I knew aTriz and Zapo were owned by the same person, but I don't recall that person owning the jamalaezaz account--and the link between the first two was made a few years ago, so my memory might be fuzzy on the matter.  However, I long suspected jamalaezaz of being shady, even before I tagged him but there was a time when aTriz was working his way up to being a respected campaign manager. 

I'll take a look at the trust pages for aTriz and jamalaezaz, but was that connection made a long time ago or more recently?  It could be a memory issue on my part, but I'm finding myself a little surprised that all three of these accounts are connected.  Then again, there shouldn't be anything on bitcointalk capable of even making me blink after being here so long.  Master-P, anyone?

Word up.  My tech ignorance combined with my ever-growing paranoia about all these sneaky ways being mentioned about how scammers can get access to anything on your PC of phone have made me not want to download anything anymore (not that I ever did a lot of downloading of fishy stuff anyway).  Pretty soon I'm just going to be cowering in a corner afraid my computer is going to murder me in my sleep.  Lol.

It's been a while since I've seen Teamviewer mentioned on the forum, and every previous instance where I did see it, it was in relation to a scam.  I assume the younger generation, if they're dealing with crypto, would stay far away from it and that this was indeed somebody's mother who got scammed.  That sucks, OP.  Listen to the advice you're getting here, because you've gotten some good feedback so far.  Spread the word to anyone you know who's even thinking of getting involved with bitcoin about potential scams, because they're everywhere.

Agreed.  For having been here a decade, OP's post count and merit stats are lower than someone who'd been much more active during that 10 year period.  I don't even recognize his username (and that's not a slight against you, OP).

So....congrats, I guess?  I still don't quite understand why people feel the need to create these kinds of threads, and in this case hZti hasn't been a consistently active member of the community for the number of years he's celebrating.  Aside from my party pooping however, ten years is a hell of a long time to be a member of a forum, especially one dealing with bitcoin.  As far as I'm concerned, we're still in the early days.

I was hoping the online world had stopped using and overusing that stupid non-word that was made up on the spot by either an anonymous teenager or 20-something-year-old.

We didn't get 'scammed' by COVID so much as manipulated in a very big way by our governments, and I'm pretty sure that would include those from countries all around the globe.  It infuriates me when I think back on the lockdowns, the masks, the vaccine requirements (but not vaccines themselves), and all the other crap that seemed to go on forever.

I'm an adult, however.  I can't imagine what it must have been like to be a child growing up and only seeing human faces covered by masks.  That really pisses me off.  What the effects of that have or are going to be, I don't know but I suspect that there was some damage done that didn't need to be done.  Grrrr.

You're not an alt of cryptohunter by any chance, are you?  If I recall correctly he used to insert his own personal grudges against DT members every chance he could. 

OP, the phenomenon you described might be ever-present on bitcointalk but, as noted, it also happens on other forums as well.  And I'd say this forum is fairly well policed by mods and members who report low-value posts, which is unlike many other forums I've come across.  Report that member if you want to (because I suspect he probably doesn't belong in a campaign, just like so many other members who come here to make a living), but try to keep things in perspective.  I can't say I'm innocent of not reading before I post; it's a bad habit that so far I've been unable to reverse.  Usually I end up reading and sometimes quoting posts into my own after I've hit the post button.

On top of that, the posts don't seem to be of much higher quality on the first page of a thread than they are on the nth page, so it isn't surprising that you're finding people who aren't doing any reading at all.

Wow, I guess sig campaigns aren't as new a concept as I thought!  I am probably far more shocked by that fact than my written words are conveying in this thread; it would seem like more forums would implement them, since they offer advertising space to manufacturers/whoever and at least a small amount of income to forum participants.  They benefit everyone as far as I can see, and the only real drawback is the one that's plagued bitcointalk, i.e., that incentivized posting leads to a lot of crappy, off-topic, low-value posts.

And that was prior to 2000, eh?  Wow.

"Unusual" wouldn't be the first word I'd use to describe what OP is claiming Rollbit required of him, and it would have been nice if he'd provided some evidence that any of this actually happened, because if it is indeed true it's disturbing.  And OP, I'm not accusing you of lying; I'm just being skeptical of what I see as an extraordinary claim.

In fact my hope is that OP is lying, that he's working for a competitor of Rollbit and is trying to besmirch their reputation--because if not, then some government somewhere is clamping down on crypto casinos and/or Binance like never before, which is ominous.  I don't know out of which country Rollbit operates, but I thought they were relatively safe as far as being in the jurisdiction of the US or one of the Western countries that don't really like crypto.

Not being European or familiar with European economics, it'd be nice if you cited a source for that claim.  For all I know you could be making shit up or even an AI-generated nonsense machine.

You're also comparing a very long timeline with a very short one and trying to make some kind of point in the form of a question from that.  Why not lock this thread if you're not going to bring any evidence to the table--this is going to become a disorganized, unproductive thread unless you do one of those two things.

Um, yeah it's retaliation.  That's obvious by the timing and the fact that I've done nothing else to Ratimov aside from ~'ing him from my trust list and have had no contact with him, probably ever.  

That's OK, though.  I think the trust system has become a total joke anyway, which is why I opted out of the game completely for the past I-don't-know-how-many months.  The only reason I created a new trust list was to participate in this situation we're discussing here.  And Little Mouse, I did not create a custom trust list in order to get onto DT; I just want that known.  As I've said, being on that list used to mean something and the members on it were expected to use the "power" it gave them very, very responsibly.  These days it's a complete free for all.

He's not fucking me.  He doesn't realize it yet, perhaps, but he's eventually going to dig his own grave when the majority of the community goes against him, which it looks like is going to be what happens.  

I don't think his deletion of threads/posts should count against him, though.  If you open up a self-moderated thread, you've got the right to do what you will with anything therein.  Sure, it'll lower the post count of members who'd posted in the thread but that's the risk you take, and it's clearly stated at the top of the page when a thread is self-moderated.

Yeah, I never had anything against him either (though I knew about the plagiarism accusations, I never did a deep dive into their validity and assumed the mods would do their job if he was truly guilty).  I still don't aside from the fact that he appears to be acting in an extremely emotional way and also seems to be sort of power-hungry. 

Huh.  I never heard of that first one you mentioned, though I'm quite familiar with Yobit's monstrosity of a forum.  I remember when they created it and basically scraped the bottom of bitcointalk's barrel for its user base.

And I wasn't absolutely certain early on that this forum was where sig campaigns originated from, I discovered that fact one day when I was randomly browsing ancient threads and stumbled across that first thread where a member offered up his signature space for rent.  That was what sparked the idea, and though my opinion is that campaigns have had a negative effect here, they're also a great way for people with little money to earn some way more easily than they could if they worked a job in their country in real life.

They're also pretty good for the bitcoin economy, although I don't know the magnitude of the benefit.  But by spreading bitcoin around, that's got to help in some way.  And damned if this isn't the first thread I've seen about the origin of what remains a unique (except for those other two forums) phenomenon.

Edit:

Oh, no kidding?  My bad, I posted before reading, but I was confident that our forum here was the first to do such a thing--and I wouldn't have thought it'd have been feasible back in 2007 since there wasn't an easy way to send small amounts of money to a bunch of different people all at once (like bitcoin).  I guess I'll have to read up on that site.

Yep, and actmyname did the right thing as far as changing his negs to neutrals.  In my case, I didn't think changing all of the negatives I left to neutrals would have any effect, so I did the easiest thing and just deleted them.  Now that you mentioned that actmyname's neutrals did make a difference in the eyes of campaign managers....wow, I regret not taking the time to do what he did. 

On the other hand, there was probably a lot of overlap between the two of us.  We were both on a rampage back then.

I have no idea what you're referring to; please don't clarify the above; and let's just move forward and not return to wherever it is that quote came from.  LOL.

I feel like I must chime in to say that I have left negative feedbacks like the ones above about shitposting, but that was before the merit system and the trust system was the only powerful tool DT members had to combat the plague that was going on at the time.  I had to delete a ton of feedback after January 2018 because after that it was a strict no-no to neg someone for being a shitposter.  In addition, nobody ever accused me of feedback extortion but there was certainly a lot of controversy about the trust I was leaving (and actmyname, too).  But as in so many other things, it was worked out by the community communicating just as we are here.

I'm no angel, and I'm not even sure I'm worthy of that praise you shot my way, but I try to be a somewhat steadying influence nowadays.  I did not start out that way, and that's something I thought I should clarify.  

OK, but to be fair I took a look at the first page of your sent feedback, and you've left negs on people for promoting closed-source HW wallets, which I find to be inappropriate.  A neutral might be fair, but why in the world would you give a red trust to somebody for that reason?  Account selling, fine.  You and I both agree that can seriously affect the forum in a negative way, but I'd suggest reevaluating some of the red trust you've left before complaining about the red trust you've got.

I recently added DaveF to my trust list and I see that he was one of the members who negged you.  I might have to take a look into that.

If we're discussing MSTR/Michael Saylor buying the dips, I have a hard time believing that's his strategy (though I'll be the first to admit I haven't looked at the timing of his previous purchases).  He seems like a bitcoin permabull, just like the big-name goldbugs who are permabulls in the gold & silver market, who always have the mindset that it's always great time to buy [gold/silver/bitcoin], i.e., at any price.

Obviously when there's a dip and you have that mindset, you see a bargain, but I just don't think that's Saylor's strategy.  Anyway, I'm still watching the company's stock price even though I don't often post in this thread anymore.  I thought Saylor and MSTR might have been in trouble for a while when bitcoin was down, but it obviously didn't turn out that way and likely won't unless bitcoin seriously drops in price--and given that we're over the $35k mark, things are starting to look pretty rosy again.  We're all happy about that, I'm sure.

Don't know, maybe suchmoon is just a little tired of being a very active merit source--and if so, I can relate to that especially when real life stuff gets in the way of forum volunteerism.  Who knows.  Suchmoon has always been a closed book as far as I can tell (which is probably a good thing when you're talking about online activities).

Ah...I'm my own harshest critic, and I have noticed that I've been consistently slacking off on doing post history reviews, and even when I promise myself I'll muster up the enthusiasm and whatever else it takes to spend time reading posts and handing out merits, I still seem to fail.  I may be one of the more active merit sources, but in my mind I could be doing a hell of a lot better.  If every source was as inconsistent/lazy/whatever as I am, the whole merit system would be in trouble.  Know what I mean?

Hadn't notice this thread before, and it's a nice tribute to merit-earners on the local boards.  It's not like it keeps me up at night, but I've often worried that there hasn't been enough merits circulating in them, and the problem when that happens is that members with lousy English skills start making posts in the main sections that are of generally low quality. 

Just curious since I have now seen the list(s) here: Ratimov being at the top, is that now going to be considered highly controversial or what?  I'm also wondering if, after the various threads that have been created about him as of late, whether he's going to continue to be a top merit earner or not.  Time will tell, and this isn't the thread to start a discussion about that but I think it's more than appropriate to ask the question here.

Props, OP.

I only now came across this post, because I'm modifying my trust list to exclude Ratimov and wanted to see when I was removed from DT.

I don't generally post PMs, but in that particular case above I didn't think it was in any way inappropriate and in any case there didn't seem to be much blowback or harm done, so I'm not sure why you ran your fool-ass mouth.  I wasn't bragging either, by the way.  I was absolutely honored to be added to DT back then, and it actually made me feel good in real life.  My point was that DT used to be a much more curated list and not like it is today and, I'd add, there was a lot of opposition to me being added to it the first time.  I got lucky; I appreciated the gesture and support back then; and I tried to use the influence the position gave me to better the forum.

So there, take that!!!

And dang, I seriously did not realize I'd been off DT for all this time.  That's OK though.

Cannot tell if trolling.  If not, this has got to be the lamest suggestion for a new section that I've ever seen, and if you take offense to that OP....I'm good with that.

Bitcointalk has already got an off-topic section like many other discussion forums do, plus it's not a forum about health, and people generally don't come here to discuss their health issues or even much about medicine for that matter.  I imagine most of the membership is comprised of young men who are in pretty good shape physically.  There aren't many curmudgeonly old hermits like me who'd bitch and moan about their aching [insert anatomy term here] to a bunch of people who couldn't care less.

Just lock this thread and forget that you ever created it, OP.  It's going to become a spam magnet if you don't, and that might put you on people's shit list.

Franky1, I see exactly where you're coming from and if I thought the US government wouldn't figure out what was really happening, would let it slide, or otherwise wouldn't put the ol' kaybosh on it, it'd be a friggin' excellent idea.  But when you're running a loan service and none of the borrowers are repaying you--and, most importantly, when it's a fiat<-->BTC conversion--you'd better believe it isn't going to last for long.  Not with the scrutiny crypto is under right now, and probably not even if it weren't.

But yep, the wealthy can and do get away with tax evasion all the time.  They've had that shit mastered since the beginning of taxation, I'd imagine.

My gratitude for explaining this whole situation to idiots like myself who don't watch news and thus have no clue what's going on in the world--and I'm dead serious, I'd no idea any of this was happening.

Ah, that word terrorist....it's just lost its meaning over the years (if it ever really had one).  I'm not picking any sides politically, but boy oh boy if you called any Israelis terrorists in the US you'd probably be called an anti-semite and so forth, because it's taboo to criticize their government or anything about them basically.  Again, I'm ignorant of world affairs so I couldn't choose a side even if I wanted to; just saying that you'd never, ever see a phrase like "Israeli terrorist" in the Western media.

Now, about those energy prices.  My guess is that the effect of all of this conflict would be pretty hard to predict.  Economists have tried to in the past (with respect to gas prices, for example) and they've turned out to be entirely wrong.  So I'm hoping if shit goes totally south in the region shown in the OP, it'll spur a move toward energy sources that wouldn't be affected by war in the middle east, in Asia, or anywhere else.  Kind of like how lab-made diamonds might cure all of the corruption that's infested the diamond market for many, many years.

I wasn't accessing the forum much today, so I can't speak to any problems that might have happened in the past 24 hours but given that this site has never given me a problem with the speed of reloading pages, it's highly doubtful it's a problem on bitcointalk's end (as others are pointing out).

What's usually always slow is the search function and random crap like adding members to your PM ignore list.  I think those are universally slow.