Well, bitcoin does seem to be holding onto the gains it made since exploding in the past two days.  Big gains don't really give me cause to be concerned, except for the possibility of crashing--but in this case it doesn't look like bitcoin is gaining fast enough to cause too severe a correction.  And I guess there already was a mini-correction, because it had gone above $10k if I'm not mistaken. 

Definitely nice to see bitcoin being alive again.  I don't hold a lot of my money in crypto, but I hate to see it get beaten down and this last year has been exceedingly rough.  This might be a good sign for next year.

Yeah, there would be no end to the complaints of bias and whatever else the demerited member could think of to bitch about.  And what would happen with members that have no merits to begin with?  Would they end up in negative territory? 

In any case, this isn't exactly a new idea.  The concept of having demerits has been floating around since the early days of the merit system.  You must've missed all the threads and posts discussing it--and obviously nothing ever came of the suggestions.  Theymos just isn't interested in making it harder on members to rank up.  IMO it's hard enough as it is.

You know, I don't really disagree with you about that.  It's turning out to be way harder for members to rank up, and maybe harder than it was supposed to be.  When the merit system was implemented there was no way to tell how many members would be able to get to the higher ranks from scratch, and after almost two years we've pretty much found out. 

There have been some good members with good posts who didn't start at Newbie rank since Jan. 2018 still stuck at ranks under Hero or Legendary.  TheUltraElite comes to mind.  Part of the reason may be their number of posts--more posts increase the chance of getting merits, but part of it is just the randomness of earning merits.  Lowering the bar might not be a horrible idea.

I've been trying to target the lower ranks with my sMerits this month, but it's still as hard as ever to find good posts being made by them.  I've been through a lot of threads in Economics, and I swear all the excellent posts are made by Hero/Legendary members, and if someone under that rank posts, it's usually a poorly-written one liner.

Neither one was surprising to me, to be honest--but both were pretty dramatic. 

I'm not a big seeker of explanations for short-term market movements, but I do wonder what caused this last rise.  There was some news out of China, statements by the president or whatever and record volume on Bakkt too, so it could be any of those or none of them.  The only thing I care about is whether bitcoin can hold onto this gain and not fall back into the $8300 range again.  Usually when the price pops like this that's exactly what happens, so we'll see.

Everyone cries manipulation when crap like this goes on and it can't be adequately explained, but can you imagine how risky it would be to try to manipulate the price of bitcoin?  I'm not sure what whale or institution would have the balls to attempt something like that, because they could easily lose--not to mention that their motivation for even trying isn't clear.  So I'm pretty sure this wasn't true market manipulation, but damned if I have a way to tell for sure.

LOL, I agree with you there--I had to take a look at the price, which I'd checked maybe a couple of hours ago, and it was still at $7500 or so.  Now preev is showing bitcoin at $8614.  Crazy, crazy, crazy.

I've always said that the only thing that influences bitcoin's value is the buying and selling of it, and it's basically demand because supply is increasing at a known rate.  So right now there must have been a ton of buying in the last couple of hours to drive the price up this much this quickly.  It does bring a smile to my face, but I'm a realist--this doesn't necessarily indicate that bitcoin has found a direction and will continue to move upward.  As you said, the price is random and unpredictable and who knows what tomorrow will bring.

Still smiling, though.  It's great to see bitcoin jump that high so fast.   Hee hee!

I probably should use BPIP more than I have been, which is not at all.  I forget that you can check all of those stats there--and believe me, I'm well aware of Vod's efforts to make it a great website, I just don't think about merit stats a lot and tend to forget about BPIP.

Anyway, I figured I might be one of your merit fans since I agree with a lot of your posts and they tend to have some bite to them.  

Alright, I don't remember that but I get a lot of communiques from members via PM and so forth, plus my memory of such things isn't that great to begin with.  If you want any more excuses, please PM me and I'll write something up.  Lol.  It could be that I just didn't see many of your posts for a while, though you do tend to post a lot in Meta--or it could be that you had a period when you weren't posting as much.  Anyway.  Hopefully it won't take you almost two years to get Legendary status because you're deserving of it IMO.

First off, I'm not getting paid to make this post, since posts in the Services section aren't paid by my campaign.  I just wanted to add my two cents about the button not working.

I was in the first Yobit campaign from 2015 to '16 (I think; I can't remember).  This happened constantly.  Like at least once a week if I remember correctly--but Yobit always topped off their campaign funds, even if it took a while.  So I think they're good for it this time.  Like their awful customer service, they fall behind on little 'ol things like their signature campaign funds but they have had a history of making things right again.  

Give Yahoo62278 a break on this, because there's really nothing he can do--don't post in this thread if it's just to complain about the withdrawal button not working.  He's aware of it.  

I think Yobit must have something like three employees total, because they don't ever seem to be minding the till.  

Odd that you're writing this post from a brand new account.  I'm assuming you have at least one alt account.

I don't know how new you really are to the forum, but the merit system was implemented for a very good reason, i.e., to combat garbage spam shitposts.  By the beginning of 2018 the situation was out of control, with account farmers, alt accounts, and members in signature campaigns all making as many shitposts as they possibly could.  There needed to be a mechanism by which the worst members wouldn't be allowed to rank up, to decrease the incentive to keep making nonsense posts. 

That's why the merit system exists--but I understand your frustration, believe me I do.

I tend to disagree, but it really depends on which sections you're posting in.  Even if you make great posts in Bitcoin or Altcoin Discussion, they probably won't earn any merits.  If you make them in Meta or Reputation or in the technical sections, there's a better chance--but the posts still have to be well above average.

OK, this thread had me confused at first, but I see what OP is getting at.  Congrats on earning 250 merits, you deserved 'em and I think I've given you quite a few since Jan. 2018 and probably will continue to do so as long as you keep making good posts and I see them.

You'll get to Legendary one of these days, I have no doubt about it even though it's hard as hell to earn 250 more merits.  Guess it took you almost two years to get the number you have, which kind of surprises me--but you were inactive for a little bit, weren't you?.  Anyway, keep it up. 

That's always great advice, and especially nowadays when you have things like Libra getting extreme scrutiny from the government.  Who knows what's going to happen, what laws are going to be passed regarding bitcoin? 

OP, any single government could crack down on crypto, but it would take a bunch of them altogether to really have an effect.  I don't think the United States is going to do anything as far as outlawing bitcoin, even if they're giving Facebook a hard time.  Bitcoin isn't a stablecoin like Libra is supposed to be and isn't really a substitute for fiat.  Still, you just never know what these asshole lawmakers are going to do. 

Anyone remember Prohibition in the 1920s?  Yeah, the US government was responsible for that failed experiment as well as the current war on drugs and everything else.  They think they can legislate the world into being clean and squeaky, but they're silly for thinking that.  My point is that I wouldn't put it past them to try to make crypto use illegal.  But even if the US did it, it's only one country and it wouldn't necessarily stop people anyway.

Lauda!  You're back.  Now it's only a matter of time until cryptohunter and his posse of multiple pathological personalities starts ranting again. 

I think I know who you have in mind, and it wouldn't surprise me if it were true.  I don't even remember the last time I saw the name Blazr, and it is odd that that account would suddenly become embroiled in something like this, an extortion attempt of a gambling site. 

And yeah, given the inactivity of the account I don't think Blazr should still be on any level of DT.  I had a feeling the screenshot wasn't faked (just intuition), and TECSHARE's post just makes that feeling stronger.  It's a scammy thing to do, and Blazr should be removed from DT if he hasn't been already.  I'm going to ~ him in my trust list.

Agree and agree, and I support this application as well. 

It's also good to see members are still applying to be merit sources, because I haven't seen many applications in the past few months.  Jet Cash has expressed his frustration at the "job" of being a merit source, and I understand that fully.  The merit system is important for the forum, and we need merit sources who want to do the job and who know good posts from bad. 

Good luck, fillippone.  Hope you become a merit source--I know you're qualified, and the only issue is whether Theymos is adding any more sources.  Personally I think he should, but you never know.

I read the post above yours and was wondering why the hell this dude would be making a bunch of posts in the Chipmixer campaign thread, so thank you for explaining it.  I haven't checked his post history and may not do so, but getting rejected from Chipmixer is the norm for most applicants.  It's like the bitcointalk equivalent of getting into fucking Harvard or Yale.  Spewing a bunch of bile because of a rejection just demonstrates a lack of maturity--but again, I've not seen his posts.

Just curious, how did he threaten you?  He sounds like an entitled little brat the way you describe his behaviors. 

BTW, posts in other campaign threads like the Chipmixer one aren't paid for by the cryptotalk campaign as far as I know.  Is that the case or what?

I don't know man, but senior members really need to do shit like this--and I agree with your second statement that the screenshot isn't sufficient proof of anything.  Still, I've got a bad feeling about this and that other thread.

I've gotten plenty of PMs from members I've negged asking me how much it would take for me to remove feedback, so I know other members have probably gotten similar offers.  While it might be tempting to some, it's a stupid-ass thing to do 1) morally, and 2) because you get things like this thread, where apparently after the request was made the other member blows the whistle.  Ethics aside, if you care one whit about your reputation on this forum you'd be crazy to try to extort someone via PM.

I'd be interested to hear what vlom has to say.  Has anyone PM'ed him about this?

Yeppers, they did the same thing to me around 2015 or so and the coins I bought never went to gambling or any other illegal or questionable wallets.  I think I've written this a dozen times:  I tried to make a small purchase of bitcoin and by accident when it got to the payment screen I clicked on a bank account that I had just closed but forgot to delete.  Obviously it was rejected, and shortly thereafter I got an e-mail similar to OP's saying they'd closed my account.  They never said exactly why and I've never used them again.

They're going to lose a hell of a lot of customers if this is their MO.  It's unfortunate, because I actually liked Coinbase--almost as much as I liked Circle back when you could buy bitcoin from them.  Sorry to hear about this, OP.

It's not new at all.  I remember hearing stories of Coinbase banishing customers for sending coins to gambling sites, no questions asked, no appeals, no nothing.  IMO that's really a crappy example of customer service.  Why should they care what you spend your bitcoins on?

I had no idea I should have been reporting shitposters to Yahoo62278--I've made a few reports to the moderators instead, and I've found quite a few members who probably shouldn't be getting paid to post.

I'm glad the members on the list have been doing what they've been doing, but I'd also like to give props to Yahoo62278.  Because of his management of the cryptotalk campaign, the level of spamming is nowhere near what it was when Yobit launched their last campaign with no active management.  It really is a remarkable difference.

Keep it up, guys.  There are plenty more where those shitposters came from, and I'm assuming that new members are still able to join the campaign?  It's an ongoing battle, but it looks like you/we are winning it so far.  Fortunately most of the worst of the worst are posting in spam sections that I don't visit.  Heh heh.

Edit:

Nah, I'm not looking for a reward and I don't have the energy to search post histories and all that right now.  It's so much easier just to report a shitpost to the mods and hope they deal with it.  And yeah, I've no doubt that there will be more members getting banned from the campaign.  Since there's no selection process, Yahoo62278 has to deal with these knuckleheads after the fact.  I'd pull my hair out.

I get that, but my point wasn't Coolcryptovator's credibility but the fact that it was sent in a PM in the first place instead of making it public.  If you're going to make an accusation like this, it shouldn't be circulated in PMs because that obviously causes even more problems and delays and frustration.

Not to worry, I wasn't attacking you in any way.  I explained my issue with this in my above post.

All of those members are still on DT?  Is Lutpin still on DT1/2?  I could swear he was removed a while ago, but I haven't been keeping up with who's on the list.

Yeah, it sure as hell doesn't look like the market is going to be moving on pace to hit $50k in a year.  I agree it could happen, but it just doesn't seem likely at the moment, does it?  On the other hand, nothing would really surprise me as far as bitcoin's price swings go and I do think there will be a rally at some point between now and the end of next year.

The abundance of altcoins doesn't have much to do with how bitcoin is going to behave IMO.  The size of the bitcoin community basically dwarfs all of the other ones and if any coin is going to achieve close to a 10x gain in a year, it'll be bitcoin.  The rest of the altcoins are just tagging along with it.

As would I.  I'm not going to say I don't believe it, but when an accusation like that is made there really needs to be some evidence presented--for everyone's sake, and especially the forum's.  You really don't want DT members pulling shit like that.

And you sent it to him because....?  Better to just lay it all out here in this thread so we can have a discussion about it.

Cool.  The accused member ought to have a place to defend himself, too, which is another reason the accusation should be made right out in the sunshine where everyone can make their own conclusions.

I guess because I'm not a chart analyzer, or even a watcher--that's why I'm surprised.  This is one hell of a plunge bitcoin took.  Yikes.

Me neither, though I figured bitcoin could break out of its range and go lower.  I just didn't expect it to go this low this fast, but that's bitcoin for ya.  It never ceases to surprise me what the price can do.  Not sure if more pain is ahead, but I'm not selling--I'm holding on to what I've got, because I'm sure the good times will come again.