Um.  Hate to tell you, but there usually aren't.  Bitcoin just decelerates faster than that dude who crashed straight into a side wall at 200mph at the racetrack in Indiana. 

I also hate to tell you that buying bitcoin on credit or margin or with leverage is what idiots did back in 2017 when prices looked like they were only going up.  It's a complete newbie move, OP.  And it's how people get burned in a bull market--the trick is to buy LOW, sell high.  Where does bitcoin appear to be right now in that equation, eh?

Putting an advertisement in your sig space isn't shilling, and I think the dictionary definition would agree with that.  If you're shilling, you're doing it actively of your own salesmanship and not passively as one does in a signature campaign.  Members who actually "shill" for a service/company/whatever are usually spammers in my experience, breaking the rules in an attempt to get you to visit whatever site they're shilling for. 

Sometimes they also create advertising threads masquerading as a real topic, and that's so fucking annoying.  Like "Hey guys, did you ever hear of [insert shill company here]?!".

Right, and that's why I wouldn't consider it shilling. 

Hmm.  They were one of the first segwit-compatible (or however you phrase that) wallets out there if I remember correctly, and I had one of their wallets too.  I'd no idea that they were basically web-based, which is what OP is describing though not exactly.  But if a wallet-maker can blacklist you from trying to hack into your wallet, there's something wrong with that.

Thanks for the heads up on that, OP.

Man, I thought not when I used them (but that was a long time ago).  Guess I was completely wrong.

It's obvious you do, though that tends to force other members to have to invest tons of time reading what you wrote, which I cannot consistently do I'm afraid.  But that's a "me" problem and not a "you" one.

Yeah.  I sort of hate to see Ratimov get banned, but if he plagiarized something then at the very least he deserves a temp or a signature ban--and that would only be if Theymos agreed that he deserved such lenient treatment.  I think I've only seen one or two members get their accounts restored, so it's rare.

Jeezus--I give you megaprops for trying to sweep the poop off the door o' that thread, but would it not have been easier and more efficient to report just a handful with a note to the moderator to check the thread for the constantly-refreshing nonsense?

Hmm.  Does that actually count against your reporting accuracy?  I'm pretty sure I've bumblefooted my way through threads like OP linked to, reporting nonstop, and it can get confusing.  Maybe there should be a box to check off "nuke thread please" when you're reporting stuff to the mods.  It'd be one hell of a time saver.

So sez you, OP.

I've been on the forum 5.5 years now and I do recall the name webtricks, but for the life of me I can't remember its significance.  I'm assuming he is/was a scammer.  Just too lazy to search right now.

This behavior reminds me of another very juvenile, immature member from a few years ago.  It wasn't webtricks, though, it was another member and a complete troll.  Troll on, OP.

But I give him props for thinking about stuff like this, and even if the solution is overly complex it's something that's interesting to me.  I have no idea what a 10 minute e-mail is, but I'm pretty sure I know what the concept is and that something like that exists (I don't stray far on the internet; I'm a hermit inside a hermit).

I don't have any operations with members of the forum I need to keep secret, so this kinda-sorta doesn't apply to me.  The creativity of encrypting messages has sparked my interest, and I wish I knew more about cryptography....but alas, it would be like learning a new language for me.  Protonmail will have to suffice.

All of your other arguments are valid, but it's the above reason why OP's suggestion (which has been made plenty of times before) won't see the light of day.  Theymos putting the 1-merit requirement on Newbies ranking up is about as far as he's likely going to go with noob restrictions. 

Sometimes I wish he'd think of a genius solution for all of the annoyances created by brand new accounts, and who knows, maybe he's working on it.  But the solutions brought up by the community over the past few years have just fallen on deaf ears.

I agree with both of these, except that as ranochigo and I said above, Theymos isn't looking to put any major restrictions on brand new/newbie account and certainly not what amounts to a B&H jail.

So does this mean I could live like a king in Venezuela being a bounty hunter/sig campaigner?  No, probably not--I'm not an economist, but I'm assuming currencies like the VES (which I'm not sure exactly what it is) are hyperinflated, so I'd need a lot of satoshis to make a living there on a shoestring salary.

I'd be interested to know which country that is, but of course I respect people's need for privacy.  Either way, I always find it interesting when people from economically-depressed countries weigh in here about bitcoin vs. their local fiat currency.

And that's what I asked above as kind of a hypothetical question.  I'm not sure you'd be able to "survive only with crypto" in any of those countries, though I would imagine the cost of living would be a hell of a lot less than a country like the US.

Ah, I knew where I'd recently seen HitBTC's name mentioned, but I guess it was a few months ago when Curecoin apparently got listed on their exchange:



Sorry to bump this thread, but I can't stand it when decent (but obscure) altcoins like Curecoin and GRC aren't traded anywhere except on sketchy-ass exchanges.  No update, OP?

I figured we'd be almost back to normal life by now, but in the US at least it looks like everyone is freaking out even more about COVID-19.  There have been several local businesses that have closed for days--and for unknown reasons.  Masks are starting to be enforced in stores, and people are getting really salty.

Whatever the pandemic brings, I'm just hoping there's an end to it soon.  No country can afford to keep locking businesses down; it'll cripple any economy, and fast.  The good news is that the vaccine is being manufactured and distributed (last I heard in the UK), so hopefully that will ease people's fears.  Long live bitcoin, death to COVID-19!!

Moneta?  Wasn't that one of Yobit's shitcoins that only ever traded on Yobit and only ever for 1 satoshi?  I could swear that was the case and that Yobit was giving moneta away as one of their free coins a few years ago.

Anyway, nice catch OP.  I don't know if this is evidence of an impending scam, but it indicates two things about the team:  laziness and dishonesty, both of which any potential investor ought to be made aware of.  It baffles me that new projects are still plagiarizing parts of their whitepapers and then starting up ANN threads here.  They must not be aware of how much they're under a microscope when it comes to shilling their wares on bitcointalk.



Lol.  That's not even true anymore and hasn't been since at least the beginning of bitcoin.

LOL, newbies above unable to read rules, and I'm sure they're not sockpuppets.

Wow, I haven't been following this contest for a long time, and I didn't realize it was officially endorsed by Theymos--I saw an announcement for it on my unread threads page.  Should be interesting to see what the results are.

Man, you are too kind.  I wasn't always that way, and it's interesting to see how much I've changed since I've been a member (and since the merit system was introduced, too).  I've seen a lot of other members change as well over the years, sometimes for the good, sometimes not.  I shan't name the names that are in my head, though.

WTF is that nutcase talking about?  Of course you'll get banned if you're caught plagiarizing something verbatim--have you never looked at ban appeal threads in Meta before?

I can't stand SEO, and the use of text spinners is just one reason.  The internet hasn't been the same ever since Google took over the search engine space and SEO folks went to work.  I much preferred the internet circa 2000, but that's just me.

OP, are you saying (or implying) that Ratimov is guilty of text spinning in that Beginners & Help thread?  You'll have to excuse me for asking that; I just woke up and am still drinking my coffee.  But we've known for a long time that spinners have been a problem on the forum, though there have been some members who've proved themselves quite adept at sniffing out such plagiarists.

Bump.  Still looking to sell 0.014BTC.  Drop me a PM if you're interested.

Edit:  Deal done with DaveF.  Locking thread now.

I forgot to check in on my thread here, and I appreciate everyone's opinion.

You're quite right, Slow death.  The fact that there are so many unregulated exchanges that can scam their customers and get away with it does mean that the exchange space hasn't fully evolved yet.  I'd be tempted to say that once Yobit is put out of business, then there might be some order setting in. 

What I'm not looking forward to are those things in your crystal ball, though I don't mind if exchanges have to be accountable to whatever government their operating under.  Unless that happens, we're going to keep seeing shit like Mt. Gox, Cryptsy, and all the other exchanges that disappeared with their customers' funds.  Coinbase, for example, wouldn't be able to do that and get away with it.  There would be huge lawsuits and government action taken if they tried an exit scam.  But with an exchange like Kucoin or some of the smaller ones?  Sometimes we don't even know where they're based.

I think that's exactly what's happening.  And this time, some of these whales have faces, e.g., MicroStrategy, Grayscale, and others. 

That's the how, but I'm wondering about the why, as in why are these large corporations snapping up bitcoin as soon as its mined.  Somehow I don't think it's just bitcoin fever hitting them, because they're accountable to their shareholders (I'm thinking of MicroStrategy here) and there must be a damn good reason they're heavily investing in such a risky asset as bitcoin.

But hey, it's great times for everybody who owns bitcoin right now.  We're getting closer to the ATH and 2020 hasn't even ended yet....but the paranoid little bird that lives on my shoulder is telling me that the banking system and/or global economy is about to take a serious spin-kick to the liver.  That wouldn't be good for any of us.

I agree with that completely, although helping people on the forum is usually out of my sphere of expertise when they're asking for help with wallets or other technical stuff.  But I've worked most of my life in helping roles, and there's a satisfaction in it that's worth more than whatever my paycheck was.

Props to you for providing guidance in the situations you've mentioned.  I'm not exactly sure why you created this thread, but if it's to toot your own horn, go for it.  Nobody else ever does that for you, right?

Wish I had examples about me helping others on bitcointalk, but I can't recall any.  Some members have sent me PMs thanking me for various things, but usually I wasn't intending to help them at all.  Lol. 

You know what?  My guess is that OP has lost track of what his main account actually is, and the rambling and the target of said rambling, and style thereof, make me think this is you-know-who-hunter, who said he was leaving this forum for good if I'm not mistaken.

As far as design flaws go....yeah well, a lot of this confusing shit was implemented by Theymos's unique neuroarchitecture, which I find mostly unfathomable.  But hey, I've been here for over five years now and there are very few things I'd drastically change.  I even like the look of the forum, which has that circa 2008 look.  And we all know why that's appropriate.

Anyway, the new forum software should be rolling out any day now.

Yeah, I get that people's motivations are going to run the full spectrum in a truly open marketplace, but the fact that something like that showed up in a Mycelium wallet does surprise me--and you're right, they ought to have somebody moderating what gets put up for sale. 

I haven't used Mycelium in a while, so I wasn't aware they added a feature like this, though I did read a thread recently about how they're expanding their partnerships and so forth.  But Jesus....this is like having a drug dealer just knock on your door and offer you some cocaine for a good price.  Crazy.