You know, that's kind of all I think this is.  That growth rate of bitcoin ATMs is quite astonishing, though, and I wouldn't have expected that many new ones to pop up because I'm not sure how many people are actually using them and how much of a demand there are for them.

The big problem with these machines is the fees, as has been mentioned.  I'd love the convenience of a nearby ATM where I could buy bitcoin if only they didn't charge so much--and I don't even mind the KYC documents I'd have to provide either.  It's just that it costs so damn much over the market price that it really isn't worth it.  I can usually get preev 1:1 deals on this forum, so why would I waste money?

Wow X 2.  That's impressive, but as I said I wonder how much use these ATMs are getting.  I'd really like to see some hard data on that.

Why?  China has been counterfeiting everything the US produces for years, so why should its cash be any different?  

And the US has done very little to stop the other counterfeiting China does, which is of Nike shoes, Apple products, American silver eagles, and a whole bunch of other stuff.  Funny how when it's money that's getting faked the government issues a press release--and that's because when China does that it's a direct hit on the government itself.  If money is getting diluted, they'll eventually feel it.

Anyway, there's probably a lot more of this going on than the one bust but $900k isn't a big sum in the grand scheme of things, not when there are hundreds of billions of US dollars in circulation.  This might be more of a hit piece against China than anything else, but that's not to say this isn't a real problem because it is.

That is indeed weird, but whatever.  Who knows what they're thinking?

I would definitely not go that far--schools shouldn't and can't teach common sense that everyone should have, nor can they teach people not to be greedy or fearful, and those are the emotions that scammers play upon.

Lol.  I'm sure a lot of people here won't know what the hell you're talking about, but I remember beenz.  And Flooz with Whoopee Goldberg endorsing it, which is what I thought bitcoin like was at first before I realized it's decentralized.

That first post was in an ANN thread with 1488 pages in the altcoin section and it had to do with doge--I could have predicted it wouldn't get a response.  That's about the only thing you can expect in a thread like that.

The second post did get a few responses, but they sounded like they didn't understand what you were trying to say, and that might be a little bit of a language barrier.  But in general when you're expecting responses from posts that aren't in your thread, don't bother unless it's in the mining or technical section or Meta.  And if it's your own thread, be as clear as you can possibly be if you're looking for specific information--and even then it depends on which section that thread is in.  All of the altcoin sections are spammy, as is Bitcoin Discussion.

Welcome to bitcointalk, OP.  Looks like you're having much the same reaction I had when I joined.

Yeah, that sounded like a typical public relations statement putting a spin on a bad situation and I wouldn't put much faith in it.

Very interesting.  I was among those who thought Bakkt would boom once launched, because I'd figured that hedge funds and other big-money investors would want in on the crypto game, and the only good way to do that would be through futures and options.  Apparently the reception is tepid at best, and I'm kind of surprised to see that.

Even the volume on the CME seems pretty low.  I've no idea what's going on behind the scenes, but my guess is that if business doesn't pick up on Bakkt, they'll shut their doors.

I think most sig campaigners don't really have a lot to say about crypto, and I'm not sure how profitable blogging would be for the average person just trying to earn crypto--especially if they don't have any writing talent, which also seems to be the case with sig campaigners.  Just take a look at what those idiots are writing over at cryptotalk.org.  It's all spam and plagiarism, and that's why so many of them get booted from campaigns on this forum.

This is an interesting infographic, OP.  But HYIPs are shown as being highly profitable, and I'm not sure that's the case.  My impression has always been that those are Ponzi schemes in which most participants lose all their money.  I also think that term "HYIP" is only used on bitcointalk, because I've never seen it used elsewhere.

I don't care what this guy thinks in the best of times and I certainly am not paying him any mind with this statement.

I would also point out that the market disagrees with McAfee, as it's giving a very high valuation to bitcoin and a much lesser one to coins like ETH that do have the smart contract capability and so forth. 

"Shitcoin" is a very subjective term, and I'm sure if you asked 100 crypto geeks what one is you'd get 101 different answers--but I don't think bitcoin or ETH are shitcoins, and they can coexist very peacefully.  There are so many coins out there, and there's no need to be militantly opposed to any of them.  Everybody has got their favorites, and personally I'm fine with that.  Just tune out comments like McAfee's and you'll sleep better at night.

I ask this seriously: is it really abused that often?  Maybe I haven't noticed it because it's a problem in sections I don't visit that you do (like P&S, which I think you post in), but I haven't seen members changing the thread title all that much.  Or it could be that I'm just not paying attention to it since there's really no need to.

I think when you brought this up last time I supported the idea and I still do.  It's a small change, but there's really no reason why someone ought to be able to modify a thread's title in their post.  Having a title for your post on any discussion board is annoying and unnecessary, especially if you're required to put something in that field--and on bitcointalk I don't see any reason why we even need a title repeated with every post.

Bingo.  Frankly the only thing I tend to not trust about TECSHARE are some of his trust ratings, which is why I have him ~'ed in my trust list.  Other than that I don't consider him untrustworthy in the least--in fact, he has a very long history of completing trades to the satisfaction of his counterparties and thus it comes down to a case of leaving red trust for someone whose opinions/interpretation of facts/whatever doesn't jibe with your own.  I don't think the trust system ought to be used for that, and it seems like we've had this debate before.

As an aside, reading through this thread it struck me that we haven't heard from CH/TOAA ever since he promised to leave the forum--or I may have missed their posts, but I don't think I did.  Hooray for that but boo for all of this other drama.  Where are Rodney King's words when you need them?

I'm pretty sure there was pressure put on him to stop managing it--but as of right now the campaign is closed anyway if I'm not mistaken, so no more pressure need be applied.  I'm actually glad Yobit decided to end it before this issue blew up more than it needed to. 

I've had mixed feelings about members getting tagged because of what they're advertising in their signature space and with this Yobit thing I've been going back and forth in my mind as to whether there's an actual Ponzi scheme going on with the investbox--and yes, I've read posts made by o_e_l_e_o and others about it and it's started to look and quack like a duck if you know what I mean.

I wouldn't be able to bring myself to tag Yahoo62278 anyway, even if he wore the Yobit signature.  That would be based on his long history of trustworthiness and the little doubt in my mind that remains that Yobit is approaching full scammer status. 

Yeah, this has been a weird situation all around.  They definitely were sneaky when they switched from the cryptotalk sig to the investbox one, and I'll bet a lot of people didn't even know what it was they were advertising exactly.  Ah....it's making my head spin.

I don't think that's why he came up with the flag system, though I have to admit I haven't paid much attention to it and have yet to make a flag against a member here.  TECSHARE has always brought up the issue of the difference between dispicable behavior and trustworthiness in business deals--and sometimes, but not always, they're the same thing.  As an example, I think TECSHARE is an angry loon but I would do business with him with no hesitation because of his track record on the forum of not screwing people over.

There have always been allegations of trust abuse by DT members, but the fact is if that happens those DT members would be called on it and probably would be kicked off DT via exclusions by other DT members.  TECSHARE is actually one example of that happening (years ago), but there have been others too. 

I'm comfortable with all the negs I've left for members, which mostly deal with account sales.  But back in 2017-18 before the merit system was launched, I was leaving negs for shitposters because there were no other tools available to combat them.  I was never comfortable doing that and ended up removing all of those feedbacks after the merit system came along.  If you're on DT, you have to be careful about leaving either positive or negative trust just because of the weight it carries.  Hopefully new DT members realize this and act accordingly.

Well, that's certainly not the only question I'd have about it--but regardless, I don't think this is a good idea even if it's real.  There has been talk about gold-backed crypto for years, as I remember seeing discussion about it from my early days on the forum.  And from all the comments I've read, it doesn't seem like it would be particularly popular--not to mention the fact that you'd have to trust someone to actually have the gold that the crypto represents.  That's a big problem, and there have been other gold-backed digital currencies before (they were more like securities) that turned out to be scams.

If you really want to own gold, just buy some physical gold.  If you don't want to physically own it, there are ETFs and mining stocks and that sort of thing.  I wouldn't want to own a cryptocurrency that's supposedly backed by gold, since there would be too much doubt in my mind as to whether the gold exists in somebody's vault.

Never heard of BitMart, never heard of TSL.

As to why exchanges keep shitcoins listed, it's mainly because they do still get traded--in fact, that's the only purpose they've ever served.  None of them get used as currency, and my guess is that most people don't hold them for the long term.  And take a look at Yobit and all the shitcoins they have listed.  Some of them seem to be exclusive to Yobit and I'm not even sure they exist outside of that exchange.  And Yobit is probably the worst in terms of having coins listed that have no volume and which can't be withdrawn because their wallets are always in maintenance mode.

Also, the definition of a shitcoin is somewhat subjective.  Some folks think doge is a shitcoin, whereas others think it's one of the best, and most exchanges have it listed.  But when you're talking about a coin like TSL (whatever it is), there would probably be unanimous agreement that it qualifies as one.  I've no idea why that BitMart exchange has it listed aside from my guess that there are probably some people who still trade it.

He probably means lately, as in the last couple of weeks--because before that bitcoin was stuck in one of its trading ranges that it tends to stall out in from time to time, but I understood your point completely.  Those stall-outs are just periods of stability in what is otherwise a very volatile asset.

If you're giving bitcoin until 2021 to hit $25k, I would say it's certainly possible and perhaps even desirable.  If it was to hit that level in a couple months from now, the market might be in danger of a crash.  But if bitcoin saw slow gains instead of major spikes, it would probably be sustainable.  It took 10 years for bitcoin to comfortably be able to hold a price in the $8000s with seemingly no danger of crashing.  That's the way I see it anyway.  When bitcoin goes crazy to the upside, there's always been a heavy correction that follows.

In any case, even if $25k isn't reached within a year I'd be more than happy if it got to $10k-15k in that same time frame.

Well of course it is.  I would have to be living in a bizarro world if one of my friends showed up at my place crying that they'd been banned from bitcointalk--and I fully realize that in some countries there are whole families (apparently) who participate in bounties and/or work on bounty farms, but I didn't believe OP's claim from the get-go.  Sounded way too far fetched.

That's all true, and I suspect there are probably more females here than we realize.  People just like to keep their information private, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Nor is it the first time bitcoin has been over $9k--but I'm still happy it finally broke through that value, as it's been a while since bitcoin was above $9k.  It's only been a few months, but I swear it feels like years.

The question I have now is whether it can stay here.  Last time we saw a price spike like this, bitcoin fell back to earth pretty quickly and was floundering in the $6k range for a bit.  That certainly could happen again, but for whatever reason it feels like the bulls are back in town.  At least a little bit.  We're still a long ways away from bitcoin's ATH, however, though I've got my fingers and toes crossed that we could see bitcoin approach $20k this year.

Well, you're also centralized even if you don't require KYC.

This all seems way too good to be true, and my guess is that even if this is a legitimate service it won't be in business for long--whatever government they're operating under will shut them down or force them to comply with some regulation eventually.  Governments don't want anonymous exchanges like this even if they're not dealing with fiat.

I agree, although I'm not convinced this is a legitimate exchange and I certainly would want to see some evidence of success before I used it and a track record of them not scamming people.

I noticed that extreme necrobump too, and I was wondering why that member did that since they usually don't have a problem making decent posts without having to resort to bumping nine-year-old threads.  OP, did you report that or what?  I didn't, but I probably should have.  It's certainly an interesting thread and I do like to see what people were writing about bitcoin and the economy years ago, but nevertheless it's against the rules unless there's a damn good reason to resurrect an old thread.

Also: hooray for Yobit's campaign ending today!  Hopefully the drama surrounding it will die down and we can learn something from it--maybe not agree on everything, but them switching from the cryptotalk campaign to the investbox one on the sly definitely wasn't something that has happened on bitcointalk before, nor was a Yobit campaign ever managed by a campaign manager.  

Yeah, I suspect a lot of them are going to disappear until the next opportunity rolls around.

Once again, an opinion I could have written myself. 

Bitcoin could easily hit six figures within the next few years, but I don't think it would be because people are adopting it as a currency, nor because it competes with precious metals or fiat currency--it would be for the same reason it hit $20k in 2017, i.e., investors would be driving up the price because they want to make a profit.  And you're also probably right that most bitcoin buyers just want to see their dollar value grow.  I don't necessarily think there's anything inherently wrong with that, since that's the measure of its worth.  1BTC=1BTC, but that's meaningless if things aren't priced in terms of BTC.

I also hope that if bitcoin does get to those lofty price levels that it can stay there.  That's something I always worry about when it starts to blow up.  2017 was a euphoric year for anyone who owned bitcoin, but man....that hangover was a bitch.

This is interesting to me, as there are at least two businesses right near me that only accept cash because apparently they don't want to deal with payment processors like Visa & Mastercard and the fees that are involved.  I don't know of any businesses in my state that won't take your paper money or coins.  That seems very odd to me--whatever happened to "cash is king"?  Why would any merchant not accept cash?

I totally get that people love paying for things with plastic or their smartphone, but there should always be an option to pay for things with physical money IMO.  Not only is it cheaper for the merchant but it's sometimes more convenient for some people, plus you have to deal with problems like the power going out or not being able to connect to the payment processor.  What do you do in situations like that--not make sales?  That's crazy.

I'm not a New Yorker and rarely go there anymore, but this is a good move on their part I think.

Exactly.  That population is by no means negligible.  Some people beg for their meals or collect pocket change, and how are they supposed to pay for things if society goes completely cashless?