Ay!  Not sure if I ever took notice of that thread, so thanks for linking to it.

For as long as I've been here I've apparently been unaware that there was that much turnover of Donator/VIP accounts--though it probably shouldn't come as a shock to me.  Account selling was very much tolerated up until the point where people started to realize how harmful it could be, and there was that huge hack back in 2017 from whence so many bounty shitposters got the seed to start their horrible careers.

Jesus, I think I remember that whole thing going down from my lurking days.  That's definitely a username I'm familiar with, whereas many of the other ones don't even ring the faintest of bells.

Hear, hear.  My initial thought was that if the ultra-wealthy give anything away to a decent cause, it's a net positive.  Whether they're lying about it or not....meh.  I've never been the type of person to rage against the rich in general; I have way more of a problem with people who've got too much power and lord it over those of us who have much less, and while it's true that powerful people are often quite wealthy there are rich folks who don't have too much power or at least aren't power-tripping assholes.

I haven't read the entire thread yet.  Is Warren Buffett lying about what he's going to do with all his money when he dies?  I'll go back and read after I post this (bad habit, can't seem to break it).

Oof, that's definitely a topic that'll spark some strong emotional responses to people who disagree with your point of view.

But here's the simple truth: DT members should not let disagreements affect them when it comes to using the trust system properly--and here I'm making the assumption that the community has reached a consensus on what "proper" use of it is.  From what I've read it does seem like 1miau's actions were spurred by emotion, but even if I'm correct I wouldn't say those actions rise to the level of wiping him from the DT list.  I don't know where the cutoff point is for iffy behavior and calls for DT exclusion, but in my opinion it didn't reach it in this case.

There's got to be some leeway given to DT members, because they're all human and all make mistakes from time to time.  To keep someone from being on it, I'd say there needs to be an established pattern of misuse of the trust system or some other major reason (like a proven scam/attempted scam/etc.).

That's not to say there shouldn't be debates like this.  I don't fault OP for creating this thread, even though I'm probably not in line with what his opinion is on 1miau being on DT.  This is how we establish where boundaries are.

OP, you suck for making this a topic for a thread (lol). 

I was never a trader, first of all.  But when I think back to the prices I had the opportunity to buy bitcoin (or ETH or any of the other altcoins that have blown up since their inception) I can get seriously depressed if I dwell on it too long.  Regret starts to seep in, and the voice in my head that is my enemy starts getting louder, and it keeps calling me a fucking idiot for not having faith in bitcoin even after I realized that it wasn't a scam--and that's indeed what my initial impression was of it.

To be very specific, I remember bitcoin dipping below $200 and me sitting like a dribbling moron at my keyboard wondering how low it was going to go.  I probably even posted about it, which would've been back in 2015.  Ugh.  I am not joking about that sinking feeling in my chest when I contemplate what could have been.

To the community: Don't be like me.  Ever.

Yeah, I'm well aware that there are zillions of members nowadays, but unless someone has sequestered themselves to a specialized area of the forum (like Collectibles, for example), I'd imagine I would at least recognize a username if that member has been here longer than I have--and if they've been active, which I've said hasn't been the case with OP.

And come to think of it, now that I'm looking at his handle again, it is starting to ring a bell somewhere in my besquiggled ball of neurons that I refer to as my noggin.  Can't say I remember any of his posts, but his username is looking like I've seen it before.  Small victory for my scrambled brain?

I'm not confused, though I'm chronically tired, and if I were even a lot more cynical than this forum has made me I'd still call this for what it is: a merit-grab.  OP is obviously trying his damnedest to scrounge up the remaining number of merits necessary to hit Legendary, and no doubt he's noticed all of these self-congratulatory threads and figured he'd take the time to honk his own horn about the most irrelevant statistic of all. 

To all of you guys who are congratulating him, may I suggest that you check your heads, wipe off your glasses, whatever, but see this for what it is and don't blindly go along with what's quite obviously nonsensical bragging (with an agenda).

FWIW, here's my time logged into the forum:



That stat doesn't mean jack bootywhack, because there's no way in hell I've actually spent well over a calendar year on bitcointalk, either reading or posting.  And if I did, whoop tie-doo.

I am (as usual) very late to the party--and by that I almost always mean "the thread"--because I didn't notice this one until now. 

I think I was vaguely aware that there was some kind of kudos given to the 3 millionth registered member, but I didn't know they got that as their username.  I was wondering if that lucky member had made some productive posts and was chagrined to see that this is the last one I was able to view:

Oh well.  I don't recognize the usernames of many of the members whose avatars are shown on the first page of this thread, and I'll bet a lot of them are OGs who took their bitcoin wealth and are now sipping on some kind of drink with an umbrella sticking out of it whilst basking in the warm sun on a private island.

Yep, that's one hell of an assumption but I like to assume big when I think about the early members of the forum.   

Disclaimer: yahoo62278's post is as far as I've read in this thread, but I think his comment is all I really want to respond to.  What he wrote is true, and that last sentence there about people trying to meet their post quota for whatever campaign they're in has been true for probably longer than 9 years--and I've also never seen much of an improvement in my time here.

Except that the merit system might have improved post quality overall, but the effect hasn't exactly been overwhelming.  I'm not even sure if we'd see people not reading before posting even if sig campaigns and bounties suddenly went *poof*.  I've seen posts on reddit made by people who'd obviously not read a single thing in the thread they were posting in.

I guess if a post is of extremely low quality and it shows that the person making it didn't read even the first page of the thread, report it to the mods (as was already suggested).  Low/zero-value posts should be reported anyway.

High inflation isn't necessarily hyperinflation, though I don't know where the cutoff is; anytime I think of the latter it's usually in the context of the Weimar Germany era, when prices would shoot up by thousands of percent points daily (if I'm not mistaken).  If you're saying that prices doubled or tripled in the course of a year in Turkey, I'd probably consider that extremely high inflation....but no matter how you categorize it, it sucks beyond belief.

The situation isn't great anywhere these days from what I can tell, and the worst part is that our elected leaders don't seem to have a solid plan as to how to extricate any of us from the mess that they've created.  If the question at hand is how to survive a hyperinflation scenario, my only thought would be to put your money into a currency that isn't inflating as rapidly.  That's what Venezuelans did when they were hit with hyperinflation not too long ago.  The only other thing is to buy as much stuff as you can as quickly as you can--and neither option is ideal.

*Man, how the hell did you find that?*

I'm no accountant, lawyer, or otherwise in any profession that would be able to give an official interpretation of that entire statement (more of which is in that post you took a snippet of), but my layman's opinion is that what Theymos wrote is really vague.  And though I still don't fully understand the details of Vod's claim, i.e., what exactly OgNasty received and why and how it might be illegal, my first thought is that it's going to be damn hard for Vod to get a US agency involved in this--and he's said as much himself.

No other donors have complained that I know of.  LoyceV or anyone else: is that the case?  Has anyone who's donated (and thus might have a problem with how the funds were used) supported Vod's accusations?

And then there's still the issue of donations being out of the control of donators once they're given.  It's messy.

Edit:

Doh!!!  My bad, my bad.

Say what, now? 

I was asking that question in regards to Vod's claim of mismanagement/embezzlement of forum donations.  I wasn't around when the old members made their (now enormous) donations to bitcointalk, so I didn't know if Theymos or whoever was soliciting those donations said that the funds were going to be used for any specific purpose.

And even if there weren't any stated uses, it's yet to be seen whether any law enforcement agencies will think Vod has a valid enough claim to get them to investigate.  I've never heard of any US alphabet agency go after a discussion forum (and someone please point out a case if that's happened) for financial issues.  There may have been a case or two about hate speech, but even that I'm not entirely sure of.

It had stopped for a while but there were government shutdowns a few years ago as well, so this isn't anything new.  I don't exactly know what's going on as far as funding everything, but the US government is way too big as it is.  No wonder taxes are so high and (from what I've read) most people don't trust politicians and/or government institutions.

Some fat needs to be trimmed, I know that for sure but it's never a politically popular decision to do it, which is why said fat never gets trimmed.  Ugh.  What a mess this country is in.

That's true if law enforcement takes an interest in him (though it looks like so far they haven't and IMO probably won't), but he's obviously not concerned enough with self-incrimination, because he did post this:

I did get a better understanding of what the issue is here from the recent posts I read, far more than I had previously.  The alphabet agencies would probably see the use of forum funds--which were donations--as a stumbling block to any kind of legal action, but who knows. 

I brought this up before: were any promises made to the donators as to the intended use of the donations?

Yeah, somehow I don't see Theymos going for a suggestion like this, especially since it would be creating code to link directly to sites out of his control.  And I don't know about coingecko, but CMC has been undergoing a lot of changes as of late and who's to say they're going to remain the top site for prices and such?  

Those in the know can probably search for a coin quickly, without the need for a direct link on the forum.  And even for those who wouldn't know where to look up info, I'm not sure the benefit of a function like this would outweigh the effort it'd take to implement (and I'm also not sure there would be any risk necessarily, but IMO it's just not a great idea).

That was floating around in my head as well, although I doubt CMC or coingecko are likely to periodically stop working like preev does.  Those two sites probably make money, whereas preev is just a ticker.

He was back yesterday to pick up where he left off with his feud with OgNasty, just like the last time he returned.  Don't know if Vod is back for good, but I hope so (drama about alleged misuse of forum funds aside).  He was a very positive influence on the forum for years, especially in the lending section and other places where scammers tend to lurk.

BPIP is working just fine for me, but that was probably just a brain fart on Vod's part.  You're allowed a few of those, Vod.   

Agree 100%.  Most DT members and others who fight scammers and various other scourges of our fair forum have plenty of negative feedback--retaliatory feedback, that is.  As long as it isn't from a DT member and so long as what's written in the feedback doesn't make a valid criticism, one ought not give it a second thought.  In fact, as long as you're not seeing the color of your trust under your avatar as red, I probably wouldn't even keep checking your trust page.  I used to do that years ago when I was new, but I stopped keeping track of who's left what feedback for me a long time ago.

And Royse777, I never had a problem with you personally as you know but others obviously have; if you think your reputation might in any way need some rehabilitation you probably should try to keep a low profile when it comes to issues like this one, which really isn't an issue at all.

I don't want to stray off-topic, but you did make a good point.  Every single problem I've ever seen in the lending section of this forum has been due to lack of collateral (though I'm sure there've been other problems I've missed), and for an obvious reason: it's too damn hard to provide physical collateral for a loan on a discussion forum, and borrowers generally can't or won't provide altcoins.  If they had any significant amount of any cryptocurrency, they probably wouldn't be asking for a loan in the first place.

I stopped browsing Lending quite a while ago, so if there's anyone who's been able to successfully keep a lending service alive I'm unaware of them.  And I'm not sure if anyone has cracked the problem of collateralized crypto loans in the online world, where in the end it doesn't come down to a matter of trust between the lender and borrower.

Ah, thank you for that link.  I detest reddit and would never have known of that thread's existence had you not pointed it out or unless I saw another link to it on bitcointalk.

Now that I did see it, I'm not sure what to think.  I doubt any US alphabet agency would give any credence to Vod's claims about this forum's mismanagement of its funds when said claims are alongside accusations that his stroke was due to the stress from forum drama.  Then again, there's been no hard evidence as of yet regarding what's been presented to any government agency by Vod, so who knows.  What I've seen so far has basically been bluster and not much else.

Foxpup has a good point about donations being out of the hands of the donator once they're given, though I'm not sure about what, if any, promises were made to donators as to the use of the funds.  And I'd really like to hear OgNasty and Theymos's opinions on this, though I'm pretty sure they're not going to chime in.

Funny you should bring that up; ever since I announced that I'm no longer including the gambling section in my post history review offer, I've been getting way fewer requests--and the reason I'm excluding posts there is because I strongly suspected I was doing reviews for a bunch of alt accounts even though I don't have enough proof to connect them.

OP, if I got a PM just asking for merits without having to look at the member's posts I might report the PM to the mods depending on my mood (which has been as sour as a rotten lemon as of late).  But if I were to take the high road, I'd just put that member's PMs on ignore and be done with it.  If he's PMing you, he's probably PMing other members and somebody's likely to report him anyway. 

Looks like merits are becoming more popular than they seem to have been for the past year or so.  I was beginning to wonder why members weren't as obsessed with ranking up like they always were.

Vod, you know I'm no fan of OgNasty so please don't take this as challenging you in a negative way, but when you returned to the forum the last time you were saying more or less the same thing as you are now.  If you've really got investigators looking into illicit transactions involving Theymos, OgNasty, and/or anyone else, it'd be much better if you'd show some evidence of the wheels of justice in motion instead of what look like empty threats.

And the reason I said "empty" is because you've been at this for years now and there hasn't been any action taken as far as the community can see.  Know what I mean?