created such a thread it would just die off like the other ones have.  I suppose I could keep bumping it, but I think I've made the offer enough times that anyone who thinks their posts would hold up to my standards would have PMed me by now.

But I'll consider it.

Edit:

Right, and I think those merit giveaway threads were all in Meta, where you can't create self moderated threads.  I can't think of another section where a thread like that would be appropriate, but if any of the mods have suggestions I'd be happy to listen, because I agree that a merit giveaway should be in a self-modded thread.

I'm not so sure a new ATH depends on that, though I would say that if an ETF were approved it definitely wouldn't hurt.  I think the importance of bitcoin ETFs is overblown, though I could be wrong--and the only way I'm ever going to know that for sure is if one gets approved.  We'll see.

As I write this, bitcoin is moving toward $49k, which isn't bad, and I certainly wouldn't underestimate its volatility and rule out the possibility of surpassing its ATH by the end of the year.  But do I think that's actually going to happen?  I don't.  I'm also not sure a $20k+ rise in value over the course of three months would be sustainable, and I've written similar sentiments before.  I'd be much happier if the price rose slowly, hitting $64k by June 2022 or thereabouts. 

And that's a big part of the problem--I don't have the time to go scanning a wide array of sections searching for good posts.  I just don't have the time or even the interest to read threads in certain sections--and since I don't speak more than one language, all the local boards are ruled out. 

I'm glad I'm able to distribute as many merits as I do, and I wish more members would hit me up when I offer to do post history reviews, because I encourage that.

Giving more merits per post isn't a bad strategy at all, IMO.  That's something I couldn't do before my sMerit allocation got upped, because I'd easily run out if I gave more than 3 merits for a decent post.

And I don't think I'll get above #6 unless some merit sources above me drop out.  I'm not even sure I can maintain #6 on a monthly basis, as it's not easy to distribute that many merits consistently.  I'm glad some members have taken me up on my offer of monthly post history reviews and that the "Ranking up" thread exists in Meta.  If I had to rely on finding good posts all by myself, I don't think I could give out 600-800 merits monthly.

Thanks again for posting the results, OP!

I think this discussion belongs in Economics, and I'm glad OP posted this here, as I have Bitcoin Discussion on ignore.

None of this is surprising, even with names named--tax evasion among the ultra-wealthy and politically powerful has been going on for longer than any of us has been alive.  I think there are simply better ways of detecting that evasion these days (and probably more laws as well).

I see a lot of Asian names, and European ones as well.  I'd love to see some American ones, because I know damn well my country isn't exempt from this.

Look at these posts:


Now tell me if you think any of these are alt accounts or not.  OP started this thread on September 3rd, a month ago, and he's only posted once and it's a question about how to increase his rank.  You'd think that a person concerned with that would, oh, I don't know, start posting regularly?  Especially since that was suggested to him. 

This is an alt account farm in the making; that's the way I see it.

I don't know about anyone else, but the above post makes very little sense (especially the bolded part).

OP, you should do a lot more research, not only into DeFi but into cryptocurrencies in general, as it seems you're very new to the space--and if that's true, then welcome!  Crypto is fascinating and very profitable if you know what you're doing.  As far as loans and banks, I don't think banks want anything to do with crypto or the loaning of it.  Why would someone want to take out a bitcoin loan, for instance?  Probably to gamble or to speculate in risky investments, and banks aren't in the business of making those kinds of loans.

In addition, there's the issue of collateral.  On this forum there's a lending section, and the last time I checked there were members constantly looking for no-collateral loans and very few members taking out loans with real collateral (altcoins are basically the only good form of collateral for crypto loans).  I don't know much about DeFi myself, but I have a feeling it's not going to be a threat to the banking system like some people say it is.  Time will tell.

Ah yes, members of the 1000+ post/0 merit club.  Gotta love 'em.  At least what they post is mostly just bounty reports and not shitposts (though some of them do that as well).

It's not that the members who've posted don't really care, it's that there's not a hell of a lot any of us can do about the problem--and it's been discussed previously in many threads over a period of years.  Unless bounty managers become more selective in who they admit into those bounties, or if Theymos puts the smackdown on shitposting (which he won't), the only thing the community can do is complain about it--and that's a pointless exercise in futility.  That's why you're seeing so much apathy here.

And....the slump has reversed itself, and bitcoin is climbing back toward $50k as I write this.

The China news was pretty big, but I figured it wouldn't affect the price long-term.  Bitcoin has survived and thrived through pretty bad news events in the past, from exchange hacks to EFT rejection to strong governmental regulation changes.  I never expect it to move upward in a straight line, but I've come to expect that bad news doesn't keep it down for long.