Don't you think allowing the purchase of merits would be oppressive to new members who may not have settled in the crypto space? Ideally, people should join this forum because they need help from experienced members in crypto (and other kinds of services) and/or because they want to provide some kind of help to other members, while they improve their own skills. Helping one another to get their problems solved shouldn't be a difficult task unless we all want to selfishly rank up and leave the forum with shitty posts.

Lol...HODL for life ? What is the essence of bitcoin? Is it meant to be locked up in your wallet for life ? Apart from hodling  for some time, you could lend out your bitcoin, trade it for more profit or diversify into Alts  and earn profit and then get back more bitcoin.

Theymos  brought the merit system obviously to check spam. But have you pondered  over why newbies didn't have to earn merit(s) to rank up junior members? The forum somewhat allows members irrespective of their ranks to contribute to discussions  and learn too. But in liberal societies you can't always have everything in the garden being rosy. Sometimes some of these spammers make me laugh out loud.

Patience depends on the type of trader. A long term trader needs every patience  in the world to succeed while a day trader would like to take opportunities quickly and restart at different entry points.

If you still have some bitcoin in your portfolio you still have a good chance to either trade and earn more profit or diversify part of your major holdings and buy some alts that have lost some remarkable value. This could compensate for any loses in few days. Hodling alone might make you impatient.

There may be manipulations to some extent so far as we are dealing with banks. There may be players and stake holders whose primary may be geared towards making profit. It's better to take control of your own bitcoin.

How can the so-called scam not belong to a centralized group or individual? People rush into bitcoin when they hear prices booming so they fail to do extensive research into what kind of wallet or exchanges they should deal with. If you're cautious there's almost no possibility of losing your bitcoin.

It's always advisable to invest your spare money in crypto. This strategy doesn't market  will collapse; it only means prices may not shoot up as you may have planned but you could shoot up some other time. If you need money urgently you may have to make some cash out. But leave some BTC to restart your crypto experience in trading or buying and  hodling.

Simple! It's easier getting "fooled" or tricked. If you look closely, any person who gets tricked or scammed oftentimes ignore some checks and scrutiny the should have done on the scammer. In crypto you can't trust anyone implicitly just as much as you can't leave your money anywhere, even in your own house. It takes a great yet simple effort to skip scam projects.

Bitcoin is more or less an individual "asset". It could become a national asset when big players come in and the government allows bitcoin to coexist with their  currency. It's just a matter of time until most people realise the real benefits of bitcoin.

Try as you might, participating in dozens of bounties is tedious. You might want to learn some trading skills; you could make some good profit(forget the losses). If participating in bounty campaigns is your major source of "income" in crypto, you might want to learn more, make "meaningful" contributions to discussions on the forum, earn merits and rank up. Higher ranked members are awared more stakes/tokens relatively. A hero or legendary member doesn't need to participate in countless bounties; they just find one good campaign and Bob's your uncle, they're good to go.

I don't think everyone who bought bitcoin at 14K still has the same amount of bitcoin as of now. Some might have sold out of panic while others might have bought more BTC at lower prices to make up for their losses. BTC could easily hit 14K or more despite the ETFs effect.

To be a good trader it's advisable to "stick to the rules" rather than being guided by your emotions. When you move along the same path as everyone else(making quick profit in the flash of a pan), you will ask always lose a good opportunity at becoming a good trader. Principles work better than your emotions.

It's strange how the alts struggling recently. It goes to prove that bitcoin should always be the largest of your portfolio. It will be quite unusual to see alts rising for weeks while bitcoin descends, unlike we are seeing the alts going down against BTC.

This is a no trainer question to me. Bitcoin came with groundbreaking invention which has stood the test of time. Looking at the altcoins, it either most of them are duplicating the bitcoin's ingenuity(most of them fail though) or they try to invent overly ambitious stuff that they can't accomplish in the end. So far, bitcoin is still peerless.

Banks may accept bitcoin as deposits. But they may do so under a certain clause which may not favour the bitcoin owner. I don't really think you need a bank to keep your money for you when you are your own bank through crypto and blockchain.

My target is always set. When the downtrend hits my target low, I quickly pull out. Sometimes you may have to wait for quite too long for market to recover and I may not have too much patients in day trading as I may have in long-term hodling. When you set your target and respect these targets you don't have to lose too much.

You can't predict the price of bitcoin absolutely for the rest of the year. A lot of factors will come into play to determine the price of bitcoin in the coming months. There are so many predictions and speculations about prices but you can't depend on people's view. It's either you are a long term holder or you have mastered the skill of day trading.

Twitter blocks/suspends you when they notice that you are using a third party app/site to boost your number of followers. If you claim these site are legit you should audit your account with twitter audit and see the number of fake followers on your follower list. It's almost impossible to dodge the bots/fake followers when you use these "boosting" sites.

People may join bitcointalk for different reasons such : joining signature campaigns,learning about bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies,learning some trading skills and so on. Personally, bitcointalk has redirected me to learn other things for myself outside the forum. People here know better places such as websites where you could learn an important skill such as basic programming, blogging and so on. There are healthy debates to safeguard your judgment too.