Interesting, never heard of most of these!
i guess the majority of these kind of sites earn by referral links? but icobench for example (the seemingly most popular one) doesn't do it that way?

phishing sites in pural, where are people getting phished?
myetherwallet I'm aware of, but beyond that, what are the sites people are accessing?
also, a suggestion is to use MetaMask which is a browser plugin (you can import wallet from myetherwallet).

some more tips: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3576100

is this again like that DNS redirect thing? stupid to enter details even if certificate isn't there, why risk it? 

I think your final point about founders wanting to get rich from the token + easy to contact, I think the first point is arguable.
it's not about getting rich short term for any serious inventors, I think so at least. getting rich from the token = might aswell pump news like tons of shitcoins do, and then sell and let it die.
and easy to contact, really? they should have far more important things to do than to sit in telegram!

but it was a good post

those with IQ should be capable to quickly contribute enough to gain a high rank it'd seem like,
newbie is a good seperator from people who creates new accounts for the sole purpose of spamming for bounties!

Why do you think crypto takes a lot of time and work, in which regard?
and sorry what do you mean by minuses in this context, are you saying it relies on outside influencers?

a good pointer is to assume noone's ever going to give you anything free, no discounts, no trades that you'd profit on and so on, but that fake app thing was quite interesting, what's the relation with telegram for that?

there was a while back some sort of DNS hack(?) that made myetherwallet.com redirect, I think the "MetaMask" plugin (www.metamask.io) is supposed to warn when it's fake sites, not sure how that worked out with the dns hack, anyone know?

there's tons of great coins, in early stages and near-finished(if it ever can be  )
however, there's also risk/growth potential involved.
if you have $100 you could go all in on a risky coin that might give you $10,000?
if you have $100,000 you might want to go all in on bitcoin for "safe" (as safe as it gets in crypto) growth, low risk, and lower reward.

I'd suggest coinbase if you don't care about privacy,
it's very very quick and easy to use, it's automatic and instant "KYC" = picture of passport and then you can start buying with your card!

it's true indeed, and I personally believe that major adoption will come from industries adopting blockchain - not people using crypto to buy things (yet).
surely that day will come aswell, but currently the majority seems to be in it as an investment - and as long as that's the case, it means the "crypto used as payment medium" will not be very functional for it's purpose, so we probably have a good while before crypto is used in large scale everyday (I know there are plenty who already do!) 

I think the trust part is the most difficult part, at least by your definition: trust and know which coins to hold?
looking at the market in general, that's the biggest issue: many people have no idea what is good to hold and not, at least considering how many shitcoins there are in the top 100!
I think a purge is coming to the market and many of today's coins will be gone, in each category there's 10+ coins doing the same thing (competition, yes) - but all are grossly overvaluated to begin with.
so, how to know which coins to hold? 

it's a scary concept for new people; how can there not be someone in charge? (a bank for example).
but slowly it's becoming more and more clear that we benefit greatly from not having the middleman.
people surely know of bitcoin - atleast most people below like, 50?
but the concept is scary, even for many technical people I've spoken with.

give it time 

Not sure if it's fair to bump this but I thought with these many new users here asking how bitcoin works it might be worth doing? 

while it's good to consider security steps for smartphones, honestly, if one exposes themselves to that risk I think sooner or later it'd be a costly mistake..
for the general user, smartphones are the alternative with the least insight into what's going on in the background, most exposure to possible attacks from networks, but also most simple to use.
simplicity is great in many terms but not when it comes to handling value, please do not rely on a user/password app for your crypto on your phone!!!

a hardware wallet as mentioned is a very smart investment but there's also other alternatives, just try to seperate [crypto] and [daily use].
if possible, don't use the same phone/computer that you are doing with crypto, and so on.
here is a text i wrote with some information if someone would like to read a little more: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3576100

either way, even if simplicity, easy access etc today might seem convenient,
one single small mistake at any point in time can result in complete loss of all your crypto!
it's better to learn and understand how to safekeep your crypto, don't rely on any third parties, don't expose yourself unecessary(phones especially, but also computers, browsers, etc).

for all you know your crypto access was exposed since day one and someone is just waiting for you to fill it up more!
get a safe device(hardware wallet/clean computer), get a wallet, move all funds over, and then it's good! 

well you have one merit now so 9 more to go before a change,
people don't hold their merit because it has no gain for them and it also is removed if not given,
so there really isn't much difference with before, since there were also new merit sources added.
this means there's more people willing to give merit, the only difference is that more people also want it now -
but if you were going to post useful posts, then you'd have done it before this change!

Jet Cash is highly ranked and always very constructive here, I'm not highly ranked! nor were I constructive, I maybe should have been but there's sooo many threads about this same topic.
people with 0 merit coming and telling everyone how to get merit/not to worry about having no merit..! 

the original idea might have been along those lines indeed but as you also point out, the control over media nowadays - in most of the world, where there's one-a few companies controlling 90% of the media. it's a good illusion to make people think they can make a choice and thinking there's a difference between the news sources!

especially considering the general societal climate where nowadays it seems like it's much easier to cause a conflict of nothing (consider all the trends etc that comes from seemingly nowhere and becomes gigantic due to media), it's if anything a very easy way to cover up and completely control leaks, questionable government acts etc - keep the people's mind on something else while it passes with minimal coverage..

the media has definitely gotten too much power and influence over society!

A very interesting topic but, for all we know extraterrestrial life could be anywhere, so how much does this news actually mean?
Very likely, or "it's not impossible"?
even if we only know life formed our way it could definitely have evolved differently somewheeere in the vast universe.
or is this just another topic to get more funding again? 

You need one (1) merit to be rank up to a Jr. Member again, right?
the world isn't ending, why is there 5 threads in this section about this every day?!
is it so difficult to write something that isn't garbage? 

You can't really pump and dump a coin that has such a high market cap, beyond the actual reasons for a pump - which ultimately leads to a dump aslong as bitcoin isn't going up.
for some reason this market is in such a way that all news leads to a pump followed by a dump!