Utopian is a platform on the Steem blockchain which rewards various contributions to open-source projects.
They do this by giving out high-value upvotes to articles with details of the contributions made to open-source projects.

Contributions are curated by moderators and they get a certain score which determines the value of the upvote.



Current website: https://join.utopian.io/

Now, the reason why I'm asking this is because they're currently running a crowdfunding campaign for building a completely new platform.
They seem to want to create a more standalone platform, with more social features than are currently available on Steem.

A large part of their back-end will still be running on the Steem blockchain, but with their (future) new platform, submissions will be much more visible and easier to filter through.

Link to crowdfunding campaign: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/utopian-empowering-open-source-innovation/x/4464230#/

What do you guys think of this? Is this something that will ultimately be of great benefit to the open-source ecosystem in general? Or is it a wasted effort?

For those of you who don't know what Utopian is, they're a platform built on the Steem blockchain which incentivizes people to contribute to open-source projects.
You basically write a blog post with the details of your contribution and they will give you a significant reward for it.
Reward sizes depend on the curator's rating of your contribution.

More info: https://join.utopian.io/

Well, now they've launched an IndieGogo campaign to build a completely new platform called Utopian Colony.
This platform has a lot more features than their previous implementation on the Steem blockchain.

You will be able to build a profile and showcase your contributions. Utopian can then reward you for any work you put into open-source projects.

Check out their IndieGogo campaign: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/utopian-empowering-open-source-innovation/x/4464230#/

Or read my latest blog post on Steem

So, Steem recently got added to the Huobi exchange and the effects of that are reflected in the current price.
I'm personally very pleased with this, since I'm now earning about 20% more on my posts.

https://steemit.com/steem/@steemitblog/steem-now-on-huobi-exchange

I'm just hoping the price keeps increasing to $1 again.

From the 20th of February till the 27th of February, the Steem community is launching a promotion campaign on social media under the hashtag #sixtyseconds.
This is a community-run initiative to promote Steem on other social media platforms.

For this campaign, a couple of video advertisements have been created, some are actually pretty good.

Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41-KcNmZgrA

If you're a member of Steem, you can join in by reading the following post:

https://steemit.com/marketing/@surfermarly/join-the-60-seconds-of-steem-social-media-party-and-help-to-promote-steem-on-a-global-scale-tomorrow-20th-of-february-starting-from-10-00am-est-583ed362a19b4est

[Don't quote the entire OP with images when you reply]

I've seen a couple of articles pop up with the headline that you see in my title. According to a report by Cyphertrace, 1.7 billion USD worth of cryptocurrency was stolen in 2018.
The report explicitly mentions that many countries are ramping up their KYC requirements and in the report Lightning Network is added to the 'top 10 cryptocurrency threats'.



Full report: https://ciphertrace.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/crypto_aml_report_2018q4.pdf

Seems like we could soon see regulations implemented that make it illegal to send/receive cryptocurrency anonymously. At least, that's the sort of feeling I'm getting after reading the entire report.
Most countries are looking to implement forced compliance by 2020 at the very latest.



Articles about this report:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/donnafuscaldo/2019/01/31/hackers-stole-1-7b-worth-of-crypto-last-year/#4c01809590a0
https://www.livebitcoinnews.com/hackers-total-loot-for-2018-1-7-b-in-crypto-ciphertrace-says/

Don't quote the entire OP with images when you reply

Found this interesting article on Hackernoon, which states that the main source of the negative press surrounding Bitcoin's environmental impact, is completely untrustworthy and unscientific.

Here's an excerpt from the article:  

Almost all news articles that repeat the lie that crypto is an environmental problem can be traced back to one source: Alex de Vries, a twenty-something year old who has zero knowledge of the electricity industry, power system modelling, China, or any related real-world experience. He blogs from home on digiconomist.net. His “reports” are about as unscientific and unethical as you can get.

While claiming to be unbiased and touting “peer reviewed” “academic articles” his site uses incendiary language to describe the bitcoin computers that maintain system security and administration as “consuming huge amounts of energy” which have now, apparently, reached “epic proportions”. This “massive energy consumption” isn’t the biggest problem, though, according to de Vries; it is that “the network is mostly fueled by coal-fired power plants in China”, resulting in “an extreme carbon footprint for each unique Bitcoin transaction.”

Do read the full article, it's very interesting.

https://hackernoon.com/the-reports-of-bitcoin-environmental-damage-are-garbage-5a93d32c2d7

The report feature should really have some multiple preset options, in addition to the "enter comment:" field.
I've noticed that you often have to report content for the same reason.

For example, when I'm going through Bitcoin Discussion, I can usually find multiple threads for reporting where I just leave the same comment: 'Wrong board, move to Speculation board' (anything involving price speculation)

Wouldn't it be easier to have a couple of these options to choose from when you're reporting these posts?

Some examples:

• Wrong board, move to $subforum (selectable in a dropdown list for example)
• Plagiarism + Source field
• Low quality thread/reply

These are just a couple of examples that popped in my head, I'm sure that there are a lot more possible preset options out there

I think that with these preset options, some people would be more inclined to report just because they can already see what kind of 'violations' there are.
It would take out some ambiguity of the whole reporting process and it also just makes it easier to report the same type of rule-breaking content.

Also, for moderators it might just become easier to go through reports, if the reports adhere to a little bit of standardization for the clear-cut cases.

Let me know what you think! Is it too much work for too little change? Or would this be something useful for people who are active reporters/moderators?

EDIT:

Check out Suchmoon's One-click mod report hack => https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5103488

Source: https://twitter.com/EternitasIO

Eternitas is currently answering question on Twitter regarding their platform, which allows people to lock their inheritance on the blockchain.
Given that there are many topics on Bitcointalk asking about inheritance of digital assets, I thought this might be interesting for people.

I haven't seen this news yet in Altcoin Discussion, so I thought I'd share the article here.
Hackers have stolen 1.1 million USD on Coinbase by doing double spends, after they'd gotten control of more than 50% of the mining hashrate.

Ethereum $ETH▲1.15% Classic, one of the most popular forks of the second most valuable cryptocurrencies by market cap has suffered a 51-percent attack.

After Chinese blockchain security firm SlowMist raised the alarm, an analyst at CoinNess dug a little deeper. The analyst found that a private mining pool had managed to increase its hash power to 3,263 GH/s, making it – temporarily – the most powerful mining pool at around 11:00am UTC on 6 January.

After this brief spike in power, the mining pool returned to its normal state of around 300 GH/s. However, ten hours later the same thing happened again, and the pool’s hash rate began to climb. At the time CoinNess’ article was published the illicit mining pool’s power equated to around 63-percent of the total network hash rate.

Shortly after these attacks Coinbase paused all Ethereum Classic transactions, it initially detected that around 88,500 ETC ($460,000) had been double-spent. However, the cryptocurrency exchange has since uncovered another 12 attacks that “included double spends, [now] totaling 219,500 ETC ($1.1 million).”

Source: https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2019/01/08/ehtereum-classic-51-percent-attack/

At least 14 double spends were detected!

So, I've been steadily increasing the rate at which I'm reporting spam, but I have a question regarding spam replies in ICO bounty threads.

Is it okay to report spam replies to bounty threads? You know, these replies where people just quote their own posts 10 times.

Example:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5023814.msg47833236#msg47833236

In the end, it's just pure spam and it doesn't contribute anything to the forum, so I should just report it, right?
Or is this sort of stuff kinda condoned because it's contained within these bounty threads?

Ghello, i am new to this forum and i think ive contributed a lot to htis place.
i cant undrstand why i havnt receved any merit, good sir.

that's Y i have to make thisd long ass thread, in order to let people know that i am devervant of a lot of merit.

i relly tink that senior legendary membrs are just givin merit towards each other, not evn considerin new members of tis forum.

pl0x gief merit to thoos wo are deservant of htem merit points, it wuld go a long way to feed they're family.

i have brother, sister, mom on this forum. all got banned because of dubble account issues, relly not fayre at all :C
nun of them receved any merit ether.


Okay, I'm really sorry for posting this, it's just my completely whacked-out sense of humor.
Do you recognize any of the behaviour presented in this post?

The spelling errors might have been a bit too much, it's barely readable, but it kinda adds to the vibe I get from these sorts of posts.

Disclaimer: this is a shitpost, intended to make fun of all the merit beggars on this forum.

[HeyWebsite: https://crypton-exchange.net How to get a bonus of 0.005 btc( 18$ )? Enter this code: YQAOA in settings (promocode) https://crypton-exchange.net/profile#promocode_page ) IF YOU WANT WITHDRAW WITHOUT DEPOSIT, YOU NEED WRITE TO SUPPORT: "Hello, I want to withdraw without deposit" but before it you need to play one game in roulette from bonnus money. What is the reason for the site to give me a free bonus? This is a lie? - not. This website is absolutely unique and has no analogues. Players playing against other players, not versus website, and the website will to receives a commission of 10% for each game and each withdrawal, 5% of this commission is invested by the website to invite new players.]

Lately there have been a lot of messages like these posted on this forum:

Hey

Website: https://crypton-exchange.net

How to get a bonus of 0.005 btc( 18$ )?

Enter this code: YQAOA in settings (promocode) https://crypton-exchange.net/profile#promocode_page )


IF YOU WANT WITHDRAW WITHOUT DEPOSIT, YOU NEED WRITE TO SUPPORT: "Hello, I want to withdraw without deposit" but before it you need to play one game in roulette from bonnus money.
 

What is the reason for the site to give me a free bonus? This is a lie? - not. This website is absolutely unique and has no analogues. Players playing against other players, not versus website, and the website will to receives a commission of 10% for each game and each withdrawal, 5% of this commission is invested by the website to invite new players.

This is a scam where they supposedly offer you a free bonus and say that you can withdraw your winnings after sending a message through their live chat.

When you place a bet on their roulette, you will always win a big amount. Then, if you contact them on the live chat, they will ask you to either send 0.01 BTC or ask you to 'verify' using a credit card.
After you've done this, they just remove your account and you don't receive anything.

Don't fall for this and don't even create an account on this website.
They will use your login data to check whether they can access other websites with that data.

Be careful!

[HeyWebsite: https://crypton-exchange.net How to get a bonus of 0.005 btc( 18$ )? Enter this code: YQAOA in settings (promocode) https://crypton-exchange.net/profile#promocode_page ) IF YOU WANT WITHDRAW WITHOUT DEPOSIT, YOU NEED WRITE TO SUPPORT: "Hello, I want to withdraw without deposit" but before it you need to play one game in roulette from bonnus money. What is the reason for the site to give me a free bonus? This is a lie? - not. This website is absolutely unique and has no analogues. Players playing against other players, not versus website, and the website will to receives a commission of 10% for each game and each withdrawal, 5% of this commission is invested by the website to invite new players.]

Lately, I've been seeing a guy post the same message over and over.

Hey

Website: https://crypton-exchange.net

How to get a bonus of 0.005 btc( 18$ )?

Enter this code: YQAOA in settings (promocode) https://crypton-exchange.net/profile#promocode_page )


IF YOU WANT WITHDRAW WITHOUT DEPOSIT, YOU NEED WRITE TO SUPPORT: "Hello, I want to withdraw without deposit" but before it you need to play one game in roulette from bonnus money.
 

What is the reason for the site to give me a free bonus? This is a lie? - not. This website is absolutely unique and has no analogues. Players playing against other players, not versus website, and the website will to receives a commission of 10% for each game and each withdrawal, 5% of this commission is invested by the website to invite new players.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5084776

This is a known scam, where they will ask you to deposit onto their website to supposedly receive 'free' bitcoins.
I knew from the start that this was a scam, but I took the bait, just to find out how they were scamming people. (with throwaway login data of course)

They're posting this quite regularly and I don't want people to fall for it.

I want to post this message on all the posts I come across, before reporting them:

SCAM

This is a known scam, don't fall for it.

When you contact their support they will ask for credit card info or a Bitcoin deposit.
Do not believe anything this guy is saying and don't fall for it.

Don't create an account, because they will also use your password to get access to other services for which you've used the same password.

Op, stop posting this here, I will copy this message and post it as soon as I see another one of these posts!

Am I allowed to do that, since I'm just going to copy and paste the same message?

Musing.io is basically a website where you can ask and answer questions, just like Quora.
Except, it's on the Steem blockchain and you basically earn money for writing out decent answers and questions.

I think I'm making around $30 per week, just by spending like 30 minutes a day on there.
Not that much, but it's a pretty fun community.

Is anyone else active there?

https://musing.io/

Just found this disturbing news on the ETC subreddit. It appears as though ETC's Github has been compromised by possible hostile actors.
I'll cross-post the thread here:

-- ETC Community Notice --

To the ETC community, miners, stakeholders and fanatics.

This may be the most important point in ETC's history. More important than ETH hard forking from our network.

    ETC Declaration Of Independance
    Crypto-Decentralist Manifesto

-- Key Information --

TRUSTED ENTITIES

    Github: https://github.com/ethereumclassic
        This is the only TRUSTED code repository for ETC going forward
    Website: https://ethereumclassic.org
    Forum: https://forum.ethereumclassic.org/
    Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/EthereumClassic
    Twitter: https://twitter.com/eth_classic
    Discord: https://discord.gg/z9Qjkh

TRUSTED 3rd PARTY ENTITIES

    ETCDEV Github: https://github.com/orgs/ETCDEVTeam
    PARITY Github: https://github.com/paritytech
        PARITY Wallet: https://github.com/paritytech/parity-ethereum
    IOHK Github: https://github.com/input-output-hk
        MANTIS Wallet: https://github.com/input-output-hk/mantis

UNTRUSTED ENTITIES

    HOSTILE Github: https://github.com/ethereumproject
        DO NOT USE THIS ORG GOING FORAWRD. IT IS CONTROLLED BY MANIPULATION AND ALL SOFTWARE IS CONSIDERED A SECURITY RISK.
    HOSTILE Entity: https://www.dfg.group/

DO NOT USE ANY SOFTWARE PRODUCED THROUGH THESE ENTITIES AS THEY CANNOT BE TRUSTED. USE SOFTWARE AT YOUR OWN RISK. THEY HAVE PROVEN MALICIOUS AND HOSTILE AND THERE IS NO TELLING WHAT ELSE THEY MIGHT DO. KEEP YOUR ASSETS SAFE!!

​
-- What Happened --

ETCDEV's development team was manipulated into making Github organizational changes requested by DFG - Digital Finance Group which runs ETC Labs to add an owner to the EthereumProject Github Organazation. After multiple requests, the developer believed to be Eric Yang a.k.a krykoder was granted ownership roles on the Github organization. Shortly following in a malicious act founded by DFG management, all original owners were removed so that DFG could have controlling access of the Github organization.

After failed attempts to have Github restore proper ownerships. Github citing their TOS and failing to do what is right, along with the unresponsive and cold nature of DFG, we came to the conclusion this was indeed a malicious takeover brought on by the hands of DFG's management team.

DFG later published a public statement talking about doing what is best for the ecosystem, and sitting high and mighty on what they think was in the best interest of ETC. They made no attempts to talk with the community, its stakeholders, or anyone else involved with ETC to come to this decision. This has now been deemed a malicious attack on the ETC network, with hostile parties controlling the original Github organization.

We made one final attempt to reach out to James from DFG in order to revert their hostile actions, but were met with silence. The same group claiming to be doing what is in the best interest for ETC has nothing to say to the 6,000 member community. This does not align with their false public statements of doing what is best for the ecosystem.

-- What can you do --

We need every community member, miner, stakeholder and fan of ETC to voice their dismay loud and clear to DFG that this will not be tolerated.

DFG intends to centralize the network, the governance behind it and the future of ETC through its software development team ETC Labs. WITHOUT ANY SAY FROM YOU!

Please share this information, write your disapproval to DFG and ETC Labs management teams and let them know this will not be an acceptable way to act on our decentralized network.

ACT NOW! Beat the war drum on the doorsteps of these malicious actors. Communicate your disgust and distrust for this move with the following public contact points:

    DFG Email: [contact@dfg.group](mailto:contact@dfg.group)
    DFG LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/digitalfinancegroup/
    DFG Twitter: https://twitter.com/DigitalFin_GR
    DFG Angel.co: https://angel.co/digital-finance-group
    ETC Labs Email: [info@etclabs.org](mailto:info@etclabs.org)
    ETC Labs Twitter: https://twitter.com/etclabs
    ETC Labs LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/etclabs/
    ETC Labs Angel.co: https://angel.co/etclabs
    James Wo Twitter: https://twitter.com/woquan826
    James Wo LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-wo-272904114/
    James Wo Email: [james.w@dfg.group](mailto:james.w@dfg.group)
    Terry Culver LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terry-culver-518a836/
    Terry Culver Email: [terry.c@dfg.group](mailto:terry.c@dfg.group)

Please take a moment out of your day to stand up to the corporate bullies using the same type of tactics current corporations use to bleed its users dry.

​
This Notice as Github Gist

Want to help? Email MikO: [miko@ethereumclassic.org](mailto:miko@ethereumclassic.org)

Do read the entire thread, as I've not included all the links that were present in this post. be careful not to download anything from the ETC Github until further notice, stay safe!
https://www.reddit.com/r/EthereumClassic/comments/a5tuud/etc_time_to_stand_up_against_hostile_centralized/

The crypto industry has the urge to purge amid the prolonged bear market. The latest victim is ETCDEV, a major Ethereum Classic development team that launched in 2016.

Igor Artamonov, the founder and chief technology officer of ETCDEV, announced that the group is shutting down due to lack of funds.

“As is publicly known, we have struggled with funding our operation in the last few weeks,” Artamonov wrote on Twitter.” This was partially due to the market crash, combined with a cash crunch in the company.”

Source: https://www.ccn.com/crypto-downturn-claims-another-victim-ethereum-classic-dev-team-etcdev-shuts-down/

Well, this is definitely going to be a serious blow to the development on Ethereum Classic.
I suspect that it'll grow a lot slower, now that development is fully in the hands of the community.

And again the reasons given are 'lack of funds due to bear market'.

I would think that these companies would build some sort of a war-chest for times like these. I mean everybody knows that bear markets are bound to happen some day.

Ever since I gambled at cryptocurrency casino's that offered instant withdraws, I haven't used any other online casino that imposes 'reviews' on payouts.
I'm wondering if other people still play at online casinos where they have to wait for days before their withdraw is processed.

Why would you even play at such a casino?
They usually even encourage you to cancel your withdraw, to keep you playing. Seems somewhat manipulative to me... Why would anyone support that?

The founder of Steemit, Ned Scott has announced that they have been 'forced' to layoff close to 70% of their employees, due to rising infrastructure costs & the failing cryptocurrency markets.
He made the announcement on his personal Steemit blog yesterday.

There's been an overwhelmingly positive response from the community, with people starting up initiatives to keep the Steem project going through community-run efforts.

Check out the announcement here: https://steemit.com/steem/@ned/2fajh9-steemit-update

Dear Steemians,

Steemit, Inc. is currently undergoing a structural reorganization which I believe is important to share with the community. Steemit Inc., is a private company that runs the open-source steemit.com, a decentralized app on the Steem blockchain. Steemit Inc., also uses some of its resources and engineers to contribute code updates to the Steem blockchain. In addition, we provide APIs to third party developers at our own expense to help grow the developer ecosystem.

Given the weakness of the cryptocurrency market, the fiat returns on our automated selling of STEEM diminishing, and the growing costs of running full Steem nodes, we have been forced to layoff close to 70% of the team. The remainder of the team is staying on to focus primarily on reducing the costs of the infrastructure running steemit.com and our public APIs, and ensuring that the community can remain informed of developments.

We have conducted our first all-hands meeting and are prioritizing all the cost reduction solutions we can accomplish in the near term, including replacing steemd plugins with hivemind, pitchforking Steem to prune the chain state size from 160gb to 0gb, AWS usage projections, DevOps solutions, reduction of Staging and Testing nodes, and eliminating redundancies.

We still believe that Steem can be by far the best, and lowest cost, blockchain protocol for applications and that the improvements that will result from this new direction will make it far better for application sustainability. However, in order to ensure that we can continue to improve Steem, we need to first get costs under control to remain economically sustainable. There’s nothing that I want more now than to survive, to keep steemit.com operating, and keep the mission alive, to make great communities.

There are two reasons I’m in cryptocurrency: first, I came in because I believed in the potential of cryptocurrency to give us greater freedom through unrestricted value transfer, value store and all the financial tools that come along with that, which can empower us like few technological innovations have. The second reason I stay in cryptocurrency, is because it has the potential to spawn the next killer application that can rival the Instagrams and Reddits of the world, and that fuels the mission to make great communities, which need unrestricted access to financial tools.

Over the last many months, along with a hyper-talented team, I have gone back to the drawing board and figured out the remaining challenges that are acting as barriers in the way of that killer application and making great communities. In that time we have created many assets that will help us accomplish this mission. Over the next several weeks, despite our course for bringing these products to the world being changed, I hope to share the assets we have created with you, including showing you how their success would be a benefit to Steem and cryptocurrency in general.

I would like to thank all of our employees and contractors for their months and years of dedication and hard work. It is incredibly difficult to part with these great people who I have gotten to know well and respect. I am deeply grateful to the many contributions to our mission. In order to minimize the impact on these people, we are doing as much as we can to smooth their employment transitions. Everyone who has assisted us are outstanding individuals that any organization would be lucky to have.

Source: https://steemit.com/steem/@ned/2fajh9-steemit-update

Lately I've been very interested in looking at all the different cryptocurrencies that have the goal of providing people with a universal basic income.
I currently have a whopping 24 projects listed in my Overview of Universal Basic Income Crypto Projects thread, so I think I've seen pretty much every basic income related cryptocurrency out there. 

One thing I've noticed while doing research on all of these projects, is that almost none of them seem to have realistic means of actually giving their cryptocurrency any value.

I would argue that Manna is one of the projects that currently the most far ahead, but I don't really see how something like this can succeed without ongoing donations/crowdfunding/philanthropic investments/...

From what would these basic income cryptocurrencies gain value? Why would people buy these coins from exchanges, if you take out any purchases for philanthropic reasons?

Some of these basic income coins are hoping to build some sort of internal marketplace (for goods and services) that would create demand for the currency, but I don't see that working on a large scale.
Swiftdemand is one coin that goes for an approach like that, while Manna seems to focus more on getting funding from the public and NGO's.

If you're looking at the price charts of Manna for example, you can see that its value has been steadily dropping to a measly $0.000786 USD or 0.00000012 BTC.


Source: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/manna/

I just don't immediately see how any of these project could become 'self-sufficient'. I would think that they would always need some form of institutional funding to keep their value up, since almost everybody would just be selling the basic income they would receive from them.

I'd like to hear your input on this.

Just found a small interesting article, which lists the coins with the largest amount of developers working on their projects.
Not surprisingly, Ethereum came out on top, with over 1000 developers contributing code the the project.

One interesting coin on that list is definitely LBRY, which has 334 developers and 19 of them were actively contributing to the code (active developers last week).
I say interesting, because the coin barely has any volume or marketcap.

Source: https://bitcoinexchangeguide.com/how-to-judge-a-blockchain-project-by-code-contributors-top-6-crypto-developer-communities/