This article right here has got to be one of the worst pieces of financial journalism (it doesn't rise to that term, but what else to call it?), and it's particularly galling given that the title of the article is something that gets a great deal of discussion right here where Satoshi once posted whilst creating his masterpiece.

So I just have to ask a simple question:  What the FUCK is this shit?

I don't think that's true at all, right? Like Wall Street doesn't care. They just want number go up, right? They or or go down depending on where they're trading it, right? And I think many retail investors feel the same. They want to make money. Um and so I would think that that has changed things too.

Fear and greed are the two things that drive most investment policy. And so now you're seeing more of the greed factor come in and that's where you're seeing these layers of financialization coming on top of it. I think you probably noticed the big keyword at the conference, the buzzword to me was yield. Everybody's looking for yield options on these large holdings of Bitcoin, XRP or others, uh and almost every player is looking and trying to position that yield. Now, this isn't yield from 2022 to 23 where the FTX Alameda, the explosion of rehypothecation in the staking.

This is a new era, I call it yield 2.0 and there's some really solid fundamentals to it and everybody's looking for, okay, I have this bundle of goods sitting here. How can I put it to work for myself? Just like if you're sitting on a large balance of cash, especially at a time where rates may be dropping on cash, that's the one tool that a new Fed chair might have. Uh and that will take away some of the incentive for sitting on bundles of cash and and may position liquidity in other places.

Just take note that the above super-sized serving of word salad is sprinkled with some of the foulest neologisms that could only come from a yapping head on the interwebz, and to keep up the farce that they know of that which they speak, they lead the hapless reader through the path of least coherence and maximum retardation.  In other words, the above points could have been written in plain English instead of the massive load of excrement they left on our living room floor instead.

So happy bitcoin became so mainstream that it's now reported on as frequently as whatever the hottest stock du jour is.  Would not have predicted this back in 2015.

Just a short while back when Bitcoin Magazine (the shop) sold a variety of bitcoin-related collectibles, before they took down most of their offerings, they had up for sale a vinyl record which I thought was titled Bitcoin is a Record but might actually be The Bitcoin Record based on what's actually written on the back cover of the LP.  There's no catalog number, it can't be found on discogs, and the only website I could find with info about it was the announcement of the contest through which musicians could submit songs and potentially get their tracks pressed on wax.

I purchased several of these and have been thinking about selling a couple, but I have absolutely no idea if there's a market for them, and if there is, what one would go for, price-wise.  They're all still sealed and have been kept in outer sleeves to protect the shrink wrap--if you look in the dictionary under 'anal' there's a picture of me as a child rearranging my comic book collection whilst in the background my parents can be seen with obvious expressions of concern on their prematurely wrinkled faces as they look on.  *Ahem*

So here are some pics:
<snip>

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nyse-working-platform-trading-digital-225737392.html

Yeah, that title is dripping with sarcasm.  So you mean to tell me that the NY Stock Exchange is 'working on' developing something that's already existed since the early days of bitcoin, i.e., 'round the clock crypto trading?  Makes me wonder if they're just waiting for their government bedfellows (that means their oro-genital, analingual, scissorfucking or what-have-you partners between the filthy sheets) to put all of the existing but very pesky little exchanges out of business first?

However...if, as the article states, this means shares of stocks and related securities digitally...wait, it's all digital with those now...I mean blockchain-based...wait, why does any of this need 'tokenization' or the use of blockchain technology solely on nights and weekends?

This has got me all confused.  24/7 stock trading would be fantastic, but I'm not sure what to make of this press release.  What do you brainy-brains think?

Someone please tell me I'm not losing my mind or something.  I was just idly browsing the crypto collectible crap on feebay and came across what looks to be a standard Ballet BTC wallet--only the seller put in the description that it's a "first day of issue" limited edition:



The seller's description is one of those fucking horrible AI-generated ones that all end up sounding the same whilst giving absolutely no information about the specific item you're looking at (like if a cat pissed on it or it's been through a house fire).



So I'm just askin' here whether this is bullshit or not.  When I get my answer, I'll lock this thread up like it was Bill Cosby.

[Local rules, kiddos]

As I've been doing a shitty job as a merit source for months now, I've not visited the forum's merit stats section in some time.  I feel shame and want to defenestrate myself right off a skyscraper....but I digress. 

Visit those pages I did, and my orbs nearly popped out of my head when I saw this:



Because I was shocked, I have a feeling the number of merit sources used to be a lot higher, but that isn't a statistic I've kept in my head or read a post about since I don't know when.  My question then is this: Did we used to have far more than 88 sources or am I making that up in my chronically fatigued noggin? 

My second question is whether 88 merit sources generating (is that distributing?) just over 30k merits per month cutting it?  That seems low relative to the number of members we've got here.

Local rules, kiddos:  Stay on topic.  I'll report low-value posts or anything I even suspect came out of the godforsaken pissbrain of an AI thingamajig.  Aside from that, anything goes.

I recently added a question to the one other thread I started about Bitcoin Magazine, which went unanswered--but after an e-mail exchange with their support person I got some info that I thought I should share with the community.  I've no idea how many here buy the magazine and buy it direct from the source, but read this before shelling out extra $ for a "sealed" copy:

    

On Fri, Nov 14, 2025 at 12:19 AM, xxxxxx<zzzzzz@yyyyyy> wrote:

         On my second to last order (#------), I purchased 3 issues of Bitcoin Magazine at the "sealed" price; what I got were magazines placed into resealable polybags, very unlike my early purchases.

         This time I did an unboxing video for order #----- and got the same thing for the newest issues.  

         This is disappointing, especially since I have a 100-count pack of polypropylene bags with resealable flaps, and I could have done exactly what you did myself and saved $8 on each issue.  Has this become the norm?   You're offering "sealed" magazines for the collector, but that really isn't the case, nor does it justify the price difference.  In my video I showed some of the earlier issues I received that were shrink wrapped (which is what I was expecting).

         Can you clarify any of this?

On Nov 14, 2025 at 11:47 AM, xxxxxx from BTC Inc <store@btcmedia.org> wrote:

Hello xxxxxx,
     Thank you for reaching out, and I truly appreciate you taking the time to share this with us. I’m very sorry for the experience you had with your recent orders — this is definitely not the kind of experience we want you to have, especially when purchasing items meant for collectors.

     I completely understand your disappointment, and I want to make sure we look into this properly. Would it be okay for you to share the unboxing video and any photos of the magazines you received? This will help me flag the issue to the relevant team so we can review what happened and determine the best steps to resolve this matter.

     Thank you again for your patience and for bringing this to our attention. I’m here to help and will make sure this is addressed.

     Best,

     xxxxxx

On Sat, Nov 15, 2025 at 5:14 AM, xxxxxx<zzzzzz@yyyyyyy> wrote:

    Hi xxxxxx,

    I have the unboxing video, which was NOT done professionally or uploaded to Youtube or any other site.  It hasn't been edited, and from it you can definitely see what I'm talking about.  However, the file is 860MB, so if you can suggest a way for me to share it with you I will.

    But from what I described to you it seems to me that it ought to be a very simple matter for your team to figure out how those 'sealed' magazines are being shipped out now as opposed to issue #28, for example, which is actually shrink wrapped with no way of getting the issue out without removing that shrink wrap.  I think the change started with issue #36 (the mining issue), because all the issues I ordered were simply placed bare in a resealable polybag.  

    Hopefully you understand my concern with 1) The unannounced change in packaging, and 2) Paying an extra $8 to have a bare magazine put in a polybag and accepting that it qualifies as 'sealed'.

    Let me know what you'd like me to do, and I appreciate your time.

xxxxxx from BTC Inc <store@btcmedia.org>   Nov 24, 2025, 12:28 PM
To: zzzzzz@yyyyyy

Hello xxxxxx,

Thank you for your patience as I get more information about your concern.

First, we want to thank you for sharing your feedback and for taking the time to make an unboxing video — we really appreciate the detail and effort you put into it.

I’d like to clarify that we have started using resealable polybags instead of shrink wrap for all “sealed” products. This approach offers the same or better protection and a very similar look, but it does allow the product to be opened and removed more easily. We understand that some avid collectors may prefer the traditional shrink wrap, and I completely understand your perspective.

The switch was made primarily to reduce processing times while maintaining product protection, but I understand it may feel different from earlier issues you purchased. To help reduce any confusion, we are planning to update the product listings on our store to clearly reflect what customers can expect to receive.

We truly value your support as a collector and your honest feedback, and I hope this explanation helps clarify the change.

Thank you again for letting us know — it helps us improve the experience for all our customers.

Best,

xxxxxx

As I wrote in my e-mail to them, you can buy those polybags by the 100s, and since I do just that for other magazines I collect I can tell you they're indistinguishable from what Bitcoin Magazine is now putting their "sealed" issues in and charging $8 more for.  As far as the sealed magazine being more easily opened and removed....sure, that's true, but usually collectors buy sealed items so as to keep them in *factory-sealed* condition.  

There's a lot of circumlocution in their response, and on top of that they're presently pulling a dick move by offering what looks like a massive Black Friday sale, except that they jacked up the prices on most everything they sell, especially back issues of the magazine prior to issue #24.





What's going on here isn't a massive deal in the grand scheme of the world and history of bitcoin, but I've often wondered if anyone working in any aspect of the cryptocurrency business is or will stay honest.  Now that I've ended this shizdig on a down note, I'm going to toast to disinfo-flation.

Note: I have the original e-mail and unboxing video but will only share with one or two very trusted members and only upon request.

Have any of you visited Bitcoin Magazine's website lately?  They've taken down a huge number of items that they had up for sale just recently--in the Collectibles area of their site, there are only five items for sale, and their Merch now consists of two hats and a hoodie (that's sold out).

But one other question that is directed toward collectors who might not even visit Bitcoin Magazine's store:  what's up with issue #38?  It's the Lightning Issue, and I've seen it on eBay (here's a link to one for sale), but it is conspicuously absent from the store and I'm not even sure it was ever up there.  That I could be wrong about, but I visit BM's store at least twice a week and don't recall seeing it.

Anyone know anything about either of these things?  God I love this section, but every time I'm here I feel like I'm trespassing.

I know some of you might not remember obscure PoS altcoins (or are too young to even have ever had them on your radar), but back in the day there were numerous proof-of-stake altcoins out there where all you had to do to earn passive income was to 1) own some coins, and 2) keep your wallet running.  It was so easy that some company produced Raspberry Pi's branded as Stakebox(es).  PIVX, Pinkcoin, Neblio, Gridcoin, Peercoin, Reddcoin, and....Navcoin.

From time to time I check CMC to see how all of those oldies have fared, and let's just say it's been brutal.  But I just looked at what was Navcoin and was surprised to see that it's been rebranded to "Navio".  This is from a Medium article dated July 11, 2024:



Just take note of all of this we stuff, and the community discussion that's mentioned.  Navcoin might have always had some kind of dev team, but over the years it morphed into a DAO.  Meanwhile, the one-year price chart looks like this:



Don't know about y'all, but I get the feeling that some massive changes were made that a lot of NAV holders (or a few big ones) thought were going to send the coin down the shitter and sold out.  And just one last thing since I'm guessing nobody is going to even read this post.  This is from the new Navio block explorer, which has a link to the "rich list":



The way everything is written there makes me picture a scammy Youtube huckster winking at all the suckers, hyping up Navio whilst not even believing his own bullshit.  Any time there's a DAO and proposals are constantly being made, you can bet your ass most of them are going to be self-serving and not in the interest of the community.  The smartest thing Satoshi did was to create bitcoin's framework and let it be (though there's been some controversy about whose hands he left continuing development in, but that's another story).  Don't you miss the good ol' days before these silly DAOs?

I didn't see this posted anywhere in the Exchange section, and I know Xeggex has become quite popular among those who dabble in some of the more obscure altcoins, so I'm starting a thread on this.

Looks like they had some kind of hack per the announcement on their website:



And here's the "more info""

Incident Status

Current Status: Restoring data

On February 3rd XeggeX experienced a security break and data loss. We are currently working to restore user information and balances.

What happened?
There was a breach onto the laptop of the primary system admin. This laptop had access to all system resources. Database collections were dropped, telegram was deleted, and other things were done on the laptop to make it inoperable.

What are we doing to restore service?
As we were unable to fully restore the database, we had to rebuild peices of of from other sources. Due to this, it has taken some time to collect and parse the data to rebuild parts of the database. There are some user records we were not able to associate with an email address. We will be making an account restore function for these users. Since records such as trade history, deposit history, and withdraw history are missing information we will be starting just from an initial balance on user accounts based on balance information at the time of the incident.

When can I login?
We hope to have user logins restored within the next day. If you have issues accessing your account when we open user logins, then please contact support.

When can I withdraw?
We will start opening assets for withdrawals as we do a security review on them. This will be asset by asset as we finish each review and not all at once. We have no timeline for how long this may take at this time but will work as quickly as we can.

Will the exchange continue to operate?
This is undecided at this time. Our current priority is to getting users access. After this we will decide what we will do next.

Other notes:
We want to make it clear that this affects the XeggeX exchange only. Some users think that XeggeX and NonKYC exchanges are owned by the same people, but in fact they are not. NonKYC is a completely separate system and ownership. The only thing similar is that they are using a version of the XeggeX software for their exchange.

Some other users have asked if Nayiem Willems was an owner of XeggeX. The answer is no, he was never involved with the exchange. There were discussions years ago about collaboration, but nothing was ever agreed to and he went on to work on another project. He has been receiving a lot of undue harrassment since this incident occurred, and we want to make it clear that he has no involvement with anything XeggeX does.

Looks like this was one hell of a clusterfuck.  Not quite the magnitude of Mt. Gox, but apparently their security protocols were similarly lousy.

Hope nobody had a lot of coins on there, because as of right now their future isn't looking too promising.  Curious to hear opinions from the community.

Nor am I sure if this is even the right section to post this in, but I came across this on eBay and while it looks pretty neat, I'm not sure what exactly I'm seeing:



Was there such a thing as a BTC savings bond issued by somebody in 2018?  I was thinking this might be more appropriate to bring up in the Collectibles section, but the members who frequent this section are pretty damn knowledgeable.

I don't know if the disclaimer can be seen in the pic yet, stating that papersafe bears no liability for blah blah blah, but am I right in guessing that this is a scam or a counterfeit?

Edit:  how the hell do I adjust the image so it can be viewed properly?  Like the ideal width and height.  Grrrr.

Has anyone seen this article?  Bitcoin has been getting a lot of mention on Yahoo Finance, some of it interesting, some of it not--but this write up had me scratching my head.

There's a senator apparently proposing this, but then there's an explanation by some guy George Tung from CryptosRus, which I've never heard of (and I've not googled it).  In any event, this so-called reserve fund is supposed to be earmarked for repayment of the US's debt, something I'd find extremely risky at best given how volatile bitcoin is.  

In order to justify the clickbait-y headline, there's some speculation that other countries might also start buying in an act of global keeping-up-with-the-Joneses, which in the media constitutes an arms race.  As to why those countries would need to follow the US's bitcoin buying spree, who knows?  No need to explain that when the writer of this can then add in corporate purchases and make the leap to this:

he scenario Tung describes grows even more intense if corporations join the race, such as BlackRock's speculated involvement. He asserts, "If four entities try to buy 40% of the supply...that alone will drive bitcoin into the millions." He highlights how limited the global supply of bitcoin is, mentioning that even smaller countries, like Bhutan and El Salvador, have already started acquiring significant amounts of bitcoin.

Fundstrat analyst Sean Farrell recently used the same logic to say he may need to adjust his $115,000 price target higher.

I'm curious as to what you all think about this article, this idea, or anything related to it.  Me?  I think it's total BS (though definitely bullish), but I tend to scoff at most crap that gets published online, especially if it's financial news--but I never rule out the possibility that I'm being a moron.

I used to follow PoS coins a lot back when they didn't have these silly little DAOs that centralize what's supposed to be centralized and stakers only had to keep their wallets running in order to stake instead of having to delegate to those with more wealth.  One of those coins from back in the day was Neblio (Heard of it?  Anyone?).

For shits & giggles I visited Neblio's CMC page and then took a stroll over to its Reddit page, where I found this comment in the second-to-most recent thread:



Nobody in that thread elaborated on what was said about Neblio's team selling the coin to some sort of pump and dump team, but I just can't figure out how that would work.  Sure, the owners of the website could sell the domain name and the site's code but that wouldn't prevent a community from continuing to maintain the blockchain, right?  Can anyone provide some insight as to what might have happened or if the above quote could somehow be true?

Another coin I used to follow was Bitcash, even though it was never a PoS coin.  Now, if you click on the link to the website from the CMC page it takes you to some bizarre website, and it's obvious in this case that either the site was sold or the original owners just straight-up changed it to something completely different.  Oddly enough, it looks as though the blockchain is still going even though nobody is mining it...?  Kind of the same thing with Sinovate; nobody is mining it but it's being reported that people are still staking it.

Anyway, input is welcome.  Shitposts are not.

I had the thread about someone "impersonating" his wallet address open while I was doing other things and by the time I got back to it, it was locked.  However, I read through it and found that I'd also gotten a PM from agbamoni basically pleading his case and blah blah blah.  I wondered why he dropped me a note about this, and then I realized I'd recently done a post history review for him and that the reason why he wants his reputation intact is so that I'll keep doing reviews for him.  There's no other logical reason I can think of.

The reason I started this thread is that I wanted to get some more thoughts about these two members, whether they're really alt accounts and if there's merit abuse going on.  It doesn't make sense to me that Richbased would start a thread to complain about his alt account using an address of his except if it's a smokescreen devised to make it look like they're not connected.

Richbased hasn't asked for any reviews from me, but he's been an indirect recipient since agbamoni has sent him some merits.  That being the case, I've blocked PMs from both of them and won't reverse that unless I'm convinced these are two separate people (and from reading the original thread, it sure as hell doesn't seem that that's the case).  Share your thoughts, please.
 

Note: this is a self-moderated thread, as I saw some very low-value posts in the other thread.  I'll grant a lot of leeway and will only delete posts if they're zero-value and/or obviously fucking retarded.

As stated in the title, I have 0.0033BTC and need PayPal funds at preev 1:1 (roughly $113.36)

I will not send first unless you have significant green trust or if I've done business with you before.

This will be a neutral feedback transaction.

Send me a PM if you're willing to help me out, as I might miss seeing this thread if you post here.

Local rule:  Please do not post here unless you're interested in doing this deal and are at least a Sr. Member or a member I've done business with before.  PayPal is very risky because of the chance of chargebacks, but I have never done this and won't ever.

I might be asleep for a while, so I'm going to lock this thread until I get up and can do the trade if anyone's interested.

I'm awake, still looking to trade.

A'ight, that was quick!  Deal done, locking thread for good.

I've been checking the Ledger subreddit pretty often since their idiotic, trust-destroying Recover service was announced and looking at it today, I saw a thread that linked to a Twitter post that in turn linked to some other source saying that Ledger is laying off 12% of its employees.  Having read through the reddit post, I'm seeing opinions about the cause of this ranging from "this is expected during an economic downturn" to "Ledger fucked themselves because of Recover and/or the behavior of their CEO".  Those aren't direct quotes from the post, by the way.

Frankly I was expecting a thread about this on bitcointalk, but apparently there isn't.  What do you guys think about this development?  Was it mentioned on any crypto news sites?  The reddit thread also mentioned that Ledger has something like 500 employees, which seems like a hell of a lot for a company that basically makes 3-4 products (unless a lot of programming/coding is needed).

I also wasn't aware that there were very negative opinions about Ledger's CEO.  Very interesting.

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.