Yep, that's the first thing I thought.  I would also argue that there is at least some good discussion going on in certain sub-sections of the altcoin board, though it's pretty rare that you find a decent thread that goes on for more than a few days before getting buried underneath a mountain of crap. 

I've got all of those sections on ignore, so it wouldn't bother me if they were nuked--but it is also true that the spammers aren't going to just disappear from bitcointalk as long as bounties and sig campaigns exist.  Thus I'd have to disagree with OP's suggestion just on that basis.  The potential for the rest of the forum to get spam-bombed is too great to risk it.

Since the penalty for PM violations is so severe (apparently), I'd be conservative about reporting them. 

I don't mind getting unsolicited PMs from members as long as they're not spam, which I've definitely received and reported in the past.  I get PMs from members asking for feedback to be removed and all sorts of other things, and to me that's not a problem--not even if there's bad language involved.  As far as profanity goes, you probably want to have a thick skin where that's concerned on bitcointalk, given how much freedom of speech Theymos allows.

Not if someone with half a brain who has enough power to stop it has a say in the matter.  I'm not sure how they think the US is going to pay for such a relief effort--and I don't even know what the impact on taxes and inflation the first stimulus payment is going to be, and it worries me.  Part of me thinks that the Fed thinks it can get away with printing money nonstop, having done it a few times before without disastrous consequences.

But there are going to be consequences, that much I'm sure of, and somebody is going to have to pay for all this free money eventually. 

I'm also wondering how long the politicians think this crisis is going to go on, and my personal guess is that it's not going to be longer than six months and probably will be much less than that.  People aren't going to need all this relief money once they start getting back to work--which they will once businesses start to open again.  I don't know.  This proposal is stupid on its face, and it could just be political posturing.

I was just thinking the other day that I hadn't heard much about Libra for months, and I was wondering if the project had quietly been canceled--but I also figured I'd have seen some discussion here about that if it were the case.

Anyway, no; I don't think Libra would be a threat to bitcoin, nor do I even think they'd be competing for the same user base necessarily.  Most people who own bitcoin nowadays don't use it as a currency, but rather as an investment.  And since Libra is supposed to be a stablecoin, there would be no reason for anyone to own it as an investment.  They'd be using it as a currency for whatever Facebook intended them to use it for. 

I haven't searched the internet about Libra lately.  Has there been any news or developments?

I wouldn't exactly call what coinfunda did as "disgusting".  He has to get the information for his articles from somewhere, and it looks like he was just querying members here to get it.  And while I haven't looked at the replies he got, I would bet that a lot of the members who replied are in signature campaigns and thus got paid for their answers.  In any case, I don't really see a case of abuse or dishonesty here unless I'm missing some glaring piece of evidence.

This is the least of the forum's problems.  I've seen threads where alt accounts pretend to carry on discussions between themselves and much worse examples of "disgusting" behavior.  I wouldn't worry too much about what coinfunda did.

I'm not expert enough in the technical aspects of crypto to understand why you have the opinion you have, but I respect it nonetheless--and I know there's a big rift between PoS supporters and those who only favor PoW.

But I'm thinking bitcoin won't ever move to a PoS algorithm, as that would be like adding baking soda to the formulation for Coca-Cola.  It just wouldn't be bitcoin.  I am interested to see how ETH turns out as a PoS coin, though.  I don't own any and probably wouldn't be motivated enough to buy 32 of them in order to stake it, but I'm curious to see whether it's going to be a success.

Yeah, there's that big rift I was referring to above.

I shared the same sentiments a few months ago, but the COVID-19 outbreak has thrown an enormous monkey wrench into the machine, and not I'm not sure at all that the halving is going to affect bitcoin's price.  I sort of think that if there were going to be an effect, it would already be reflected in the current price--but there's no way to know.

It'll definitely be interesting to see what transpires come May, but I'm not placing any large bets on the outcome and I don't have my hopes up for a huge price increase.

Trump is trying to get the US reopened as soon as possible, which should limit the economic hit it's going to take (though who knows if it's too soon as far as the outbreak is concerned), and I don't think the US in general is going to get killed economically when all is said and done.  So if that's the case, I don't think China will end up more dominant than it already is--but that scenario certainly could happen.  China is a huge country with a lot of citizens and a booming economy.

Also, I think this "crisis" is going to end up being shorter than most people realize.  It seems like life has changed permanently around the world, but this isn't going to last forever.  I don't even think it's going to last more than a few more months, but we'll see.

Yeah, and I seriously doubt our country's ability to keep paying people to stay out of work.  Sure, the Fed can keep the printing presses going full-speed, 24/7, but someone's going to have to pay for all of this relief eventually--and I'm not sure Trump really gives a shit.

That's my only concern about the stimulus.  I'm worried about increased taxes and/or high inflation as a consequence of it.  And I know Trump wants to get the country back on its feet and out of lockdown fairly soon, which I think is a great idea as long as it's safe for everyone to come out of hiding.  Hopefully he's getting good advice from his advisers, because I certainly don't trust his own judgement.

That's probably the best advice anyone could give OP, though I'm wondering if he's mistaking trading with gambling.  I'm not sure how you could lose your entire starting amount (if that's what he's saying) if you're simply trading altcoin, or even just bitcoin.  You might lose money, but unless you're trading on margin you shouldn't lose everything.

As to whether $100 is a good amount, that depends on how much that means to you and whether you can afford to lose it.  If $100 can buy you food for a few months and you've got a track record of crappy trades, I wouldn't advise it.  But if you're living in a country like the US where that amount doesn't buy you much anymore--and you wouldn't flinch if you lost it all--then I'd say go for it.  You probably won't make a lot of profit, but you'll get some experience and it'll probably be fun.

Wouldn't you kind of expect that?  Not that I know much about the Nano X's battery, but I have a variety of power banks for emergencies, and they don't tend to lose much charge even after a few months.

Anyway, I'm hoping to own a Nano X one of these days, but as I've said in other threads I can't seem to justify the purchase when the S is working just fine for my needs.  I'm not that into altcoins and I don't think an X would offer much advantage to me--but glad you're liking it, OP.

Huh.  I'm kind of happy that the S doesn't have a battery that can go dead.

I don't know how serious this "second wave" is going to be, but as far as China goes, they're a huge country with a very strong economy.  So even if the outbreak gets worse there, it might sting a little bit but it's not going to kill them.

Viral outbreaks don't last forever as far as I know, and while things might look pretty bleak at present, this isn't going to last forever and life will get back to some sort of normalcy--eventually.  I also don't think China would have a problem getting some help from other countries if things get really bad.  Or they could sell all those US bonds they hold.

Those are pretty much my thoughts--bitcoin's price progress has been hampered severely by the outbreak, and I doubt the halving is going to have a major effect this time.  I've also always had the opinion that halvings are priced in well ahead of time, though I'm not entirely confident that's true.

In any case, I'm hoping the halving does have some sort of positive effect.  And someone mentioned all this free, printed money that's being thrown around, and usually when that happens (or there's very low interest rates), asset prices skyrocket.  In the long-term it isn't a good thing, but in the short-term it could make people a lot of money if bitcoin goes up.  We'll see.

I guess that's an interesting question, though I doubt that's going to happen in Bruno's case.  Last year he sold one or more of his accounts to, I think, suchmoon.  I'm wondering if suchmoon (or whoever took control of the Gleb Gamow account) still has access to it or not, and I can't remember the outcome of that situation other than Bruno got slammed for doing what he did.

People die all the time, and accounts all over the internet get abandoned daily.  It's not a new situation, nor do I think it's an issue that's of particular concern to bitcointalk.  We've already got a problem with account sales, and you never even know who's really writing when you see a member post something.  Someone hacking a deceased member's account certainly could happen, the same way an inactive account (from a member who isn't dead) could get hacked. 

Anyway, I wouldn't worry about Bruno's accounts becoming active again.  Obviously if one of them did start posting, you'd know it wasn't the original owner.

That's what I was thinking, too, although I don't think they're going to go bankrupt.

I'm kind of worried about the future of the US, especially since the government cranked up the money printing and is sending pretty much every citizen or family a check for something like $1200.  I'm not sure how we intend to pay for all that, and my guess is that it's not going to be a gift from Trump but a loan that we're going to be paying off with higher taxes and such after everything settles.  The US isn't going to go bankrupt in the immediate future, but that's where we're headed.

And yeah, I think the poorest countries are going to get slaughtered economically.  But who knows.  We'll see where we are in a year or so.

Thank you for bringing that up so I wouldn't have to for the millionth time in OP's threads.

Never heard of Pantera Capital, but it doesn't really matter who they are and I don't trust public announcements like this from investment firms or money managers, because it always strikes me as a bald-faced attempt at hyping an asset that they likely own.  It's also only one person/company's opinion, and for every one of those you find that tells you bitcoin is going to spike there are probably hundreds of others telling you the opposite.  The truth is that none of them know for sure, so it's all noise.

There is no relevance, and I'm putting OP on ignore for constantly using irrelevant images.

That's the advice I'd give.  His post(s) about Bruno should be deleted, as they're vicious trolling posts and thus against the rules, but I wouldn't go so far as to recommend banning him for that.  If he keeps it up, I would think differently because I've seen other trolls get banned for much less.

In any case, fuck that guy.  Maybe he's an alt account of someone who got busted by Bruno some time ago--who knows?  And though I'd be tempted to pipe up and defend Bruno's memory in a thread like the one OP linked to, that would just be giving a troll the attention he wants.  Just ignore him for now, regardless of how offensive he is.

No, no, no.  I was personally using the trust system to fight shitposters right before the start of the merit system and it wasn't popular with anyone, including Theymos.  The merit system was absolutely needed, and it was a pretty elegant solution to the problem it addressed.

If newbies are frustrated that they can't rank up on a discussion forum, that's 99.9% likely because they're here to use the forum as a place of employment instead of having a genuine interest in reading and writing about crypto.  I have zero sympathy for those folks.  And where are they going to go where they can rank up quicker?  Cryptotalk?  Good luck with that; that forum is a shitfest and it's nothing compared to bitcointalk--and there aren't a hell of a lot of other forums dealing with bitcoin that I know of.

The whole issue as I see it is the existence of signature campaigns, which is fairly unique to bitcointalk.  It is because of their existence that account farming exists, account sales thrive, and rank is of the utmost important to newbies.  I could pretty much guarantee you that if campaigns went away, nobody would be bitching about merits or ranking up.

That's it exactly, and I wouldn't call high demand for all of those things OP mentioned "hoarding".  I'd call it what I just did: high demand, and it isn't surprising in the least that stuff to alleviate boredom is being bought up.  I've been on eBay and Amazon lately buying books and such, and I'm sure I have that in common with millions of other people around the world with enough cash to spend on those items.

What worries me is that there's all this spending going on, but at the same time a lot of people are out of work--and nobody knows when they'll get back to their jobs.  People are likely buying those Nintendo games and everything else with credit cards or what little savings they have.  That's not good for the long-term.

No, but it's natural for some people to wonder where a colorful member like TMAN has gone off to--especially when you hear about situations like Bruno's.  He did a wonderful thing by announcing his permanent departure IMO, but that's not something 99.999% of people would even think to do.

He's disappeared for long stretches of time before, as have other established members like Lauda, Vod, hilariousandco, and Quickseller if I'm not mistaken.  I wouldn't worry until it's time to worry, if you know what I mean.