satoshi's coins are lost forever as far as anyone knows.  There have been attempts to try and unlock those coins (Bitcoin Gold fork, Bitcoin Satoshi's Vision fork) with varying degrees of success, but the Bitcoin community has considered them lost.  However, watching the Bitcoin community evolve over the last 10+ years, I no longer believe that those coins are lost forever.  I think at some point people will complain that Bitcoin needs a higher than 21 million coin limit.  Maybe 10 or 20 years from now.  The original Bitcoiners will have mostly moved on with their lives or fallen victim to Father Time, and the new generation will want more coins for themselves.  Ultimately, I think this will lead to a compromise of unlocking satoshi's coins for some "good" project like solving world hunger.  Do I think this should happen?  No.  Do I believe it will someday when the 21 million coin limit is more heavily debated and those coins are used as an excuse for why there isn't even 21 million BTC?  Yes.  However, I also believe I'll be dead by then.

I've promoted quite a few projects over the years and had varying degrees of success.  I've also been attacked by people as a result.  There's one guy on these forums who lost a bunch of money gambling at an online casino I was promoting years ago (not Stake) and still to this day blames me for his losses.  The crazy part is that his losses occurred BEFORE I was hired to promote the site and when I heard his complaining I stopped promoting for the site within a week or two, leaving money on the table and cutting off my agreement early.  Yet to this day he still holds a grudge and tries to damage my reputation at every opportunity.

So be careful what you market.  People who do dumb things will always look for someone else to blame when it goes bad and they have no sense of honor, truth, or personal accountability.

I never got porn vibes from Howard Stern, but I was watching it in my late teens and later listening as a young adult so I was already well into girlfriend/wife territory.  If we're talking about questionable cable TV we watched as youngsters, I'd definitely have to go with USA's Up All Night.  I was too young when I watched that show to know why I liked it so much.  I just knew that I really enjoyed the movies they showed for some reason.  Now that I revisit it, I'm just now discovering that it wasn't Morgan Fairchild with Gilbert Gottfried.  I always thought it was. 

So this doesn't get deleted by mods...

Make sure to show us that shiny physical Beetcoin when you get your hands on it. 

I don’t think they would have picked up Dennis and Pat if they were keeping Russ. This news along with Westbrook putting his house up for sale makes me think that a deal is already in place and now they’re just working out the details. Since Westbrook is already privy to this information I would assume it involves some sort of buyout or sign and trade. I think we’ll find out in the next 2 weeks what the real story is.

Nvidia is now starting to lose partners as a result of their behavior. I have no doubt that the LHR lock is the main reason why. I can only imagine the issues this caused their partners. EVGA has said they’ve had enough and are exiting the GPU business entirely, blaming Nvidia’s behavior. I hope this is just the start of Nvidia’s problems. That company is being led by fools and I’m glad that big business has taken notice.

It definitely shouldn't fall only on Westbrook, he's just the biggest problem that is fixable.  Anthony Davis' knees are arguably the biggest overall problem.  If AD was healthy all season, they wouldn't have even needed Russ to make the playoffs... 

The coaching staff deserves some of the blame as well.  Benching Westbrook at key points in close games isn't something you do to a superstar.  It had to have shaken his confidence and opened him up to unnecessary criticism. 

Maybe AD will be healthy and the new coach will give Russ some confidence to be his old self again.  Going into a contract year, he definitely has the motivation for a revenge season.

I was a Howard Stern fan pre-Sirius Satellite Radio.  I will admit it's probably been 15 years since I've listened to his show.  He was super funny back in the day though.

I didn't know Beetcoins existed or that Beetlejuice had his own coin.  I may have to look into it for the lolz.  Thanks for sharing.  I wonder how many other awesome creations are out there that I have no idea about...

Anything I sell.   

I doubt it would just be awkward.  Probably a majority of the employees won't want to work with him in any capacity.  He should sell the team ASAP if he has any sense.  Having him as an owner going forward will hurt the team's ability to sign free agents and keep their stars.  I promise you that none of the Suns players want their paychecks signed by some racist asshole. 

Is it the NBA's job to make sure their owners are good people?  No.  In free markets the Suns would suffer as a result of this discovery by loss of talent and value.  I applaud Adam Silver for this approach, and hope the players/employees/owners of the Suns continue this push to not stand for this.  Everyone knows Sarver doesn't deserve to be an NBA team owner at this point, but removing him the right way should be the goal now and it seems like that's happening.

Someday I suspect the energy problems on this planet will be solved.  When it does and the technology to extract hydrogen from water and store in hydride is readily available and cheap, I think it wouldn't be a bad option for the planet.  I'm not sure how long we'll be able to keep making batteries with rare earth...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ytg23mDd1a4

^ Watch that video.  It's educational.  People have been able to run cars on hydrogen extracted from water for decades now.  The planet would certainly prefer this method.

Pretty cool seeing a deflationary coin.  I wish I hadn't been so dismissive of Ethereum early on, but I had blinders on.  It really is a marvel and I don't think it's going anywhere anytime soon.  In fact, now that it's deflationary and can be staked at a high %, it's basically a fund manager's wet dream.  All that ETH holders need now is time and it's likely that the per coin price will surpass Bitcoin's someday.  Sure, it may take 100+ years and we'll all be dead, but I have no doubt that if the supply keeps lowering, Ethereum will be Wall Street's darling in the 22nd century.

Solana is cool as a plaything.  I'm sure whenever they get a good metaverse developed they'll be able to find a lot of interest.  The younger people I know seem to gravitate towards Solana for some reason.  I think because of the low fees.  It gives you the Ethereum experience without costing you a hundred dollars in fees to buy a picture.  It's obviously way too centralized and buggy to be a legitimate competitor to Ethereum now, but maybe in 5-10 years they'll figure things out the way ETH2 has for Ethereum. 

Given that Snowden's entire life basically revolves around dodging the US government, I'm sure he has plans in place where he can relocate and I would think it's likely he already has.  If he gets caught, it will mean the end of his life as a free man (if you want to call him a free man now).  It's not like he's going to wake up one day and be shocked that he may have to find a new place to hide.  This is a guy that worked for the government.  He knows more than we do about the creepy things they do to their enemies.

I don't think that Bitcoin will reach $45K by the end of the year.  I may even be willing to place a bet on it if the bet is denominated in USD and not BTC (for obvious reasons, or maybe not obvious if you're bad at math).  The people who think that Bitcoin will hit $45K by the end of the year, what is your justification for this and how long have you been involved in Bitcoin?  Sure, I'm expecting the bottom to be in sometime before the end of the year and it's likely the price will be on an upward trajectory by then, but more than doubling from here during a period when we should be dragging the lows and accumulating...  I don't think so.

If you aren't obsessed with controlling the trust network and you don't care about ranking up, there's very little benefit other than a dopamine hit I guess.  If you earn them you can also send them to others, so I'll shoot you 2 merits so you can try giving 1 away. 

I guess the main benefit is that signature campaigns pay more money the higher you are ranked, so if you make good posts and earn a high rank, you can get paid more for posting. 

I would agree there's no need to implement NFTs here.  Maybe if there were ever a distributed profit sharing plan of some sort, or if there was a need to raise funds for something, but there are better ways to do both probably.  If we ever got a Bitcointalk metaverse I could see why it might be cool.  Maybe this is something I could use a Sandbox plot of LAND for if there were any interest in building a Bitcointalk adventure.  If anyone is interested in something like this and has voxel skills, shoot me a PM.  It probably wouldn't be well received here though considering we'd have to use MATIC/Polygon due to Bitcoin's lack of smart contract support.

NFTs today remind me so much of Bitcoin in 2011.  It's so obvious they're the future, but everyone is so dismissive.  It's like people think that this is some sort of 0 sum game and other people's success will take away from theirs.  When the grownups get around to dabbling in NFTs things will change.

I'm very curious how this will turn out.  I'm not sure there's evidence this was an actual Ponzi from the start, but I haven't cared much about the saga other than that I was saying how stupid it was for him to telegraph his buys like that, but now I see that he was doing it on purpose to pump Bitcoin for himself to get rich and then dump on everyone.  I'm not sure that's illegal though, but maybe we'll find out why soon enough.  It looks like they've taken his passport now to try and stop him from fleeing the country.  I'm sort of surprised he isn't already on a beach somewhere getting plastic surgery and a new identity, but maybe he is.  This is the most interesting case since Razzlekhan. 

I don't think people need to be concerned as much as they are about random stats from users here.  Especially when you consider that the people running them are obsessed with controlling the trust network and that's why they were drawn to these projects in the first place.  I think the obsession with tracking stats has led to attacks of honest people like myself and made this place a far worse environment for everyone as a result.  I wish people cared as much about real Bitcoin activity or projects that actually exist on the blockchain as they did about trying to be ranked high on a website that let's be honest, has devolved into a digital billboard.

That's not really true.  Not all Bitcoiners have blinders on.  I think as a futurist it would be stupid to think that NFTs won't play a major role in the future digital economy.  When I see Bitcoin maximalists scream to hodl and dismiss all other forms of digital tokens, it is the same as seeing someone invest in a single stock and then criticize everyone else for having a diversified portfolio.  It's downright stupid.  You can root for Bitcoin to be successful while acknowledging that it doesn't meet every digital need the future will have.

I went ahead and locked the polling.  It looks like so far the community is right as the price has declined somewhere close to 10% since the merge.  The crazy part is that coins haven't even been unlocked or are tradable yet on most exchanges.  This little drop was purely speculation from people trying to buy the rumor and sell the news.  Once ETH2 coins start trading on exchanges and people can unlock them from Coinbase and the like, I suspect we'll see another big dip.  It will likely only last a few months though.  Now that ETH is deflationary, it seems like the value will go crazy at some point.  It's just a matter of how long until investment funds scoop up all the access liquidity.