Most of us probably know of Credits by now, they're often dismissed as not being a real contended despite signs of having the fastest blockchain by a long way. Legitimacy has always been a concern. As of now they've just announced a partnership with Lenovo. What do you think this will do to the price?

https://credits.com/en/Home/New_Ins/4154

Here's the link for you guys.

One thing I've constantly seen being said is that bitcoin volume is significantly lower than it was in the run up to and at its peak in December. While looking at the USD/BTC chart I noticed an interesting thing and that is how relatively the volume isn't changed all that much. By that I mean:

Dec 17th high: $20,035   Volume: 14,916,600,000     that means approximately 745,000 bitcoin changed hands on that date.

Yesterday, March 27th: $7979    Volume:   5,480,430,000    approximately 687,000 bitcoin changed hands.

From that we can see that volume is only down about 10% in terms of actual bitcoin traded. I'm not entirely sure how to interpret this, just perhaps to ignore some of the stories stating how bitcoin volume is so low, because all of them are measuring that volume in USD not in BTC.

Be interested to hear any opinions on what this could mean for the market.

All data was taken from coinmarketcap.

    Date                Close        Volume          Bitcoin volume
Dec 17, 2017   19,140.80   13,314,600,000   695613.5585
Dec 18, 2017   19,114.20   14,839,500,000   776359.9837
Dec 19, 2017   17,776.70   16,894,500,000   950373.2414
Dec 20, 2017   16,624.60   22,149,700,000   1332344.838
Dec 21, 2017   15,802.90   16,516,600,000   1045162.597
Dec 22, 2017   13,831.80   22,198,000,000   1604852.586
Dec 23, 2017   14,699.20   13,086,000,000   890252.5307
Dec 24, 2017   13,925.80   11,572,300,000   830997.142
Dec 25, 2017   14,026.60   10,664,700,000   760319.6783
Dec 26, 2017   16,099.80   13,454,300,000   835681.1886
Dec 27, 2017   15,838.50   12,487,600,000   788433.2481
Dec 28, 2017   14,606.50   12,336,500,000   844589.7374
Dec 29, 2017   14,656.20   13,025,500,000   888736.5074
Dec 30, 2017   12,952.20   14,452,600,000   1115841.324
Dec 31, 2017   14,156.40   12,136,300,000   857301.2913
Jan 01, 2018   13,657.20   10,291,200,000   753536.5961
Jan 02, 2018   14,982.10   16,846,600,000   1124448.509
Jan 03, 2018   15,201.00   16,871,900,000   1109920.4
Jan 04, 2018   15,599.20   21,783,200,000   1396430.586
Jan 05, 2018   17,429.50   23,840,900,000   1367847.615
Jan 06, 2018   17,527.00   18,314,600,000   1044936.384
Jan 07, 2018   16,477.60   15,866,000,000   962882.9441
Jan 08, 2018   15,170.10   18,413,900,000   1213828.518
Jan 09, 2018   14,595.40   16,660,000,000   1141455.527
Jan 10, 2018   14,973.30   18,500,800,000   1235586.01
Jan 11, 2018   13,405.80   16,534,100,000   1233354.22
Jan 12, 2018   13,980.60   12,065,700,000   863031.6295
Jan 13, 2018   14,360.20   12,763,600,000   888817.7045
Jan 14, 2018   13,772.00   11,084,100,000   804828.6378
Jan 15, 2018   13,819.80   12,750,800,000   922647.2163
Jan 16, 2018   11,490.50   18,853,800,000   1640816.327
Jan 17, 2018   11,188.60   18,830,600,000   1683016.642
Jan 18, 2018   11,474.90   15,020,400,000   1308978.727
Jan 19, 2018   11,607.40   10,740,400,000   925306.2701
Jan 20, 2018   12,899.20   11,801,700,000   914917.2042
Jan 21, 2018   11,600.10   9,935,180,000   856473.6511
Jan 22, 2018   10,931.40   10,537,400,000   963957.0412
Jan 23, 2018   10,868.40   9,660,610,000   888871.407
Jan 24, 2018   11,359.40   9,940,990,000   875133.3697
Jan 25, 2018   11,259.40   8,873,170,000   788067.7478
Jan 26, 2018   11,171.40   9,746,200,000   872424.2261
Jan 27, 2018   11,440.70   7,583,270,000   662832.6938
Jan 28, 2018   11,786.30   8,350,360,000   708480.1846
Jan 29, 2018   11,296.40   7,107,360,000   629170.3552
Jan 30, 2018   10,106.30   8,637,860,000   854700.5333
Jan 31, 2018   10,221.10   8,041,160,000   786721.5857
Feb 01, 2018   9,170.54   9,959,400,000   1086021.107
Feb 02, 2018   8,830.75   12,726,900,000   1441202.616
Feb 03, 2018   9,174.91   7,263,790,000   791701.499
Feb 04, 2018   8,277.01   7,073,550,000   854602.0846
Feb 05, 2018   6,955.27   9,285,290,000   1335000.654
Feb 06, 2018   7,754.00   13,999,800,000   1805493.939
Feb 07, 2018   7,621.30   9,169,280,000   1203112.33
Feb 08, 2018   8,265.59   9,346,750,000   1130802.52
Feb 09, 2018   8,736.98   6,784,820,000   776563.5265
Feb 10, 2018   8,621.90   7,780,960,000   902464.654
Feb 11, 2018   8,129.97   6,122,190,000   753039.6791
Feb 12, 2018   8,926.57   6,256,440,000   700878.3889
Feb 13, 2018   8,598.31   5,696,720,000   662539.499
Feb 14, 2018   9,494.63   7,909,820,000   833083.543
Feb 15, 2018   10,166.40   9,062,540,000   891420.7586
Feb 16, 2018   10,233.90   7,296,160,000   712940.3258
Feb 17, 2018   11,112.70   8,660,880,000   779367.7504
Feb 18, 2018   10,551.80   8,744,010,000   828674.7285
Feb 19, 2018   11,225.30   7,652,090,000   681682.4495
Feb 20, 2018   11,403.70   9,926,540,000   870466.6029
Feb 21, 2018   10,690.40   9,405,340,000   879793.0854
Feb 22, 2018   10,005.00   8,040,080,000   803606.1969
Feb 23, 2018   10,301.10   7,739,500,000   751327.5281
Feb 24, 2018   9,813.07   6,917,930,000   704971.0233
Feb 25, 2018   9,664.73   5,706,940,000   590491.4053
Feb 26, 2018   10,366.70   7,287,690,000   702990.3441
Feb 27, 2018   10,725.60   6,966,180,000   649490.9376
Feb 28, 2018   10,397.90   6,936,190,000   667076.0442
Mar 01, 2018   10,951.00   7,317,280,000   668183.7275
Mar 02, 2018   11,086.40   7,620,590,000   687381.8372
Mar 03, 2018   11,489.70   6,690,570,000   582310.2431
Mar 04, 2018   11,512.60   6,084,150,000   528477.4942
Mar 05, 2018   11,573.30   6,468,540,000   558919.2365
Mar 06, 2018   10,779.90   6,832,170,000   633787.883
Mar 07, 2018   9,965.57   8,797,910,000   882830.5857
Mar 08, 2018   9,395.01   7,186,090,000   764883.6989
Mar 09, 2018   9,337.55   8,704,190,000   932170.6443
Mar 10, 2018   8,866.00   5,386,320,000   607525.3778
Mar 11, 2018   9,578.63   6,296,370,000   657335.1304
Mar 12, 2018   9,205.12   6,457,400,000   701500.9038
Mar 13, 2018   9,194.85   5,991,140,000   651575.6103
Mar 14, 2018   8,269.81   6,438,230,000   778522.1184
Mar 15, 2018   8,300.86   6,834,430,000   823339.9913
Mar 16, 2018   8,338.35   5,289,380,000   634343.7251
Mar 17, 2018   7,916.88   4,426,150,000   559077.5659
Mar 18, 2018   8,223.68   6,639,190,000   807325.9174
Mar 19, 2018   8,630.65   6,729,110,000   779675.9224
Mar 20, 2018   8,913.47   6,361,790,000   713727.6504
Mar 21, 2018   8,929.28   6,043,130,000   676776.851
Mar 22, 2018   8,728.47   5,530,390,000   633603.5983
Mar 23, 2018   8,879.62   5,954,120,000   670537.7032
Mar 24, 2018   8,668.12   5,664,600,000   653498.1057
Mar 25, 2018   8,495.78   4,569,880,000   537899.9927
Mar 26, 2018   8,209.40   5,921,040,000   721251.2486
Mar 27, 2018   7,833.04   5,378,250,000   686610.8178

Edit: I added the calculations from December 17th through to today using the close for the day. It's definitely clear to see that volume's have dropped off a little but not as much as would seem apparent if you considered USD volumes. The average BTC volume in this period was 880,883 per day.

"Bitcoin is down, crypto is down, everything is down, this is the end, crypto and bitcoin are dead."

How often have you read the above in the last weeks? Let's look at some things in a bit more context here to really understand things. 3 months ago, bitcoin price was around exactly the price we're at today. A year ago it was at about 1k, that's a 600% increase since then. All this crash/correction has shown is that nothing can rise indefinitely and at an ever increasing pace.

Take a step back people and think about things logically, nothing else in the world would offer the same ROI that crypto has for the last year, do not let your greed blind you, the illusion that you could invest and the price would continue to rise without any resistance is dead but crypto is not.

[1. Is the initial amount of merit people received fair?]

So it's been a day or so now since merit was introduced and I've shared some of my thoughts and opinions on it across a number of threads, now I feel I'll compile them all in one place.

1. Is the initial amount of merit people received fair?

Many people have complained at the unfairness of receiving the same merit points when they were 1 week away from a rank compared to someone who just ranked up. Frankly they're right and it isn't fair. However it's hard to have done anything that would have been fair, the most logical would have been to give everyone merit = activity (except for newbies and juniors) but even if we had settled on everyone receiving the merit between their ranks it would've been a much fairer solution overall. In this scenario all Members would have received 55 merit, all full 175 merit etc.

For anyone saying that they should've waited until the next activity period - the argument is completely false because there would be people each activity period who are one activity period away from a new rank.

I think it's safe to say this could've been introduced in a better way but now it's too late and it's just going to have to be something people suck up and deal with.

2. Will it combat spam effectively?

To answer this I think we need to consider the two main sources of spam - account farmers and signature campaign exploiters. Account farmers build up accounts and rank them up to sell them on. Signature campaign exploiters have many alts that participate in signature campaigns. So how do these changes effect each one?

Account Farmers

Account farmers are the ones that will be hit the hardest and this is where we'll probably see the biggest change. They can no longer just spam there 14 posts per activity period to ensure they achieve the highest rank, or even 1 post per activity period until they reach the potential activity they desire and then spam all their posts at once. They will now have to produce constructive posts in order to rank the accounts beyond Jr Member status. Mostly the farmed accounts are sold to people to use for signature campaigns (will probably require member+ we'll cover that next) or just because they want a high ranking account. This will make a huge difference in that many will simply not try and those that do try will have to up their post quality. In short, merit will probably combat this problem very well.

Signature campaign spammers

The second source of spam in the forum comes from signature campaigns, I myself have participated in campaigns and am a big supporter but it's no doubt people create multiple accounts and spam the forum as a result of such campaigns. Before we start, it's important to note that with the changes, junior members can no longer have links within their signature, this in turn will likely lead to signature campaigns being for members and above.

The merit system will struggle to combat this in a number of ways. Firstly all accounts that are already member plus will still be able to participate in campaigns and their post quality can remain exactly the same. This is going to make up a large number of the accounts. It can act as a deterrent to new accounts being created as it will require some quality posts to achieve a higher rank and higher rewards but still people can just farm member accounts and use these, once they have their 10 merit then their post quality does not matter.

Even worse, if signature campaigns decide to still allow Jr Members (this is entirely possible) and accept that they won't have links in their signatures then the spam could actually become worse. In the environment whereby accounts cannot rank up beyond Jr Member without quality posts there is no incentive to write anything of use or substance. Previously signature campaign participants had an incentive to post quality posts because they did not want their accounts to be banned for spamming and lose all of their progress. It would take months to reach a new rank and having to start again is a big set back. If Jr Members are still allowed in campaigns there is very little risk in regard to their accounts being banned for spam, they can simply create another Jr Member in approximately 1 month. In short, I think merit will have mixed effects here and won't be nearly as effective as it will be against account farmers.

3. Is the way that sMerit works well thought and will it be fair and effective?

The math

By now you probably know that the only long term source of sMerit is from selected accounts. Theymos has said that in total there will be 8175 sMerit to be distributed each month. Before we actually look at how this sMerit may or may not be fairly distributed let's just break that down with some numbers.

Each account previously if fulfilling its potential growth would grow by 30 activity per 30 days. Given that, dividing 8175 by 30 we get 272.5. That means that 272.5 accounts with the new measure could grow at the rate they were previously able to grow. Now as of writing we have approximately 1.7m accounts in this forum, of course many will be inactive but even removing those it's a lot more than 272.5

An alternative way to look at this point is to consider the posts per day. If we take the average number of posts per month from January 2015 to December 2017 (therefore discounting for the fact the forum has got a lot busier in the last months than at the beginning of this time period which would only serve to worsen things) we get an average monthly number of posts of 451,274. Given that of those 451,274 posts there will be a total of 8175 merit given out we can calculate that per post we are looking at approximately 0.0018 merit being given per post, or alternatively 1 in 55 posts earning 1 merit. Compare that to previously where a user could assume that per 1 post they'd gain 1 activity up to the limit then it's a much slower rate of progression. These figures were calculated from the official forum stats if anyone wants to check my calculations.

The logic

The math is all very good at showing that there's probably not enough sMerit to go around but it also fails to highlight a number of other things.

Will sMerits be fairly distributed across ranks and sections of the forums? I've seen many concerns that lower ranked members will never receive merit and that it will in fact always go to the higher ranked members of the forum, undoubtedly there is some correlation between post quality and ranking but it does not mean to say that a newbie can not have excellent post quality, will they be rewarded for that, that remains to be seen. Also, given that there are currently about 30 merit sources, will they check enough of the forum that all areas are covered and peoples contributions are rewarded, it's highly likely that they are more likely to be in sections that are regarded as more 'elite' such as 'development and technical discussion' or 'serious discussion'. Newer ranked members are less likely to post in these sections and even some higher ranked members may chose no to, I myself do not and find I am much more able to offer advice in other sections of the forum, it remains to be seen how the spread of sMerits will be across the forum. One seemingly obvious solution to this would be to have more sMerit sources, it does not have to mean more circulating sMerits but more sources would mean that more of the forum is likely to be scoured for good quality posts. Furthermore I think it is worth considering sMerits not being spendable/giftable to legendary accounts, they are effectively wasted as there is nowhere for them to progress from Legendary.

What of sMerit sources that become inactive, we only have a finite amount already, we can be sure that some of the 30 or so sources will become inactive and that even further reduces the scarcity of sMerit.

One thing I feel would be a nice solution in the long term would be to have some sort of way to nominate yourself or others for consideration for a rank increase or a merit boost. Undoubtedly some people's contributions will go unrewarded and they should be able to speak out about it. Of course some consideration of controls would be needed so as to not have many Jr Members spamming saying they deserve more merit.

From both the intuition and the math it would seem right now that we are set for a period of great scarcity and ranks will be much harder to progress throughout, of course it's early days and this could change but those are my initial impressions.

4. Why do ranks even matter, it's not like it makes a difference?

This is one question I found myself answering earlier and the real short of it is this. Rightly or wrongly people can make money by posting in this forum, as they increase ranks, their earning potential increases. The community is incentivised to contribute and help one another by such things as signature campaigns. If we end up in a scenario whereby the elite remain elite and those at the bottom remain at the bottom then it will only promote discontent within the forum. It is vital for the forums success that there is always a progression and a constant stream of new members. If these new members feel that the same opportunities are not afforded to them then they won't stick around.

5. Summing up

This covers most of my initial thoughts on the new merit system, I see a lot of good in it and a lot of potential but also it has a feel of something that was perhaps a little rush and not well thought out. It remains to be seen how well it will function and we should all give it time but subsequently there should be a willingness for people to listen to feedback and consider change. Spam will certainly be reduced in the forum but a correct balance needs to be found between limiting spam and limiting opportunity for new members. If things don't work out and sMerits are too scarce I hope that this is acknowledged and changes are made whether that be in increasing the number of sMerits in supply or reducing the merits required to rank up.

I'm really interested for some feedback and your inputs on this, especially your feelings regarding the total supply of sMerits and if you feel like it's enough to sustain the ranking up of accounts. If anyone has any access to more detailed numbers about things such as the amount of activity gained each month by the whole forum or anything similar please let me know as I'd be really interested to look in to it.

Now feel free to agree or disagree with some of my points but let's try keep it to constructive criticism and discussion instead of just flaming people.