See, I told you, cryptohunter--they didn't invite me (and I'm hoping the place at least has windows and doesn't ever catch on fire). 

And suchmoon if you ever do invite me to that club, can I bring my lady friend along with me?  She really knows the spirit of bitcointalk and might love to be in on a good conspiracy.

No, because I have nothing against signature campaigns and don't mind getting paid to do something I'd be doing anyway.  I was a member here for about 9 months or so before I joined a signature campaign.  I didn't even know what they were until I started reading about how they were the main reason why the majority of posts on the forum are so bad.  Why should I punish myself to prove something to anyone here?  And it isn't like it would help anything anyway.

Shitposters shouldn't be in signature campaigns.  It's a privilege to be in one, and I think all of them should be as selective as Chipmixer is.  It's no small amount of money (to me) that I earn by being in the campaign, but IMO I'm not a shitposter and I do my best to keep earning the privilege of being in not only a sig campaign, but Chipmixer in particular. 

Who are my pals?  Why do you think that if more than one person who consistently disagrees with you, there's some sort of conspiracy?  I also don't mean to be rude, but you seem to be a bit paranoid.  There are a lot of members here who see the shitposting problem through the same lens that I do, and that may have something to do with how blatant and obvious the problem is.  They're not my "pals", just people who happen to share a similar opinion on the matter.  I've disagreed with a lot of DT members (past and present) and staff before, including hilariousandco, Lauda, DarkStar_, LoyceV, and others as well.  There's no concerted effort to do anything as far as I'm aware.  I very rarely even exchange PMs with any of them, so there's nothing that I know of going on behind closed doors.  If there is, they're not including me in it.

Agree.  It's unfortunate this knucklehead shotgunned all those merits to those accounts, but the merit and trust systems are separate and should be that way.  Not only that, but Theymos doesn't want merit abusers to be tagged anyway.  So even if it could be proved that all of those accounts were alts, DT members probably wouldn't do anything anyway.  In addition, I think I've seen examples of members who've given out merits like this guy did, and they weren't even red-trusted to begin with.  It sucks, but there's not much that can be done about it.

Not sure what you mean by that, but if you're alluding to the fact that these cases are self-limiting because of how merits decay as they're distributed, that's some consolation.  Foserfox doesn't have unlimited sMerits to give out and this isn't something that can go on forever--at least not for him.

It's exactly in the spirit of bitcointalk.  I don't care how poor or desperate these plagiarists are, and there's no way of knowing that for sure anyway.  It's just an assumption.  The indisputable fact is that there are too many newbies coming here to make money by shitposting, and a lot of them are getting busted for stealing other people's work.  I have no sympathy for that.

Good, Meta would be a lot cleaner if that were to happen.  But it hasn't happened yet, which is why the Plagiarism Bingo game is such jolly good fun.  They lie, they give excuses, and they beg--all of that on top of the original offense of stealing content.  My conscience doesn't bother me about taking the piss out of those kinds of people.

I agree--there are some crypto geniuses here, in addition to the fact that Satoshi was one of the founding members.  I don't read news about crypto on any other site, as I have a pathological distrust of media even if it's not mainstream.  Pretty much everything I know about bitcoin (which isn't extensive) I've learned here.

The drama around bitcointalk is what keeps me coming, though.  This forum is like a bunch of people from all around the world arguing with each other, trying to scam each other, and it's like the wild west trying to keep a modicum of order.  That's what makes it fun for me and it's what I first noticed about the forum when I was just a lurker.

Why do people abbreviate bitcointalk as BTT anyway?  Not that there's a standard way of doing it, but BCT makes more sense to me.

I was actually surprised as well.  I'm not sure why he gave me that many merits for all those posts--I guess he just likes what I post, but you'd have to ask him for the reason.  I swear to Baphomet that I'm not an alt of Foxpup if that's the implication.  Perhaps he knows I'm looking for Newbie-to-Sr. Member accounts (and some Hero members, too) to give merits to, and he knows I'll distribute the sMerits I get.  Who knows?

You got me with that Rickroll.  I thought that shit went ghost in 2012 or so, and it's not something I'd love to have revived. (lol)

Oh ffs, he's not stalking you.  You're going all over the place giving opinions that are very contrarian and playing devil's advocate in ban appeal threads.  He probably just disagrees with you about some things (and I can completely understand that) and wants to challenge you on what you're writing.  That's part of what a discussion forum is.

Same here.  I just found one post worthy of merit in an Economics thread buried in a shitpost sandwich, but looking for such things gets very tiring very quickly.

Yeah, everyone believes in the dollar because there hasn't been a crisis in their lifetimes--nor mine, and I'm also not a millennial.  I don't think I've ever met anyone who thinks the dollar is still backed by gold, although I'll admit that those aren't the kinds of conversations I typically have with people.

The fact is that a lot of folks have hated paper money since it was first issued.  I'm no history expert, but I know there was a time in the 1800s and before when if the money in your hand did not have intrinsic value, i.e., if it wasn't made out of precious metals, it was just funny money.  A lot of those people wanted gold or silver only, and it would be interesting to see how they'd react to today's world, where not even paper is necessary to buy or sell something.  I think they'd be baffled by the concept of something like cryptocurrency or even paying for groceries (or whatever) using your phone.

Thank you for writing an intelligent post in the sea of shitposts that this thread is.

I'm a believer in relatively efficient markets, meaning that new information gets incorporated into the price of an asset quickly as the new information gets disseminated.  But you know what?  Sometimes the information gets incorporated into the price before the information becomes public--funny how that happens. 

In the case of the ETF decision, I'm not sure how substantial that decision is going to be for bitcoin, but my guess is that whatever movement it generates (up or down) will start happening before the SEC announces its decision.  It'll get leaked to people with deep pockets, and we'll see the change before February.  And hey, this crash we've all been experiencing might already be the market's reaction.  The decision could already have been made behind closed (but not locked) doors in a room with many flies on the wall. 

I'll bet it's going to be rejected.  I'm hoping to be surprised on this, but the cynic in me is yelling in my ear that the ETF's fate is already sealed.  We'll see.

That's the first thing I noticed, and I'm surprised by that.  I'm thinking Russia is where most of the shittiest ICOs originate from, but that's just kind of a guess.  I'm pretty certain that a lot of the scammers we see are Russian, or maybe I've been watching too many movies or still have some sort of cold war resentment.  Either way, the proportion of posts being made in that section is relatively enormous.

Good analysis.  What isn't surprising is how popular the altcoin sections are on a bitcoin forum where you can make money promoting shitcoins.  I can't even imagine how bitcointalk would look if Theymos suddenly nuked the entire altcoin buffet of sections--not that I think he'd do such a thing.

Ahh, you're a smart guy.  Even if you made some errors in your analysis, you're probably at least in the ballpark with the data.  If I was able to produce work like this, my statistics professor from 1997 would be proud.

Dude, the problem isn't with the moderators or with the forum.  The problem is with you.  You broke the rules, and everyone in this thread is telling you what the consequences are for doing that, and they're correct.  You're permabanned.  It doesn't matter what your other posts are or how long you've been here; you got busted for plagiarism and that's it.  It doesn't matter what you think about the rules--they're applied the same to everyone, and as far as a warning goes, if you'd bothered to actually read the rules there would be no warning or clarification necessary.

Where's the bingo card, anyway?

The old trolls or the old legitimate members?  I'd imagine the earliest members made a fortune and really have no use for bitcointalk anymore, especially given how spam-infested it's become since signature campaigns came into existence.  I don't think most of them are ever coming back.  As far as the trolls go, the ones I listed could tend to be very annoying and they wore out their welcome very quickly--except mixan, who just had a mental breakdown toward the end and finally just quit. 

I respect a good troll, but you have to have some language skills to be effective, and unfortunately the influx of new members looking for the bounty gold rush have no inclination to be pests nor could they manage an ounce of coherency if they tried.  Part of me misses MPOE-PR, even though he/she was pretty much gone by the time I arrived.  He/she was intelligent and wrote some of the most biting posts I've ever seen. 

Anyway OP, Dig Bicks isn't likely to respond to this thread just like he didn't to mine, so you ought to lock it up.  I'm sure he's getting a kick out of all the replies and attention he's getting.

That's an interesting point, though I don't know how true it really is.  I do know a lot of people have been burned with bitcoin and may never come back--but on the other hand, how many people do you think have been burned in the stock market in the past 100 years?  The stock market still exists, and it still goes through bull and bear cycles, including times of extreme volatility.

This guy's prediction depends on an enormous IF, i.e., if history repeats itself perfectly.  There's little chance it will and no reason to expect it should do so.  To me, it's just empty words, very much like everything else TA people spout. 

Jesus Christ, it sounds like you were reading stories about people giving their history of getting buttfucked and thought some of it might fit in here as an excuse for plagiarism.  That alone is a good enough reason in my eyes why you should never be unbanned.

And this account is yet another one registered in October 2017, that month and year that keep reappearing in situations like this.  Something's awry at the Circle K, methinks.  Anyway, I'm just waiting for B-I-N-G-O and then I'll have my amusement for the day.

If I may ask a somewhat noobie-type question:  what's the difference between nuking and banning an account?  I've always used those terms interchangeably.  Anyway, it's good to see these fuckers getting banned.  It all looks like sloppy texting to me, but there's little doubt in my mind that those accounts are connected.

Hear, hear.  However, the change is of much less value without including an example of the plagiarism in the ban PM that these morons get, i.e., they need to be shown exactly what they did to get banned.  I'm asking a serious question here: would it be too much to include in the PM what you just did right here?  You showed him exactly what he copy/pasted, and unless the content thieves get solid proof in that ban PM, they're just going to keep creating these futile threads--and I'm not even sure that'll fix the issue, but it might help a little more.

If someone was unfairly banned because of some misplaced quotation marks, then they have a valid argument and should appeal by making a thread.  Jokers like OP are the ones who just want to waste everyone's time making them dig up the proof of what they did wrong, in addition to the lying and begging we often see in threads like these.  And I still say that creating a child board is the best solution.

No doubt.  The problem is that Meta is being overrun with ban appeal threads.  I don't see why a child board can't be created.  It's not exactly like it would require more moderation--it's just like putting a partition in place where those members who don't feel like looking at plagiarist begging, lying, and general nonsense don't have to look at it.

Yep, I saw that and I've seen others, too.  I wouldn't argue that people shouldn't be able to appeal their ban, just that such cases like the one you mentioned are the exception, not the rule, and that most ban appeal threads are just a bunch of excuses and pleading by people who know exactly what they've done wrong.  If you create a child board, you can then put it on ignore if you want.

You've been a member with the kabum21 account since May 30, 2018.  That's hardly "quite a while" IMO, although you did manage to earn merits from some of the most respected members for a single post you made.  Somehow.  I think they were being overly generous, but everyone has different standards.

The reason you're looking for is here, and you quoted it yourself:

My guess is you plagiarized something, and I'm also fairly certain someone will show up with the evidence of that. 

Yeah, but how many of them do you think can survive?  How many exchanges does the entire crypto market actually need? 

Look at the stock market and think about how huge it is.  Then take a look at how many stock brokerages there are and how many of them are successful.  There isn't room for hundreds of crypto exchanges, and there isn't a need for that many.  Ones like Binance have very good user interfaces and offer a lot of analytic tools, which is why they're popular.  Don't know about their customer service, but I'd imagine it's not bad--and that's why shitty exchanges like Yobit are on the decline.  They just don't care about their customers whatsoever.

You wait until governments start regulating the crypto exchanges, especially ones in Asia & Russia.  If and when that happens, that will likely weed out the ones that are scams or those that can't or won't conform to government regulations.  Why do you think there aren't that many US-based exchanges?  There's Coinbase, and I can't think of any others.  Circle used to be a legitimate place to buy bitcoin, but they decided it wasn't worth the hassle (or whatever their reason was).  And if regulation doesn't force some exchanges out of business, we'll probably see some buyouts and consolidation with the exchanges. 

In 10 years, there may only be a handful of crypto exchanges in existence, but whether that's true or not, I'm pretty certain a lot of the ones now in existence won't be in 10 years.  The landscape is going to look a lot different.

Seems like computer stuff is popular--I've bought quite a few things on Newegg, including a new PC, headphones, and a few other things.  And while not endorsing this, you can buy gray-market pharmaceuticals like nootropics and kratom with bitcoin, though I don't know how popular that market is.

I think what people really want is for big retailers to start accepting bitcoin, e.g., Amazon, eBay, and other places where they tend to shop the most.  Overstock.com does take bitcoin, but I haven't found much on that site worth buying.  They don't even sell cases of cat food last time I checked, and most of the writing instruments I was looking at were kinda crappy.

Never used Tor or bought anything on the dark web, but I'm pretty sure bitcoin is very useful there.  Not surprising, but it'd be nice if more big online merchants started taking it.  I'm not a big proponent of using bitcoin as a currency, but there have definitely been times when I've had more bitcoin than cash and I've chosen to spend bitcoin on things. 

Cat food.  I'd really like to be able to buy wet cat food in bulk.  If there's a place that takes bitcoin where I can buy some, I'm all ears.

I would have been singing in that chorus back in 2012 or so when bitcoin seemed like a ridiculous form of electronic currency that was completely unnecessary.  It reminded me of that digital currency Whoopee Goldberg used to promote (Flooz) back in 1999 or so.  People thought the internet somehow needed its own form of money.  Nobody ended up needing it or using it, and it died.  It took me a while to figure out how bitcoin is different, how it's P2P and not under the control of any corporation or government.  Some people still don't understand this, but as far as the world needing bitcoin, I can see their point.  Right now I don't think we do, but if there came a time when fiat money suffered a severe crash, it'd come in pretty damn handy.  It's also useful for online anonymous transactions.

The other things you mentioned also happen in the stock market.  When prices are up, people think it's too expensive to buy; when the market crashes, they get scared and don't want to buy something that's obviously on sale.  Even worse, if they sell at a loss when the stock they own starts to plummet.  The markets are a weird taste of human psychology.

A lot of them are trolls, though I'm not sure why you'd have an account on bitcointalk if you really didn't believe there was anything to bitcoin.  My guess is that at least some of them are bitter about losing money at some point, and they're trying to spread the misery as far and wide as they can.