On a local board, I would think it'd be hard to avoid meriting the same posters over and over--outstanding posters are like big fish and a fairly small pond, and I do think the good posts should be merited, even if it might result in the appearance of the merit source being biased. 

I can't read his mind, but it sounds to me as if he's concerned about his own reputation and doesn't want it to look like he's favoring certain members.  I don't know how many members you have on the Philippines board, but I do know there are a LOT of Filipino shitposters--no offense, but it's something I've observed in the last five years. 

I don't see a problem with cabalism13 taking a short break from handing out merit.  It's not like the world is going to come to an end if he does that.  A merit source has no obligation to constantly be giving out merits.  I'm a merit source and I can go days without giving any (though I try not to do that).  I also know that it's my choice as to what posts I'm going to merit; I have pretty high standards, but each merit source has his/her own.

Yeah, that is a lot and I'm also surprised that hasn't been noticed by regulating agencies all across the world.  My guess is that it probably will be eventually, but I don't think that'll cause Binance any huge troubles.  They might have to lower the withdrawal limit, but it's not something that's going to put them out of business.

Nah.  They seem to be one of the exchanges that are trying to play by the rules.

I agree.  Binance is one of the exchanges I trust, but I'm not naive enough to think it's safe to leave large amounts of funds in their hands for more than a day.  I've been around the crypto space long enough to know that crazy shit happens sometimes with "trusted" exchanges.

LOL.  I hadn't visited this thread since I last posted, so I missed this response.  So the Talk token should be able to be traded by now, correct?  I'll have to check out what it's going for.  I can't imagine anybody actually wanting to buy it, so I'm guessing those cryptotalk participants are getting screwed pretty hard.

Yes, I've been following Yobit for at least 5 years now, so I'm familiar with their coins/tokens constantly being in maintenance mode, whether they're scam ones or not.  They list RDD and (I think) PIVX, but even though you can trade them, you can't withdraw them.  That's just bogus shit IMO.

Has anybody here done an actual "experiment" and tried this virtual miner?  I know some members tried the Investbox thing when it was being hyped.

OP, if I wanted to discuss margin trading on steemit, I'd just go there.  If you want to start up a discussion on bitcointalk, just start it up here instead of linking out to steemit.  It's annoying.

Sometimes I swear the luckiest newbies are the ones who've never even heard of margin/leverage, because it's so easy to lose everything in a short period of time if you don't know what you're doing. 

I fully understand how using leverage works and how it can potentially increase your profits to an extent that would be impossible without using leverage--but I've never purchased stocks, crypto, or anything else on margin and don't ever intend to.  For one thing, it's akin to gambling, which I detest; and second, margin is debt.  That's something I also detest and try to avoid at all costs.  I'd rather buy an investment with money that's mine instead of borrowing someone else's to buy it with. 

But hey, to each his own and good luck to any of you who're trading on margin.

Well, the world was headed in that direction anyway.  COVID-19 just gave the world a little (or perhaps a big) push toward that digital age, which I assume means primarily e-commerce and the like.  People have been ordering a lot more stuff online than they used to, and there's been a massive adoption of apps like Zoom, GoToMeeting, Skype, and the like for distance learning, working from home, or just talking to friends/family from a distance.

I happen to agree with that, but I don't think it's for the same reason as you.  Bitcoin, to the best of my knowledge, hasn't been more widely adopted as a currency because of COVID-19.  Its price has spiked this year, but the stock market has also gone up, too.  I think that's because of all the money printing and interest rates near zero--and don't expect that to last forever.

I find it almost unbelievable that a pension fund would invest in bitcoin or any cryptocurrency, given how risky they are--unless it's a stablecoin, but holding one of those isn't going to make money for anyone.

It's interesting that litecoin is among the favorites, and it kind of makes me wonder what other altcoins these big-money investors are buying or already own.

Yep, I bet it will, especially if you're able to stake it (I haven't been following it and don't know if ETH has moved to PoS yet).  All in all, this is a pretty bullish report.  Thanks for posting it, OP.

10 years I'd say with almost certainty.  100 years, not so much.  OP has a point that these indexes are constantly changing, although not that often.

The "intrinsic value" of a stock (or a stock index) comes from the capital invested in the businesses that underlie the stock, and the earnings the companies generate.  I don't know if that counts as intrinsic value or not, but I do know that it's those things that give stocks whatever value they have.

I don't know if I agree with either of those statements.  Intrinsic value is what something is worth simply by existing, right?  If that's true, the statement about bitcoin is completely off, and so is the one about gold.  Gold's instrinsic value is that it can be used to make jewelry or coins--but only as long as human beings want those things.  Maybe my understanding of the term is lacking, but I'm thinking that it tends to get applied to bitcoin and other investments too much anyway.

Longer than is probably healthy.  Longer than I'd care to admit.

But it depends, because I do a lot of stuff online throughout the day and I take little "bitcointalk breaks" where I'll look for a thread that catches my eye.  If it's interesting enough, I'll spend time reading it and probably making a post.  Lately there don't seem to be as many threads that hold my attention for long, but I've put that down to an overall decrease in traffic to the forum in the last few months.

Yeah, me too.  I see no point of logging out since I visit the forum so often.  

I actually used to spend much more time on bitcointalk between 2016-2018 when I was actively hunting shitposters and account dealers.  My enthusiasm for both of those endeavors kind of fizzled out in 2019 for various reasons--but even still, it seems like I'm on the forum more than I see the sun.  lol

I don't think OP meant a price break-through.  I think he's asking why bitcoin hasn't been more widely adopted as a currency than it currently is.

I think if all those banks failed in 2008, bitcoin might have a different and more prominent standing in the world, but the global economic system didn't collapse, ATMs didn't stop spitting out $20 bills, and the corrupt bankers and mortgage brokers got bailed out instead. 

This is as good as it's going to get for now--and personally I'm fine with that.  I've always considered bitcoin to be an investment rather than a currency, though it certainly can function as one.  The huge thing standing in bitcoin's way to mainstream adoption is the fact that it's still much easier to use credit/debit cards, smartphones, or plain ol' cash to pay for things.  Why would anyone go out of their way to spend their fiat on bitcoin in order to just spend the bitcoin....when you could probably have used fiat in the first place. 

My take on it:  Don't fret, OP.  Bitcoin is doing just fine.

Agree completely with this, and that should be OP's bottom line answer.  I certainly understand that $51 is a lot of money if you can't afford it, but if that's the case why in the world would you be investing in risky and super-volatile assets like cryptocurrencies anyway if a new Ledger is too much money.  OP sounds like he might be the type of person who invests more than he can afford to lose--but I could be wrong, and I don't mean any offense by that.

As for me, I would never buy a used hardware wallet.  I'm not super paranoid, but I'm paranoid enough not to trust that it hasn't been fiddled with in such a manner that my coins could get stolen.  Generally I don't encourage people to be paranoid either, but in a matter like this....if you want to sleep well at night knowing your crypto is safe, be paranoid enough to buy a new HW wallet. 

If OP had a lot of altcoins, I don't think that would be convenient.  Sure, you could put them all onto a Coinomi wallet and write down the seed, but they're not 100% secure last I heard and I wouldn't recommend that.  Nor do I know of any other multicoin wallet that has been proven to be safe.  Other than that, I'm all for paper wallets.

Nice research, OP.  I find this info to be....depressing, for lack of a better word.  What I really don't like is that apparently if you visit Ledger's website, they give data (I'm not sure what, exactly) to Facebook, a corporation I detest with every neuron in my CNS.

Shame on both of these companies for this.  I'm pretty sure they know how important privacy is to people who are interested in their products.  I'm sure there's a way to know beforehand about these cookies, but in practice that's something the vast majority of people don't bother to look at, lest they waste multiple hours per day simply figuring out what data each website is sharing with what companies.  Jesus.

That isn't going to happen unless or until goods and services are priced in terms of BTC--and I don't see that happening in my lifetime. 

Bitcoin is a new, global currency/asset thing that doesn't have a good track record so far of people adopting it--and when I say "adopting" I mean using it to buy things.  The USD and Chinese yuan are only two fiat currencies out of many, and I don't think the performance of either one of those will have a significant impact on bitcoin's price. 

As far as the US's addiction to debt goes, something's got to give eventually.  We can't continue printing money and accumulating debt like we have been.  Somebody is going to pay for all of the shit that happened between 2008-now, but I don't know if it's going to be the current generation or one or more of the future ones.  And frankly, I don't think anyone in the US government's money management department is paying attention.

With Electrum, the first thing you should be doing when creating a new wallet is writing down that seed phrase--always. 

As far as the most recent update (to 4.0.4), I don't think it's a critical one but I updated from the most recent version just the same.  I haven't noticed any earth-shattering improvements or anything like that, so I wouldn't fret if you don't update.

Definitely good advice.  With all these phishing scams and whatnot going on these days, you can't be too careful.

I assume you're talking about Theymos and if so, you're right--I wouldn't count on newbie jail being brought back and I wouldn't hope for more newbie restrictions.  The creation of the copper membership and the 1-merit requirement to rank up to Jr. Member are about as far as I think he's going to go for now.

I don't think Theymos is all that interested in combating scams on the forum, either.  Most forums have a zero tolerance policy toward scammers (sometimes even just suspected ones), but here even a proven scammer can keep operating with impunity.  OP, you're presumably new to the forum unless you're posting from an alt account, so you've got a lot to learn about the way bitcointalk operates.

Just speaking for myself as a merit source, I think I've seen a list of members who've included me in their trust list but damned if I can remember any of them--and I don't use merit-giving as a political tool.  I've given merits to members I don't like, don't agree with on a lot of things, you name it.  To tell you the truth, I completely forgot that merits had anything to do with the DT system.  I stopped paying attention to all of that around the time Theymos introduced the flag system.

Totally agree with this, and it goes double for merit sources.  I try not to give too many merits to the Legendary members who are usually the focus of a lot of drama anyway.  I much prefer meriting lower-ranked members, though it's tough finding many outstanding posts made by Newbie-Member ranks.  Most of the newer members are just here for bounties and that's it....but that's been an ongoing problem for years now.

I haven't noticed suchmoon being all that distraught by Lauda's departure.  I think your perception of reality is a little bit askew, but I don't think there's anyone here who'd be able to help you with that.

This sounds like a wee bit of jealousy rearing its head.  In case you haven't noticed, suchmoon has earned quite a few merits, and that is an indication of what the community thinks about a member's posts, whether you agree with that or not.  Thus suchmoon is doing something right.  If anyone is guilty of making "low-info low-skill" messages, it's me--but only if we're considering the technical aspects of bitcoin.  Come to think of it, I don't tend to make a lot of posts about things I'm ignorant of, unless it's to ask a question.  Anyway.

Yeah, I'm seeing a lot of that going on here and it's obvious as hell.  Time to put the "report post" button to heavy use, just like the old days.  Wheeee.

I happened to notice coinswitch.co, as it's one of only a handful of exchanges that lists curecoin (oddly enough, on the curecoin website in the exchanges section, they apparently link to coinswitch(dot)net, which my browser flags as dangerous.

In any case, I think coinswitch.co should be listed in the OP, because I think it's a legit instant exchange (though I haven't tried it out yet).  Not sure if OSS is updating this thread or not, though I did see he posted here today.

BAC, you know I support FBC.com but I have yet to try out the exchange function.  Right now there aren't any altcoins that I fancy, but I do keep an eye on the website daily.

Did Lauda in fact erase all avenues of coming back?  I haven't read through that entire "Goodbye World" thread, but perhaps I should.  There have been a lot of members who've said they were leaving the forum for good, and then they don't.

One of the ones who did follow through (so far) is Spoetnik, and another is mixan.  And didn't MPOE-PR have a rather notorious record on the forum before he got banned?  That was a long time ago, so a lot of people these days might not even remember him.

I don't know if any of them belong in the so-called Hall of Fame, but they're all gone now and they were all popular members (except maybe for mixan) when they were active.

Oh if that were only true.  Ever get involved in the justice system as part of an investigation (even if you were innocent)?  Tell me how much of a right to privacy you have then.  Tell the NSA or Facebook or Twitter how we're all entitled to privacy online....and on and on. 

I would love it if we really did have some legal protections to guard our privacy, but we don't--or we have the bare minimum at best.

So what's this new drama all about?  I'm so tired of all of this mud-slinging against members who don't deserve to get splattered.  I excluded nullius from my trust list because of his "troll" feedbacks, and that's something I wish I didn't feel I had to do, but those red tags are supposed to be handed out to members you wouldn't trust with money, not because they're shitposters, trolls, assholes, arrogant, psychotic, or anything else.

And you as well.  But just FYI, I was commenting more on the nature of the negative nullius left rather than whether it's accurate or not.  Negging members for scamming is proper; giving negs to trolls is not.  

Christ, you've got thin skin.

Edit:

A lot of members have engaged in trolling at some point or another (including myself), but there's a difference between occasions of the behavior and having "TROLL" be your defining feature.  I've read plenty of OgNasty's posts, and I wouldn't consider him a troll.  Nor TMAN (though that's a close one), nor Lauda, nor Vod....and the list goes on.  I would consider cryptohunter and his alts to be trolls, but you might argue the opposite.  The label, the assignment of the primary feature of a member, as being a TROLL and nothing more is really subjective.

That's how I see it anyway.  I can agree to disagree on an issue like this one.