Yeah, I guess. It’s almost impossible for mods to catch everything happening on this forum though. When you start talking about all the various language boards it becomes completely impossible.

A perfect example would be the Korean thread. MatthewNWright was a semi-respected troll on this forum that became the mod for the Korean thread because he was an expatriate living in Korea and was fluent in Korean. He ended up banned because he didn’t know when to shut his mouth and fucked up a few times. I can see Matt ignoring the sale of sMerit and no one would know it was happening.

They are not “trying” to sell merit, they’re already doing it in Turkish subsection thread.

Ah, got it. Thanks

I just realized something, the ath last year means Goat paid nearly a million dollars to be a VIP member of this forum only to have a tantrum and leave to start a forum that failed. That would have bought him a few more Lamborghinis. If I was theymos I’d be laughing my ass off. LOL

Thanks! No, I never read that thread. Hey, I donated 2 btc to the forum long ago so I should be a copper member. LOL

I saw someone had a gold member under their name. What does that mean?

Changes to even national systems take decades to slowly take hold and transform the finance systems of a country.

Western Union, in 1914, began issuing purchase cards to select customers. Then, in the 20’s a number of oil companies began issuing out proprietary cards that were designed to create customer loyalty. These cards were accepted at the merchant that issued them and only in certain locations. Gas stations started issuing cards that could be used to make fuel purchases; some gas stations even started accepting competitor’s cards.

Department stores were next to jump on the credit card bandwagon. Department store cards were originally a marketing device, designed to increase the number of customers the store had. It turned out that customers really appreciated the “buy now pay later” aspect of the cards; the stores liked that there were limits to the repayment period. Department store credit cards gave rise to what’s today known as credit history as good customers that paid on time gained a reputation.

The 1930’s and 40’s saw the rise of revolving credit. This began when stores started to let customers pay debt off over months, getting rid of repayment periods by requiring that all debt be completely paid before any new purchases could be made. Customers could now actually carry a balanc eon their cards that wasn’t due within a specific period of time. This is also when credit card companies really began to make money from interest and fees associated with cards.

In 1946 the first bank card was introduced by a banker named John Biggins: this card was called the Charg-It. When a customer used their Charg-It card for a purchase the bill was forwarded to Biggins bank. Next, the bank reimbursed the store. Transactions could only occur locally and cardholders were required to have an account at Biggins bank. The first bank credit card came five years later, showing up in New York’s Franklin National Bank.

It took roughly 80 years for credit card systems to become what they are today. Not just because of technological advances but because users need time to accept the new systems and integrate them into their lives. Bitcoin is totally foreign to today’s banking citizens. It will be necessary for overlays to be built on top of the bitcoin network (like BitPay) to increase adoption. It will also be necessary to have professional developers (not the ragtag group of volunteers and corporate shills we have as devs now) to begin working on blocksize increases and chain pruning.

The short and sweet answer: it’s gonna take a long fucking time dude. You aren’t going to be around to see the end of it.

Hey dude, what’s a Copper Member and more importantly what’s a:

But the difference is that this sales thread is a joke thread and your sales thread is really selling sMerit.

Unless, of course, you think Bruno is serious about selling 200 sMerits for a million dollars. However, he is willing to throw in a ball cupping with the sMerit so maybe it’s worth it.

Fuckin Bruno, LOL!

I should have known you would be the first one selling sMerits. You crack me up dude.

If you follow what real core developers are saying like Van der Laan (don’t listen to Gavin “Wright is Satoshi”  Andresen), it will take many years, likely decades, for bitcoin to scale to anywhere near a major payment network.

In order for bitcoin to compete with just the ACH Network it would need to move $43 trillion and 25 billion electronic financial transactions each year. That’s roughly 125 times more transactions than bitcoin is currently doing very poorly. There is a backlog in the mempool so it can’t even keep up with what it’s currently doing.

If you look at the transactions processed by the major credit brands (Visa, MC, Discover, etc.), it appears to be around 100 billion transactions. That’s 500 times more than bitcoin is currently processing poorly. Now we’re up to 625 times increase in transaction volume for bitcoin.

Pure EFT transactions (debit card) is around 50 billion per year. That adds another 250 times more transactions worldwide than bitcoin is currently doing poorly. We are now at 875 x current number of transactions that bitcoin is now doing horribly at keeping up.

It’s safe to say that at minimum it will take many decades before bitcoin can be made to effectively scale enough to just replace the ACH Network. It could possibly take the entire lifetime of the youngest bitcoiner on this forum before to could scale enough to take over all major worldwide financial transactions. If it could be made to handle that kind of volume, bitcoin would need to change from its current 5 or less transactions a second to 56,000 transactions a second and the blockchain would fill up the New York public library.

The real Stephen Gornick either sold his account or left the forum forever and his old account was hacked. This new person ain’t him.

I just see it differently. I see it as a system that allows you to reward quality posts. Some people will never get any and others will get a lions share. The worst trolls on this forum sometimes post something that’s really helpful or new and interesting so even they will end up with some. Or, maybe I’m missing something.

That’s not really fair. If someone like Stephen Gornick was still around he would probably get all of my sMerit all the time. He was the most truly helpful and unbiased person on this forum. He would have deserved to get more than others and more from one person.

Oh, don’t tell me Stephen Gornick is still here, he’s not.

This person: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2811617.msg28777253#msg28777253
Is not this person: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=109741.msg1193039#msg1193039
Unless he was in a car accident and had half of his brain removed.

If you can figure that one out you’re my hero. I’ve been mining, buying and selling btc for seven years and I can name at least 20 things that act on the btc/usd exchange rate but how much and when is still a mystery to me.

Ah, cool. Thanks

Hi Andrew,

How do you tell how many sMerits you have to give? Do you click into that +merit link on the side of the post?

Don’t feel bad, Bruce Wagner has 250 merit, cablepair has 500 merit, cypherdoc has 1000 merit, MagicalTux (aka Mark Karpeles) has 500 merit, Inaba (aka EclipseMC, Butterfly Labs, his trust rating is the worst I’ve ever seen -9999: -15 / +4p) has 1000 merit.

I don’t think it matters what your merit is unless you want to jump ranks and be able to make signature money. This might help the mods out by cutting down on the meaningless posts aimed only at post count. Hopefully “merit” will succeed where “activity” failed miserably. It will be interesting to see how Merit is gamed. I can definitely see account sales increasing now.

Bitcoins exchange rate is right at $11,000 today. By years end it will be different. How it changes will be the result of speculator activity, government involvement, media announcements and fud.

If this thread goes to 100 pages this will remain the only 100% correct answer here.

Stupid risk maybe. There’s nothing wrong with being conservative. Conservatives have all the money. I think women choose to go out and live life instead of existing inside of a fantasy world created behind a glowing screen. Just another example of how women are smarter than men.