Wasn't Poloniex a US-based company to begin with?  I didn't look it up before starting to write this post, but I could have sworn that Polo was one of the registered US exchanges, sort of like Coinbase.  I do recall their fall from grace a year or two ago, when they went from being one of the most used exchanges to practically having nobody using them--and that they did some sort of reincorporation that moved their base of operations.

Justin Sun might be a bit odd, but he's not a fool as far as I know.  You would have thought he'd have complied with US regulations if Poloniex was still doing business there, no?

Wowza!  You wouldn't think even Foxpup's nimble fingers would be able to pull that off, and I'm actually puzzled as to how he did it (potential time machine aside).

I probably didn't mention that I occasionally do this for certain members when I'm out of merit, and even when I'm reviewing post histories I tend to hand out merits at a rapid pace if I'm familiar with that member's writing style and quality.  At that point, the only judgement left to be made is effort, and that IMO can be done by looking at post length--which is a quick process when you have all of the member's posts pulled up on your screen.

Really?  I have never heard that before.  Do you know which countries have laws against people using their electricity at home for "commercial purpose(s)"?  I'm assuming this isn't against the law in the US given how many American Youtubers make videos about mining at home, and I've certainly never heard that you can't do what you want with your electricity.  That sounds insane.

I've never mined btc, but I've read a lot about it and watched tons of videos relating to it.  If I had way more money than I do and if I had a bigger place to live, I'd probably jump right in.  I read most of that article OP linked to, and it sounds reasonable.  The way he wrote about bitcoin reminds me of satoshi's vision of it, free from governments and banks.  It's truly sad that governments are starting to strangle bitcoiners with regulations lately after so many years of tacit approval of crypto.

Yes, I know what a reverse split is and the significance of them--what I obviously didn't get across was that the way the split is presented (1:4 or 4:1) always confuses me.  That's just a thing with me, always has been, probably always will be.

I didn't realize I'd posted this previously here:

Now I'm thinking that they might be a decent company worth investing a few bucks into their stock--if I had a few bucks to play around with, which I currently do not.  Despite the relatively high P/E, they actually do make a profit.  That's saying something in the realm of tech stocks, where most companies operate at a loss and many never will make a penny of profit. 

Unfortunately (IMO) that's true.  There's no way Theymos would have the moderators hand out bans for promoting a scam site, although if memory serves me correctly something similar happened when Yobit was running its last campaign--but it wasn't because of Yobit's scammy nature; it was because the participants were spamming the forum like crazy.  It was unbelievable how many garbage posts were cranked out during that brief period when Yobit had hundreds of signature campaign participants promoting them.

Don't feel too bad for any of them.  And this member OP mentioned wasn't banned because he was promoting Betking anyway; it was for another offense. 

I'm not convinced these accounts are linked, but I'm playing devil's advocate here.

Well, it does make a difference if you don't want to look ignorant and care (and also know something) about what you're writing.  Kevin and Kelvin are two different names, though obviously there's only one letter of difference.  If you're familiar at all with Kevin Durant as a basketball player and have seen his name before, I'm not sure how you'd make that mistake--much less multiple members making the same mistake.

You're missing the point by OP entirely.  JollyGood knew exactly who you and the other accounts were talking about.  He's suspicious that such a spelling mistake in addition to other similarities in writing style might be evidence that you're all the same person.  It may not be true, but given how many alt accounts there are abusing bounties and engaging in other crap, you can't blame him for making the connection.

Looks to me as though BitCoinDream is/was a merit source, since he wrote this in his last post:

His last activity date was only a few days ago, and the last post I can see made by him was from April (though I can't see posts in the Bangladesh section).  I don't know if he quit being a merit source or what, but he certainly hasn't sent any in the last 120 days.

Little Mouse, why don't you apply to be a source?  You've been around long enough and seem like you'd be enthusiastic about the position, so perhaps you should ask Theymos to consider it.

That bill (the infrastructure one that has the crypto regulation inserted into it) hasn't been passed yet by the senate, and I think a lot of crypto miners are calling up their state senators and complaining about it--at least that's what seems to the case if Youtube is to be believed.  We'll see on that one.

As far as Ukraine becoming a crypto utopia, I wish them luck and hope that country does turn into one.  Maybe that's where all the miners will end up after all of the big countries regulate all things crypto to death.  My fear would be that Ukrainian politicians change their minds eventually and decide they want some of that crypto wealth for themselves.  Dkbit98 is right about not trusting the government, because politicians change as well as attitudes toward certain things, cryptocurrencies included.

You haven't committed any such crime by self-moderating this thread, and I think it's smart to do so.  The problem is that some members do indeed just start deleting posts at random, so it's tricky whether to spend time posting in a thread like this when there's a risk that it'll have been for nothing.

OP, you might be on to something here (good eyes, by the way).  Did you PM all of the members in question so that they could respond?  I see one of them did with an explanation that I have no way of verifying personally.  Maybe someone in a country where "Kevin" autocorrects to "Kelvin" can chime in.  I guess it's plausible that this could be true, but who knows.

Back when I used to dedicate a lot of time trying to catch alt accounts posting in the same thread and/or trying to cheat bounties I used to find little things like this that would give them away as being connected.  I think most of the time I was right, but be prepared to be wrong from time to time if you keep at this (and I'm certainly not discouraging you from doing so).

I'll be watching this thread.

Done.  Fuck this operation and their attempts to obfuscate their wrongdoings through alt accounts.  There's enough evidence presented here to prove that they're outright scammers, and it's unfortunate that they have another signature campaign going.  Hopefully JollyGood's thread will persuade members to stop promoting them.

I wasn't aware of this situation for some reason, but I'll be keeping an eye on it from now on.

So the CEO said he would be willing to be replaced by someone with "more regulatory experience"....but the headline kind of makes it sound as if there's going to be an imminent transition of power at Binance, and that doesn't appear to be the case.  He could have been saying that just to sound more pro-regulation in case those regulators are watching what he says (and no doubt they are).  In fact, I'm almost certain that's exactly what's going on here.

I would say this headline is almost clickbait, because the headline doesn't quite match up with what Changpeng Zhao actually said.  Just wait, in two years' time I bet you that he's still the CEO regardless of what kind of regulation Binance is operating under.  Saying you're "very open" to being replaced is a long way away from saying your company is actively seeking a replacement.

Huh.  I wonder what's going on there that the Binance US unit's CEO would step down.  That rarely happens unless something is seriously wrong with the company or it's a ruse, and the CEO was actually fired.

That's exactly what I was going to say, so I'll second it.  If you have the seed words written down and stored safely, it doesn't matter if Mycelium disappears forever.  That's one thing I hate about web wallets that you can't back up with seed phrases; you're dependent on their continued existence, just like exchanges.

Glad you got your issue sorted out, OP.  When I was new to bitcoin I had some extremely fear-inducing moments just like the one you went through.  Hope you learned from this thread.

Thank you!  I had no idea a script like that existed--now I'll just have to figure out how to use it, but I definitely will.  Despite suchmoon's comments toward the OP of this thread (which I respect), I still think it's a decent suggestion.  If you ignore a user, it's annoying to even see that they've posted something.  I don't know how many times I've "peeked" at an ignored user's post--and I used to do that a lot when cryptohunter was around.

The irony is that I have the OP of that thread on ignore for some reason.  I'll have to take a look at his most recent posts to see if he should be un-ignored.  Again, I appreciate your link.

Yeah, I have no doubt there's discrimination on the forum, though I haven't noticed (or participated in) much of it lately.  China is a bit of a ticklish subject in a lot of people's minds these days, so it's not surprising to see even blatant anti-Chinese sentiment being expressed.  I'm pretty sure I've posted some myself.  However, I want to clarify something on my part: I have nothing against Chinese people; I have a problem with the Chinese government.  

I also don't care for the Chinese culture of counterfeiting goods, and if you can argue that that isn't a thing, good luck with that.

A few years ago I had a problem with Filippino shitposters, and I regret that I made some pretty bad statements directed against them--I was fed up with the shitposting, and everything I wrote just reeked of nationalistic bile.  For the record, I have nothing against the Philippines or Filippinos or any other nationality or race.  Sure, there are aspects of different cultures I don't like, but when I meet people in real life and it's just two people talking....all of that goes away, magically.  So I guess I've changed.

However, even if there is prejudice, racism, or discrimination on bitcointalk, it's fully allowed.  I wouldn't even want to change that, because it would mean the mods would be censoring thought, however offensive it might be.  If you feel you're on the receiving end of any of that, it's up to you to defend yourself, and you should do so without fear of retaliation, IMO.  One thing about being a member of the forum is that you ought to have a fairly thick skin.  If you don't, you should thicken your skin ASAP.

Well said.

I don't know if there was much debate about it, but I do remember this suggestion being brought up at least once in the past--and personally I would love to have the option not to see any trace of the members I have on my ignore list. 

If I recall correctly, there were some arguments that you'd still be able to see quoted posts by an ignored member, but to me that's not a big deal.  There were some other cons presented against it as well, but the last time someone brought this up was quite a long time ago (I think).  In any case, the suggestion came to nothing, just like most do here.  Theymos doesn't seem to be into adding any optional features to the forum as of late, and I don't expect him to chime in on this--so don't get your hopes up.

Thank you as always, DdmrDdmr.  Sometimes I have to be bludgeoned over the head with a link before I figure out that it's useful and I should check it out.  That's why I'm always a chronic laggard when it comes to knowing how to search for data I'm interested in (and other things, too).

Now those are encouraging statistics, though as you pointed out they might peter out after the first month or so.  I'm hoping it won't drop off too much, but I think a lot of that depends on merit recipients spending their sMerits and not hoarding them.

It's OK, you can be rude on this forum (which is one of the reasons I love it), and you can also speak the truth as you see it without fear of censorship by the moderators.  Sure, you might get flamed by other members, but that's the consequence of free speech.  Other forums/platforms are much more restrictive in that sense, so bitcointalk has that advantage at least.

Although I agree with you that Theymos doesn't seem to be giving much thought to improving the forum--or at least not showing any action to that effect--I happen to like it the way it is.  Younger people who've grown up with social media platforms probably see the forum as antiquated, and I get that.  But it serves its purpose as a place where people can just chat about bitcoin related topics, and it doesn't really need to be much more than that IMO.

And you are completely on point about signature campaigns keeping the forum alive.  If they ever went away, I have little doubt that it'd be like a ghost town around here.  Just look at the forums for some of the more popular altcoins--they're active when the coin is hot, then they just die out.  The truth is that most members here are incentivized to post, which accounts for why there are so many threads and posts within them.  As long as they're around, I doubt the forum is in danger of dying.

Yeah, I was kind of wondering why OP and other members who posted in this thread received similar e-mails.  It looks like either these scammers got ahold of bitcointalk members' e-mails or those e-mails were used for some unrelated crypto things and got sold or hacked.

I get infrequent spam in my primary e-mail account, and when I see that there's any in my spam box, I usually just delete them without even looking to see what they're about.  I'd bet you that I've probably gotten e-mails like the ones OP showed, and I'll be on the lookout for any in the future if only to satisfy my curiosity about how my e-mail was obtained.  I don't use that address for any other bitcoin-related things, so the only way a scammer could have gotten it is through bitcointalk (or if they just happen to be a scammer using bitcoin as their tactic and got a list of e-mails from another source).

Hopefully members here are smart enough not to click links from crap like this.  You shouldn't even open the e-mail in my opinion.

Awesome that those two members ranked up, especially Hydrogen, who seemed to have been at Hero member for as long as I can remember.  It's about time he ranked up to Legendary.

I'm confused as to what that statistic reflects (aggregate awarded sMerit).  Is that 5.194 given to users on average?  For the month of July, the total number of awarded merits increased quite a bit, as referenced in this post.  With that being the case, I wouldn't be too discouraged as the increase in merit sources and sMerit allocation to existing sources is having a real effect.  The only question is whether it'll be a sustained one.

Thank you!  I wouldn't have known where to find that data to be honest with you. 

What I also learned is approximately when I was made a merit source (I couldn't remember the month before looking at those graphs), which was Oct/Nov 2019.  Previously I thought it was in September that Theymos had tapped a bunch of new sources.  Anyway, it's great to see the circulating merits increase so much for the past month.  I certainly did my best to use up my allotment, though I fell short.

Now I'm wondering why merit circulation had declined from Jan. 2020 in the first place.  It could be that some merit sources have become inactive, I guess, but that's probably not a full explanation.  Any ideas?

I also forgot to mention in my last post that I'm glad ndalliard, the member Silver80 was referring to, is giving out merits as well as earning them.  It's important for members to not be stingy with their sMerits.