Definitely a risky move if they actually did this.  The only other business I know of that actually accepts bitcoin (as opposed to using a payment processor which converts crypto to fiat) is overstock.com, and I think I remember reading that the CEO had said they had kept a lot of the crypto that they received as payment--and given how volatile bitcoin is, that's a crazy thing to do.

Wow, that's a lot of donations--but if all of that came from 2014-present, it doesn't sound so outrageous.  It's still a hell of a lot of money, and I guess in hindsight they were smart to hold onto the bitcoin they received, but things could easily have gone the other way.

Anyway, I've heard of protonmail but I don't know much about it.  I think I may have to check them out if they're privacy-friendly.

Congrats, dude!  I'm obviously not a part of the Russian local board, but my guess is that they could use a merit source there as well as the forum needing more sources in general.

Also, thanks for the pic of the PM you got.  I'm not sure what Theymos means about source merits being wasted if not used and that you should give 50 merits to a post if you have sMerits left over.  Do you know what he's talking about?  Left over from when?  I think he sent out a different PM when I was made a merit source, though I can't remember.  Anyway, props to you and I'm confident you'll do your best!

I hate to tell you this, but that's a common fallacy in investing--in the stock market, novice traders tend to want to own 100 shares of a stock trading at $1 than 1 share of a stock that trades for $100, but obviously the money involved is equivalent.  And when you're talking about altcoins, they're much, much riskier than bitcoin itself is.

As far as OP's question goes, I guess it sort of depends on how much money you're investing, but I definitely wouldn't invest everything in altcoins and I'd always have some bitcoin in your portfolio.  I'm not a huge supporter of altcoins, because I think most of them are really shitcoins, but there are a few good ones that might be worth owning.  But I'd say if you were only talking about $100 or thereabouts, you might spread that around a few of the top altcoins because you might get lucky. 

If you had $1000 or more to invest in crypto, I'd keep the majority of it in bitcoin and wouldn't fool around with shitcoins at all.

Yeah, but you still need some more merits, though I'm pretty sure that you'll earn those before you get enough activity to hit Legendary.  But hey, that's a good problem to have, right?  I know tons of other members would love to be in your shoes instead of being perpetually stuck at Jr. Member.

I'd like to reiterate my offer for members to PM me with links to their posts that they think are deserving of merits.  I made the offer in another thread (I think) and have had a grand total of two members contacting me.  I'll be happy to review posts and as I said before, if I like them I'll give them merits and if not, I won't.  There's no harm in PMing me.

I'll check his post history after I finish writing this post.  I definitely recognize the name but I'm not sure if I've ever given him any merits or not.  I have a lot of sections on ignore, so I'm sure I miss a lot of good posts.

You were smart to back out of the deal, because it sounds fishy as hell to me.

I don't know what other members think about this, but I think you ought to identify TOM and invite him to explain himself in this thread--no negative trust needs to be given, but you're right about the potential of someone else getting scammed if that's what's going on here (and I'm not saying it is).  I did much the same thing a couple of years ago with gameristo, because I had doubts about him using multiple PayPal accounts.  I had enough doubt in my mind to question it in public but I wasn't willing to go so far as to neg him, and regardless of those PayPal accounts he's always been honest with me.

These two points are something all noobs should learn as soon as they register here, because accounts get sold, hacked, and even senior members with green trust can and have pulled off scams.  You just never know for sure who you're dealing with.  Your other points which I didn't quote are valid as well.

But the supply isn't actually decreasing, only the rate of production of newly mined coins.  And I would suggest that there's no such thing as a free lunch in the world of finance, which means that it is NOT a given that bitcoin will increase after the next halving.  The litecoin price after its last halving is a good example of that, and I'm glad that was brought up because it clearly shoots down the argument that bitcoin halving = major bull run. 

I was just commenting in another thread that the last halving was in July 2016, and bitcoin's price didn't start taking off in a major way until the beginning of 2017.  You'd think that if there was a cause-and-effect relationship, bitcoin would have immediately spiked right after the halving, but it didn't. 

Anyway, I don't know what's going to happen with bitcoin come May of next year, but it'll be interesting to see how the price reacts, if it does at all.  Maybe then this question can be put to rest for good.

Well I would think that if Binance is going to allow deposits for these currencies, users are going to be able to use them to directly buy bitcoin at least.  I don't think users would have to convert to USD or something like that, if that's what your concern is--and I can't imagine it would be all that difficult for an exchange like Binance to offer trading pairs with 180 fiat currencies.  Why not?

I would also think that if you can deposit a certain currency that you'd be able to withdraw it, but who knows.  Binance has kind of fallen off my radar since I can't use them anymore, and I never deposited fiat with them anyway.  Too bad, because they're an excellent exchange and I think it's a good thing they're doing this.

I happened to look up when exactly the next halving is taking place before seeing your post, but thanks for posting the info.  People are talking about it a lot here, but they usually don't mention the exact date.

Can't argue that price increases have happened after the last two halvenings, but I'm skeptical as to whether we're going to see another huge bull run come next May.  I've always thought that these should be priced in well beforehand, and I'm not sure that they aren't.  I remember writing that in quite a few threads back in 2016, and noticing that nothing really extraordinary happened immediately after the halving.  The huge run-up in price only started to happen at the start of 2017, and in my mind it's questionable as to whether this was due to the halving, which was in July 2016.

I'm not trying to downplay the importance of this, and I do hope bitcoin sees some upward momentum next year--but I'm not hoping for a repeat of 2017 which saw bitcoin get to levels that weren't sustainable.  If the halving produces that kind of bubble, I could do without it.  Slow and steady gains are much, much better.

Are you kidding?  I would buy that magazine in a heartbeat, and probably multiple copies of it at that. 

Doge might not be a great altcoin for investment, but it's an integral part of crypto history and it's a coin that's held its value over its lifetime so far, whereas other coins have crapped out and have nowhere near the popularity of doge.

There used to be a bitcoin magazine that was published for a while.  I've seen issues for sale in the collectibles section, and though I wouldn't pay the crazy money that they're going for, I would love to own a set of those--and I wish they were still publishing it.  Like I said, it's history in the making and I'd like to see a doge magazine with real print copies.  Unfortunately I don't think there's enough doge material to keep it going beyond a few issues, which might be the reason why the bitcoin magazine ceased publication (or did it?).

I'm not sure Argentinians are actually adopting bitcoin as an alternative to the peso, though.  You could ask the same question about Venezuela and the answer would be the same--I don't think people in these crisis countries are spending a whole lot of money to buy bitcoin, because I don't think they'd be able to buy food, pay rent, utilities, and all of their daily needs with bitcoin.  That's basically how it is in the rest of the world as well.

Argentinians are turning to other, stable currencies and not to crypto--at least not to an extent where there would be enough of an increase in buying that would lead to a price increase.  And OP, if I may say, this is kind of a selfish question to even be asking.  These people are in serious trouble, and whether their plight might lead to a higher bitcoin price is a questionable one to be raising.

It's funny, but that's exactly what I thought about bitcoin when I first heard about it, when I didn't understand how it actually worked.  Years before bitcoin was created, there were some "internet currencies" like Flooz that failed and I didn't realize that those weren't decentralized in the way that cryptocurrencies are.  It took me a while to realize what the advantages of bitcoin are.

There's always been this question of whether bitcoin could be banned, and while it certainly can't be stopped entirely it could be legislated out of existence--but it would take a coordinated effort on the part of all the governments of the world in order to do it.  If bitcoin mining suddenly became illegal around the world, or if possession of it became illegal, do you think people would still be using it like they are today?  I don't think so.  It might find use for criminal activities, but that would be about it.

But I've long suspected that bitcoin was created by some government agency anyway, and that the US government at least isn't going to make it illegal.  The US banks kicked off the 2008 crisis, and if the banks and financial system had failed, bitcoin could have been the savior.  I think the government realizes this and that's why they haven't regulated bitcoin more than they have.

I always assumed that posts in Ivory Tower and Serious Discussion, where sigs aren't displayed, were never counted for campaigns.  I thought posts in those sections didn't even increase your post count--but I haven't checked the rules of those sections to verify that.

I agree, they all do a good job and I've never heard of any of this being a problem before.  I'm assuming it's a non-issue and that if it ever was a problem, campaign rules would be updated.  The small group of bitcoin-paying sig campaign managers in general do an excellent job and don't put up with a lot of BS.  I trust that if any of them thought members were being paid for posts where their signature wasn't being displayed, they'd fix that quickly.

Edit:

So it's the Wall Observer thread that's the issue? 

I'm not sure feminism and pornography go hand in hand.  There are plenty of people who think it's degrading to women, and that porn is anti-feminist.  That's probably why there isn't much of an outcry when payment processors do things like this.  But that's a subject for another thread, probably one in P&S.

What coin would be appropriate for PornHub?  I don't know, pick one of the thousands that are on the market and I'm sure it would work just fine for their purposes.  How about Monero or one of the other "privacy" coins?  How about plain ol' bitcoin?  Isn't there something called Sexcoin as well?

I can't stand porn, so this isn't an issue near and dear to my heart but it does tick me off when payment processors start making moral judgements that affect their customers.  It's not like people are buying illegal porn with their services, so why should they care?  But anyway, crypto is absolutely a perfect solution to this.  It doesn't depend on banks or corporations or governments who can tell you what you can spend it on.

LOL.

I don't know anything about this guy Paegle or his scams, but real human beings are often complicated creatures who can have dual natures, and yes I think it's possible for a scammer to be running a legitimate project or business, though my guess would be that if he really did pull off scams in the past there's a danger that he'd do the same thing again and to beware.

And if someone has a track record of being dishonest, you could reasonably expect them to be dishonest again.  So even if they're operating something that looks legit, I'd stay away from it if it means putting your money at risk--especially in the world of cryptocurrency, where things often are not what they seem and where scams are rampant.

I did send you a PM, not sure if you noticed it.

I could take ETH, Dash, LTC, or PIVX if you can convert your bitcoin to any one of those.  I mentioned doge in my PM, but I'm going to have to retract that offer.  Send me a PM and we'll do the deal.

Edit:  Deal done, locking thread now.

This is the only reason why I wouldn't support OP's idea--you're absolutely correct that just a few seconds per handled report would add up to way too much time being spent in order to explain why a post is being deleted.  Most of the time, we pretty much know why anyway and there are only a couple of reasons why any posts are ever deleted, e.g., being of low value or being off-topic.  And sometimes a post gets deleted because a thread is trashed entirely, though you don't get a PM for that anyway.

It would be nice if mods could tell members why their posts are being nuked, but it isn't necessary and it would take far too much time.  This isn't a forum with a couple thousand members actively posting, nor is it one with a hundred moderators.  There are millions of members registered here, and even though a lot of those accounts are inactive, there are still a lot of active members here and a lot of reports being made and tons of posts being deleted. 

Members shouldn't start threads when they end up having posts deleted, either.  Mods generally don't respond to those, and it's easy enough for the member to just take a guess.  I'm sure most of us have had this happen to us, and you just have to suck it up and move on.

I might do the same thing, or I might just start looking for more posts to merit, though I don't plan on lowering my standards any.  I did just check my sMerits and I'm glad to see I just got around 200 more.  Thanks, Theymos.  There are certainly a lot of shitposters who don't deserve to rank up, but there are a lot of members who do deserve it, and their posts go under-merited for whatever reason.  Sometimes even really good ones don't earn any merits, and that's a needless impediment for the people making good posts.

Huh.  I hadn't looked at that number in a while.  Weren't there something like 120 merit sources at one point?

Yeah, but they probably won't do that.  I found a lot of the discussion in Ivory Tower to be above my head in a technical sense so I've had it and Serious Discussion on ignore for a while now.  I don't think there's ever been a problem with higher-ranked members spamming either section, though I could be wrong.

I don't think Theymos wanted to have such a stringent requirement to post in IT or SD as an earned merits thing would be.  He obviously realizes that most garbage comes from lower-ranked members (not all of them, of course).  A merit requirement wouldn't be a horrible idea, but I think that would be too strict.

I'll have to un-ignore it and see what kind of discussion is happening these days.  I have posted in IT before, but I didn't find it any more interesting than other sections, and some of the discussions died off rather quickly. 

It took me a few minutes to figure out where the inconsistency was, but yeah you're right.  It does look like it wasn't written correctly in that thread vs. the description of the section. 

I think you have to be a Full Member in order to post in the Ivory Tower section, but I don't know for sure.  You could check some posts to see if there are any by Member ranks, or maybe someone can clarify what's actually the case.  Nice catch on this one.  I sure as hell never noticed it.

Just looking at their usernames and the complete lack of originality from one to another, I have no doubt this is probably a single person or maybe a few.  I'm not sure how many "farms" exist where there are actually multiple people working on bounties, but we all know there are individuals who have multiple accounts enrolled in the same bounties.  This number of accounts would be a lot for one person to handle, though.

Wow, I haven't heard much from him lately nor have I seen any recent posts from him.  Is he still busting ICO scams or what?

Anyway, good catch on this, OP.  I clicked on a couple of their profiles and those weren't wearing any signature.  Are they currently enrolled in a bounty?  If so, you might want to bring this thread to the attention of the bounty manager.

Edit:

It isn't likely that a bounty manager is going to catch cases like this on their own, though I imagine it depends on the manager.  Some don't care and wouldn't bother to pay enough attention to posting style or similarities in usernames and registration dates.  In fact I would say most don't give a shit at all and won't ban these bots/farms/alts unless someone brings it to their attention.