Yeah, but I'm not so sure that tensions have eased all that much.  I'm sure the Iranians are super pissed about the initial US strike that killed the general.  It is a good thing that Trump isn't still gloating and puffing his chest out like the total asshole that he is, because that's the sort of thing that could kick off WWIII.  I'm really hoping he gets impeached before he can do any more damage.

But as far as bitcoin is concerned, I have to admit that it looks like its price is following these developments pretty closely.  It could still be a coincidence, but it certainly doesn't look like it is, and frankly I'd rather have it under $8k than have it soar to a new ATH while everyone is preparing for nuclear war.  I don't have my bunker ready yet, you know.

I kind of agree with you on that.  It's not like bitcoin is a safe-haven asset that people buy in times of uncertainty, like gold.  However, it's obvious that people were buying it in droves these past few days and something had to be causing them to do that.  I don't know what to think, but then again I'm not one for needing explanations for market movements.

This is why people don't make money trading--they let their emotions get the better of them.  My opinion is that it's a much easier and less stressful tactic to just buy bitcoin and hold it for the long term.  That way you don't have to be constantly watching every fluctuation of its price, wondering what's causing the price movements.  Who cares, anyway?  The jump to above $8k could have been due to the Iran-US situation or it might not have.  We'll never know, will we?

No, it is not.  Nobody in their right mind would consider bitcoin a safe haven asset, and all you'd have to do to convince yourself that it isn't would be to look at the 10-year price chart.  Gold has been relatively stable in the past ten years, whereas bitcoin has been like a manic depressive mental patient off his medications.

Wasn't me either, and I was directly involved in that discussion.  I've got OP on ignore and didn't even read what he wrote--and even when it was quoted here I didn't read it except for a quick skimming in which I noticed:


So it would have been obvious to anyone else that OP's post was just another rant that he crow-barred into a thread that he had no business posting in.  It might not even have gotten reported.  It's possible a moderator read it and just deleted it.  Who knows, but people are tired of all this nonsense from cryptohunter's alt accounts.  It's been going on for way too long.

Yeah, I was tagging plagiarists for a brief period of time, but I stopped doing it because I figured it was a waste of time if the plagiarists were going to get banned anyway. 

Let me correct the "unwarranted" statement.  The feedback itself is appropriate.  It just isn't necessary.  That's what I should have written.  I am in no way criticizing you for negging this guy, because I wouldn't trust him either.

Dude, stop giving him bad advice, literally.  If he gets a permanent ban, he's finished on this forum and he can go improve himself somewhere else.  The negative trust this guy got was superfluous, because plagiarists generally get banished, and there will be no need or way to get that feedback removed once the moderators look into this.  It's a non-issue IMO.

Since you ended this statement with a comma, I have to ask: were you finished?  And what you wrote doesn't address the plagiarism accusation in any way--though I suppose you really don't need to.  The evidence seems to prove beyond a reasonable doubt what you did.

You had a chance when you registered here.  A chance to read the rules and not break them by trying to pass off someone else's work as your own.

I'd be happy if bitcoin crashed if it meant that a war could be avoided.  But I'm not so sure that this escalating Trump conflict/impeachment-distraction is responsible for what bitcoin's been doing.  Sure, the timing would suggest that's the case, but I really don't think people are flocking to bitcoin as any sort of safe haven asset.  Gold & silver are up, but not all that much, and those are what I'd expect to see jump if we were expecting anything close to a world war.

Lol at the "hopium" term, never heard that one before but I know exactly what it means.  We're only 7 days into 2020, and a lot can happen.  I'm happy with bitcoin being where it's at right now, but there's no guarantees that this is going to be a sustained movement.

I agree.  I'm assuming those instances of "partial plagiarism" were reported?  And I think hilariousandco had commented in another thread dealing with this episode of shenanigans, so I'm also assuming that at least one moderator is aware of what's going on.

OP, what do you have to say about the plagiarism accusation?  Negative trust probably isn't warranted, but only because it's overkill.  Getting permabanned is the usual consequence of getting caught copy/pasting or plagiarizing via text spinning or paraphrasing.  I'd like to hear what you have to say about all of this.

I'm not sure Yatsan was saying any of that, nor is it prohibited to give 50 merits to a garbage post as long as you have them to give.  Frowned upon?  Yeah, probably.  Prohibited?  No.

OP, I'm kind of indifferent about this idea of reducing the max merits one can send.  On the one hand, sometimes a member like TMAN will give out a bunch of merits in a lump sum rather than going through a member's post history and meriting individual posts.  I certainly get the reasoning behind that.  There are definitely members who thus far have gone undermerited and people like TMAN (and others) like to help them out.  It's taking a shortcut by giving a single post 50 merits, but I don't see anything wrong with that.  Nor does it happen all that often.

On the other hand, if a post actually does deserve 50 merits, there's a good chance multiple members will merit it and it'll end up with at least 50 with no single member having to hand out the maximum amount.  That does happen a lot, and I'd say it's rare that someone would feel so impressed by a post that he felt it deserved 50 merits.

But I'm pretty sure Theymos did give it some thought when he set the max at 50, and unless that max has obviously caused a lot of trouble (which it hasn't), I doubt he'd consider lowering it.

Maybe there was a little bit of it in the past couple of days, but I think it takes a lot more than a $900 rise to start inducing fear of missing out.  Experienced traders surely realize that this little pop we're having might not be the start of anything bigger, and I sure as hell didn't think I'd be missing out on anything if I didn't start buying bitcoin. 

We were just at over $10k in the summer, so even at today's price I think bitcoin is still a bargain.  But as you said, if and when it gets to the $10k mark, then we might start seeing some FOMO and even then, only if it happens relatively quickly.  It's way too early to be getting all giddy about the market.  Way too early.

If I'm understanding this situation correctly, you plagiarized some content through a text spinner...?  If that's accurate, you'll probably get permabanned and all of this negative trust and flagging will be moot.  

And yes, we've all made mistakes before, some more serious than others, but that doesn't mean any of us can't call BS when we see it.  By that logic, anyone is free to do anything with no consequences whatsoever.  The world just doesn't function that way.

That's not what all this is about, it it?  Because TMAN explained why he gave you 50 merits for that post, and the explanation seemed reasonable to me, and he's not abusing the merit system by doing what he did.  Lazy, maybe.  But there was no abuse IMO. 

I sort of agree with you here, though I don't think I've ever handed out lumps of merit based on a member's overall post quality.  Maybe once or twice if I was being really lazy, but generally I'll go through the post history and hand out merits for each individual post.

In any case, it looks like The-Devil got himself in some hot water with a few DT members and I'm still trying to figure out why (I haven't read this and the other thread in their entirety yet).  One of the obvious drawbacks to giving a lot of merit that's supposed to be for overall good posting is that it'll get questioned, as it did in this case.  That post linked to in the OP didn't deserve 50 merits IMO, but I see where TMAN was coming from.

I'm sure a lot of folks are thinking the same thing as you and probably for the same reasons above, but I'm not convinced.  Bitcoin has surprised me time and time again by doing things I never thought it would do.  When it was above $10k last time, I was almost sure that it would never drop below that level again--and here we are, a couple thousand dollars below it. 

But believe me, I hope you're right.  I just wouldn't bet the ranch on it.  This last bit of bullishness has colored a lot of people's glasses a nice shade of rose, but don't start thinking that bitcoin is never going to crash again.  Even if the halving brings it back up to $20k and beyond, it could easily fall below $7k again.  Easily.

I wouldn't insult you by calling it a stupid idea, but it's a bad one IMO.  I don't think those illiterate newbies ought to be doing mindless tasks that they'll probably learn nothing from anyway in order to earn merits.  That isn't what the merit system is for.  It's to prevent said illiterates from ranking up and incentivizing them to join signature campaigns in which they'll absolutely crank out shitposts by the dozens.

If a member can't earn merits by making good posts, let them remain meritless.  I won't feel badly about that, and I don't think most merit sources or senior members who've seen the carnage shitposters have wrought would either.

I would say that the next move for bitcoin would be staying around $8k.  It's nice that it got there and all, but it could just be typical market volatility and not the start of the next bull run. 

For some reason it seems like it's been a really long time since bitcoin was at $8k, but it's only been a couple of months at most.  I took a look at a 1-year price chart yesterday, and bitcoin was at that level in November.  I don't know why, but it really feels like we've been stuck in the $6600-7400 range for quite some time.

You know, there are medications you can take for symptoms like these.  Powerful new antipsychotics that don't cause as many side effects as the older ones did, though you might get a dry mouth and a headache.

Seriously, I don't even know what to make of OP's post here.  It's great if you want to start trading stocks if Fidelity is cheap, but the rest of this rant is just bizarre.  I would also suggest that moving to the stock market right now, when it's already flying high, might be a mistake.  Remember: buy low, sell high.  And what's low right now?  The crypto market.  The stock market is higher than a damn wedding cake.

I swear I came to this forum to troll people but ended up actually learning a lot of stuff about bitcoin and crypto instead--and I also got attached to the dysfunctional community here in a weird sort of way.

But I really don't want to go back and peruse my earliest posts because I'm afraid of what I might find.  I'm sure some of them were pure vitriol, because it drove me nuts how many members here were just writing nonsense posts.  And while that's still true to this day, I think I've become either more tolerant of shitposts or at least inured to them.  

In any case, I've definitely changed in the nearly five years since I registered here.  Maybe not so much as a person, but certainly in the way I make posts.

And you definitely are.  I've always enjoyed reading your concise and often biting posts, which are always well-written and amusing.

Maybe that's what's going to happen here, maybe not.  What I can say is that I'm very glad bitcoin is at $7744 right now, because that's the highest it's been since November.  And man, it feels like it's been way longer than that.

So I don't know if what we're seeing is the start of some upward momentum, but I hope so.  And if bitcoin drops back down below $7k again, I'll just take it in stride since I have no way of influencing what happens.  The market is going to do whatever it wants to do, and there's nothing to be done by any of us except to sit here and watch it all unfold. 

I've pulled up a battered lawn chair and got me a big tub of popcorn, and I'll have my eyes glued to preev for a while.

You're asking this question, but your assumptions are all wrong.  Stablecoins aren't created to compete with the USD or any other fiat currency as far as I know, and their purpose isn't to destroy fiat at all.  They basically function as a substitute for fiat on crypto exchanges, so instead of cashing out your bitcoin for USD, you trade it for Tether or some similar stablecoin--so you're never really dealing with fiat currencies at all.  I'm not sure what the advantage is of this, because I've never read a good explanation anywhere.  Those are just my own thoughts.

Kind of makes me think of Libra and why Facebook wants to create a stablecoin.  My guess is that it would allow them to collect data on users' financial transactions, which they can't exactly do right now when people are doing transactions through their banks.  I don't know what people are supposed to use Libra for, but I'm assuming it would be for FB-related stuff.  I'd love to hear somebody's input on that if they know something.

OP seems to be completely off his rocker.

Is this "free energy" of the same type that's prohibited by the first law of thermodynamics (, i.e., that you can't get something for nothing)?  Just curious, because there are still some people in the current year who think they can build the world's first perpetual motion machine or tap into zero point energy or whatever.  It's insanity, and much of the other stuff that OP wrote is as well.

The best you can hope for as a miner is getting electricity cheaply in terms of cost.  Nothing is for free.  Even if you use solar power, you still have to invest in solar panels.

Yep, that's exactly what would happen without a doubt.  Anything that can be abused on the forum will be abused to the max by shitposters, scammers, account farmers, and all the other seedy elements we have lurking about.  The only thing merits should be used for is to reward good posts, not as any other kind of reward.

If any recognition needs to be given to members who make a lot of good reports, maybe Theymos could create that reporter badge thing that was suggested a while back.  I don't see a need for it myself, but I certainly wouldn't involve the merit system in something like that.

I agree, and just speaking for myself I'm not looking for any sort of recognition as far as my reports go.  I'm happy if mods act on them.  That's a reward in and of itself.