I disagree, though I wouldn't dispute some of the points you made about mud-slinging and the like.  The thing is, Reputation is the section to post things in if you have a problem with a member that doesn't rise to the level of a scam accusation (in which case it should go in that section). 

Nor have I noticed Reputation having gotten any worse lately except for when certain trolls like CH and his alts start threads there--and if you don't like a particular member's drama threads, you can always hit that ignore button. 

Yeah, that's always an option as well if there's some serious trolling going on.

I tend to agree, although I'm sure governments don't see it that way.  In any case, that's just a proposed law in Russia and not a reality (yet).

Goldbugs have been fearing that gold will be outlawed for many years, so that doesn't surprise me--but it's also not something I want to see happen in any country.

By the way, I don't agree with the part of the title of this thread "As fiat currencies face potential collapse" since I don't think the majority of them are in danger of collapsing or experiencing a hyperinflation situation, at least not in the near future.  Some of them that have been in danger (like Venezuela's) eventually get replaced by some other type of fiat. 

Yeah, he probably should have allowed you to state your case, but he didn't and there isn't anything left for you to do in that thread. 

Instead of starting a thread like this one, calling for Little Mouse to get tagged, it might have been a better idea to start a thread in Reputation referencing LM's thread and laying down your own argument as to why his accusations aren't true.  This shit happens all the time on bitcointalk.  IMO, I don't think anything Little Mouse did in that thread makes him worthy of a neg. 

The post OP quoted that was deleted didn't look that off-topic to me, and given the fact that you outright accused him of being an alt of someone, I probably would have let it be.  Just my 2 cents.

I would say definitely not.  If you're escrowing a transaction, the only thing you should do with the funds is to keep them safe and distribute them fairly upon completion of the transaction between the parties involved.  Using escrowed funds for loans or investing them to make a profit is greedy at best and unethical at worst.

I'm trying to follow exactly what went on with this situation, but my befuddled brain isn't taking it all in.  One thing I do understand is that OP doesn't seem to understand why it's important that he verify he is who he says he is--and it's NOT off-topic to this thread to discuss that.

That's great that a successful vaccine might be on the horizon relatively soon, but as far as the stocks of companies that make vaccines (even ones that get widely used, like for seasonal flu), I don't think Moderna or any other biotech company is going to be able to hold onto gains like 39% over the long term. 

I remember the biotech boom of the late 90s, though for the life of me I can't remember what sparked that, and that turned out to be a bubble just like any other one.  A biotech company or big pharma firm might make a bockbuster drug, but it takes a lot of money up front to do so, plus they only have the patent on the drug for about 14 years. 

But we'll see.  I'm not sure if coronavirus is going to turn out to be a fast-mutating virus, where a new vaccine is going to have to be developed every year, or if a vaccine will impart lifelong immunity.  If the latter is the case, a COVID-19 vaccine might not be the big moneymaker people think it's going to be.

I'm being honest here, I don't have the attention span (or even the necessary interest) to read a long rant like the OP here.  But Trump attacking China doesn't really have much to do with how each country's economy is performing relative to each other--nor is the United States "poor".

I don't know what the real truth is behind how this strain of coronavirus got released into the world, but if it originated in China then that's what happened.  Trump is being unreasonably antagonistic every time he refers to COVID-19 as "the Chinese virus" even if it's true.  If we eventually find out that the virus was released maliciously or there was some sort of coverup, then that's another discussion but as of now not all the facts are known.

I'm not a big fan of China, believe me, but I'm not going to pretend that I'm outraged that the outbreak started there.

Lol, that was one of my first thoughts.

The second is that Vod and TECSHARE will somehow still be feuding from beyond the grave--or if science has progressed to the point where your consciousness can be uploaded to the internet by 2140.  Cryptohunter will probably have quadruple digit numbers of alt accounts by then, and he'll still be bitching about the unfairness of the DT system (or whatever else he can troll about in 120 years).

On a serious note, it is strange to contemplate what things are going to look like that far into the future.  I'd love to see what the internet will have become by then--and also what's going to become of bitcoin. 

So you got hacked and the hacker didn't change your password?  You're lucky; it could have turned out to be a much bigger pain in the ass.

Glad there weren't any scamming attempts, because I've traded with adroitful_one a number of times and I could easily have gotten suckered if I was selling bitcoin.  Sometimes it makes me want to pull all my hair out how much hacking goes on here, and how you really can't trust members you think you should be able to trust--because they might not be who you think they are. 

Yeah, and no matter how you try to tighten things up, there are always going to be ways to manipulate data for whatever your purpose is.  

I don't have a problem with Binance as an exchange, but I don't put a lot of stock in what CMC has to offer other than price data for altcoins--that's the only thing I use the site for anyway.  Who knows, maybe Binance will completely overhaul CMC's function and the site might not even look recognizable a year from now.  In the meantime, and whether any changes are made or not, people ought to look at the data presented on CMC with a huge grain of salt.

Yeah, that always made me roll my eyes because it was such blatant deception, which made me think that CMC probably didn't have a positive estimate on the intelligence of folks looking at their site.

Obviously it was way too low for OP's comfort.  And I've used transaction accelerators to good effect in the past, and as long as you're not being charged for the service you've got nothing to lose.

I did notice that Electrum on my PC had increased the default fee to something crazy like 165 sats/byte as the default, and I gathered that there must be some sort of network congestion going on. 

But OP, this happens from time to time.  Sometimes transactions get confirmed extremely quickly with a low fee, while at other times you seemingly have to wait forever even with a high fee.  Hate to say it, but it's one of the sucky things about bitcoin that's driven me nuts right from the start.  And sixteen hours is a long time to wait for a confirmation, I've had instances where it's taken much longer than that.

Thanks for the partial explanation of what the problem is--I can't say I understand it fully since I don't deal with those types of digital goods sold here on bitcointalk. 

Funny how OP is upset after Vod left him a neg, but he seems to not care at all about the other negs he got well before Vod's.  Obviously I know why that is, but it tends to detract from OP's credibility in my eyes at least.

In this particular case, I'll take your word for it (and Vod's)--not that it matters in the least to OP, since I'm not one of the ones who gave him negative trust.  And you mentioned that these sorts of shenanigans give bitcointalk a bad name, and I agree with that. 

Jesus, I just wrote a long post based on my misreading of what you said in the OP.

I don't think arguments and/or drama need to be moved to Off-Topic necessarily.  I think if a thread gets completely derailed it ought to be locked by a mod, or at least the off-topic posts should be nuked.  It's up to the campaign managers if they want to pay for posts which are basically back-and-forth arguing, and I bet you a lot of that would fit within the definition of post bursting at the very minimum.

Anyway I don't think it's a huge issue, and as long as the arguments aren't completely petty I think they add some spice to the forum.

Since the CH account has technically disappeared (but not the person behind the account), ignoring the cryptohunter account isn't going to accomplish much of anything, unless it becomes active again.  All of his other alts should be put on ignore as soon as they're identified--which usually only takes a few posts.

Nah, I doubt it.  In my area, things are starting to get back to normal and restrictions are slowly being lifted, which is giving me hope that things are going to be returning to as close to normal as they're going to get.  And so far I've seen no evidence that the COVID-19 outbreak has been pushing people toward using crypto.  Online shopping yes, but we all know how few merchants accept bitcoin as payment.  All the stuff people have been buying from Amazon and everywhere else was bought with fiat, and that's not going to change anytime soon.

Stores in my area also continued to accept physical cash as well, which is what I normally use. 

As long as the banking system hasn't failed (as it almost did in 2008), bitcoin isn't ever going to become a mainstream currency.

Dude, we're getting that advice and more every single minute on the news, and people are generally doing a pretty good job of keeping distance from one another, washing their hands, etc.--at least from what I've observed in my country.  I'm sure there are wide variations on how serious people are taking all of this depending on what country you're in.

This quarantine/outbreak/economic crisis isn't going to last forever, and I don't think it's going to last as long as many people seem to think it's going to.  There's going to be some economic damage done, but I'm oddly optimistic that most people are going to get back to work once they're not locked down anymore.  It's going to be tough times until that happens, but I don't think it's going to be that much longer.

Who are these analysts and why should they be listened to?  And the whole reason people might be hoarding cash is precisely because the current times are uncertain. 

I don't listen to the blabbering talking heads on the news or anywhere else.  I've found that I can live my life just fine without paying attention to the news, and I bet a lot of other folks could do just fine without it as well.  Seems like they've made up a non-issue to discuss here, which is generally what happens when they run out of legitimate topics.

I don't know if I buy any of the rest of this argument, but the above statement I completely agree with--and that's why I stopped paying attention to pretty much all news sources a long time ago.  I'm also fairly certain it's not just the Western media that can't be trusted.  That' seem to be a global thing.

Who knows, OP could be right about this strain of coronavirus being manufactured and unleashed upon the world.  It's sad that I've become too apathetic about such things that I don't even care to look at the evidence for and against that theory. 

Wasn't Trump facing impeachment before the outbreak?  I was only partially paying attention to that, but then that story just disappeared from media altogether.

Hell no, this is nowhere near what 2017 was.  Before the coronavirus outbreak I was pretty optimistic about bitcoin's prospects as far as maybe hitting a new ATH, but even with the general vibe of optimism, it was nowhere near as insane as 2017.  Bitcoin and altcoins were pretty much in a bubble, and you had people investing in ICOs that had the most idiotic whitepapers simply because they thought they might be getting in on the next bitcoin.

And I doubt bitcoin is going to hit $20k this year, though it might surpass $10k and get close.  I'm not even close to confident that that's going to happen, because there are too many unknowns right now.  Not that I've written 2020 off just yet, but I'm now hoping 2021 is going to be another euphoric year for crypto (though I'm not hoping for a bubble).

Sounds to me like you're here for all the wrong reasons, but to each his own.  You don't have a reputation, so the last neg you got didn't ruin anything.  Diks obviously thinks the project you're promoting is a scam, so he tagged you according to his judgement--and yes, members are allowed to do that. 

That's a risk you take with the trust system the way it is, where anyone can give negative trust to anyone else for arbitrary reasons.  I don't know a damn thing about the TOR project that was referenced, but you have to make sure that anything you associate your name with is on the up-and-up.  If it's not, you're going to get tagged pretty quick.

That's definitely part of it.  And I would assume for small business owners, they rely a lot on business loans in addition to cash flow.  

I haven't been to NYC in quite a few years, but I recall being amazed at how many little mom-and-pop stores there were, selling everything from music to antiques to any number of things.  My guess is that those kinds of shops also have some kind of online presence and don't rely exclusively on foot traffic sales.

There was a member who was going to start up some kind of crypto arcade/coffee shop thing in NYC a few months ago.  I wonder what happened to him and his idea?

Edit:  OP gets 1 merit for showing a pic of the city, which makes me want to take a trip back there one of these days.

Thank you for writing that, because I've gotten the same feeling every time someone uses that term "dear" in a casual context.

As far as this topic goes, it might very well be true that there's some discrimination against bounty participants when it comes to merit-giving.  Personally, it makes absolutely zero difference to me whether someone's in a bounty or not when I'm judging a post.  I've got my settings set such that avatars and signatures aren't displayed, so unless there's a personal message text with advertising in it, I wouldn't necessarily know who's doing what.  Nor do I care.  If a bounty hunter makes a post that I find to be interesting, funny, or looks to have some thought and effort put into it, I'll give it some merit.

That's just me, though.  I still have high standards as far as how good a post has to be before I merit it, but whether a member is in a bounty or sig campaign doesn't factor into the equation.