I found this quote from the article to be particularly interesting:


And it made me wonder whether in 18 years, when the gift recipient has grown up, bitcoin will be as popular or as relevant.  It's a technology that might not age well in that amount of time--and I don't get the feeling that it's going to disappear or anything like that, but you wouldn't expect USB drives to disappear either.  People expect long-term growth from bitcoin, but the truth of the matter is that none of us knows what's going to happen in crypto.

Having said that, I think it's a fantastic idea to put aside some satoshis or whatever amount of bitcoin would be appropriate for a newborn.  It's a cool gift if nothing else.

Both true, unfortunately.

There are some members here that you can trust (as much as you can trust anyone on a discussion forum) with PayPal deals, but there aren't many of them.  I've had no other option to buy bitcoin for years, so I pretty much have to buy it with PayPal funds and I know it's not the best way to do it, and that people might think their funds are at risk from a chargeback.  It sucks all around, but ever since Circle stopped selling bitcoin there's been no good way to buy it.  Coinbase permabanned my ass even before Circle went to the dark side, and I can't even use Binance anymore because they don't support my state.

I wouldn't say never deal with PayPal, because I'd be a hypocrite but just be extremely careful who you're dealing with.  I would only accept it from someone who has a long history of PayPal deals with no chargebacks and even then I wouldn't deal with huge amounts.

That's true, but giving someone merits for a post here is next to meaningless compared to any lies that might be told.  I don't agree with this feedback, and I'm going to counter it.  Aside from anything else in TECSHARE's post that OP merited, I thought it was amusing because of the pajeet comment and it was well-written, both of which might cause someone to merit it even if they didn't agree with anything else.  Hell, I've merited a handful of posts by members I either don't agree with or can't stand. 

There's no need to neg OP for just giving TECSHARE some merits for a post IMO.

I don't have any goals as far as ranking up or anything like that, but I would like to distribute more merits next year.  I'm not off to a good start in December, unfortunately, as I've been extremely lazy this month.  Guess you don't have to start working on new years' resolutions until the new year comes, though.  Lol.

OP, is that the anniversary artwork badge under your username?  I've never seen that image before, and I'm assuming it is.  I was wondering what some of these badges would look like and this would be the first time I saw one.  Interesting.

This is the only correct answer to OP's question and it doesn't even require elaboration on it.  I get the feeling that the phrase "pump and dump" is one of the only set of words some people know in the English language, and they tend to just write it over and over on bitcointalk, whether it makes sense or not.

And why would you even ask this question when bitcoin hasn't done much of anything in months?  It isn't like the price is spiking and then crashing like you'd see in an actual P&D scheme.  Take a look at the penny stock market and you'll see plenty of real pump & dump action, and once you've seen that you'll realize that bitcoin's little price movements look nothing like that.

Sure, a lot of coins have the potential to go ballistic in a bull market, and you could probably throw darts at a board right now and wind up hitting a coin that will make you money if bitcoin goes on a tear.  But BNB wasn't even mentioned in the OP, so I'm not sure where all this love is coming from. 

I hate these false choices anyway.  If you think all of these coins will do well, buy some of each.  You don't ever have to limit yourself to any particular coin since you can buy small amounts of any of them.  But anyway, the only one I don't like is Ripple out of the ones OP mentioned.  Bitcoin and ETH are probably both going to be big winners in the upcoming year and maybe Litecoin as well.  Ripple sucks IMO.

There you go, evidence that mining isn't going to slow down one bit because of the reward halving.  I will assume this upcoming one will make little difference and that not a lot of miners are going to bail out as OP has suggested.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but most mining is done not by individuals but by big mining operations with lots of rigs.  If that actually is true, then there's no way in hell they're going to get rid of all that equipment and just dump the operation because the reward for mining a block got chopped in two--and it was a halving that everyone knew was coming anyway. 

I think OP might be under the impression that these things take miners by surprise.  Hate to break it to him, but that isn't the case.

And a self-moderated ANN thread, too.  Class act right there.

Yeah, this looks like an attempt to wash away the stain of the previous venture, although it's a feeble one since they didn't bother to hide the fact that they run Duckdice.  Not that I can use online casinos anyway where I live, but I certainly would avoid this place.  I read through the reference link in marlboroza's feedback and they definitely screwed that guy over who deposited 2 btc on Duckdice.

That's not a harsh reality at all--it's been understood from the start, and it really doesn't matter all that much if bitcoin isn't an absolutely perfectly decentralized thing.  It's one thing to be dependent on the internet for it to work and quite another for the whole system to be controlled by a single entity, which bitcoin isn't.

So not a huge deal IMO.  Probably more of a concern in my mind would be China's dominance in the mining sphere, but I don't think that's even all that big a deal.

Yeah, and if you haven't been a member here for long you might not really understand why those controls are in place.  I gave you a couple of merits so you can rank up to Jr. Member but that won't help you immediately.  Your OP here was certainly worth 2 merits.

Sorry to hear of your troubles with this casino--it totally sucks when you think you're in the process of getting scammed but aren't sure.  That's probably even worse than fully knowing it.  Been there.  Hopefully you get your issue resolved, but there isn't a hell of a lot people here can do for you, unfortunately. 

I don't think a business would bother scamming an individual customer for 0.03BTC, but you just never know in this strange world of bitcoin.  People and organizations have scammed for less, and while you would think a casino wouldn't want to risk their reputation, who knows.  But you did the right thing by coming here and opening this thread.

Neither did I.  The thing is, bitcoin is way more important than bitcointalk, and I'm not sure how much can or even needs to be said about a discussion forum as far as encyclopedic data goes.  It's not like wikipedia needs to mention the merit or trust systems or the dramas or any of that, things we find important but that the average person would most definitely not. 

IMO the main thing is that Satoshi was one of the founding members, and some other useful data would be how many registered members there are here, but that's all I would care about if I wasn't already a member.  You can't write opinions on a wikipedia page, so the fact that this forum might be extremely helpful to newbies is irrelevant.

It would be a great idea to have vending machines accept bitcoin....if this was 1996.  But in 2019?  I couldn't even tell you where the nearest vending machine is.  Probably at my local hospital or something, but you don't see them all over the place like you used to.  So I think even if this were ever to become an option it wouldn't have a major impact on anyone's lives--certainly not mine.

I do realize that vending machines are still very popular in other countries, and I think Japan is one of those if I'm not mistaken.  But where I live they're pretty much a dying breed and have been for years.  I don't see too many of them around anymore.  Plus I think people would still much rather use their debit card or some physical coins to pay for a snack or a drink out of a machine because that's what they're used to.  I sure as hell don't want to pay a network fee when I could use cash and not have to worry about the opportunity cost of spending bitcoin, the confirmation time, and whatever else.

Yep, they're definitely good ones.

I'd like to give a huge thank you to DarkStar_ for managing the Chipmixer campaign like a freakin' boss, which he has consistently done and continues to do.  It's amazing how consistent he is, and I think he doesn't get the props he deserves because he doesn't manage a lot of campaigns like Yahoo62278 and Hhampuz do.  There aren't many campaign managers left that I can see--it seems like there used to be a lot more of them, but the ones that are left are very good.

Edit:  I don't need any merits here, I just wanted to publicly thank DarkStar_.

That's why I don't read crypto news.  At all.  And I'm not sure why people would be talking about a bull market right now, because there obviously isn't one and hasn't been for a while.  There hasn't been any really bullish movement since this past summer and bitcoin has been moving sideways ever since.

And usually people cry "manipulation!!" when bitcoin is going down to the mat, but that isn't happening right now.  It's not doing much of anything, just treading water.  There's no manipulation I can see, and you have to also keep in mind where bitcoin started off at in the beginning of 2019.  It was a lot lower than it is now, so despite hitting $12k or whatever the year's high was, we're not ending 2019 on a bad note.

I would wholeheartedly agree with you, but I don't think video makers are going to be doing that--Youtube just has way too much market dominance over other video sites.  It's like telling people they'd be better off selling items on a site other than eBay, which I've heard many times over the last few years, but very few sellers go to other sites.

At least they admitted it was an error (which it probably wasn't; they're back-pedaling) and fixed it.  That's at least something, though this shouldn't have happened in the first place.

There's no real relevance, but it is interesting although I do think there was another thread a while back that provided the same data--or maybe it's my imagination playing tricks on me. 

Go Chipmixer!  That's basically the relevance.  They have the best campaign and recruit the finest members from the forum, and I'm not being biased or anything (LOLLY-LOL). 

And hey, there are a lot of good members in the Yobit campaign, too.  It's unfortunate that there aren't as many campaigns these days and that good members have to settle for that one, but whatever.  The forum as a whole is probably better off with fewer campaigns anyway, but good posters deserve a spot in good campaigns, and it's too bad there aren't more spots in Chipmixer.  You just have to get a little bit lucky on top of being a quality poster and at least somewhat trusted.

Hey Jet Cash, long time no see!

I'm curious as to what these forums are that you're finding the anti-bitcoin sentiment on.  You don't have to tell me, but I am interested to know what they're related to.  There was a forum for skeptics that I used to frequent some years ago that had a lot of members who thought bitcoin was a scam, but from what I saw about a year ago a lot of them have changed their opinions.  That was kind of funny, actually.

And you don't have to proselytize anyone, really.  The upcoming generation will probably grow up knowing what bitcoin is, and bitcoin will get mainstream one day.  You have to remember that it's only ten years old, which is nothing.  People will either adopt it or they won't, and I doubt you're going to change anyone's mind unless you can show them how much money there is to be made.  That usually does it.

I might be in the minority, but I'm hoping we don't see another 2017 again, though I'm pretty sure we will eventually.  What happened in the lead up to December of that year was pure crypto insanity, and if it wasn't a full-fledged bubble, it was damn close.  And look at where bitcoin and the entire altcoin market are right now.  They're both still trying to recover from the madness that was 2017.  Bubbles aren't healthy, but they're like drugs.  They feel great but you know the high is going to end at some point and they're not good overall.

I'd still love it if bitcoin got back to $20k, but only if it got there s-l-o-w-l-y.  Slow and steady rather than in a hyperbolic manner that's characteristic of something that can't be sustained.

I don't know if I agree with that or not, because even if bitcoin were to hit that price tomorrow, it still isn't much of a gain at all.  At $7500 it still seems pretty much like sideways trading to me.  Bitcoin can easily go up or down a few hundred dollars at a pop, but that doesn't mean there's any momentum behind it.

If bitcoin hit $8k tomorrow, then I might start thinking there was something behind it.

Ah, let it lose faith if it wants to--those options traders aren't trading real bitcoin anyway, and I don't even think places like Bakkt even have an impact on the reported price of anything, so who cares?

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, locking thread now.