Another Scam although you do have to admit at least they did not just use some stock miner picture :
They actually put a few minutes of work into making something look a bit different.
https://www.Mntdminer.org/product/MNTD-aw-pro/







If a few more people can contact namecheap they might take it down. Although I doubt it, namecheap & Godaddy really seem to not want to be bothered dealing with scams.

-Dave

Yes with a but, many larger businesses are (were) doing it themselves. The corner store is going to use a 3rd party processor. The local gas station is going to use a 3rd party processor.
But, BP as an example, if you go to one of their corporate owned stations does process cards themselves. A couple of airlines do (or at least did) as did a hotel chain.
It just made for a more integrated setup. Admittedly I have not dealt with that stuff directly for years but I know there used to be many places that did it themselves.

Is AMC / Regal large enough to be be able to do it themselves for a better cost then 3rd party? I don't know.

For crypto payments it size / better cost / more efficiency many not even matter. They can start with 3rd party, see how well it goes. If it goes well they keep with it and bring it in-house.
If it does not go well, then they shut the program down.

Kind of like how WalMart is on their 3rd or 4th revision of their credit card. They keep trying different things to see what will work, so far all of them have imploded, but if one really finally does I can see them leaving their current provider and bringing it in house.

-Dave

Hate to use a movie quote but:

"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it."
- Agent K

That is why machine learning for trading will always fail, people can panic and be irrational at the smallest thing that is not at all relevant to the price of BTC, or anything else for that matter.
Big brokerage houses have spent tons of money working on it and although they do work somewhat they have also had some spectacular failures. That will not change. Over time it will get better and computers get faster and faster the same way they have over decades, but a group of people / investors panicking over something or getting excited and buying over something else. Nope, never going to happen.

-Dave

At a guess he is spreading FUD to support another coin. Running around pointing out non issues with BTC that this other magical coin will fix.
He will not actually post about the other coin, some other user will pop in and say what about "X" and go from there.
It's a promotion tactic that has come up before.
As of now they have been here a little over a month started 23 topics made 77 posts (including those 23 topics) and earned 0 merit. It takes work to be that bad a poster.


-Dave

Because if you can't prove what you paid and they do audit you, you're screwed.
Not BTC related but there was a case like that with a classic car sale a few years ago. Was watching a show about it the other day
More or less; someone paid about $7500 for some old car, lost the receipt during the years long restoration process and when they sold it they wrote off the cost of the car, the parts and many other things. They got hit with an audit. And even with YEARS or receipts showing parts purchases for the car in the end since he could not prove what he paid and WHEN for it they only allowed some silly small amount in the 100s. So he owed more in taxes.

That's what brought on this thought.
If you are planning to buy today as an investment are you better off going through one of the big annoying KYC exchanges, since if you sell it in a few years you have proof of what you paid.
Saying a paid $49000 for 1BTC from BlackHatCoiner today is great and all, but if I handed you cash and you sent it to me how do I really prove it.

It's a sad comment but in most places in the world you are innocent until proven guilty.....Except for taxes and traffic court.

-Dave

So there are some serious no KYC people on this board. There are many who think all BTC should be anonymous.
We continually have several threads on it getting posts all the time.
Even a one I started about privacy vs. anonymity https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5366195

But..... does anyone worry that some of that might come back to bite them in the ass at some point in time when it comes to taxes / proof of ownership / other things.

Case in point. I bought 1BTC on Coinbase in 2016 at under $600 a BTC I sold it this year. I know I am going to take it up the ass in taxes. It is what it is.

Now lets say I bought 1BTC anonymously and I can find someone to give me the $50000 in cash today. I should report it and if whoever gives me the money should report it, and if we don't report it it does violate the law. But, whatever. Once again, that is up to how an individual wants to do something.

Here comes the kicker.
Lets say at the last big bullrun in 2017 I bought 10BTC @ $16000 when it hit $60000 this I wanted to sell and get a really nice house somewhere. If all BTC I accumulated back in 2017 was anonymous. I am going to really take it up the ass in taxes since I can't prove what I paid for it....since it was anonymous. So the IRS will take it as $0 cost.

So following that, so do you really want it all with no paper trail. Or even a difficult to follow trail, since if it is difficult to follow and you do have to prove it you might spend a lot in time and effort (read money) proving it.

Just a random Saturday thought.

-Dave

PM the seller and ask. They don't seem to be into crypto but more into baseball and trading cards in general. They may be willing to talk. Worst case they tell you to go away.

If you are thinking of selling one put it up with a stupid high price and see what offers come in. If you put in $10000 obo and an offer comes in at $4500 you know kind of where this one went.

-Dave

Along with a website that has only been around for a month:


It's 100% a scam. I just emailed the abuse address about the scam site, if others can also do it they might take it down more quickly.
But I do have to agree with NotFuzzyWarm looking at the site it does look like a nice box, but there is no way it can do what they say it does.

getmntd.com is the site for RAKWireless HNT miner that has nothing to do with this.

-Dave

Don't forget the OP here tried to get other people to send him money to but the script:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5370215

If you look at a lot of his other posts you can see they he is madly trying to break bitcoin encryption and scam people.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=2795868

Add him to ignore and go about your day, nothing good can come from engaging with him.

-Dave

Considering that all of the financial markets in NYC and the influence that NYC banking and markets have to federal regulation I see it the other way. If it was a small city in the middle of nowhere then that's a different story.

NYC = Largest city economy in the US, PRO BTC
LA = 2nd largest city economy in the US, PRO BTC
Chicago = 3nd largest city economy in the US, no idea, never heard any politician from there talk about it.
San Francisco / Bay area = 4th largest city economy in the US, PRO BTC

Will there be a fight for more regulation from the feds, probably. Will the feds try to ban it, no, not with that kind of money (read tax base) behind it.

-Dave

Some business people will go for the safer if less profitable route, others will go for the chance of more profit with the possibility of smaller profit or loss.
Depends on their plan and view. Variance is great to say if you can really ride out the highs and lows. But if you can't then it can kill a business.

It also looks at stuff in a bubble. If you have been selling BTC from mining to cover bills and such and the PPLNS pool has a run of bad luck when the BTC prices spikes up what did that really cost you? Yes, I know the opposite is also true the pool could have had a run of good luck during the spike. But in the end a lot of businesses want known numbers coming in.

Side note but relevant:
The known numbers think is actually hurting a lot of small businesses. You are actually seeing that now in a lot of retail rental spaces in hot markets. Landlords will ask for stupid amounts of money for small businesses but give large corporate entities a much lower rent sometimes 1/3 of asking *not 1/3 off, but 1/3 of asking*. People see it as gouging the little guy, the owners see it as no matter what Starbucks is going to pay the rent for the next 7 years. Even if they decide the store is not working and close it, they will buy out the lease. They never heard of "DaveF mikeywith kano coffee" so lets charge them full asking price If they make it great, if not and they only last a year we got the money. Because if they don't make it, we don't know what the market will look like in a year and that place might stay vacant for a while till we can rent it again. And if they don't make it collecting from a small closed business is just about impossible. But you have many many landlords willing to have vacant space (PPS pool) or rent a much lower price (PPS+) then take the risk of unknown (PPLNS)

-Dave

Drifting a bit from the original topic. I have been using the Coinbase card.
4% cashback in XLM, and if you use USDC to fund it, since it's a 'stablecoin', there are no tax implications.
Yes, you should be reporting the trades that you do to get the USDC before sending it to Coinbase, but they themselves do not report what you spend in USDC.
They will report all other transactions.
Hmmmm, they don't report the stablecoin that they created and support. Coming up in tomorrows news.....water is wet :-)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5348368

-Dave

IMO we are going to see a lot more of this. Not because it's a new thing, but because it's being talked about more and more.
When nobody heard of crypto / BTC there were still a lot of people doing it and doing it in ways that may or may not have been 100% legit. Stealing electric, mining on hacked PCs, and so on.

I see it the same way we used to see a lot of marijuana growing places that were stealing electricity from nearby houses / businesses or setting up in abandoned buildings. Now that is, at least in the USA, not as big a deal with major business coming into it we see that less and less. Substitute BTC for marijuana and we are now seeing the same thing.

-Dave

Bit of snark but did you read the fees section? It's always been there $5.00 / month after 90 days of non use, it's what you agreed to when you signed up.
Agree the card sucks for other reasons, don't get me wrong. But they never hid that fact.

Most of them have that or worse:
https://support.unbanked.com/support/solutions/articles/44000411370-what-are-the-fees-to-use-the-card-

There are others but most are similar.
The main advantage of BitPay is that you can use it to get cash back so outside of the crap exchange fees you can use it for BTC -> Cash (at least in the US) so there is that.

-Dave

I guess the other question is, if it's not .com does anyone care?
Followed by, if they do care did they do any research into what extensions matter?

I was thinking about it while driving home the other day and actually thought this is one of those things that I could see some mid level executive spending thousands of dollars and hours of time on getting research done to see what domain extensions appeal to which people.

We see here and think xyz is not a good thing, but I'll bet there is somebody someplace who put together a 90 minute power point presentation as to which domain extensions appeal to which demographic group.

-Dave

That's his view and he is entitled to it. Judging from other things he has said, he seems to feel it's too speculative and risky and not secure / regulated enough.

Berkshire Hathaway made most of their money & profits from long slow low risk investments.
And BTC / crypto is the exact opposite of that, so you can easily see it's not an lack of tech knowledge or anything else. It's just a thing that is opposite of what they want / how they operate. So it's not surprising that he is against it.

-Dave

I'm guessing that in addition to all the large mines coming back on the colder weather in the northern hemisphere is bringing back a bunch of smaller home miners who are using them as heaters.
Last year I had about 40th that I was using to heat my place instead of gas. Lost money running the older units, till the bull run, but it still was better then just burning gas for heat.

This year for me personally I just have 17th or so, but my neighbor is running about 65th to heat his home & garage and workshop out back.
How many people are going the same. 10th here, 25th there and so on does add up.

-Dave

It's not even a question of explaining it to investors, it's a question of the opportunity cost of money.
If you are generating a fair about of BTC mining. You get a somewhat known amount with PPS you can then budget to get more miners & power knowing how much BTC you are going to take in.
You will probably over time get more BTC on a PPLNS pool, *but* if you are buying new miners out of the money coming from mining then unless you are in a huge pool, you would not want to take the risk since you want more miners coming in at a known rate. You might get more miners with PPLNS you might not. Can't run a business on might.

-Dave

Take a look at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5363391.20
Finally got the miners but late. There were other similar stories on reddit, but I can't find them now, if you dig a bit I am sure they are someplace.
But, it does not look like they are out and out scamming and running with the BTC, but sold stuff figuring it would be here 'soon' but due to everything going on in the world soon never happened.
Keep bugging them, don't let up and keep posting about it. The more bad people see about them, the more they will (probably) want to fix the issues that are out there in public.

-Dave

KYC is not a bad thing. If you don't want to use services that require it then you don't.
Depending on where you live there are plenty that do not require it.
There are exchanges for other coins, ways of getting cash, gift cards and just about anything else that do not require your info.

IF on the other hand you want a regulated environment with more rules and security, then yes you are going to wind up with KYC.
I can go to localcryptos.com and get cash for my BTC, and hope everything goes smoothly (it usually does) OR I can go to Gemini give up my personal info and know that it will go smoothly.
The choice is up to you.

-Dave