On another related note, some of these Facebook pages charge a "Subscriber" Fee. Not saying this is a way to make money but I saw one particular page where the monthly subscription fee was something like $120 ! Can you believe it ? I guess it could be an attempt from Facebook to steal back some of those Tik Tok influencers they lost a while ago.

Have a look at this:



So as far as I know, these stars are redeemable for money. Seems like the silliest idea, until you see some people are already using it.
In the screen cap example, it's a model / singer who gets stars from fans and can redeem these for money. The person actually running that page is the
mother of the singer, and I imagine she's the one cashing in on her daughter's popularity. But if this works country to country ( model singer is from Asia, fans are
from Europe / US ) could this be a sneaky way to transfer money ?

Anyone done this ? I think Mirror Protocol and FTX used to have this feature where a token would track the price action of your stock ?
Given the ties to the Terra Ecosystem and FTX of course, I'd stay away from these indefinitely. But is there any other decentralized
protocol on the blockchain that offers this ? I think Amazon, Nvidia, Google and Apple were the big ones, so quite possibly there's
a solution out there. Something like Injective Protocol maybe ?

P.S. I think several centralized exchanges offer access to stock markets but I rather use a DEX.

Well, the ad blocker was originally an extension so I checked and it is removed. Also not listed as a program separately , checked Control Panel.
I guess if the problem persists I will do a fresh install of Chrome.

No man, Newsgroups were never about "News". It's basically anonymous file sharing. Much faster than webpages if you know what you're looking for.
I think I will try it for the reasons I explained in my first post. Webpages sometimes die and never come back, old programs get discontinued, etc.
But it's true that for the most part Newsgroups have been replaced by better ways of sharing content.

Okay ! Thanks for all the inputs ppl. I switched over to Firefox, problem solved ! But just in case, I installed uBlock Origin, enabled it and no problems so far.
Went back to Chrome,  the pop up issue still happening !, the AdBlock extension did nothing to fix it, in fact... i run the trial version to see if it worked, and when it didn't
I stopped using it. So now I get the AdBlock Ad Pop Up spamming me every 5 seconds ! Nice !



I'd hate to have to remove Chrome from my laptop, but what other choice do I have now ? I already removed the AdBlock extension from Chrome and
the damn pop up is still there, rearing its ugly head on every page I browse !

From time to time I get a subscription offer from EasyNews on my email... I wonder. Are Newsgroups still alive ?
I think Newsgroups were good for the anonymity and speed... two of the things Blockchains are known for. But .... what about
the content ? Well, many of the webpages I used to follow have for some reason , disappeared ! Others are just impossible to find...
google search does not help either, it takes you to fake spam sites that are potentially harmful. So after some months of waiting
and thinking ( my fav site never came back ), I'm almost ready to try Newsgroups again. Full disclosure here, I'm looking for a
specific version of Edius ( Edius 6 ) which is available for free to registered users on the Grass Valley site.  I did register my
details on their site more than 2 weeks ago, never heard back from them ( my registration data needed to be checked and processed )
I did try some free alternatives to Edius which did not work on my laptop, either my GPU was not supported or some other issue.
So I guess Newsgroups are my last resort... if I don't find what I'm looking for, it's only a $5 subscription fee anyway.
Thoughts ?

I'm using Exodus wallet by the way. ETH network fees were $420 ( Australian Dollars ) at one point, and as low as $ 5.60 that same night.
A while later I checked again they were still around $120. So they are wildly volatile as you can see, and I don't know whether this is
an issue with the Exodus wallet but I normally try to pay less than $ 15. I see other chains like BNB charging a lot less, but most tokens
can only use ETH.

So this would have been the cost of ONE transaction. That's right, one.

WTF !?! How is this even possible ? And I swear Nework Fees were $420 at one point...

Okay, I know that the founders are pretty clever and accomplished, but you could say that of
just about every Layer 1 project. Why is Aptos special ? What does it bring to the space that other
L1 projects can not offer ? We already have too many of these, all of them run by geniuses, all of them
with ground-breaking technologies, and I don't see any of them pumping the way Aptos is ? Or is it because this
project is new or something ? Frankly I don't get why Aptos is so important, but I'm open minded, and
willing to listen.

FTX, Celsius, Voyager,  and soon Luna ( probably )... all making ridiculous gains in this BTC rally.
Meanwhile some coins with good fundamentals and strong utility ( like Chainlink ) are doing poorly...  C'mon...

I guess a lot of people around here were shorting the market...

Mine is Optimism. 55.5 %   
Jumped all the way to 4th place in my top holdings.

Thanks people ! I managed to see my funds again, but it was not very intuitive.
I had my MetaMask linked to the Trezor device, so luckily connecting my Trezor kinda fixed things.
I say "kinda" because once I connected my Trezor, it only showed me my ETH balance, all the other Altcoins I had
in all the other Networks were missing. So it was up to me to remember exactly what coins I had and in what Networks.
Fortunately I could do that but it was tedious as I had to re add them to MetaMask one by one, not at all intuitive.
What caused this problem was Chrome accidentally clearing my history ( I must have clicked the wrong button or somethn )
so MetaMask did not recognize I was a long time user and treated me as though I was using Meta Mask for the first time.
I was disappointed it took me a long time to restore my old settings and looking to get rid of my Meta Mask as soon as possible.
I still have no idea what this "private key" is about or the damn .JSON file , that sounds way too elaborate and overly complicated,
I'm not really interested !  I already had a super complicated password, a 12 word seedphrase, and a Trezor hardware device setup,
why ask for more ? To make things worse, MetaMask does not have customer support, when you click on their "contact support" they
force you to go elsewhere and find the answer to your question there, and only come back when you exhausted all other options.
So basically, " get lost, we're too busy for you, just find your answer in the nerds forum and come back next week ".
Not impressed ! 

WHAT !?!?
I haven't checked my MetaMask account for about a month, and now a go back and try to check it and it's not there !!
I went to the MetaMask website it gives me two options:
create new account, Import passphrase ( or something like that ) I did not want to create a new account, so I entered
my 12 word seedphrase there and then it asks me to create a new password. WHy would I want to create a new
password when the old one should still work, however there was no option to enter the old password so I created a new one
( same as the old one ) . Once I entered those details now it takes me to a brand NEW ACCOUNT with nothing on it !! ZERO assets !!
WTF ?!? This is not what I want ! Where is my old account !? I had 7K worth of assets there and now ? where is it ?
What's the point of a seedphrase if you can't retrieve your old account !!

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I need a private key ? I don't think I have that ?

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I don't have a JSON file either ? WTF ?!  I thought 12 word seedphrase and password was enough ? Did I lose access to all my assets now ?

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

Would the uBlock Origin extension block "necessary" popUps such as the prompts to authenticate or validate the transaction on your Trezor when you're using MetaMask ? MetaMask itself works via PopUps on some sites.

I don't use CoinGecko on Firefox because that's where I have Facebook. Facebook is notorious for tracking all your activities online so I don't want it to track my DeFi moves.
Anyone here feels safe about using MetaMask and Facebook on the same browser ?

Literally EVERY SINGLE TIME I go into Coin Gecko now I get this annoying popUp



How to stop it ?

I got Total AdBlock Chrome extension ( I think it's free for 24 hours ) and it seemed to work SOMETIMES, not always, in fact... I'm pretty sure I still got the Coin Gecko PopUp a few times right after I added Total AdBlock.
I'm now thinking just switching to Coin Market Cap to avoid this incredibly annoying popUP, only problem is Coin Market Cap won't let me display the token value in other currencies, only in US Dollars. I find that potentially more annoying than the Pop Up... 

Hey people.
Just noticed how different pages list different prices for any particular token.
For example, Quant 5 minutes ago was listed at:

$156.44               at Coin Gecko
$160                    at My local centralized exchange
$163.44               at Coin Market cap

What gives ? These are huge differences if you've got large number of tokens !?

NOTE: I am using the Australian Dollar for currency in this example ( something I can not figure out how to display on Coin Market Cap ! )

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Also: My local centralized exchange has a different "sell" and "buy" price for a token. For instance, if a token is listed at $160 per token, the buy price usually would be $162 and the sell price would be $158. So that adds to the confusion, although my exchange tells me the listed price ( in this case $160 ) is the "average" price of any given token.

There are other Altcoins pumping not just Star Atlas. Part of the reason is that Bitcoin is basically moving sideways and market cap dominance is still very very low. So many tokens that have reached all time lows in November are bouncing back furiously, and Star Atlas is of course one of these. The thing is once a project starts going up and up FOMO spreads and fans of the project ( such as myself ) that had a small stake on it get optimistic and jump in. Outsiders follow and this creates an avalanche of new investors into the project, which in this case was very good to begin with. So unlike Shiba, this project is arguably the best game we've seen in crypto so far and we get regular updates on what is happening with the ecosystem and it's development. So the transparency is one thing that is driving people away from DeFi now and into GameFi. I see the same thing happening with Illuvium with regular updates and lots of fan engagement so even though at the bottom of the bear market people still want to buy into a project that may be huge in 2024 - 2025.