Good, glad to hear your skin has thickened and hopefully you don't take things so personally that you either start to think this forum sucks or, even worse, decide to abandon it altogether.  Yes, I am as cynical as one can be and often sarcastic--but humor and sarcasm don't often translate well when written, and I try to keep that in mind.

And hey, JollyGood even wrote in his feedback that once he figures out who you are and what you're trying to do (if anything), he'll review that neutral.  Coulda been a hell of a lot worse.  You could have gotten a big ol' DT1 negative and then had that member die or just disappear forever from the forum.  You'd be stuck with that black eye forever.  Positive thinking, my man.

Wait a sec.  Did you read the explanation I gave for my decision to not merit gambling posts?  It isn't because of shitposts necessarily, it's mainly because I can't tell the difference between a post that's saying something true and meaningful and one that's total horseshit--and that's due to my own ignorance of gambling.

On top of that I suspect I might be getting alt accounts PMing me with most of their posts in the gambling section.  I said explicitly that I have nothing fundamentally against gambling.  

That part in bold up there?  I'm not out to merit anything in any particular section; I'm just reviewing members' post histories, so I'm just looking in whatever sections those members post in.  There might be excellent posts in self-modded threads by gamblers, but if the members who are requesting reviews don't post there, I'm not going to see them (and once again, l am ignorant of gambling-related stuff, so that point still holds).

Did you PM me?  You have to do it that way, not by posting here.  You might well have and I just haven't seen it, but I'm just saying.  I've got to get caught up, because right now I feel like the biggest merit source slouch there is--and I'm probably right on the money.

I understand the concept of opportunity cost, but if what you wrote is true then I'm left asking "Where the fuck do our tax dollars go?".  Those expenses above are usually taxpayer-funded as far as I know, and some of them aren't even at the federal government level but either state or even municipal levels.

And the question OP asked is one I've never asked myself; instead I've always wondered why countries get into so much debt in the first place (particularly the US, which is where I'm from).  The US debt is something I've been hearing about for decades, and I'm sure it's been an issue for longer than I've been alive.  I'm not sure if the US or the other countries in OP's list actually could pay off their entire debt all at once even if they wanted to.  I'm pretty sure that would mean whopping tax increases or some kind of financial chicanery that would wind up hurting the country rather than helping it.

It's sad.  This isn't even going to be my generation's problem, but the current gen's one and their kids' and grandkids' problem.  I would dread it if I were to live 50 more years, because I think the whole political landscape is going to be much different than it is today.

I would tend to agree with you that a new thread isn't necessary in cases like this--but look at the evidence you just presented!  I don't know if he's been reported or is banned or whatever, but that's the sort of good that can come from starting up a seemingly superfluous thread.

*Ok, I see Cyrus banned that guy now.  Awesome, awesome, awesome.*

Good eyes on this, OP.  Another idiot bites the dust....for now.

That statement above is of such higher quality in terms of English proficiency than your posts from back in 2017 that I have to wonder if you're either already using some kind of AI tool to polish your shortcomings OR you somehow got your hands on this account which used to belong to someone else. 

A third possibility is that you've improved your English, but I don't think I've ever seen that happen with an account that's recently woken up from a long break.

Anyone else get that sense?  Am I being paranoid here?  I seriously doubt I am, and if that's true it's baffling to me why OP would create a thread like this, which just invites scrutiny from shitposter/account buyer hunters.  Any good detectives want to delve into this one?

That would be a very honest thing for a restaurateur to say--and every one of them should say that if they haven't explicitly done tests for poisons.  Even if they said they did, there are a lot of poisons that standard tests wouldn't pick up on.  Personally if I got that answer from our theoretical restaurant owner, I'd still feel comfortable eating at his establishment.

But when it comes to everything Ledger has said and the risk you're comparing to being poisoned at a restaurant....I'm not reassured in the least by anything they've said after they announced the Recover thing, and I just don't understand all of the support they're still getting in their subreddit.  Some of those people have to realize the gravity of Ledger being able to get access to their customers' private keys at will. 

Still have my fingers crossed that their company goes down in a bright, flaming ball of wreckage and is never to be seen again.

I'm really torn as to whether I should give you a couple of merits for the above post.  It gave me a chuckle, and that's rare coming from a lower-ranked member (no offense, but it's true), but others might see it as frivolous merit-giving.

Ah, fuck it.  Since when did I ever care what the community at large thinks of my merit source duties?  True, I do take constructive criticism from members I respect quite seriously but I don't think they'd mind.  Consider the 2 merits I'm giving you to have come out of my personal stash in any case.

What's the significance?  Searching for that probably wouldn't give someone a clear answer, no matter how many threads showed up in the results.  There's really only one reason why it's important aside from bragging rights: you can earn more money through bounties/sig campaigns because you get more signature space.  If that weren't the case, rank would probably be less than 1/10th the issue it is and has been for years.  On other forums I've been involved with that have nothing to do with crypto, I've never seen posts talking about rank.  Ever.

Edit: I didn't read through all the posts before posting the above, and now that I read a few more I see the reason I gave was already written.  Consider my post to be confirming anyone who wrote the same--because it's true, sig campaigns are really the only reason merit is important.  I never read through the entirety of threads like this since I've probably seen at least a hundred of them in the past 5 years.

Man, I knew Murat's name rang a bell but I haven't seen a post from him in a long time; I did a deal with him a few years ago, which is reflected on his trust page (a neutral one).

I wasn't familiar with this situation at all, but the questions you asked that I snipped out of the post I took the above from are valid ones.  Murat doesn't seem too eager to do much explaining, though.  I read through most of the first page of this thread, about gas fees for the tokens in question and so forth being prohibitively high, but I'm going to go back and see why they weren't sent way before now.

Yep, that's the impression I get as well.  Maybe he can aim his sights at me with his bilious sniper rifle, though I don't think I've done anything to him that he'd have enough ammunition to do anything but get the community rolling their collective eyes and me greatly amused.

And yeah, I wish bounty hunters would all vanish immediately and all at once.  I find it hard to feel true pity when they don't get paid for their spamming.  On the other hand, what's fair is fair no matter my feelings toward their line of 'work'.  If Murat was supposed to pay them, then that's what he ought to do.

Years ago I probably would've been in the same boat, eager to see what kind of drama was playing out or browsing the Speculation section during one of the raging bull markets.  Maybe it's a change in attitude or enthusiasm or the state of the forum, but while I did in fact notice that bitcointalk was down for a lot longer than it normally goes down for, I just got up from my busted-up chair, stretched my legs, and went for a bike ride.

That was hours ago, and *yay!* we're back.  I don't know much about cloudfare, but I thought there might be some kind of DDOS attack (and if that were to happen, some other screen would probably show up, right?).  So let's get back to the fun and games, kids.

I don't think I ever looked into whatever allegations of plagiarism Ratimov had against him, but I trust the judgement of the moderators; if Ratimov was guilty, I seriously doubt they'd make an exception for him.  Enforcement of the rules--and especially the one for using other people's words without citing a source--is pretty damn harsh here, and I don't think I've seen much favoritism as far as letting certain members get away with something.  I was surprised when Bruno got temp-banned a while back for consecutive posting, but he did.

Gee, why is my gut telling me that isn't going to happen? 

Just FYI, you're only allowed to bump your own thread once every 24 hours, so don't keep bumping it like I saw you were doing earlier.  You don't want to get banned temporarily.

I bet you that even though you've withdrawn $50k and higher amounts before, that's the reason why they're suddenly putting the screws to you.  That's a lot of money, and Kucoin looks like they're covering their ass by wanting to know what your source of funds are and all that.  You said you've never done anything shady with crypto (and I have no reason to doubt you), but they don't know that at all and since they're complying with regulators, it's become their job to be suspicious when large sums of money are involved.  I would imagine even $10k would cause them to start paying attention to one of their customers if that customer was consistently depositing/withdrawing that amount.

Still hoping for a good outcome for you--and Kucoin is legit as an exchange, so I suspect things will turn out in your favor (though I absolutely understand your anxiety).

Ah, thank you!  You all know I just drive the bitcoin automobile without knowing how most things work under the hood, so I can't say I'd know how to do what you described--but it doesn't sound like something I couldn't easily learn, and I appreciate that explanation. 

Yeah....take a look at the links Findingnemo provided.  This was pretty big news, and I know it caused me to not trust Ledger anymore and left me questioning whether it's worth it to use any HW wallet.  Part of that could be my ignorance of what's under the hood of these devices, but I do believe I read a post by a member whose knowledge I respect saying that in theory private keys could be extracted from any device with a secure element.  It's just not worth it for me (even though I don't exactly have a large amount of crypto to lose).  In any case, most of my bubbling bile was caused by Ledger's treachery.  They are truly scumbags and are likely in bed with multiple government agencies--you could almost call it a governmental gangbang, but I'm just speculating.

I don't always use dirty words, however you define them.  But when I do....well, what's the point of all this freedom of speech we're granted by Theymos if it's not exercised?  Plus I'm infusing a little color into this conversation.  If everyone just wrote bland, insipid posts (and most members do, unfortunately), doesn't that seem boring to you?

It's not just that someone new can instantly acquire a high rank without putting in the work.  If that was the only issue, I wouldn't be tagging bought accounts or account sellers.  Just check out some of my sent feedback from a couple years ago, where I ticked off all the reasons why account sales are very bad for the forum as a whole and sometimes for individual members.  There are very good reasons to want to deter that kind of shit.

I'm assuming by "you guys" you mean me.  But it doesn't matter, because I usually want input from anyone before I go on a tagging spree, because I never assume that I've got complete information or that my judgement is infallible.  I'm not soliciting advice from just DT members, if that's what you mean by a tribe.  Truth be told, I don't even know who's on the DT list anymore because my trust list looks like this:

~DefaultTrust

And digaran, have we ever had a disagreement before?  We might well have, but for the life of me I don't remember one and I don't think I called you an idiot troll, moist basement or not.  Looks like you got tagged by a bunch of familiar members, but I'm not one of them.  If you've got a beef with them, start up a thread or something.

If you're referring to the firmware update that allowed the Recover "option" to work, it doesn't matter if you sign up for it or not; Ledger admitted they can pinch your private keys out of the secure element at any time, which they had previously said wasn't possible (and someone please correct me if I've got any of that wrong, but what I wrote is my understanding of what Ledger did and how it works).

OP, good for you for dumping Ledger.  I am curious as to what you did exactly with Electrum, because I don't understand based on what you wrote.  I've been wondering myself why hardware wallets are necessary, and the impression I get is that simply using Electrum leaves you vulnerable to getting hacked, which wouldn't be possible when using a HW wallet (or at least much harder if you're paying attention when doing transactions).  If you could elaborate, I'd appreciate it.  If not, I still like to hear "fuck Ledger" as many times as I can.  I'm rooting for them to swirl down the toilet and go bust, because they're just plain dishonest.

I cannot tell if you're being sarcastic, joking, or what.  Hopefully so, because there's no way in the hottest hell a member like BADecker knows something about cancer that's been eluding scientists for decades/centuries.

And aren't we living in a world where unpopular opinions are expected to be stifled as soon as they're discovered?  I've noticed that a lot on Youtube where creators can't even use the word "suicide" because it's apparently such a horrible word that it'll get videos demonetized.  And then there's all of the things you can't say with respect to identity politics.  So what I'm saying is that perhaps Joeyp is one of those new-generation youngsters who expect people to say what they want to hear and nothing they don't.  I don't know, but I don't care how outrageous BADecker's (or anyone else's) conspiracy theories are; they should be debunked instead of censored.

Word to the bird.  However, the sentence I highlighted might be wishful thinking, because I've met plenty of people who don't think critically about anything.  You'd hope that wouldn't be the case, but some folks will believe anything they see on TV or the internet, especially if it's info with a lot of technical jargon that they don't understand but is presented in such a way that it sounds like it makes sense.  That can happen very easily when medical info is presented, because most people don't understand medical terminology....and blah blah blah.  Christ, how can I get this pessimistic before I've even finished my first cup of coffee of the day?

A big LOL headed down the turnpike your way, philipma1957. 

What's up with two threads about BADecker in one day?  He must frequent the Off-topic section, because I can't say I've ever come across a post of his at random.  Now as far as giving him a special rank related to trolling activities, that seems like something that ought to be voted on by the community, not assigned by Theymos.  And even if there were such a vote in the form of a poll or whatever, what do you think the chances would be of Theymos actually going for it?  I seriously doubt he would, especially since such a rank would be an insult.

The little devil that lives on my shoulder really wants something like this to happen.  We need to seriously liven things up around here, don't you think?

OP, I second this.  I had to check when BADecker registered on the forum, and it was way before the merit system came into existence.  For the time he's been an active member here, he actually hasn't earned many merits at all.  Assuming he was already Legendary in January 2018, he would've been airdropped 1000 merits as did every Legendary member when Theymos created the system. 

In other words, his posts aren't very popular and the merit system wouldn't have been able to suppress his nonsense anyway.

No kidding!  Why did I never know that?  We could probably have long conversations, even if we live in different countries (which I'm unsure of).  And I know of at least one doctor here (o_e_l_e_o) who would be able to debunk any medical claims falsely made by BADecker or anyone else.

This forum is all about freedom of speech, OP.  If someone writes bullshit, you just have to counter it with facts or ridicule and let the community judge for themselves what to believe.  The merit system has nothing to do with any of this.

WTF?  I knew Kucoin was going full KYC, but those questions seem way above and beyond what they'd ever need to know (unless a government agency has provided them with what amounts to a script, i.e., questions they have to ask certain customers--and seemingly arbitrarily).  It's too late now, but you should've dumped any exchange that announced they're going to start requiring your dox.

Yeah, but don't those questions OP is saying Kucoin is asking him seem extremely excessive to you?  OP didn't say how much money is involved here, but I wonder what triggered Kucoin to suspend the withdrawal and then ask for all that info.  I'd expect this from an exchange like Coinbase, but not Kucoin.  Jesus.

I did know all of what you wrote before I posted my question--I guess I'm just wondering how big a risk it is to use Electrum as a storage wallet if you don't visit weird sites and don't download fishy things.  It baffles me how computers get infected with malware so bad that they can steal coins from your wallet, particularly because pretty much everyone has anti-malware software of some kind.  And I know this isn't the thread to start a conversation about that.

OP, best of luck to you.  From what I've seen on this forum with hacks like what you're describing, there's rarely a good outcome (or the person doesn't bother to update the community).  You've got a lot of money on the line here, so I hope you get the fuckers who stole from you.  I'm sending positive vibes in your direction.

Oh, if for some reason sig campaigns ceased to exist traffic would fall by more than 80%.  I'd bet good money on that--but so far there's been no indication that's in the works.  And you don't have to justify them to me, because I do see the benefits of them and I know people in poor countries can make excellent money by participating in them.  The problem is that a lot of those participants don't give a shit about the forum and don't care about what they're writing and just want the money.

What was that forum that got started by Yobit a while back?  Cryptotalk?  Everyone on it was being paid to post, and that place turned into plagiarism central.  So many people were copying posts made here and pasting them into any relevant thread there.  The whole thing was so ridiculous that I'm surprised it lasted more than a week.  Crypto is full of dishonest/desperate people who'll do anything to get money, and when you present them with a pretty easy writing gig....well, you either get Cryptotalk or a section like Bitcoin Discussion where the mods do the best they can.

OP, welcome to bitcointalk where 9 out of 10 members are here just to take a dump on the forum and drop as many shitposts in a week as their campaign or bounty will pay for.  This has been going on for years and nothing has changed much, not even after the introduction of the merit system.  It almost seems like earning merits isn't a priority anymore or those dumbass shitposters have found a way to get them on the sly.

You'll notice that a lot of bullshit threads get started, and I've always thought that's done by the OP so that his alts, friends, family, and/or coworkers can have a new place to post some generic shit that's been written a thousand times before.  And yep, Bitcoin Discussion is infested with members like that and it's unfortunate that the section that ought to be full of thoughtful discussion is filled with moronic topics like the ones you mentioned.

Unless or until sig campaigns go away, it's going to stay like this.

That's not true in Bitcoin Discussion, though.  People who really want to learn ought to be reading more and posting far less, and they should be frequenting Beginners & Help.  Most of the threads in Bitcoin Discussion are pure crap, as are the posts in them.  Members aren't there to learn, even if it looks like they are.  If they've got their signature space rented out, it's a safe assumption that what looks like an innocent topic for a thread is just some rehashed discussion that's been had many times over the years, usually in the form of "X vs. Y?" or a title that's in the form of a question that any illiterate shitposter can write an incoherent, low-value, and short answer to.