I don't know if OP wants to keep deals on the down low, but I've transacted with him twice and both deals went smoothly.  I just never posted in his threads or left feedback.  I probably should have done the latter, but some people don't like their bitcoin deals broadcast to the world.  And yeah, he paid what he said he would and both times things went smoothly.

From the ANN:

Hasn't this idea been tried before?  Wasn't it basically decided by everyone with a brain that it's a lousy idea to have a cryptocurrency backed by gold?  I seem to recall much discussion about this concept in general, and I don't recall there being much enthusiasm about it and in fact I remember a lot of folks expressing the view that it's not only unnecessary but it's a great way to scam people since you really have no way to verify if there's any real gold involved (unless you trust somebody's audit reports).

Anyway, good catch OP.  I can't believe these projects are still plagiarizing other projects' whitepapers.  Hopefully nobody invests in this project, but I'm afraid there are going to be suckers who will.

Heh heh, seriously. 

Maybe it's because it's the start of a new decade, but I've been hearing a lot about how hot bitcoin is going to be this year--and maybe also because there's the block reward halving, too.  I certainly hope bitcoin performs well in 2020, but there's nothing except the halving to suggest that it has to be a good year for bitcoin, altcoins, or anything else.  However, bitcoin did start the year off pretty well and I'm happy to see it above $8k.  Whether it remains above that level is anyone's guess.

As an aside, I'm more concerned about nuclear war right now (or a major war without nukes) that bitcoin's ups and downs.  True, I'll have one eye on the crypto market but I'm hoping civilization doesn't come to an end before the impeachment proceedings.

I think I recall this suggestion before at least once.  If I remember correctly, one of the mods--could have been hilariousandco--suggested that you can write something like "all of this member's posts are spam" or something like that in lieu of reporting all the offending posts individually. 

Back when I was actively searching for shitposts to report in the pre-merit system days, I would go through members' post histories and report them one by one, and it was a pain in the butt.  I'd love it if there were a check box function or something similar when you're reporting posts, because often members make a bunch of posts that should get reported all for the same reason.  It's inefficient to report them individually.

I didn't know suchmoon made a script for this.  I'd like to see it if you can provide a link.

I saw that thread but didn't read any of it, but if TOAA has got some sort of beef with o_e_l_e_o, then he's even more of an idiot than I thought.  Leo is anything but a troll, and his posts are intelligent and informative--unlike TOAA's, which are pure trolling.

I would agree with this to an extent.  There's always been some sort of drama going on here, and it kind of keeps the place lively at times.  I wouldn't want Theymos to sanitize it out of some misguided attempt to respect Satoshi's influence on the forum.  On the other hand, as I said previously there is a rule about troll posts and I do think TOAA has violated that rule many times.  Plus I think at this point the community is sick of him and his ramblings, which are obviously not accomplishing anything except to piss some members off. 

CH/TOAA's crap has been going on way too long, and even with me having him on ignore I still can't avoid seeing the titles of the threads he starts.  At the very least I think quite a few of his posts and/or threads should be deleted.  I wouldn't be heartbroken if he got a temp or a permaban either.

I wouldn't hold him to that, as I've heard similar promises made by other members that were never followed through on.  I think Quickseller made one just like this a few years ago.

As I said in the other thread by TMAN, I think TOAA is most definitely a troll and at the very least deserves to have most of his posts deleted.  This crap has been going on for way too long.  It all started prior to December 2018 if I'm not mistaken, because that's when I made this thread, which I wish everyone would still at least consider.  That was back when TOAA was using the cryptohunter account. 

That's the thing I keep thinking about when I consider what impact the halving might have on bitcoin's price--there may have been huge increases in the past, but they weren't exactly sustainable and especially not after the last one.  I guess bitcoin did keep a lot of its gains after the 2016 halving, but it sure as hell went way higher than what it settled at.  I'm not even sure if the halving was responsible for any of that, and I don't know what to think about the upcoming one.

My guess is that the anticipation of the halving will draw a bunch of new speculators into the market, and they'll drive up the price with their buying.  How high bitcoin gets as a result is anyone's guess.  Some people think this is basically a guaranteed way to make a profit, which I think is ludicrous but that's the way it is.  I'm just hoping we don't see a repeat of 2017.  Getting to $20k from $8k wouldn't be quite as nutty as what transpired in 2017, but if bitcoin goes much higher than that, we could be in trouble.

You think?  I watch a few altcoins (because I own some of them) and they seemed to rise in tandem with bitcoin, which is what they usually do.  Having said that, I don't follow Ripple so I wasn't aware of its increase in price.  I'm not sure if altcoins led the way in the past couple of weeks, but to me it doesn't matter all that much anyway.

As far as whether bitcoin can it $15k this year, I think it certainly can--and that's also a reasonable price, too.  I would rather $15k be the high for the year than something outrageous like $25k or higher.  Bitcoin can go off on mega bull runs, but we all pay the price for that when it crashes and all the speculators get shaken out of the market.  $15k would represent basically a doubling in price, and that's good enough for me.

OK, I'll take your word for it then.  It isn't just the grudge thing, it's also their style of writing which borders on craziness at times.  I've always respected Bruno for his detective work in busting scammers, which I remember from my early days on the forum.  Even with my suspicion that he was behind the CH/TOAA accounts, I'd hoped it wasn't true because those two members are just being vicious against members who don't deserve it.  I didn't figure Bruno would stoop to doing that even if he did feel like he was being attacked some months back, but it did make me wonder.

Anyway, as I said I'll take you vouching for Bruno as fact and I'll put it out of my mind.  

Oh, I've got him on ignore and have for quite a while now.  And since I don't read any of his posts, I don't think I'll be in a good position to note which of his turds are off topic.  I'd like to report him for trolling, but I think it would be a waste of time.

I do.  I'm all for freedom of speech, but there is in fact a rule against trolling here, and I think it's obvious at this point that TOAA is breaking it.  I just noticed a thread about DarkStar_ (though I didn't read it, since I have TOAA on ignore), and it seems like TOAA is attacking anyone and everyone on DT.  And I don't think DarkStar_ out of anyone I can think of on DT has ever done anything to deserve an attack on his reputation.

If members reported threads/posts like this, I'm wondering what the outcome would be.  Probably nothing is my guess, but I do think something ought to be done when a member is trolling as hard as TOAA is.  I've seen other members get banned for less--and I'm not even calling for a ban, just deletion of troll posts/threads.

I'm pretty sure they're the same person, and I've had a suspicion for a long time that that person is Bruno.  Funny how one disappeared with a grudge against the forum and another appeared, also with a grudge against the forum.

Edit:
LOL.  LOL.  LOL.

That might be true, but I can almost guarantee you that even though the majority of people might have heard of it, most aren't aware of what it really is.  I've met people in real life who basically know what bitcoin is, but they didn't know what something as basic as a wallet is or of the decentralized nature of bitcoin--which IMO is why it's so unique and important in the first place.  Such people also tend to connect bitcoin with drugs, money laundering, and terrorism too, based on media coverage of whatever busts made the news.  The more positive coverage that makes the press, the better. 

I generally like it when bitcoin gets coverage because it's in a bull market, as in 2013 and 2017 and not because it can be used for criminal activities.  That's a bit unfair IMO, since fiat gets used way more for the same stuff and yet a lot of people don't think too hard about what they're hearing on the news.  Not all media reporting on bitcoin is good, and I wouldn't consider every mention of it to be "free advertising" by any means.

That could be the case, though I never found cheezcarls's threads to be spam.  Hydrogen does much the same thing in the Economics section--he'll post some text from an article and then comment on it.  Since I don't visit crypto news sites, I find this sort of thing to be useful.  Just my opinion, though.  

I did have a problem when cheezcarls was posting those huge images, but thankfully he's since stopped doing that.  Don't know if there's a specific rule that covers what he's doing, but I don't think there is as long as he's not including reference links or obvious advertising spam.  Maybe a moderator could weigh in.  

Heh heh, well that one got blown all out of proportion in general and not just in the thread that cheezcarls created, to be fair.

I'm not so sure about the first part of that, and I would say it would depend on what the maximum number of posts you can get paid for per week, month, or whatever.  If you look at some of the absolute garbage posts that get made here, and there are a lot of them, you can tell that many members are just churning out crap because they're getting paid.  They likely wouldn't even be members of bitcointalk if they weren't in a campaign or bounty.

When I joined the forum, I really didn't know what signature campaigns were though I quickly learned that they were responsible for some of the most idiotic posts I'd ever read on a discussion forum.  My immediate impression of bitcointalk was that it had a very bizarre vibe to it.  Members weren't responding to each others posts, which is usually the case on other forums.  People would give the same answers to questions asked in the OP of a thread without regard to answers that were previously given--it was like robots were writing posts.  Very strange.

Then I figured out what sig campaigns were and it was obvious that those zero-thought posts were done for money.

Since I wasn't referred to bitcointalk and didn't come here to make money, I didn't join a campaign until about nine months after I registered and I only did it because I figured I might as well make a little bitcoin for posting, which I was going to be doing anyway.  I've always enjoyed posting here, and I did learn a lot of things I didn't know about crypto. 

But as far as whether I'd be posting less if I wasn't in a campaign, I'm not so sure.  I don't always make the max number of posts per week for Chipmixer, and sometimes I make more.  I'm not here for the money, but it is a nice bonus I'll admit.

I thought that might be the reason initially, but that situation seems to have cooled down in the past few days and bitcoin is still above $8k.  I'm not sure why any political situation would be responsible for bitcoin going up, to be honest, because it isn't as though it's a safe-haven asset like gold or silver.

I think this recent rise could be due to speculators buying in anticipation of the halving, hoping to make easy money if and when bitcoin goes up even further.  And it's odd to think about cause and effect here, because is it the halving itself that causes bitcoin to boom, or is it the speculators buying in, thinking it's going to boom and thereby causing the price to rise?  Who knows. 

I've never been one to look for explanations for market movements anyway, and if you think about it, bitcoin hasn't even gone up all that much.  It's a nice little pop, but it's nothing to get all excited about.

Yep, because OP's English is lousy but what I understood is this: OP is not ranking up nearly as fast as he thinks he/she should be, and it's all because of the merit system.  OP has only earned 4 merits since registering in May of last year, so it's probably looking like it's going to be impossible to reach even Full Member. 

My question (which I'm sure I know the answer to) is why is it so important for OP to rank up?  If you're here to read and write, rank doesn't prohibit you from doing either of those things. 

I'd also volunteer my opinion that Theymos probably isn't contemplating any changes in the ranking or merit systems.  Yes, it's very hard for members to climb the ranks but the merit system was designed to make it that way.  OP might not understand how bad the forum had gotten by January 2018 in terms of nonsense posts, spam, and account farming but let me tell you, it was bad. 

If you could still rank up just with activity, it would probably be even worse right now and might even have driven all the good members away out of frustration--so the merit system and the resultant difficulty in ranking up was an absolute necessity.  There's probably a local board OP can post in, and hopefully if that's the case it has a merit source roaming around.

I saw the link, didn't see the proof.  I wouldn't be surprised if it was indeed QS's alt, but I wouldn't be convinced unless there was some hard evidence.  From what I can see in that thread, there's just suspicion.

Definitely not proof--not even good evidence as far as I can see.  The only real way you can link two accounts is if someone admits one is their alt, or with some blockchain evidence, or if someone screws up and posts something from their alt account that was obviously meant to be from their main one.  I've seen that before, but it's rare.

Some are (by luck), but most are 0% accurate.  As they say, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

I don't think that's clear at all.  In fact I'd say that's completely wrong--but then again, my predictions are as good as anyone else's.  I just don't think bitcoin is in for a fall of at least $3k right now, not after it's started to rebound from the summer's mini-crash.  And I'm not sure what effect the halving has had or is going to have, but I'm guessing that people have started buying bitcoin in anticipation of it, which is why we've seen the price spike the way it has.

Yeah, there could be some of that, too.  You really have to be careful about who you listen to when you're reading people's price predictions, and I think it's generally a good rule of thumb just to tune everybody out altogether.

That might be a sound idea, but I suspect that day trading tends to select for loners who might not have a rich and active social life to fall back on when they're not glued to the screen.  That certainly might not be true for all of them, but I bet it's true for a lot of them.

I'm not sure I could trade as a full-time job, and it's not just the isolation and eye strain--the market can be a harsh mistress at times, and trading has been known to drive people insane, just like gambling.  Most importantly, it's just a way to make money (if you can do it).  IMO it's much better to have a job where you're actually doing some good in the world and something you enjoy.  Some folks might actually enjoy trading all day long, but not everyone as OP has demonstrated.

And OP, if you actually find trading to be boring I would quit as fast as you can and don't look back. 

I disagree--both of those services aren't that old at all, and it took many, many years for long distance phone calls to become cheaper, and those aren't free by the way, just cheaper than they used to be.

I could see something like Airbnb working with bitcoin, but I'm not so sure about Uber unless you paid in advance with enough time for the payment to confirm on the blockchain.  I've never used Uber, so I'm not really sure how the payment system works, but I'm assuming it's just like any other cab service.

Well said, and I was thinking about most of what you wrote when I read the OP here.  The main issue I see is one of bitcoin adoption in general.  I have no doubt bitcoin could be integrated into services like Uber, Airbnb, or anything else but people just aren't clamoring for ways to spend their bitcoin if they even own any to begin with.

I don't think there are any that don't require a photo and a picture of your drivers license or some other photo ID.  The only one I ever tried to use (and I'm in the US) required both of those things.  Some of the ones on coinatmradar.com seem to suggest that they don't, but I wouldn't count on it.

I've never bought bitcoin anonymously, because Paypal deals aren't anonymous and those are basically all I've done. 

You could try to arrange a face-to-face meetup with someone in your area if you start a thread in the Currency Exchange section.  I've never done it, but I have seen threads like that before, and I've had one member ask to meet up with me once (I didn't do it). 

Another option would be to sell something here for bitcoin, something that's not linked to you, like a gift card as you mentioned.  I would advise using an escrow if you do go that route.  It's a pain in the ass, but everyone will at least feel safe.  Good luck, because it's not easy to stay completely anonymous.