The primary function of a politician is the be reelected, and this is regardless of the effect his actions have on the country or its population. We don't need these people. What we need are people who believe in a country and its population, and will guide governance down a path that promotes the interests of the country, and not the Eton/Oxford deep state. It's time to dump the treasonous unicorns that are stealing the assets of their countries, and leading the populations into debt slavery.

If they made them legal, then their mass appeal would drop. Drugs create apathy in the population, and that is what the governments need to push their slavery agenda.

The OP's avatar looks a bit suspect to me. Is it a case of the bot calling the petal pink?

I'm starting to wonder if merits are the best indicators of interesting posters. There isn't much point in following me for technical information about Bitcoin or Bitcoin price analysis for example, but I'm number ten in the most merited - I think Hilarious has just overtaken me. If your political views are just right of Attila the Hun, then you might agree with some of my posts about government, but I tend not to get many replies to my political statements.

Just a minor point about that list. I was "only" a hero when the merit system was introduced.

I think the best thing would be to build your own friends or follow list.  There is a pretty wide diversity of knowledge and experience amongst the better posters here, and you may not want to follow all of them. Technical, statistical analysis of Bitcoin, forum research, and global economics all have different thread characteristics, and it would be great if we could follow topics that are of primary interest to us. The boards are supposed to provide this selection, but there is so much spam and cross board posting, that it would be better to follow specific members across the boards, rather than hunt through the bounty hunters threads that are constant bumped on most boards.

Please keep things as they are,

I'm so fed up with all these changes that make things so much harder, and reduce the number of features. Gmail has just upgraded, and the new interace is rubbish, It's harder to use, and harder to read with fewer options.

XE.com have downgraded as well to a new "pretty" GUI, and that forces me to load a second page to get the info I want.

Change for the sake of change is bad, and it seems to be designed by kids who are used to using facebook, and clicking large buttons.

It seems there are a lot of problems in that part of the Americas. The Venezuelans escaping from their country, and moving into Columbia can't help matters.

Aren't the bankers working on this at the moment. They need to lose all the toxic debt that they created in an attempt to save the bankrupt fiat banking system.

I'm English, and I support traditional English values, and I'm anti-globalist. I oppose the Eton/Oxford deep state that created the EU, and I support Brexit. Also, I believe that countries should get rid of the unicorn politicians who seek to strip sovereign nations of their assets, and lead their citizens into debt slavery,

Remember that a unicorn is not a fluffy, pink creature spraying stardust, but it is a creation by man to help him to round up herds of wild horses, and to harness them into slavery and subservience.

Dear sir,

I apologise for not making formal posts here in the Bitcoin Talk forum.
I promise to try harder in the future with my good projects.

Yours faithfully,

Jet Cash

ps - when moon my lovelies?

It seems to me that the Americans are the biggest users of the word "sir", but that could be the result of my received English accent. It's also used a lot in retail and the restaurant business, although the girls in KFC seem to be using "my lovely" at the moment. Maybe we should switch to that in our posting here.

Thanks for the replies. Most of them seem to focus on the merit aspect of my post, and in fact that is the least interesting point for me, and I wonder if I should have included it, as it deflects attention from the signature impression point.  Most signatures here are for sig spam promotions, but I believe paid signatures should be used for affiliate promotion, and payment should be based on resulting sales. This tends to promote higher quality posting, and much better vetting of the products members promote. The 10:1 view ratio is for average/indifferent threads, and, as LoyceV points out, better posters generate more views, and those views are probably of a much higher quality. His signature obviously has a much higher earnings potential than many others.

I don't believe that the second poster in my OP used my post as a base for his thread. The link is to a different site describing the TV, and I doubt if he is even aware of my serious discussion thread.

On the 3rd august I started a thread in serious discussion about the Canaan mining TV,
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4812479.0
The thread received 17 replies and 169 views. 7 sMerits were awarded to posts in that thread.

On the 13th August a similar thread about the same TV was started.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4884683.0
The thread has received 104 replies and 354 views. No merits were awarded.

As a very rough guideline, for average threads that have been active for a few days, the views:posts ratio is usually around 10:1
This is a very rough guide, but I think it gives some indication of the thread quality and interest, and the significance of the board hosting the thread. Both threads contain replies from legendaries down to juniors in ranking. Obviously the beginners thread also includes newbie posting.

Should these threads have been included in either of these boards? Well they are general interest, so the answer is probably yes. I started this thread to give a possible idea of the value of the two boards for advertising revenue for the forum, and also to indicate the problems that new members have in their hunt for merits. Obviously the merit awarders may not be reading the threads on the beginners board.

I'm working on an ignore system with a categorised public display, and a multi-admin ticket support system.

Everybody seems to think that the granting of ETF licences will push up the price of Bitcoin. I don't agree, and I think that in most cases they will help to contain the dramatic price rises that some people assume will follow. I believe that they will reduce the quantity of "physical" Bitcoin that institutional investors will buy. Institutional investors have a few ways to hold a Bitcoin "investment"

Holding methods that will reduce the available supply, and cause a price increase.

1. The purchase of Bitcoin and keeping them in a wallet or custodial service.
2. The purchase of an ETF linked to Bitcoin purchases recorded in a blockchain transaction.

Speculative methods that are not based on the available supply.

3. The purchase of a paper contract that provides for settlement in fiat. This will not result in a physical purchase when the contract is closed, but it may affect the sentiment surrounding the Bitcoin price.
4, BAAKT - This needs a bit of investigation. On the face of it, contracts are based on physical coins and other assets. The small print states that re-hypothecation and the combining of assets will be allowed for investment and repayment. This seems to open the way for fractional reserve holdings in Bitcoin.

Of course the hype surrounding ETFs may increase the awareness of Bitcoin in the investing community, and this could lead to an increase in physical purchases.

I gave you 5 merits as a result of looking through your post history, and for your record of concise and meaningful posts. I think you are doing well, even though English is not your first language.

I think this is part of my "archive merits" initiative, but I've forgotten what the letters mean in my alphabet merits project.

It's an interesting analysis, and I didn't realise that I had been merited in so many sections. I try to visit a lot of them, but the problems in finding interesting thread titles puts me off opening a lot of threads. I don't open threads with titles like "Bitcoin", "problem", or even "help me". Maybe I should give some of those posters a chance to make their point. I did make a guide to starting threads, but nobody seems to read these topics, least of all newbies.

This video about Bitcoin price prediction is a little bit different. It was posted on You Tube by a guy calling himself "I love crypto", In it he analyses the tweets by CNBC, and points out that virtually all of them are wrong, and by taking a contrarian views, you would have made money speculating on the price of Bitcoin. He suggests that the tweets are by uninformed amateurs, and they reflect the mistakes made by most amateur speculators/investors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SccUHwr8dE

6 sMerits awarded in this thread so far, and not one for the OP.

I wonder if he is still reading this thread to learn from it.