This thread is to serve as a reference for my negative trust on the member in question.

I decided to get off my ass this morning and start spreading some merits around, and a couple of PMs into my backlog of requests for post history reviews I came across one from superman184.  I checked his registration date, looked at his merit count and kind of scratched my head.  After un-ignoring a bunch of sections I was able to see that he started off his lousy bitcointalk career on June 28, 2017 with a post in the Indonesian section (forgive me, I forgot how to quote posts from locked threads):

ane sejak 2013 main bitcoin dalam satu tahun berhenti karena kalah dalam taruhan dana nya hasil dari stellar dulu 0.6 btc waktu harga masih murah, setelah kalah ane pensi jadi kagak main btc lagi ini mulai lagi gan mencari hasil dari btc 2017, vakum 3tahunan

No idea what that means, as I don't speak the language.  His first post in the English section on January 5, 2018 was this:

oh god it was still a long time ended participation for bounty earth token this, i just read and asked, hope not disappoint only and success always to token earth greeting profit.
do we have to show a reply about the reposts of fb and twitter we repost, I do not think there is a rule asking for it, what should?

Obviously homeboy's grasp of English is straight-up bad, bad, bad.  He continued to post here and there in the Indonesian section and used the same quality of English his main section posts up until July 18, 2018, after which there was no activity on the account until September 20, 2021 when he came back with this:

Hi I am new to crypto and wonder what are some of the best technical indicators to use for trading?

According to my experience in trading in cryptocurrency more to use the Moving Average (MA), because MA is an indicator of the trend-line moving lagging, or slower than price movements. The moving MA line indicates an uptrend or bullishness, while the downward MA line indicates a downtrend or bearish trend. I also use two MA lines with different periods to determine the open position signal. For example, MA 20 and MA 50. MA 20 which is MA 50 from top to bottom produces bearish signals, so I can open short positions. On the other hand, if the 20 MA 50 is from the bottom up, this indicates a bullish signal to open a long position.

If you compare the two posts in English that I've shown, the jump in proficiency is incredible.  You might say that one could improve one's language skills considerably over the course of 4 years, but I would argue that going from this:

in my opinion many benefits from the best project token earth here is the existence of a comfortable and clean environment. because the earth is old and added more natural damage caused by humans so that the weather on earth is so uncertain because of the human hand itself

to this:

Since the popularity of AI, a lot has changed in so many sectors;

1. Students now rely much on it for their assignments and it's almost difficult to engage the brain in constructive reasoning since AI can always come through for them

This only happens to students who already use the internet every day and continue to use the internet when they know that (AI) can really make it easier for them to complete the assignments given by their teachers at school. So his own reasoning and thought patterns will not work when he is not dealing with the internet because he cannot access AI to complete every existing task. So when this happens, should we blame the AI developers or should we advise every teacher in school to check all of their students' work using special checking technology that can detect AI thoroughly?

2. It has affected the graphic space since you can just do an AI portrait, or simple graphics for yourself using the AI tool, and the graphics guy is technically not needed anymore.

When graphics experts are generally no longer needed and no longer paid well because of the presence of AI, this makes me think of aerial cameramen whose work is no longer needed since the advent of drone cameras. So in general, graphic experts are also very disturbed by the presence of AI because their work is no longer valued expensively by people who previously needed special services from graphic experts. There is also a need to find a solution for this so that graphics experts can continue to develop their skills, even if it is not to beat this AI.

3. The coding guys are not even left out and although it has its advantages in all these sectors I feel it also has done a huge damage in increasing the rate of laziness on the part of the youth.

Because the aim is to make things easier, of course the level of laziness among young people will naturally appear. This is also triggered by the complexity of creating your own coding so that on average beginners who learn about coding will choose shortcuts when they already know about AI and this also makes coding experts lose space to work as usual. So I don't know what solution to look for to overcome this because in fact it has happened like that now.

We are enjoying the ease that comes with doing things using AI at the snap of our fingertips but I fear that over dependent on it might have serious effects on society, in the years to come.

There will definitely be an impact if it continues to be used and relied on excessively because when everyone no longer relies on their own minds and tends to rely on AI for everything, and what is really feared is that the minds of all humans will always depend on AI without any sense of creating their own new things in his life. Even though everything that can be detected by AI now also comes from the creations of all the people who already exist on the internet.

....isn't reasonable, especially not for a shitposting bounty hunter/sig spammer.  In addition, all posts in the Indonesian section stopped in 2018.

For the reasons I've given above, I'm tagging superman184's account, and I would ask anyone who's willing to see if they can find any alt accounts this guy has, because members like him are like cockroaches.  If you see one scurrying around, there's probably a zillion of them hiding out where you can't.  I've been getting a sinking feeling in my chest lately that there are a lot of members asking for post history reviews for themselves and for who knows how many of their alt accounts as well, and I think I'm going to have to either rescind my offer or modify my requirements.

Thanks in advance, guys.

First off, I apologize if any of what I'm mentioning here is old news or has been discussed in other threads.  The search function on bitcointalk is fucked beyond belief.

For no other reason than I'm awake early with nothing to do, I was looking through my brokerage account's various investment strategies, and I came across a category for crypto--my broker is Schwab as I mentioned in the title, and compared with TD Ameritrade or even Scottrade before the buyouts happened, they blow monkey balls in terms of site navigation and UI.  Anyway, on the one hand I'm damn happy bitcoin (and crypto more generally) is getting serious recognition from institutions as starchy as ol' Schabby.

There's no straight-up bitcoin ETF, of course, but Schwab offers these:



After looking at the Schwab Crypto Thematic ETF, it's clear that if you bought in you wouldn't be buying any coins, any fund with coins, but probably a business or two that might own some crypto.  Meh.  I didn't look at the other one, which is likely even weaker tea.

Next we have the "Crypto Trusts"":



Now these I think I might have heard of before, and this is where I'm thinking that I could be treading on old ground.  But I never actually realized that these "trusts" are traded as OTC stocks.  Of course when I clicked on a couple to see the details, there's pretty much NO information on any of them provided by Schwab.  The only thing I gleaned about the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust shares is this:



This is apparently a fund that holds bitcoin, and I'm not really sure what the difference is between it and a bitcoin ETF.  But in any case, you've gotta laugh sardonically at the

less the Trust’s liabilities (including estimated accrued expenses)

statement, because how many expenses can there be for just being a fund that holds/tracks bitcoin and bitcoin only?  It's not as though it needs to be actively managed, but the net expense ratio is 2%!

And finally, there's Schwab's recommendation for people who really, really don't want to get their hands dirty with crypto but might want to dangle their toes in the muck.  These are regular ol' plain-Jane stocks that presumably have a tangential relationship at least with crypto:



Coinbase, Microstrategy, and Riot definitely make sense. 

PayPal, maybe.  They're just getting started with whatever it is they're eventually going to fuck up. 

Overstock?  I know they accept crypto and I don't think they use a payment processor like many other businesses do that accept bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, but I'm not sure how much they hold at any given time or that it'd be a good play on bitcoin in any case.  They're a retailer after all, and I'd assume that any profits or losses made by holding their stock would be due to their core business and very little to do with their relationship with bitcoin. 

Visa?  Guess I missed something important, because I would never have thought to buy their stock if I wanted exposure to crypto.

So that's Schwib-Schwab's crypto page in a nutshell.  Thought I'd share some of it for those who don't use them or perhaps have never even had an account with a stock broker.  I know there are a lot of young people on the forum who might not have had the chance yet--and let me suggest that if and when you do decide to open an account to make stock trades, steer clear of Schwab.  There are much better brokerages out there (I remember E-Trade circa 2002 and it was kick-ass even then).  And pssst: stay away from Robinhood as well.  They just flat-out suck.

I have a habit of browsing for stupid crypto-related stuff on the internet, and I happened to be on craigslist and did a search for bitcoin.  This is one of the results that came up, from a guy apparently buying large amounts of BTC at 12.5% above market price.  Oh, and:

I have an ID verified LBC/paxful account and I’m a pro trader. Unfortunately, they are closed now.

Lol.  But this was the image he used in his ad:



This is not the Electrum wallet we're all discussing in this section of the forum, right?  Admittedly I haven't kept up with any new developments but I probably would have heard about it if a software wallet managed to crack the problem of trust and the need for an escrow agent when two people transact bitcoin.  And that link is obviously not to Electrum's website; there's no way I'm visiting it without knowing what it is.

Anyone see something like this before?

Edit: Not sure if it's appropriate to keep that phone number in there, but it was made public in the craigslist ad.  Don't want anyone to crank call this....guy.  Or spam him or enter that phone number on various websites that require phone numbers.  Know what I mean?   

No bloviated preface like I'd normally write here.

I've reached a certain point in my life where my need for cash to live on far outweighs my need for new bicycle parts, underwear, haircuts, toilet paper, and collectible HW wallets.  Regarding that last one, I am trying to sell off some of my puny collection on eBay but they have a knack for locating sellers' orifices, finding spots for new ones, and then violating all of them until you're left with dust--which the government then taxes, but that's another story.

So I have this Coldcard Genesis Edition:



And the member I got it from will recognize it instantly, and to him I apologize.  Is there any interest in one of these?  I know I could hold an auction, but I'm reluctant to because I've never done one.

I've also got a few 2022 Ballet Lunar New Year cards and was wondering the same thing:




Any input (not of the eBay variety if you know what I mean) would be greatly appreciated.  You guys know this stuff like walking encyclopedias, and I feel like a palsied dollar store novel.

This ebay member:



is selling this:



loaded onto which is this crazy-looking, never-seen-before software wallet:



And it's ONLY $30!!  Ladies and gentlemen, I think this genius might just have put Ledger, Trezor, Keystone, and all the way down to Keepkey out of business.  Get 'em while they last.

Sarcasm out.  Can you believe this crap?  The dude would only have to sell one of them to make a profit, since that USB drive was likely purchased in a pack of 100 for pennies.  I found his listing a week or so ago, and I'm happy to say that he doesn't seem to have gotten any bites....yet.  The seller is operating out of North Carolina.  Hey, Quickseller:  isn't that your neck of the woods?  I could swear Vod doxxed QS and he was from that state.  Or it could be S. Carolina.  In any case, that's not an accusation, just my rambling thoughts.

In the very old days of ebay, you could leave any feedback you wanted for any member for any reason (sort of like the system here).  When I see scams like this, I wish I could just hand out a negative without having to buy someone's item.

HW wallets have kind of fascinated me since I first learned of them, and I often check Amazon to see what new products are coming to market--for lack of a better place to browse such information; if anyone has a better idea, I'm all ears.  Anyway, I stumbled across this piece of garbage today (hopefully the image shows up, as it's my first time using talkimg.com):



This looks to me to be a less useful variation of a Ballet wallet, with just one BTC address and private key.

The kicker is this statement:

VERY SAFE: Your bitcoins are kept disconnected from any network, without electricity, so they are impossible to hack. In addition, we do not store any private keys, nor do we have any way of accessing them.

Well, ya fuckin' generated the private keys for all the wallets you made yourself, so sure you won't be able to access them after you've distributed them to resellers, but just like Ballet wallets you have to trust that you didn't make a master list....and Jesus, if you can't even trust Ledger anymore, why in the world would anyone trust Material Bitcoin?  Unless I've missed it, they're an unknown manufacturer with no reputation.  

Blows my mind.  But it doesn't look like many people have bought this wallet so far, as there aren't many reviews and the ones that are there are probably shills.  And look at how much they're asking for this piece of shit!

First of all, am I allowed to say "boner" in this section?  It's been a long ass time since I've browsed Collectibles, and while looking to see whether what I'm about to mention had already been mentioned I couldn't help but notice all of the fantastic threads that I've missed out on...and I'm going to admit that my subsequent state of arousal almost reached boner state.

This is not bitcoin related, but it is crypto-related and it is definitely a collectible: https://pirelli-montblanc.com/

For those of you youngins who might not even know what a fountain pen is....go look it up.  Suffice to say that nowadays it's a very niche market and some of the higher-end ones can get pricey to say the least, as they're usually hand made and have gold nibs and often some kind of other precious metal(s) on the barrel and/or nib tip. 

So whilst idly browsing the Tron subreddit and seeing what those losers have to say, I was shocked to see the above link.  Montblanc is one of the best-known premium pen manufacturers, so this isn't some kind of cheap pen we're talking about here in terms of quality.  It just blew my mind that Montblanc is somehow producing a pen commemorating Pirelli and, for some unknown reason, throwing in an NFT unique to each of the 72 pens that'll be produced.  Talk about jumping on a bandwagon.

I already contacted a fellow pen/bitcoin enthusiast about this, and hopefully he'll post here but I'm curious what all of y'all think (if anything).

I was just farting around on CMC, browsing through shitcoins that used to hold my attention and by looking closely at Reddcoin and their website (and in particular which exchanges RDD is traded on), I came to learn that StakeCube is apparently going bust.  What caught my attention on their website was this quote from Oleg, who's presumably running the show:



The blame is being laid on massive outflows of coins and the illiquidity of their proprietary shitcoin, SCC.  In that long and rambling screed, I don't see blame being placed on anything with lungs and a heartbeat.  Now I'm not too sure how many of you are familiar with StakeCube, as their niche was PoS coins, ones with masternodes and the like, and they were damn small.  But I'm baffled as to how, as Oleg says, SCC was--or even could be--used to pay for real-world goods like servers.  There ain't a damn shop online or with four walls and a door that accepts obscure shitcoins like that, so am I wrong in assuming that StakeCube created SCC out of thin air and then sold it for another coin (like btc, ltc, or one of the ones you can actually spend) in order to finance their operations?

Is this the reason why most exchanges nowadays have their own proprietary coins.  SBF was straight-up scamming, which was separate from the success or failure of FTT and would've been exposed eventually had FTT never existed (in a perfect world at least).  I'm not sure what Oleg and StakeCube were doing, but I don't think they were scammers.  I'm just baffled that so much was riding on this shitty altcoin, which Oleg had to know was pretty illiquid.  Blows my mind.

And finally, this quote just had me slapping my head:

So, everything was just a lie?

No, it was business as usual for everyone, everything announced in the newsletters (roadmap, v3 development, etc.) did happen, and it was never the plan to act like this – on the contrary – everyone in the team worked their ass off, no matter all the FUD coming from the community, in the hope that the crypto market would recover and we would be able to release updates and v3 in time to get back on track.

FUD from the community....uh, OK.  It seems very clear to me that whatever fear, uncertainty, or doubt existed was 100% justified.  That victim card that keeps getting passed around is looking frayed and tattered.

Curious to hear what you all think.

Sad to say this, but given the fact that Theymos kept silent when I requested more sMerits I'm no longer going to be doing post history reviews on request.  I have a number of members who've been PMing me from months back, and those are the only folks I'm going to continue reviewing posts for.  So if you're not getting a bunch of merits from me in the near future, you didn't make the cut (through no fault of your own).

I've simply had too many requests and too few sMerits.  I seriously considered quitting the merit source position as a FUCK YOU to Theymos, but that would just be an emotional reaction which ultimately wouldn't help the forum.  But I'd still like to state it, and I think I just did.

I'll leave this thread open for a few hours if anyone wants to comment, but I'm not going to be answering questions about whether individual members are going to still have their posts reviewed, because as of right now I have to go back and check all my PMs.

I've got gripes about Kucoin's usability and want to air them here.

One thing I noticed the first time I used Kucoin is that there are two different accounts you have: Main and Trading, and there's absolutely no need for that to exist.  I say that with confidence because no other exchange I've used has anything like that.  Transferring funds between main and trading accounts is time-wasting, and recently I found I have to reload the page of the account I just transferred coins to in order for them to show up.  Kucoin, get rid of that shit, please.

The worst offense is the withdrawal process, though, and it's only gotten worse over time.  This is the process:

1. Move traded coin from Trading to Main account.
2. Initiate withdrawal by clicking the withdrawal button.
3. Click a pop-up confirmation.
4. Select the coin's network from a drop down menu, click it and then click OK.
5. Enter withdrawal amount.
6. Enter your trading password.
7. Go through the SMS verification.
8. Click another confirmation pop-up.

Kucoin, that's too many fucking steps.  

Why bother having users click on a network for coins where there's only one network?
Why so many confirmation clicks?  When people want to withdraw, they've already initiated the process.  All of that clicking, when it's done many times over a long period of time, is an enormous waste of your customers' time.  As is the existence of a trading password.  As is the existence of the dual-account structure.

My experience with Kucoin has only gotten more cumbersome with time, and I'm going to bring this thread to their attention.  What do you guys think?

Edit:  Well, I sure as hell can't figure out how to contact Kucoin quickly, so perhaps I can't let them know about it.  I started up a help chat, but the response I got was that they couldn't understand what I wrote (it's a bot and the link I put in it might have triggered that response).

I'm tellin' you, my peeps, ever since I started that thread with my rules for requesting post history reviews, I haven't been able to keep up!  But that's made me curious about merit statistics, which I never really gave much thought to in the past.  Recently I saw this and was chagrined to the wind:



Here's my issue: I visited BPIP and Ninjatastic Space looking for who the banned members are that I merited, and if that info exists on either of those sites, I'm totally missing it.  But I know for damn sure there are bigger brains than mine in these parts, and I'd like to tickle said brains for an answer. 

The problem is that I've browsed a number of people's post histories without giving a single merit, and I'm generally careful about handing out merits to newbies unless I'm sure there's no plagiarism involved--I even reported one of my requestees for plagiarizing something, but I can't remember if I'd already given him a merit or two.  I don't think so, but that still wouldn't account for me being at the top of that ignominious list.

And yeah, I get that it's data for the last 180 days, but still.

Thanks in advance, you big-brained brethren....and sistren.

[or even report some of your shitposts]

I'm posting this in Meta based on actmyname's thread from 2018, which is quite similar to this one.  If there's a better section, I request the mods either move it or tell me where to move it to.

I've offered to review members' post histories a number of times in various threads, and based on my experience with doing it I wanted to formally write out some things that I find myself repeating in PMs:

I.  The offer is open to any member below Legendary rank and only those who don't already have enough merits to reach Legendary.

II.  You just need to send me a simple PM asking for a review, and I'll be happy to do it.  You don't need to be humble and apologize for doing so--believe me, if I thought anyone was wasting my time I'd tell them, and I wouldn't have even offered to do these reviews in the first place.

III.  When you PM me, please list the specific sections you post in, especially any of the altcoin sections, the gambling ones, Bitcoin Discussion, and Speculation.  I have a lot of sections on ignore, so when I'm doing reviews I have to un-ignore sections in order to merit any posts within them (hey Theymos, could you change that by any chance??).  Just write something like this (don't worry about capitalization and the like):

1. Speculation
2. Altcoin (mining)
3. Altcoin (speculation)
4. Trading discussion

You only need to do it once, as I'll save your original PM.  Note: I don't review posts in any of the local boards.

IV.  You can request a review once every 30 days at the most.  That's because there's a limit of 50 merits per member per month that can be given out, and oftentimes I do end up handing out a full 50.

V.   I make no guarantees that you'll be given any merit at all, much less 50 at a clip.  If I think your posts are sub-par, I'll usually give you a suggestion or two as far as ways to make your posts stand out.  But basically what I look for is thought and effort, not length.  I can assure you, I've been reading posts from bounty hunter spamming shitposters for years and can recognize a bloated load of nonsense within a few seconds.  Grammar and correct use of the English language help, but I'm looking for posts that took some effort and had some thought put into them, so don't worry if English isn't your primary language--you definitely don't have to be perfect, just clear enough such that your post can be understood.

VI.  If you PM me with a request and it's clear you haven't read my rules (especially III above), you're asking me for another review in less than 30 days, you should have known your posts are complete wads of shitty asswipe, or in any other way prove to me that you're a bonehead even before I take a look at what you've written, I not only reserve the right to refuse a review with no response whatsoever, I might just ignore you, block your PMs, or even report some of your shitposts.  

VII.  Please don't send me a reminder PM if I obviously haven't done a review for you within a few days, a week, or even two weeks or more.  I've been getting more requests than I can handle with the amount of sMerits I'm allocated, and Theymos refuses to increase said allocation.  If you send me a request and I'm unable to give you merits because I'm out, your PM will stay in my inbox until I get to it.

Please, one of my berzerk buttons is people who waste my time.  If you do that, keep in mind that I'm the type of man who bears a grudge.
_______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________

So those are my basic rules.  I'm going to leave this thread open in case anyone wants to make comments, suggestions, or anything else.  I don't need people to thank me; I'm a merit source, and I do this to keep the system working because I believe in it and know what the forum was like before Theymos created it.  I'd actually be grateful for any critical feedback.

Generally I don't have one eye on bitcoin's price all day long, but I do check it on preev at least once a day and have been relying on the site for years.

It's been down for at least a day and a half, with this image popping up when I go to the site:



I did do a search on the forum for any info about this before starting this thread.  I may have missed it if there's a discussion going on or if it was just mentioned, so please forgive me if that's the case.

Anyone know anything about what's up with preev?

The e-mail account I use on this forum I generally don't use for much else, but I happened to check it just a little while ago and got three e-mails from bitcointalk stating that someone had used the "forgot password" function for my account, and all three attempts were over the course of about an hour.

I'm not crazy, right?  That means someone is trying to get into my account, right?  What I don't understand is why that person would try to do that if they don't know what my e-mail is.

And after giving it a little thought, I have exposed a few e-mail addresses to members of the forum in the past, whether through deals or by becoming acquaintances with those members.  I'm wondering if one of those people thought I used whatever e-mail they had as my forum e-mail....and that's a frightening thought.

So if you should happen to see my account start posting in the Russian section or if my English deteriorates to brain-vegetable bounty hunter quality, just know that I got hacked and neg my account to high hell until I get it back. 

This is the first time something like this has happened to me since I've been a member.  Yikes.

[***]

I had to download the Dash Electrum wallet today to retrieve some dust Duffs from an old wallet, and upon installing it I was greeted with a pop-up that said:

On Feb 24th at 4AM, Russian Federation launched an all-in offensive against peacefull Ukrainian cities and citizens.

Dash Electrum team lives in Ukraine and loves Ukraine. You can help our fight against Russian invasion by donating at:
https:***//my.kuna.io/en/kunaid-ukraine
Slava Ukraini! Heroiam Slava!

I don't know about anybody else, but having politically-charged messages jump out at me when I load a software wallet gives me the creeps--big time.  Maybe it's because I'm completely ignorant about coding and how things like wallet creation happens behind the scenes, but it very much reminds me of web wallets and makes me wonder about who's got control over whether some message appears when I open a desktop wallet.

And why in the world would a wallet creator think it was a good idea to do something like this?

Whilst doing hopscotch around Youtube I eventually did a search for either "raptoreum mining" or "cpu mining" and then filtered the results by upload date (if I didn't apply that filter, all I'd get are videos from Red Panda, Voskcoin, Rabid Mining, Bits Be Trippin', and all the other blowhards that likely care more about their YT revenue than they do about mining).  The results showed this vid, this one, and maybe one other.  I was blown away because while I'd certainly seen USB miners like the Moonlander and Gridseed, the ones in these videos looked like they were mining Monero.

Doing a search I found what looks to be the manufacturer or seller of these devices, but both the videos and the website appear (to my ignorant eyeballs) to originate in India.  I'd really like to know what these huge USB sticks are and what people are saying about them.  If they're mining Monero and RTM, I'm wondering if they're some kind of CPU on a stick, if that's even possible.  Yes, I don't know much about computers but I'm trying hard to learn.

Anyone feel like taking a look at the links above and telling me what you see?

Also:  I don't mean to disrespect the Youtubers I mentioned too badly, but some of them are just so inarticulate and are obviously professional Youtubers who all follow the same algorithmic formula of 2 minutes of fluff followed by an awful musical intro and then "Let's get right into it!".  Oh, and "this is not financial advice".  If I have to hear that one more time, it's bananas for me.

Howdy, Collectibles section folks!  I know I'm not part of the clique here, but I bought a neat-o .999 silver bitcoin round from APMEX (plated in 24K gold for reasons I don't understand; they really did gild the lilly here) and searched this section to see if there was anything about it but could find nothing.

I collect silver, love bitcoin, and this round has the neat feature of having a QR code that takes you to preev.com so you can check the price.  That's a nice touch considering most of the crypto rounds I've seen on various silver dealers are kind of generic in their design (though some of them are quite attractive).  I'm not going to blabber away on the details, because the link above will take you to APMEX listing.  I thought I'd share some pics of the actual round in case any of you are curious about what it really looks like.

BTW, that wax seal represents the castle I'm currently fantasizing about very publicly and perhaps a bit too openly in a country where one could live in a mini-commune off the proceeds of signature campaigns.  Don't ask; the insomnia is pretty bad.  The castle in the wax is not to scale.









So there ya go, a pretty cool 24K-plated .999 silver bitcoin-themed round, shipped bagged in a capsule with a certificate of authenticity and the number of your particular coin.  As you can see, it's a limited run of 3000.  From what I can tell, these aren't very popular since they've been available for quite some time.  The good stuff always sells out like a lightning strike, and I'm somewhat puzzled that these rounds haven't.

Any input would be appreciated.  Do I have overpriced crap or an overlooked gem?

I'm asking this question seriously, though I'm going to qualify that by saying that I'm not planning on doing anything like this.  It's just a fantasy of mine, and the question very much has to do with economics, i.e., it basically has to do with economies in various parts of the world and the cost of living.  **Edit: This thread would be appropriate for Bitcoin Discussion as well, but mods, please don't move it there.  This isn't a thread that's meant to be funny, and I'd like thoughtful replies--which I won't get if the thread gets buried in a picosecond within the wasteland of what should be the most important section on the entire forum.**

Let's say a few of the Chipmixer crowd wanted to escape whatever tyranny they were living under in their country or countries (I picked that campaign because I think it's the highest-paying one, but correct me if I'm wrong).  We'll assume for the sake of argument that the campaign is going to continue indefinitely and that each member (let's say five in total) make the maximum number of posts per week, earning $300 worth of bitcoin in the process.  Let's further assume that these Chipmixer snobs demand only the best--Havana cigars, a large dwelling with a decent amount of land and no neighbors, a wine cellar (to be filled), and all the illicit and legal substances their cadre of well-endowed women can procure.  And a lawyer on retainer.

My question is whether there's any place on earth where $1500/week could allow five roommates to live very comfortably--perhaps not as boss-like as I described above, but maybe at least the big house and property.  Over the years I've heard stories that Filipino members were able to pay for a good weekly allocation of food just from campaign earnings, and they amounted to a lot less the last time I participated in one of those discussions.  I'm not picking on the Philippines; it's just something I remember and I don't even know if it's true.  What I'm fairly sure of is that there really do exist bounty farms within single households, where multiple family members are all on bitcointalk spamming away and earning who knows how much.

That tells me that there's something to it, because there's no way father, sons, mom, and whatever grandparents are still alive would be bounty hunting if it weren't at least a little bit lucrative.  So I'd love to know how far campaign earnings ($1500 per week for 5 people in my example) could be stretched.  Are there actually places out there where one could not only survive but thrive by earning bitcoin on the forum?

<and how does one go about getting citizenship?>

I'll lock this thread if anyone reports that this has been discussed ad nauseam.  But if it has, I've certainly missed it.

[We lowered all our prices just for you, so you can start mining ASAP.]

As mentioned in the title, I'm not sure where to put this thread.  It has to do with GPUs, but it doesn't necessarily have to do with altcoins.  It's a bitcoin mining and miscellaneous merchandise retailer, so I guess it could go in Bitcoin Discussion, but since I'm giving some harsh criticism directed toward one entity I think this is the right section.

Got an e-mail from BitcoinMerch on 2/10 but just saw it today.  Because my e-mail host sucks and uses frames from which I can't take a complete screenshot, it's chopped up as follows:





So their big announcement is that because they took possession of a larger facility, they can store more GPUs and "We lowered all our prices just for you, so you can start mining ASAP."

Here's what pisses me off big time, and I'm hoping I don't offend any loyal customers of BitcoinMerch too badly, but if I do you'll get over it pretty quickly.  They're coming off as "We're in your corner, miners!!" but what they're actually doing is rectally sodomizing all the folks out there who desperately want to either break into ETH mining before it goes PoS or just want to pick up an extra graphics card since they've finally become available again.

The proof of said sodomy lies in Newegg.  Newegg and BitcoinMerch.com are both US companies, so the comparison is fair.  Let's go card by card, starting with the 3090.  BM is selling an ASUS ROG Strix model, whereas I could only find a Gigabyte one on Newegg, but they're both OC and both have 24GB of VRAM.  I should state here that in upcoming differences like this, when it comes to mining....if the specs are the same, that's probably all you care about.  Here's what Newegg's got:


$3099.99 vs. $2243.98.  Gouge=$856.01.

Next, the 3080 Founder's Edition (open box) which Newegg did not have.  What they did have was a brand new ASUS ROG Strix 3080 OC with the same specs bundled with a mobo:


When you look at what the card is going for all by itself:



So, $2399.99 vs. $1599.99.  Gouge=$800.  

Moving straight on to the MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Super.  Newegg has the exact same card in stock:


In this case, $799.99 vs. $499.99.  Gouge=$300.  

Now, Newegg didn't stock the ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 3050 Twin Edge OC model, but they certainly did have a 3050 that could do whatever the ZOTAC one could have done (which isn't much from what I've heard).  Once again it's in one of Newegg's stupid little bundles, one of the ways they rip their customers off:


And here's the price of the 3050 if it weren't tied up to that sad little B450 piece of shit that's probably gathering dust in the warehouse:


For the crappy 3050, the ripoff from BitcoinMerch's end is $649.99 vs $379.99.  Gouge=$270.  That's the most outrageous one in this list IMO, because at Newegg you could have picked up a cheap 1650 4GB and the 3050 for what BM was charging for just the one--and both cards suck for mining anyway.

The light's at the end of the tunnel, folks.  BM lists the GIGABYTE NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 LHR AORUS Master, whereas Newegg has what looks to be the same thing in stock (again with the combo):


And the price inside the combo:


Results: $1199.99 vs. $729.99.  Gouge=$470.

Onward to the Asus ROG GeForce RTX 3060 OC Edition.  Newegg has the same card bundled with a decent motherboard (but why???):


Price separately:


Extent of BitcoinMerch.com's fuck you to its customers: $949.99 vs. $549.99.  Gouge=$400.

And last but not least, the PowerColor HellHound AMD Radeon RX6600 which Newegg also stocks:


Distance from scrotum to sphincter in this case: $749.99 vs. $519.99.  Gouge=$230.
Now why in the world did I decide to make this thread?  Well, it's been my observation for years that anyone in the bitcoin space who's both selling you something and telling you he's looking out for you is either figuring a way to fleece you or already has the plan in place--and I've also been noticing that all the mining-based retailers that I know of are engaged in price gouging in some form or another, and they're the ones you'd think would be least likely to do that, no?

All of the prices I showed were Newegg prices, not Newegg affiliates btw.  Even a big faceless company like them is figuring out ways to get a few more dollars out of the crazed GPU miners, but it's nowhere near as bad as BitcoinMerch.com.

I think BitcoinMerch recently put their egg-fried heads together recently and came up with a new business model.  It goes like this: When GPUs become available from big box retailers again, let's scoop them all up and then jack up the prices as hard as we can and scalp anyone with a pair of eyeballs focused on 6GB or higher cards, because FUCK THOSE MINERS.

These jokers should be ashamed of themselves.  And I'd like to reiterate that they said "We lowered all our prices just for you, so you can start mining ASAP".  Uh, yeah.  Anyone who buys one of their cards should be mining from the mailbox to the porch, 'cause the time to hit the break-even point on it is basically extended to infinity by BitcoinMerch because of their greed.

Been awake many hours and if I made mistakes, let me know.  I probably did.

I want to revisit this post by nutildah, which was preceded by this post by philipma1957:



The thread is locked and I'm too tired and lazy to quote the posts properly.  But the jist of it is that both nutildah and philipma1957 accused KingsDen and Magicalking of being alt accounts, and after that it seems like it was just forgotten about.  The reason why I've started this thread is because I got requests by both KingsDen and Magicalking via PM for post history reviews, and they came about 2.5 hours apart.  I'm reluctant to post the PMs here, so I'll just add that both started off their request with "sir" and both used the world "humbly".

I'm happy to do post history reviews, but there's no way in hell I'm doing it for a pair of alt accounts.  Does anyone have solid evidence that these two accounts are connected?  I'd like to hear opinions, thoughts, anything, including what Magicalking and KingsDen have to say about this.