I don't have the answer to your question, but congrats on earning that many merits in that short of a time period.  That's way better than the average bitcointalk member, probably better than some of the best posters, too.  Props to you.

Yeah, I remember that list being quite accurate.  Back in the early days of the merit system when I cared about earning them more I used to check the list as if I were in competition with other members.  Glad my mindset changed as far as that's concerned, because list-checking can become an extremely obsessive activity. 

Boom!!  It's always nice when a mod swoops into a thread like this and lays down the law.

OP, it looks like you reported that member's plagiarism in the "Report Plagiarism" thread, but did you hit the "report to moderator" button as well?  I don't know how often mods check that thread, and I would think that reporting an instance of plagiarism (or any other rule infraction) would be more efficiently handled if it were reported directly to the moderators. 

Either way, it's good you did find the copy-pasting and acted on it.  It's more than most members would do.

I hear what you're saying, but I seriously doubt any newbies are going to be dissuaded from using an escrow because of anything spy100 wrote--especially not if they also read this thread.  His opinion about escrowing funds doesn't really carry much weight, and frankly his writing is a mess to begin with so members of any rank likely wouldn't follow what he was trying to say.

You registered in March of 2020?  You've got to be the alt of a more senior member, but I'm having a hard time guessing what that other account is.  Anyway, you're right about the above statement but the chances of spy100 having the capacity of that much brutally honest self-reflection are so close to zero that I'm going to go ahead and call them zero.

Hell no, I'm not a communist!  I have capitalism running through my veins, and if I didn't I sure as hell wouldn't care about discussing bitcoin's price and wouldn't have written all the other stuff that plopped out of my noodle and splattered onto the Economics section (among others).  This dude spy100 is like Joseph McCarthy, who was so focused on communism that he ended up seeing it everywhere.

Which is a good thing, because Joseph McCarthy did, and he also had a lot of power.  That ended up leading to a lot of abuses of that power.

No kidding--I have a dark mode extension on my browser, so it shows up as white text on a yellow background.  I had to use my mouse to highlight the quote in order to read it.  OP, it would be a good idea not to mess with text colors in your posts.  Getting creative like that doesn't accomplish anything.

Governments created their own "crypto" is fine by me as long as my country's government doesn't eliminate physical cash at the same time (or at a later time).  Most of people's payments were digital pre-COVID anyway, I think, so it's not a huge step forward.  Nor would these digital government currencies spark any interest in real crypto, like bitcoin.  A person is either going to discover bitcoin and invest in it/spend it/adopt it or they're not. 

Growth in use of digital currency?  Sure, if the definition of that includes using debit/credit cards, smartphone apps, digital gift cards, etc.  I don't think there was much, if any, growth in cryptocurrency use.

I think it's neither ridiculous nor hilarious; it's exactly what I would expect from someone who didn't bother to read the rules in the first place, got banned for breaking them, and continues to break the rules by posting outside of his ban appeal thread.  Those are the kinds of people who just want to do whatever they want and don't like it when there are consequences. 

I think OP is lucky he only got a 14 day ban instead of a permanent one.  That, by the way, is the warning you claim you never got.

That would be my first guess, as we know there are so many of them on the forum abusing bounties all over the place--and that's been happening for years.  

Nice catch on this one, OP.  I have a question, though.  What is the difference between AI and a bot?  My understanding is that AI can learn and that a bot is just a script of code made to automate a task, but why would you suspect some AI thing would be involved with cheating in a bounty?  I'm not up to speed on AI, but does the average shitposting bounty abuser have access to that tech?

Glad to see you're a responsible bounty manager who's keeping track of this stuff.  That's rare.

I'll have you know that only a select few members have the privilege of being part of Foxpup's Merit Cycling Club, and qualifications for joining it did not include anything to do with communism or China.  I like to think of it more as a Skull and Bones society than the actual name implies, but that's just me.

Also, I probably shouldn't be included in Lauda's gang anymore.

Yeah, lol....doesn't have time for this stuff yet creates an enormous post like that--and apparently has all the time in the world to post bizarre threads in the Economics section (if I'm not mistaken) that barely make sense, have a tinge of conspiracy theory color to them, and that lead to a lot of members making posts but no coherent discussion. 

I even posted about this in another thread:

Of course there's no rule against it--a self-moderated thread explicitly means that the thread starter can delete any posts in his thread for any reason.  If he wants to delete all of them, that's his prerogative. 

By the way, I'm not surprised Bitcoin SV did that since he's a troll.  That's why I refused to post in any of his threads with the QS drama, because I figured I'd be wasting my time.

OP, you seem very concerned about post count.  I'll refrain from commenting about why that could be, but what I will say (and it's already been suggested) is that if you fear having any of your posts nuked, don't post in self-moderated threads.  Always check at the top to see if it's one of those or not.  I'll only post in a self-moderated thread if I know the OP is only trying to combat spam.  If it's a member I'm unfamiliar with or one that's a shit-stirrer like Bitcoin SV, cryptohunter, TOAA, etc., I won't waste my time.

Exactly.  "Responsible" is a better word for what I was trying to say.  It takes time to figure out who those members are, though, and I don't think OP was aware that any member might decide to purge his thread of all posts.

That would be my main point of advice as well.  As to why an inactive account that had made only a few posts had most/all of them deleted, that could have happened if mods nuked entire threads.  Sometimes shitposters make a habit of making all of their posts in mega spam threads, which eventually get deleted altogether if they're bad enough.  That's happened to me before, especially with posts in Bitcoin Discussion and Altcoin Discussion when I used to visit that section.

Wow, are you a slow learner in general or is the internet just not your thing?  You don't happen to be over 75 years old, do you?  I don't ask that in jest; the older generation has a really hard time trying to learn how to use tech like the internet if they've never used it before.  I have a great aunt who can barely use a cell phone--even though they're not a hell of a lot different than the old phones she used to use.

As stated in the title, I have 0.014BTC and need PayPal funds at preev 1:1.  I can sell less than the full amount if you don't need that much.

I will not send first unless you have significant green trust or if I've done business with you before.

This will be a neutral feedback transaction.

Send me a PM if you're willing to help me out, as I might miss seeing this thread if you post here.

Local rule:  Please do not post here unless you're interested in doing this deal and are at least a Sr. Member or a member I've done business with before.  PayPal is very risky because of the chance of chargebacks, but I have never done this and won't ever.

Edit: Deal done, closing thread now.  TXID: 7c82c68a6e645baf686fdba7b4d4d73cbc7db97b8a83d7c36cf245fe9ea820a4

Yes!!  I was wondering whether cryptotalk was still going but didn't want to visit the site for fear of going cross-eyed from staring at the train wreck, which is what happened when I used to check in to see how bad it really was.  I'm glad this thread got bumped with an update.

No, Yobit definitely should not have created cryptotalk.  It was a stupid concept with poor execution and ultimately a bad outcome.  There was so much plagiarism and straight-out nonsense posts on there that I couldn't believe people would waste time trying to earn what little amount of bitcoin Yobit was offering the cryptotalk members.  I couldn't sit at a computer and try to write posts in Chinese for 1000 sats/post.  I'd be getting paid peanuts for doing work a monkey could do, and where's the satisfaction in that?

Hmm.  Looks like all the feedback bob123 has sent since the one in question has been valid.  I didn't look at feedback left for members prior to that one, but I did take a look at pretty much all of the ones afterward and I don't see any instances of abuse, much less a pattern.

This looks to me like one wrongly-left neg among a great number of ones that were left for valid reasons.  Hopefully bob123 might revisit this one, but if not I don't think it makes a case for kicking him off DT or anything like that.  Quite a few DTs have controversial feedbacks, as I'm sure you're aware, Veleor.

Lol, that trust is pretty unjustified IMO.  JohnnyUA was saying he didn't care if not paying taxes was against the law, he's comfortable doing it.  I mean, come on.  This is a cryptocurrency forum after all, and I'd say a lot of us really have a deep, abiding hatred toward the tax man.  I'm sure a lot of people don't write about it in their posts, but I'm fairly certain  a lot of members here do or have evaded paying taxes in one form or another in their life.  Bob123 might be a saint in that regard, but I don't think it warrants leaving a neg on someone else's trust page because they disagree.

I don't happen to think so, but the trust system allows it.  If johhnyUA wants that feedback removed, I'm sure he knows that it'll have to be worked out between him and bob123.  They're not newbies and they know how things work.

Edit:  I don't know how to check this fact: how long has bob123 been on DT?

Not really.  Trump is a fucking idiot to begin with (although he's a brilliant businessman) and at the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak he just gave reassuring words to the public and sort of poo-poo'ed the whole situation.  And remember, in the early days the information that was coming out was that the average person would only get cold-like symptoms if they got infected and it was only later that the public started reacting to COVID-19 as if it were ebola.

Not necessarily.  The COVID-19 strain is a novel one, which means that it's new.  If people start getting infected with a brand new virus (or a new strain of an old virus in this case), how is anyone supposed to have complete information about all the variables that a politician would need to know in order to make policies and use resources to combat the outbreak?  Acquisition of that information takes time.

Fauci knows more about coronavirus, viruses in general, and anything to do with human health than Trump does--so yeah, he probably knew more than Trump in the beginning but he still had to learn how this novel virus operated.

I'm generally not a conspiracy theorist, and I don't think COVID-19 was an engineered attack on anybody's part.  I reserve the right to change my mind if new information comes out, though.

That wasn't racist.  People having difficulties with different nationalities (regardless of race) has been going on since the beginning of political borders.  It's the same thing as complaining about the Chinese, which is very much tolerated here, at least as far as I've seen.

Not in this instance, but the forum as a whole does protect them in so far as scammers don't get banned.

That's an excuse, and it's one I've been hearing for years.  Don't make a rule because it can be abused?  Then why make any rules whatsoever?  They can all be abused, bent, loopholed, you name it.

Anyway, hopefully OP figured out that if he wants to warn people about this scammer, he needs to create a proper thread in the Scam Accusation section instead of posting repeatedly about it, which is against forum rules.

Yeah, but that never happened when ICOs were all the rage around the crypto space.  People were getting scammed left and right, and I don't remember hearing any reports about exchanges listing crap scam tokens being raided by law enforcement.  Why would it be different with DeFi?

I'm very skeptical about DeFi as well (though you sound like you're past the skeptical stage), and some of the returns these projects are promising are just incredible.  And by "incredible" I mean "not credible".  There are already videos on Youtube of people claiming they made millions with DeFi, but damned if I know how they did it.  It's all looking to me like something that's too good to be true.

Anyway, the less law enforcement is involved with crypto, the better.  I just wish there weren't so many gullible people wanting to get rich quick.

Jesus, I can't tell what language any of that is trying to be.  This looks like a poem (albeit one I don't understand):



OP, did you send any "merit bombs" to Indonesian members?  It sounds like they're grateful for that, which I'm assuming is a large merit grant given to a member.  But damned if I can decipher what's really being said.

Edit:
Lol, I probably should have checked OP's merit history before asking my question.  Oops.

I wouldn't have expected UK's economy to have rebounded to what it was prior to COVID-19, but 6.6% growth in a month is fantastic news. 

Unfortunately I don't live in the UK.  My country (the US) hasn't been faring quite as well last time I heard, though I've been lax in keeping up with news about the overall economy here.  The stock market (or at least the S&P 500) had hit pre-pandemic levels recently, but I think it's fallen just below that as of today--still, that's not too bad IMO.  Unemployment remains high, but I'm still hoping that's a temporary effect of the lockdown and will improve in the upcoming months.  Keeping my fingers crossed on that one.

LOL.  I'm not sure how much the Monopoly money had to do with this July data for the UK, but I admire your cynicism.

I know, I've heard all of those reasons as well--and I have no problem with what you're doing here, so my previous post was not intended as criticism.  I never bought that "but but but...it's my cousin/dad/friend's account" stuff, because while it could be true, most likely it's not (IMO).

I've seen too many admissions of guilt by members who've gotten caught to take these bounty cheaters at their word.

OP, I get that you found linked ETH addresses by separate accounts in a single campaign, but what if they come here and complain that they're different people pooling their funds into one wallet?  If I recall correctly I've seen legitimate instances of that (though don't ask me to provide links, because I wouldn't know where to start). 

Not that I think it's likely, but that's the reason I stopped tagging suspected bounty cheaters based on this kind of evidence.  And frankly I think Fatemablabla should ban them, but I also think there probably should be some sort of  rule in bounties that members have to use unique addresses to avoid this sort of doubt.  That's just my opinion, though.  I still think most bounty participants have alts and that a lot of them are cheaters, so taking a harsh stance doesn't bother me one way or another.