I'm not a member of any other forum anymore, so I don't know what kind of advances have been made as far as functionalities and "looks" and all that--therefore I have nothing to compare bitcointalk against and I don't see it as really lacking anything. 

I've always been a big fan of consistency when it comes to websites.  It drives batshit insane when sites like eBay keep changing how the site looks and works, and I don't think they ought to be doing that.  A lot of changes that get made aren't for the better, and I'm afraid that if bitcointalk gets an overhaul with this new software it might be very annoying (at least at first).

But I'm an old fart, and I don't like change.  It's you young whippersnappers that want to keep fooling with things, meddling in my affairs and walking on my lawn.  lol

Can't argue with that, but I would point out that even though there are thousands of coins and tokens in existence, bitcoin is still the most valuable and the most popular by far.  Netscape was on its way out by around 1997 if I'm not mistaken, which would be seven years of dominance if it was created in 1990 as you say.  Bitcoin has already been here for ten years and it shows no signs of having its dominance challenged by anything else in the world of crypto. 

It's kind of interesting to think about that, because Schiff does have a point here.  But then again, sometimes the first technologies do remain at the top--look at eBay and Amazon, which were some of the first big websites that allowed online purchases.  They're both still going strong today.

I tend to tune out things Schiff has to say, because if I recall correctly he's made some very wacky predictions about gold and silver and I think he's a permabull in that respect.  But anyway, don't let one man's opinions on bitcoin drive you nuts.  Bitcoin itself couldn't care less, believe me.

Uh, definitely.  50 merits to a brand new account for what amounts to a short shitpost?  The sender and the recipient of those merits are obviously related somehow, whether they're alts or related through a merit-buying transaction, who knows.

The main question I have is whether there will be any consequences for this, and I suspect there won't be.  There's been merit abuse going on since the start of the system, and merit abusers generally don't get tagged anymore.  I stopped tagging suspected merit abusers quite a while ago, and I don't think any DT members are making it their mission--and Theymos doesn't even want that anyway.

Fortunately this sort of thing can't go on forever because of the limiting nature of merit decay as it keeps getting sent.  So even if this member gets away with this, it's the exception rather than the rule.  It's not a huge deal IMO.

Thankfully I usually have more than 50 sMerits and thus it would be impossible to unload them all at once, because that sounds like something I'd do.

But no, I haven't sent merits to the wrong member before, though I have given more merits than I intended to because of that glitch where if you reload the page after sending them, it duplicates the merit transaction.  I don't know if that bug got fixed or what, but it happened to me in the early days of the merit system, and I've been more careful since then.

Oh yeah!!  I completely agree with this, and I actually stopped using Google as a search engine months ago.  I'm going to have to wean myself off of Gmail, though, and I may have trouble not watching Youtube videos, but I'm working on it.

Great article, and it's from Forbes no less.  Mainstream press coverage about an issue like this is fantastic IMO.  I can't stand Google anymore, because they've become as bad or worse than Facebook as far as privacy invasion, and for whatever reason people don't seem to care at all. 

Man, the internet used to be so simple back in 1997.  What the hell happened?

I doubt that.  I saw a news report about this in another thread, and it looked like just bad journalism to me.  Not surprising, since I'm not sure where these crypto news sites get their writers to begin with.  Some of them seem to be even worse than what you'd find on zerohedge.

I figured this wasn't really happening in Iran.  I didn't think anyone would actually pay that much over spot for bitcoin, since it's not like anybody would need it that badly, even in a time of crisis--and there isn't exactly a crisis yet.  I could see the price of gasoline or food or other essentials going up, but not bitcoin.  Plus I would think there would be other ways to buy bitcoin instead of paying the outrageous rates that got reported.  So fake news it is, I guess.

I think the issue is that the advertisement/links are being included in the body of posts instead of the signature space where most advertising goes.  You're not allowed to just throw some advertising link at the end of your post, which is what CoinTrendy was doing.  And I've definitely seen that before.  Members will make what looks like a normal post, but if you actually read it, it's nothing more than an advertisment for whatever service they're here to promote.  Not cool.

Man, I hope there's not a war at all but I'm not keeping my hopes up.  I don't know what the fuck Trump was thinking with this move, and it doesn't seem like he's able to even justify it were he so inclined to do so, which he doesn't seem to be.  Unbelievable.

But I don't think bitcoin would be affected one way or another as long as it doesn't escalate into a nuclear conflict.  If that were to happen, we can take all of our bitcoin and flush it down the digital toilet while we're waiting for the missile strikes.  Anything short of that and I don't think we'd see an increase or a decrease in price.  Bitcoin seems to be resilient against world events, but who knows. 

Here's hoping that in 2020:
1) The world doesn't end.
2) There's not a world war.
3) Trump gets impeached.
4) Bitcoin experiences a nice bull market, hopefully around the halving.

I think I'm going to calmly choose not to panic, but I'll retain the option to do so at a later date perhaps.  lol

Not that I consider myself a trader anyway.  I'm not looking to make a quick buck with crypto or stocks or anything else.  I tried trading briefly and found that it didn't mesh well with my nervous constitution, so I gave it up and stuck with the buy-and-hold philosophy.  Not sure what these bots are all about, but are they really doing any damage to the market?  Because I don't think they're anything new.  Even back in the 1980s there were "programmed trades" going on, which is what people thought caused the 1987 stock market crash in October of that year.

Anyway, I've bought some altcoins on exchanges over the past few years and my orders always got filled and I never had an issue with the price they got executed at, so I don't think this issue is going to bother me all that much.

As stated in the title, I need $25 worth of BTC at preev 1:1. We can use whatever preev is at, at the time we finalize the deal.

I will not send first unless you have significant green trust or if I've done business with you before.

This will be a neutral feedback transaction.

Send me a PM if you're willing to help me out, as I might miss seeing this thread if you post here.

Local rule:  Please do not post here unless you're interested in doing this deal.  PayPal is very risky because of the chance of chargebacks, but I have never done this and won't ever.  Also, I won't deal with anyone under Full Member unless they're willing to send first.

Edit:  deal done with DaveF.  Locking thread now.

That might be true, but the situation right now is nothing even close to what happened at the end of 2017. 

It is interesting to me that people are rushing to buy bitcoin in these countries.  I get that their local currencies are in trouble and are losing value pretty quickly, but bitcoin isn't exactly the best store of value if you're looking for stability.  You'd think that they'd be trying to get their hands on some US dollars or another currency that isn't undergoing hyperinflation.  And believe me, I'm not knocking bitcoin here, just wondering about why it's going crazy in Venezuela and elsewhere.

Wouldn't gold or silver be a better way to hedge?  That's what people usually buy if they're looking to preserve buying power.  Bitcoin's volatility alone makes it not such a good choice for that purpose.

Looks like a great summary of options, OP, though I didn't read the entire thing.  I never traded options in the stock market and don't have any interest in doing so with bitcoin, so I pretty much know all I'm ever going to need to know about them--and options/futures/derivatives never interested me all that much.  I'm of the Warren Buffett school of thought, whereby it's better to own a stock or bond or whatever rather than a derivative of the same.

But I'm sure there are people here who don't really know what options are all about, and it's good that you created this nice summary.  It definitely gives you an idea of what goes on at places like Bakkt and the CME.

Yeah on the face of it, it looks sketchy but who knows whether he's got a deal worked out with the campaign owners to get the max amount per week regardless of how many posts he makes, as suggested by actmyname and others.  It wouldn't surprise me, because I think I've seen one other similar arrangement before which also got questioned at the time.  Can't remember if it was aTriz or some other campaign manager, but I think it turned out to be an arrangement worked out between the manager and the owners of the campaign.

I think in the other example it was a manager getting paid for a rank that was higher than what he was actually at, but whatever.  We'll see if mOgliE responds.

I agree, though OP isn't going off guns a-blazing here.  He's just questioning it publicly, and I don't have a real problem with that.  It might even satisfy anyone else who might have been wondering about this but didn't have the stones to ask.

This is horrible journalism:


"Wanna" is not a word; it's how people write when they don't know how to write properly, and this quote is attributed to some random "crypto expert" which makes it even worse.

And the takeaway message from the article is that some people are asking for $24k per bitcoin, but they're probably not going to get that price from buyers.  That would make sense, because who in their right mind would pay that kind of premium for bitcoin when 1) it's not necessary for daily living, and 2) they could probably do way better on an exchange and not localbitcoins.

Sometimes I hate crypto news sources.

The question in my mind is not whether this is a scam, but how many people were foolish enough to send them bitcoin.  That's crazy.

And I think the working definition of "airdrop" is basically "free token" in which case those scammers are misusing the term horribly and probably on purpose, since it's a word that makes certain people salivate.  But there's nothing free in this offer.  You've got to pay them some bitcoin up front....and that's ridiculous on the face of it.  That's almost exactly what the Nigerian Prince scam is.  To free up the inheritance, they just need a little money and then you can share in the huge reward.

Unbelievable.

As to why they have so many followers, come on.  We all know it's very easy to buy youtube subscribers, twitter followers, facebook likes, and all of that crap.  I've seen all of those things for sale right here on bitcointalk.

Huh.  I've been following this drama since this thread got started, and normally I don't comment in the Collectibles section.  But Scottsdale is a very reputable firm and I'm surprised they'd risk their reputation on something like this.  I know the bitcoin funding part isn't their fault, but they are associated with the coin one way or another.

That sounds like a load of BS to me, and there's no way I'd feel comfortable stashing any of these coins away knowing that the redemption of the bitcoin was dependent on a company that may or may not be around in a few years.  Either put the private key on the coin itself or don't mint it, that's my opinion.  This is bitcoin we're talking about, and we all know how many scammers there are.  This redemption process sounds like it was designed from the start to be to Hyperiongold's advantage, because they must know that they can abscond with the money at any time and they're probably expecting some coins to never get redeemed, at least not by the time they go out of business.

Exceedingly sketchy if you ask me, which no one did but I'm volunteering my blabbermouth opinion anyway.

This reminds me of all the homeless people in NYC who probably thought it would be great to drop out of society and its rules and go live in the underground tunnel system.  Then groups of them started aggregating, and they ended up forming their own society with rules and everything else.

The reputation system evolved from a need to have one, I think, and if Theymos nuked it all today I bet members would find a way to reconstitute it, albeit in a different fashion I'm sure.

But since Theymos isn't going to do this and it's a hypothetical question, my answer would be "who cares?".  It's not like being on DT grants me some godly power--it makes doing trades here a little bit easier, but whoopdee-do.  It's more a responsibility than anything else, much like being a merit source.  I feel bad when I'm lazy and not handing out merits left and right, but I try to do it because I believe in the merit system. 

And sometimes being on DT is a huge pain in the ass, because you have to be responsible when you leave trust feedback, and that means being damn sure you're right when you leave negative ones and extremely conservative with positive ones.  It's not all it's cracked up to be.

I doubt Iranians are buying bitcoin just to spend it.  Their currency isn't in trouble as far as I know, so I don't know why bitcoin would be needed for purchases. 

They're sending bitcoin out of the country?  Is there a mass exodus of Iranians happening or what?  Where are they sending their bitcoin to?  It would make sense that people would use bitcoin for cross-border transfers, since that can be done relatively anonymously, but I'm wondering what the purpose is for doing so.

And as I wrote in a couple other threads dealing with this situation, I'm very much hoping WWIII doesn't get kicked off here.  I don't know what the hell Trump is thinking, but I don't think like a psychopath so I'm at a disadvantage.

Christ, I'm hoping Trump doesn't kick off WWIII with this latest action of his--for the past few years I thought his presidency was a lot less worse than I thought it was going to be when he got elected, but what he's doing now in Iran is just a devious smokescreen to distract people from his impending impeachment.  The last thing anyone needs is a all-out war.

And if we did have a war in which nukes were involved?  Forget about bitcoin, forget about the stock market, forget about planning for the future.  Build a bunker, stock up on food and guns and land and everything you're going to need to survive underground for a long time. 

If there's a "lesser war" that doesn't bring about doomsday, I'd say that bitcoin will be just fine.  The stock market might not do so well, but I bet bitcoin and maybe even the altcoin market might come through it unscathed.  It remains to be seen, but I'm really, really hoping this situation can be de-escalated.

Not everyone and not necessarily.  Sometimes during times of war, investors start buying up defense stocks and related ones.

In any case, I'm not even up to speed on what's going on in Iran at the moment and I only heard about Trump ordering a hit on someone over there by reading a thread on bitcointalk.  That's sad--I've got to pull up a news site after I write this post.  But as far as bitcoin is concerned, I don't think war is going to affect its price all that much unless it's an all-out world war, and I don't think that's going to happen because of a situation with Iran.  It's not like the US and Iran have ever been that friendly, and we almost attacked Syria a few years ago under the Obama administration.  That was after bitcoin was created and it didn't seem to have much of an effect.

But we'll see.  And I'm hoping Trump doesn't do anything even more stupid before he gets kicked out of office.