Sorry, the the "model" is nothing more than a mechanism to lure in investors to businesses that otherwise have a failing/mediocre core business model.  It happened to work for MicroStrategy (so far, but IMO it's still way too early to tell how things are going to play out), but there are biotech and other health care-related companies apparently trying to replicate MSTR's success and to me it just reeks of something very close to a scam.  Legally these crypto treasuries might not be considered such, but once again all of this is far too new to Wall Street--regulation and so forth usually have to play a catch-up game.

I love what crypto stands for.  I don't love what these Wall Street firms are trying to do with it, and even though I doubt we've seen the end of btc/ltc/whatever treasuries, I'm hoping the end is just around the corner.

Yeah, you wrote an explanation which might be true or might be absolute BS.  The statement about TO being the absolute best, most wonderful exchange in all of cryptoland is IMO a BS statement.  True it was nice that they didn't require KYC and everything was simple, etc., but they were one of the exchanges whose provenance was a complete mystery--much like Xeggex if I'm not mistaken.  I don't think when they were operating anyone could point out who was running things or any other info about TradeOgre as a business.

Anyway, if they did get haxxed they didn't handle it well.  I'm curious to see how this all shakes out, because I have a feeling there's more to it than meets the eye.

Probably, but it's been my policy to NOT read any sort of news and that policy has served me well for years--if I did read or watch any sort of news, I'd likely have become a homicidal maniac and ended up in a penitentiary or I'd have traveled to the tallest building I could buy a train ride to and enjoyed the increasing breeze as I eventually reached terminal velocity and ultimately terminal pavement contact. 

All right, I do read some financial news online, but I mostly skim and I keep one finger on my pulse.

So anyhow, who the hell knows how we got those annoying e-mails showing up in throwaway accounts.  I'm not particularly bothered.  I'm more amused than anything else due to the spammers' tenacity (though they're probably cranking that shit out with a bot).  But whatever the case may be, I stand by my 'fuck Ledger' position. 

I'm also not just a little bit paranoid about the amount of data that gets collected on all of us and yet some of the largest companies can't even keep from getting hacked and thus exposing we plebs to who-knows-what.

Lol, I missed this joke-y post!!  It's a double whammy--you used 'best exchange' to reference TradeOgre and you claimed no one's talking about whatever the hell happened with them in a thread devoted to talking about what happened to them.

God I love this forum.  It's like volunteering in a facility that caters to mentally disabled folks who would just drool and pull at their pants if they were out in the free world.  I mean no offense, wtfonly16.

Back on topic, I guess they just shat the bed but did so in a way that nobody really knows what's up?  I'm betting it has to do with a crackdown on XMR, since that was their top coin and we all know governments just hate cryptocurrencies that have serious privacy features baked into their code.  Place your bets, folks.

And by the way, this shit gives me a headache:



I know all of that spam is not coming from Ledger (I sure as hell hope not, but I'm not opening a single one of those e-mails), but somehow the spammers got ahold of more than throwaway e-mail account and I'm a bit puzzled as to how that happened.  Could be that it got leaked by some other service and the Ledger spam is coincidental, but I doubt it.

Fuck Ledger.

With respect to taking on debt to buy crypto, I wasn't referring to MSTR but to the other companies that I mentioned--NAKA, SMLR, and LITS (formerly known as MEI Pharma).  I might be wrong about some things, but the above corporations are small and it's highly unlikely they could have acquired whatever coin they're trying to make a name for themselves with without borrowing money to do so.

The argument about Warren Buffett and US treasuries....I'm not even going to engage in that, because I could think of arguments for and against either one.  I would also feel silly criticizing Buffett for not investing in something as volatile as bitcoin (plus he's already given his opinion on it, and his track record speaks for itself).

But hey, if I'm wrong I'm wrong.  However, when I see a pharmaceutical company whose primary purpose is ostensibly drug development go all-in on LTC to the point where they changed their ticker symbol (I'm talking about MEI Pharma), I can't help but think this stuff has gone way too far.


That sounds like a horrible hail mary strategy that's so close to loading up corporate treasuries with lottery tickets that there's going to be some backlash by shareholders and/or the SEC.  Probably not for MSTR (don't ask me why), but we'll see about the me-too's.

Guess you haven't had many post deleted in your time here (and that's a good thing).  I definitely have, and there's never an explanation given--and yeah, it'd be nice if there was some kind of box the mods could check off that would make it into the PM they send you when you get a post deleted, but there isn't.  There's not likely to be either, because I've been seeing these "why was my post deleted?" threads ever since I joined the forum, so I don't think Theymos is thinking about implementing any changes.

We can still hope, though.

And I would say a lot of these companies are absolutely stupid for adopting this currently-popular crypto treasury strategy--and this is coming from somebody who loves crypto and bitcoin in particular. 

First of all, for companies like Kindly MD or Semler Scientific, crypto has got nothing even remotely related to their core businesses.  They're not even software companies like MSTR is.  What they and others like them are doing is an obvious cash-grab; they're trying to inflate their earnings by jumping on the bandwagon.  Is that something any of us should celebrate?  Go ahead, I'm sure as hell not going to.

Second, is it a good thing that so much bitcoin/litecoin/whatevercoin is migrating into the hands of publicly-traded companies?  Are you all cheering for that?  Mark my words, history is going to show that this was a period of total lunacy--especially if these corporations happen to decide to sell (or are forced to because their primary business can no longer afford to pay back the loans they took out to buy their 'treasuries').  I don't know how long it'll take, but you'll see.

That's funny, because I clicked on the link in the OP and saw the same thing--Excimer made my ignore list and probably a very long time ago since I haven't added any new members in a while.

In any case, I didn't read through that entire thread, but I'm not sure it's all about gender.  To apogio's point in this thread, I think there are a lot of aspects of the forum that need upgrading, and the profile page (including where you put your gender in) is one of them.  And no, I absolutely don't think there should be a spot to enter that info in.  How are you going to know who's telling the truth anyway?  People who want any sort of privacy are either going to leave it blank or just lie about it, so IMO it's just useless.

But once again this is a decision for Theymos to make.  We can argue back and forth here until the next halving or the one after that, but unless the Big Boss decides to change things, there's not a damn thing we can do ourselves.

I think you ought to try not writing like your posts are texts or that you're on some gaming forum, because when I saw 'cod' I immediately thought of the fish and didn't know what the hell you were talking about.  Doubtful I'm the only one who's an old, non-gaming curmudgeon.

As to your idea, meh.  That's my long answer, because even if I had a very strong opinion on going back to square one it doesn't really matter--Theymos is the one who'd have to approve it, and there have been so many other ideas in the past that he's turned a deaf ear to that it's not likely he'd even consider this one.  Not that anyone knows what he thinks, since he rarely telegraphs his thoughts to the community, but just from experience this doesn't sound like something he'd get behind.

And that's why this statement is not necessarily true:


If, for example, something happened that was catastrophic to bitcoin--some black swan event that no one probably saw coming--its scarcity would mean diddly-squat.  I've heard people go on and on about the fixed supply guaranteeing bitcoin's price will just keep going up, but you're talking about supply and demand; note that there are two factors there, not just one.  Here's an example, Bitcore (BTX).  The supply is also capped at 21 million coins, yet just look at its price chart spanning all the way back to 2017:



Doesn't look anything like bitcoin, does it?  And it's obvious why: there's no demand for it, which goes the same for all the other shitcoins with fixed supply.  What exactly is there to discuss here?

Bismuth is definitely used in pharmaceuticals like bismuth subsalicylate (Pepto Bismol, the pink stuff used for upset stomach), and for some reason there's a tiny voice ringing in my head that it might also be used in nuclear medicine--but in any case, I still had no idea that demand for it had grown.

And gallium....man, I was just re-reading Plastic Fantastic, a book about the physics fraud Jan Hendrik Schon (I don't know how to put that pair of electrons over the 'o' in his last name, as he's from Germany, lol) and early on there was mention of research being done with copper gallium selenide.  The physics of it has to do with n-type conduction, which is way beyond anything I studied in physics when I was in college, but my point is that it was studied decades ago by researchers in the semiconductor field and by this point might have actual utility in electronics--though that's just a guess on my part.

The above book is an excellent one, by the way, even if it goes back a few years.

It's kind of sad that I get most of my world news from posts on this forum, but nevertheless I'm thankful that there are people here from all over the globe and that members like you write about thing like the above, which would probably never be reported on the TV news where I live (so thanks).

And being somewhat of a chemistry geek, I found that pictogram (or whatever the hell you call it) informative; some of those elements I was aware of in terms of their industrial importance--like copper and the platinum group metals, but bismuth and gallium and a few others I had no clue about.  So people are just barging into your area to dig up these metals?  That has got to cause some serious tension, not to mention legal issues.  I'm trying to picture that happening in the US, and my guess is that any foreign miners might last a day before law enforcement booted them out on their asses.  Man oh man.


Ugh....I would have merited your post, but after looking way back in your post history it seems clear you've either studied English very studiously or you're getting some help from this forum's dreaded nemesis, AI.

It is, yet so many people seem to love the taste of it and don't care about its toxicity in the least.

I'm going to have to go back and read about the details of this debacle, but is there anything preventing other HW wallet manufacturers from doing something similar?  I would imagine so; I even recall when the Electrum wallet for Dash was taken down from Github for what I think were political reasons, and I'm not even sure if those Dash could be restored if you didn't have the Electrum software.

Yep, my technical knowledge is still sketchy which is why all of this seems just a wee bit frightening to me.  You'd think in the world of crypto, you'd truly be in control of your coins as long as you had the seed phrase....but that's not 100% true, is it?

Well in the US I believe when situations like piracy happen and they affect corporations, it's up to the 'victims' to take legal action against the people pirating stuff.  If the music/movie/whatever industries never paid attention, the government wouldn't take any action.

At least that's my non-lawyer take on things.  I can't stand lawyers, by the way.

Shit like this should be treated as nuclear war, i.e., blow his ass to hell with as many missiles as you can.  Give him a neg, report him, and lock him up in a gibbet right in the middle of town so everyone can ridicule him.  That's what I'd do circa 2016, and it's what I'd do in 2025.

Yeah, buying a 10-year old merit source account with positive trust and an excellent reputation....how bad could that end up being, right?  Fortunately I think he would have been caught very quickly if he made a lot of posts; his PM just doesn't read like anything you'd write, Jet Cash.


I've heard bad things about Knots, but I'm neither going to defend nor criticize what I've heard since my own technical experience with running nodes is sorely lacking (and I've never found the need to run one anyhow).

BTW, always glad to see you here.

People have been pirating movies, music, and whatever else since the 90s (and that's just as far back as I can remember).  It kind of surprises me that piracy has taken a huge chunk of profit out of the music business and yet that industry never really cracked down on piracy in earnest.  There was a time when people were getting sued, but that didn't last for long.  That tells me that pretty much nobody cares if stuff gets pirated, including the government.

What I hate, absolutely hate, is that this subscription model has been adopted by so many industries because it's such a money-maker.  I've heard about having to subscribe to having your seats heated in the car that you bought....and damned if that isn't taking things way too far IMO.

Never heard that analogy before, but damned if it isn't as funny as it is true.  Unfortunately, TO had been around for quite a while and developed a reputation (justified or not) as an exchange that wasn't out to scam its customers, so I assume a lot of people became comfortable keeping their crypto parked there--and that's obviously a bad idea no matter what the exchange's reputation is.


Where did that document come from?  Looks to be an injunction of some sort, though I'm by no means a legal expert. 

My guess is that TO's situation has a lot to do with the crackdown on privacy that's apparently sweeping the globe.  That's a guess, mind you, and one I really don't hope is true.

You have that right, 100%.  Most HW wallets are pure crap, and that assessment is just from me browsing Amazon and bitcointalk.  I'm guessing there will come a day when people figure out that they can build their own or don't really need to shell out money for a device that may or may not be secure.  That day might be a long time coming, but I'm confident it will arrive just like the day when people wake up and come to the realization that the thousands of altcoins on the market are mostly scams designed to enrich the coins' "devs".

I'm getting more curmudgeonly and pessimistic as the years pass--I can't imagine what my attitude is going to be in about 5 years or so.