A large proportion of the merits the original post in the above thread came from DarkStar_, so that skews the data just a wee bit.  I'm not going to comment on whether those merits were deserved or not, but it was well within DarkStar_'s rights to hand them out as he saw fit, and I can't fault him for that. 

This is really a non-issue.  Only when a member makes a habit out of either giving away obscene amounts of merits, gives them out to posts that are objectively bad, or sells or gives merits mainly to friends or alt accounts that there's a problem.  And even then, there isn't a guarantee that anything is going to be done about it.  Theymos has stated that he basically wants people to leave the merit system alone and let it work itself out.  That's why merit abusers haven't been getting tagged much.

Say what, now?

Anyway, you have a history of cheating for which I left you a neg last year, plus you're also an account dealer.  While your current predicament could be a gross miscarriage of justice, my guess is that you thought you'd get away with plagiarism.  I'm assuming that's what this is all about based on the link you provided.

Wow, nice find on that link!  I used to browse really old threads (some of them are fascinating) but never came across this one, and it's a great idea to make it visible again.

There are some seriously bad thread titles in sections like Economics and Bitcoin/Altcoin Discussion.  I don't know how many I've come across where the title is "Bitcoin" or something extremely vague like that.  I think I've even reported a couple of threads because the title was waaay too vague.  Then there are threads in the English section where it's blatantly obvious the thread starters know zero English--some of them are almost laughably bad. 

Newcomers to the forum should definitely be schooled in how to write a nice, concise thread title which also makes it clear what the thread is about.  I'm hoping this here thread gets some views, because it's pretty useful.  Props, OP.  It's one of those forum issues that never really gets addressed because it's more of an annoyance than a major problem.

It is indeed rare--but I betcha that if the members of the old list are still active here, they'll eventually start pulling the same crap.  Maybe that's me being pessimistic, but a lot of shitposters just don't have it in them to make well thought out posts and to not post-burst, etc.

In any case, there aren't a hell of a lot of signature campaigns around anymore anyway, are there?  I have the Services section on ignore, but last I checked there were only a handful of them--and from what I've heard there aren't even that many bounties around either.  So the forgiveness might actually be somewhat of a moot point.

Eh, I don't review my tags periodically but if someone PMs me asking to get a negative removed I do listen to their request and will remove a feedback if enough time has passed and there haven't been any further instances of shenanigans.  In fact I did exactly that for a member about 3 days ago.  But it's been my experience that most negs members earn probably deserve to stay put.

Why does this not surprise me?  People here are addicted to credit cards, keeping up with the Joneses, and living well beyond their means.  I've met too many of them in my lifetime to count--people living from paycheck to paycheck, and yet they're driving huge SUVs, eating out all the time, and have way too much crap in their houses.  It's an insane mindstate.

Luckily I grew out of the temptation to do the above years ago, but it isn't like I don't see the appeal of owning tons of stuff.  When you can't afford it, however.....yeah.

I think this is a generational problem, too.  My grandparents owned a house, but it wasn't anything fancy and they worked all their lives.  The key thing was that they didn't incur tons of debt.  I thought millenials were supposed to be breaking the bad habits of the previous two generations, but who knows.  You can't always believe what you read--and from what I hear those millenials have a lot of student debt which could be keeping them from saving money.

Well, I bought my Ledger from Amazon and it came factory sealed--yeah, I suppose if I was paranoid I'd start thinking that some hacker along the distribution chain could have planted some malware on it, but I really don't think that happened.  And manufacturers often don't distribute their own products, and I don't see why it should be any different for hardware wallet makers.  As long as the product hasn't been obviously tampered with, I think I'd be safe in trusting a purchase from a physical retailer.

And who's to say that some rogue employee at the manufacturer couldn't sabotage the hardware?  Pretty much anything like that could happen, so I suppose it all depends on your baseline level of trust in people and companies delivering the products they promise.

I took a look at the link, but I don't think those were ever available in their stores--they probably sold them online from their warehouse or however they do it.  That's kind of what Amazon does, and that's not my point.  I'm wondering if and when we'll ever see them on store shelves.

It's a penny stock that trades with very low volume--not something I'd be interested in, although I do find this company's existence and the fact that they're publicly traded interesting.  If they're legit and actually make a profit (you can't just go by how much it costs for them to mine 1 BTC), I suppose it would be a decent way to get into mining without actually having to mine.  Reminds me of investors who buy copper mining stocks instead of buying metals.

Those would be my concerns as well.  I'm not sure what their real cost is to mine a single bitcoin and it isn't clear what factors they included in that quote, but the whole company would be in serious jeopardy if bitcoin crashed.  Anyway, the company is too new and unproven and it looks just like any other pink sheet company that could be a scam.  No way I'd buy any of this stock.

I can certainly see the irony in it, but you won't hear me complaining at all.  There was a time not too long ago where I was using my smartphone to do most of my posting, but I gave it up out of frustration--not because the site isn't mobile-friendly but because my fingers are far too fat to type accurately on that pesky small keyboard.  Even using a stylus I find it frustrating.

That said, it's not all about me and I'm pretty sure a lot of members use their phones for forum browsing and posting, and for them I'd like to see a mobile-friendly option, one that's official.  It's always made me scratch my head that Theymos hasn't implemented something like that.  Most other forums I've been on do have a mobile option, so it can't be that hard to do--plus Theymos is hardly the sort of person who'd be perplexed by such a thing.  I have to assume that he just doesn't care to do it.

Maybe with the new forum software that should be rolling out any day now (LOL), those who want it will finally get their wish.  I haven't been keeping up to date with how that's all progressing, so I could be wrong.

This thread has nothing to do with any particular hardware wallet; it's just a question I've had on my mind for the past week or so.

I haven't visited an electronics retailer like Best Buy or the like in a few years, and I rarely shop at big box outlets like Target or WalMart, but I'm assuming that you wouldn't be able to find anything crypto-related in those stores.  You can find tons of stuff that has to do with money in those places (safes, leather wallets, coin wrappers, accounting ledgers, etc.), but I'm wondering if and when we'll start to see these places sell things like hardware wallets.  IMO that would be a pretty good indication that crypto is moving toward being mainstream.

Note:  I'm well aware that online retailers DO sell hardware wallets.  I'm more interested in retailers with physical stores.  In order to get shelf space in any of them, a product sort of has to be popular and have a chance of selling in a reasonable volume.  

Two questions:  Are there any places that sell hardware wallets (or anything related)?  And if not, do you think we're ever going to get to the point where this is a reality?

Yeah, that would be my concern--especially from a company that I never heard of.  On the other hand, if everything they said was true, it does look like a decent product.  But no, I won't be buying one of these since I'm not up to be a guinea pig for an untested product (and I don't have any crypto that I need to store that I can't do on my Ledger.

This quote under the product section:
is surrounded on the sides by a bunch of pictures of people, and I'm not sure if that's the developers or just a generic bunch of photos.  Since it looks like every race, gender, and probably even a few different religions are represented in those pics, I'm hoping they're not trying to pass them off as the devs.  Not because diversity is bad but because I'd find it highly unlikely to have a team like that.  In fact it seems more like those scammy ICOs with fake team pics....but maybe I'm seeing it wrong.

Eh, yeah.  That's quite the detective work, legendster--I don't have anywhere near the patience or attention span to go through everything you wrote, but I'd be willing to bet you're mostly correct.  You probably need to have someone who's able to go over the minute details of the links you found in order to get some independent verification.  I don't really have anything to do with this.

But the following is true:
In other words, if there was a ban somewhere in this list of accounts and a moderator agrees with your assessment here, they'll all get banned.  Thus my advice would be to do some reporting and see what happens.

Totally does not surprise me--and based on the replies here, it's not coming as much of a shock to anyone else. 

I mean seriously, does anyone really think the government is going to allow just anyone to operate a currency exchange ATM without having to jump through their regulatory hoops?  Not going to happen.  Christ, you can't even cut hair for a living without having to have a license with whatever state you're living in.  They regulate everything.

More regulation or more ATMs?  I'm kind of expecting more crypto regulation and am actually surprised the IRS and all the other government agencies haven't jumped in to regulate crypto to death already.  I'm not so sure about bitcoin ATMs taking off.  I think they're a great idea and they'd allow people to buy bitcoin without having to do it on an exchange like Coinbase, but I just don't think they're ever going to become very popular (unless bitcoin gets adopted as a currency instead of as an investment).

Haven't gone through your posts (and I'm far too lazy to do so), but the only real reason anyone ever gets a permaban on this forum is because of copy/pasting.  The only other reason is disruptive spamming, but it has to be fairly egregious for you to get a ban from that--so my guess is that you plagiarized someone else's work somewhere, and I'm also willing to bet that one of the fine forum detectives will stop by to show you exactly what you did.

Did you post someone else's words without giving them credit for it?

If you're a day trader and make $1000 with this trade, I'd say you did very well and probably did the right thing.  Me, if I had enough money to buy a whole bitcoin I'd probably try to buy it under $10k and just hold it.  I think the market is still extremely bullish despite it having cooled off recently.  Bitcoin is trading in a pretty narrow range and keeps bobbing its head above $10k....so I think any chance to buy it below that level is a good opportunity both for a short-term trade and a chance for even greater profit in the longer-term.

But it's up to you how you want to trade.  Obviously you were successful here, so it's not like you did anything wrong.  If I had to give you advice, it would be to try to buy again if and when bitcoin falls to $9000 again.  It might not, but if it did you'd probably have another chance to make at least another grand.

Ah, come on.  All traders are greedy to some extent.  He got lucky with that trade and now he's thinking "What next?".  That's natural.

SWEET. 

I honestly wasn't expecting Theymos to take any action on the crazy-ass bumping fiasco going on in the ANN and related sections.  I figured it was going to remain the responsibility of the mods and the motivated members who do the reporting.  Great to see that Theymos came up with a pretty creative solution--and though it's long overdue, it's much appreciated.  This crap doesn't affect me in the least, since I haven't visited any of those sections in quite a while, but I'm well aware how most threads are being unscrupulously manipulated in order to keep them visible and thus attract the most suckers.  That's always been a bad situation.

Not surprising.  Anything that can be abused on this forum will get abused eventually.  And usually it doesn't take too long.

Me as well.

I don't know if you mean the "mom-and-pop" banks that only have branches in a few towns (it's common in my country), but if that's the case I would assume that they want to see if the big banks have any success with blockchain utilization before they jump in.  Smaller banks generally have much smaller capital and aren't likely to venture into uncharted territory unless the risk is very low compared to the reward. 

Anyway, I think it's great if banks are actually starting to use blockchains (and it's about time)--but it doesn't really affect bitcoin, which is my main area of interest.  Banks are going to be using blockchains as a ledger for their fiat business if I'm understanding this correctly, and they're NOT getting involved in cryptocurrency.  I wouldn't exactly want to keep my bitcoin with a bank, but I would like to see such a service offered simply because it would be another step in bitcoin's mass adoption.  Don't know if that's ever going to happen, but I bet they'll get involved in the futures markets well before they allow their customers to deposit any real crypto with them.  But we'll see.

If there's a true scammer on DT, that's a huge problem, and I think the consequences of this happening are pretty obvious.  Remember the Master-P incident?  If I remember the situation correctly, he leveraged his DT position in order to pull off a huge scam--and nobody expected that to happen because of his DT status and extensive history of not pulling off scams.  And in Master-P's case, there wasn't any warning that he was going to do what he did.

If we know for certain there's a scammer on DT, that scammer needs to be voted off via exclusions.  I'm not talking about a member who holds controversial views or is an abrasive personality, but one who is an actual dishonest member of bitcointalk.  I don't know how a scammer could end up on the list, but I'm sure it could happen--and it's the responsibility of other DT members to take action.

This one is probably always going to be an issue, as there's usually a lot of debate about these issues before anything is done.  On the other hand, I have seen DT members act quickly to exclude members.  I understand the concern, but I tend to believe that there is a core group of DTs that keep a close eye on their fellow DTers and would blow the whistle at the first sign of potential shenanigans.  I'm being optimistic there, but my gut tells me it's the truth.

Hell no, there's too much hate already in this country--but people generally don't get beat up for expressing those kinds of sentiments unless they're at a rally or demonstration or something where the left and right wings mix on the streets.  You know, Antifa/SJWs, that sort of thing.

I certainly don't condone violence against gays, but as far as trusting a person who said those words in the OP....I guess it would depend on everything else the member has said and done.  I'm pretty sure those kinds of feelings are fairly prevalent in certain parts of the world, and it could just be internet bluster as well.  It would be a strike against them if I were deciding to add him to my trust list, and there's a good chance I wouldn't.  It all depends.

What the hell does the above quote even mean?  I've read about some crazy, shady ICO projects before, but this one is so obviously a scam attempt that it's making me scratch my head. 

It is a bit nuts, but if suckers would stop giving money to all these scammers--and if bounty hunters would stop advertising for them--we'd see the end of this crap.  Unfortunately stuff like this must be making somebody some money, else the promoters wouldn't even waste their time.  Good call on blowing the whistle on this one. 

As an aside, this is the main reason why I have that whole section on ignore.  The only good reason to not do that is if you're searching out scammers to expose.

I don't even think his moral(s) are questionable, at least from what he's demonstrated on this forum.  He's a hot-headed troll, yes, but he's not a scammer from what I've seen.  In fact I do recall writing quite a long time ago that I would do business with him if we hadn't butted heads and made such a relationship untenable.  I'm not sure what kind of argument Vod is trying to make here, but I'd certainly like some clarification on the "scammer" aspect of it.

Lobbying to get yourself on DT isn't sinister in and of itself, and we all knew TECSHARE wanted and thinks he deserves to be on it.  I kind of figured he'd end up back on the list eventually, along with OgNasty.