I don't either, and OP it would be nice if you'd provide a link when making a thread that references some congressman's quote.  I don't have a clue what you're referring to here.

But hey, I think Libra will be useless and unnecessary--but that's only if it gets released, which I don't think it will.  I don't think the world is itching for another cryptocurrency, much less a stablecoin branded by Facebook.  That makes me want to stay far, far away from it.  Not that I use FB anyway, so it doesn't matter for me but I'm well aware of how popular they are and how many people willingly give away their privacy to them.  No doubt at least some of them would use Libra.  Why, I have no idea, but they would.

Does anyone know what Libra is supposed to be used for?  Is it for stuff like in-game purchases and the like or some other FB-related expenses?  I don't know what they're charging members for, but I do know that they offer games and things.  And frankly I don't see why crypto is necessary to pay for those things when fiat would work just as well. 

Yeah, OK.  Short-term traders might rejoice on their filthy, unpaved streets but it wouldn't be a great thing for long-term holders.  Anyone recall 2017?  Everyone was euphoric but it led to a big crash, and nobody except maybe short sellers was happy about that.

In any case it doesn't look like bitcoin is going to get there by the end of 2019.  That sweet jump from $7500 to over $10k might have led speculators to think we'd all stepped aboard the neverending gravy train, but once again bitcoin is doing the unexpected.  Looks like it's hit the pause button at around $9100 or so.  And that's a good thing IMO.

We'll get there.  Just not this year (hopefully).

I think that's definitely part of it.  Guaranteed when the younger generations come of age, there will be increased adoption because they'll have known about it all of their lives--even if they never end up using it as a currency, they might still own it just to own it.  The same can't be said about older folks today, or even most people in their 40s (with certain exceptions, AHEM).

The biggest factor I think is the lack of necessity for owning crypto.  For nearly everyone, fiat works just fine and people have no problems whatsoever using a bank card or cash or their smartphone to make purchases.  Who in their right mind would spend fiat to buy bitcoin simply to spend bitcoin?  Yeah, if you were buying something on the dark markets that would make sense, but nobody does that for purchases that can easily be made with fiat--and they shouldn't IMO.  It just makes no sense.

If the world ever gets itself into a global hyperinflation scenario--real SHTF stuff of nightmares--then I could see where bitcoin would become extremely useful, and no doubt people would adopt it as a form of money en masse.  But unless or until that happens, bitcoin is going to stay out of the mainstream, at least as a currency.  It's already coming into the mainstream as an investment tool (which is fantastic, btw).

I am, too, and have been ever since probably before you wrote your post four days ago.  And while bitcoin is still higher than when OP wrote his post--looks like it was in the $8k range--it's gotten smacked around in the last 12 hours or so, dropping about $350.  But oh well, that's bitcoin for ya.

I assume the last dip was caused by a bunch of traders cashing out, but who knows.  Could be anything.  These are the times when I start looking at the price of bitcoin more frequently, which is not a usual habit for me.  I think I'm going to take a break and not look at it for a few days at least.  The only problem is that I get reminded of it when I see threads in Speculation, especially when the price starts to really move up or down.  Can't bring myself to put the whole section on ignore, though.

He deleted your accounts or your posts?  It sounds like you're saying it's the latter, and I don't think moderators have the ability to delete accounts anyway.

And yeah, it would help if you made it known what member you're referring to.

I voted for yes, why not.  There are only a handful of members I'd follow, but I think it would be a good feature to add.  In particular, I'd like to follow Theymos's posts, since they're usually important and I often miss them.  Yes, I could check his post history but it would be so much easier if I got notified when he made a new thread or new post.

Maybe this is a possibility with the new forum software?  I wouldn't expect Theymos to implement a feature like this while he's still using SMF software.  The way I see it is that if it's not too much of a pain in the ass, it would be really good if he could add some of these suggested features to the new forum.  Some of them are pretty good.

Nah, it's gotten less agressive but I don't think it has anything to do with leftist politics so much as members like you have been gone for a while.  The mood definitely shifts when certain members go away.

Supported. 

Yeah, probably.  New members most likely don't have an immediate interest in forum goings-on unless they've been lurking for a while like I did before I registered this account.  I just gave 2 merits to Primenumber7 for a post here, since it was a decent one but I'm hoping that account isn't a QS alt.  I don't know how many he controls these days.

They might not all be beginners.  Hell, there's even the Investor Based Games section right here on the forum where people willingly engage in Ponzis in the hopes of being out early enough to profit.  It's fucking insane, but there are a lot of insane individuals here.

I supported the flag, btw.  Even though some folks might know what they're getting into, I suspect most will not and their greed and ignorance will get the better of them.  They ought to know better than to believe those kinds of promises, but they still should be protected from scammers before the scam can happen.  Unfortunately even with the warning the Ponzi promoters will likely profit, investors will lose, and when this one ends another one will start up.  It's a neverending cycle, but these idiots should be flagged anyway.

That's the sad truth.  But even if you do that homework, there's still a chance that a project could end up scamming you because the best scammers hide all the details of their scam from the homework-doers.  And look at all the bounty hunters that ended up getting a big, fat KYC requirement slapped on their faces right at the end.  Did any of them see that coming?  Probably not. 

And nice job, OP.  I've seen you expose quite a few of these atrocities.  Question:  over what time frame were all these scams committed?  Is this in the past year, two years?  Anyone know how many scams this represents as a percentage of all ICOs?  I also have a feeling that over 90% of ICOs are scams, but I've never seen hard data as far as that's concerned.  Has anyone ever crunched the numbers?

I've bought some nice stuff with bitcoin on Newegg, but the only other real thing I bought was some silver from Provident Metals.  Interesting to hear about that farmers' market you go to, and that's very cool that you got them to accept bitcoin.

I don't think that's necessarily true, and if it is then 99.99% of altcoins will never advance, whatever that means.  I'm not sure that bitcoin or any other crypto needs people to force adoption or anything else upon it.  It works as a currency when people want to use it as such--except that not all merchants accept it--and it works very well as an investment.  If it catches on as a form of money, that's fine with me but I don't think it needs that for its survival.  Just my opinion.

I don't really know what tools are available for crypto trading, but I've known one person who used software packages for trading in the stock market.  They're all based on TA, which I think is a bunch of psuedoscientific voodoo magic fairy dust--and I know lots of folks here would disagree with me about that. 

My impression has always been that the makers of such software are the only ones who profit, and the users of it get screwed when their trades go sour.  The guy I knew in particular never made a profit, and he was trying his hand at day trading.  I suppose you could get lucky, but I don't think it would be worth it to actually buy one of these things.

I've always disagreed with the need for a new look--I much prefer the consistency the forum has had over the past ten years.  I've been here since 2015 and basically nothing has changed visually, though some functions have.  I can't stand websites that keep changing their look, but that's just me.  Everything here is simple and easy to use.  I haven't even seen the epochtalk version of bitcointalk and probably won't until I absolutely have to.  I'm hoping it's at least as good as what we have now.

Really?  I'll admit I'm no website designer, but SMF isn't bad and certainly doesn't seem like how you describe it.  Newer and trendier isn't always better.

Just speaking for myself here, please feel free to PM me with links to posts/threads you think deserve merits.  I've been blasting merits this month, but I'm sure I'm not seeing many posts which deserve them and I'm more than happy to take a look at anything that gets sent to me via PM.  If I disagree, I disagree and I won't merit the posts--but the way I see it, it doesn't inconvenience me at all.

That goes for anyone, too.  PM me if you think there are any under-merited threads or posts.  Theymos gives sMerits to merit sources for distribution, and that's basically how it's worked so far and will continue to.  If non-merit sources got extra sMerits, it wouldn't work.  You have to be accepted as a merit source, meaning that you've shown good judgement in handing out merits in the past and show promise of doing the same in the future.  Giving out sMerits willy-nilly would just promote merit sales and/or abuse.

LOL.  What a post for a complete newcomer to the forum, eh?  The brilliance, the genius!  It's so hard nowadays to farm accounts; you need so much merit to rank them up.

Anywaaay.  OP, both of those threads are famous and I do believe that both were nominated in the best post contest, which I haven't really been following.  Point is, most people are aware of them and there's really no need for this thread.  The only thing you're going to attract are very jaded senior members who've seen every noob trick in the book and don't believe you're a noob for one minute.  Everyone else is busy spamming shitposts for the cryptotalk campaign.

They'll participate in slamming this thread and that's probably all you're going to get.  Nobody here likes to be taken for a fool.

Oh, I would disagree with you there.  I don't have much bitcoin, but what I do have I'm holding for the long-term.  Thus I don't react to market craziness the way OP describes.  Traders?  Yeah, that's their game.  They're supposed to trade based on what the price of bitcoin or whatever shitcoin they're trading does.  That shit would put me in a mental institution, and that's why I don't actively trade.  I tried it in the stock market and it didn't work very well for me.

When bitcoin rises like it just did, I get happy but that's about it.  I don't react to it in terms of taking action and selling--or buying based on FOMO.  That's silly, but I know there are tons of folks who do just that.  And hell, I probably used to do that in the stock market before I learned the hard way to control my emotions.

Yah, this happens every single time bitcoin poops out.  Lately I've been seeing all kinds of old bearish threads getting bumped--not necrobumped, but threads a few weeks old sort of predicting doomsday prices or big drops or whatever. 

I've also noticed this happens with stock market news, too.  If the Dow plunges a few hundred points, all of a sudden these pundits start telling us how low the market could go--and while it's true, what they're doing is basically predicting the weather.  If it's rainy today, there's a good chance it'll rain tomorrow.  Kind of like that, you know?  I've learned not to pay attention to such prognostications, because they're all just guesses.

Now that bitcoin jumped a few thousand bucks, I'm seeing a bunch of bullish threads.  And frankly I'd rather see those than the doomsday ones.

LOL.  I could have predicted exactly what your sarcasm stated, because about two years ago there was someone who started a forum where members were paid to post, and it not only turned out to be a complete scam after it got started, but it basically skimmed the worst of the worst members from bitcointalk off the bottom of the crap-barrel and had only them for members.  Needless to say, there wasn't much discussion going on there except about getting paid.

I don't know if the scam accusation presented here is true or not, but it really wouldn't surprise me in the least.  I haven't visited that site and I don't plan to.  They're getting paid 10 cents per post?  That's pretty low, but I'm sure it attracted those people who are desperate for crypto gambling money.  Betcha it's a shit show so far, am I right?

Nobody is criticizing you for your campaign management, I don't think.  Keep givin' 'em hell, Yahoo62278.

How do you guys find these links so damn fast? 

I tend to forget that Theymos doesn't own the forum, even though he runs it.  Didn't he post something critical of the trust or merit systems a while back?  I just tried searching his name under members, as I was going to look at his post history but I don't even know how to get that greek letter character in his name to come out.  If I recall correctly, he did have some comments about the forum and did seem to still care about it, even though he's probably had enough of the crap that goes on here.

And hey, man.  Some of us have senses of humor, even if 99% of the members here might not ever show it because they're too busy writing generic shitposts.

He shouldn't be surprised or upset about that, given that bitcoin is money.  It's going to attract greedy folks, and that isn't necessarily a bad thing as long as they're honest.  And as I don't pay attention to crypto politics, I don't know who's playing the fame game except for those claiming to be Satoshi and maybe one or two others.  They're easy enough to ignore.

A'ight, a'ight.  You know, I never did watch or read any of the Harry Potter stuff, though I've had so many recommendations to do so over the years that you'd think I'd be a bit more open-minded. 

The lack of drama lately is kind of nice, so knock on wood.

Yes, I get your point and I've never stuck up for those actions though I've always respected Lauda's presence on the forum.  To the best of my recollection, Lauda admitted that situation was ill-advised whereas the-other-one-who-shan't-be-named never did.  That's the difference to me.

Out chasing birds?  Where you been?

You can create a formula based on hash rate, but it won't be rational to anyone looking at it outside of the crypto community. 

I have always said that bitcoin is not like a stock, where an analyst can look at the company's earnings, dividend, growth rate, the CEO's salary, and all sorts of other variables in order to come up with a price that the stock should be selling for.  And even when analysts do come up with a price, there's usually much disagreement about it and it may be completely wrong.

Bitcoin doesn't have intrinsic value based on electricity consumption, hash rates, or anything else.  It's value is derived purely by supply and demand--any attempt to say what bitcoin should be selling for is just delusional IMO, and no offense to OP here.  I bet if you do use OP's method, the price you get will not be what the market says it should be 99.999% of the time, and if that's true the method would be worthless.  Again, no offense.