The old guard had a history of the power struggles as well as those of reputation. Back in those days, people actually cared about things like reputation at the forum, solely for reputation's sake.  The whole things took on a significant economic angle too with the drama about people doing un-solicited "background checks" on users who would get onto Chipmixer. With the change to USD payments, it seems to me that the stakes aren't that high anymore.

Most newbies now flock over to telegrams or TGs directly from the host of bounty aggregator websites. There isn't a constant influx of people dissatisfied with what they could have earned if not for a few red trusts here and there. The forum isn't the place for "power struggles" the way it used to be, both economically as well as in terms of reputation.

Who can forget the the incident with a CM campaigner who had 3 Alts enrolled for almost 3 years and nobody knew. At some point, everyone just realized the futility of trying to hold users here to some sort of moral standards. Or maybe the its just the prolonged Alt bull-run taking away everyone's time and attention. Once another winter sets in, if it does, we'll have some of the drama back as sources of earning BTC dry up.

I think what he means is the traditional entrepreneurial rallying cry about putting the "consumer first". This is where most cryptocurrencies, not Bitcoin, like @pooya87 pointed out, fail. There are 11000+ listed coins and most are about making money through scams.

DeFi isn't good for the unbanked. It is good if you want your crypto or your cash to perform better than inflation, albeit with a lot of risk. It is also for those who can afford to make transactions worth 10s of thousands because the fee itself would cost you almost 100 USD in gas. DeFi is mostly just an experiment when it comes to mass adoption. It is a happy coincidence that a lot of people benefit from these experiments because of retrospective airdrops like the one Uniswap and DYDX did.

IDOs and ICOs being good for democratization is a bit of a far cry. These money raises generally have private sales which they are ultimately meant to benefit. Its all running on a hype cycle with almost no real products coming out. I do think though that the DAO models are indeed a good example of the democratization of benefits from a new market, which until now have been sole purvey of VCs and "accredited investors". That is good, definitely good.

This seems to be significant though I couldn't find any sources in the article and it was just really a shameless plug for PoS coins as well as some secret trading recipe. Typical.

What happens if regulators DEICDE that all mining is essentially bad for the environment and it is not acceptable that a people's currency takes up lot of electricity? Is it even possible to outlaw something like mining by quoting high energy usage. That's be ridiculous. Wouldn't it be better to do away with Neon Signs first. Or even the constant fuel guzzling that military hardware does. Or just stop centralized Air Conditioning in huge building that house banking infrastructure.

Mining requires individuals to spend energy on the network. What if an individual is willing to do that and pay for it?

It hardly matters whether regulators agree or don't agree. Maybe we'll see a shift from the humungous 180 Exahash of network hashrate towards a more decentralized network that doesn't depend on mining farms but instead on individual home miners. This would actually be the fulfillment of the dream. If this is the reason, there is every chance that the market will bounce back.

For now, it may just be the usual pre-holiday cashing out by some of the biggest miners or individuals.

While 50 Million Ind+Nig+Kenyans having 100K wage would be a stretch, the 66% bachelor's degree isn't that unbelievable of a figure. Bachelor's degrees aren't really that hard to come by in developing countries where there are Govt funded institutions that dole out degrees in humanities or commerce. Professional degrees maybe a little harder to come buy but almost every middle class person gets bachelor's degrees.

I mean there a billion people to choose from.. Its not that unbelievable.

To OP wondering about disappearance of traditional banks, well sure, "Traditional" banks will disappear but the owners and regulators will continue to stay the same. The wave of fintech is already changing the way banks function. But removing them is now out of the question since Bitcoin has become something different now. The P2P economy is filled with gatekeepers now. KYC on CEXs is the new norm and acceptable to most majority. Its just that Bitcoin will always give an option for those who want to exercise it. As far as the actual usage is concerned, it is clear for everyone to see.

His statement here:
purports a genuine concern for the customer's interest that is supposedly absent in most of crypto. I don't think this can be disagreed to. Most crypto is indeed about making money at the expense of your buyers. This doesn't mean that people aren't genuinely trying to make useful products. Its just that the speed with which crypto is getting adopted by children and young-adults working on their cheap computers in every part of the world, is unlike anything that the business community or investor community has seen.

It is almost sacrilege for them to see crypto minting millionaires and 20-somethings making the kind of money that earlier used to take an Ivy league education and a place at the topmost investment banks.

Whether this is sustainable is the question. I don't think these concerns are completely unjustified. Crypto really doesn't have much of a soul right now. Its a winner takes all race to the bottom.

Most people first hear about Bitcoin and then buy an Alt-coin as their "next bitcoin". There is enough marketing out there to convince you that your own bags have the best bet to succeed. Once you buy in, the transfer fee and selling fee is enough to deter most small holders from taking profits, unless you happen to be very lucky and buy something like Siba Inu.

Lots of fortunes made and a lot more are being destroyed. It makes no sense to have Alt-chain after Alt-chain, L2s after L2s, Launchpads after Launchpads and all of them continuing to make the private sale investors rich. It makes no sense but it keeps happening. Everyone wishes there was a way to drown out all the shill and noise. Yet, now with NFTs, it has been proven again that hype matters the most.

Posts such as these are the anachronistic now instead of the "mention" of crypto or NFT.

The feeling of having missed gains is as worse as actual losses in crypto. This is because of the stories we keep hearing on twitter about people making it and exiting/ retiring (GMI, WAGMI, NGMI memes).

I think this is all just designed for one thing. Enrichment of the existing speculators who already have millions in stolen ETH, airdropped ETH or simply the privilege of belonging to closed groups. People like you either end up becoming like them or end up being fodder for them.

This is because you have greedily and selfishly concentrated the meaning of crypto for yourself as "I wanna make money and Exit", "I don't ever wanna lose more speculative money". You are in this state of FOMO and fear in general. Just chill out man. Take a step back and Relax. You've made more than Half a Million and that too is in "stablecoins" for now. As far as crypto money is concerned, it is as safe as it can be.

To someone who has made that kind of money solely from crypto, I would say that why not treat it as an alternate career and hobby, rather than just a means to make more money? Just keep half of it in BTC and speculate away with the other by investing into projects that genuinely interest you. Find a community of like-minded people who would like to make money AS WELL AS contribute back to the space.

Have more of a vision than "I don't want to miss out". At any point, if you have that kind of crypto money, a significant part shud be purely in safe, cold stored bitcoins. Shop around for collectibles here in the forum. Get to know others who do it. Learn to avoid scams and judge people. Crypto, like every other sphere of innovation, needs its people to rise beyond just being gambling sheep. Give up the fear, calculate your risk appetite and then invest away after setting away a Bitcoin stash (which will anyways keep growing in value with crypto).

If you see the way a lot of other Alts have behaved during the cycles in the last few months, it is clear that a lot of them have formed their own communities and have their own different markets that are hardly dependent on Bitcoin anymore. This is a trend now and will only increase with time. In previous times, pumps in Alts used to lead to an increase in BTC usage too. This is starting to change.

Bitcoin will now tend to move more and more on its own fundamentals, which are stronger than ever. This also means that the hyping and pump-dumps would be recognized more easily. Atleast, that is what i hope.

There are enough products, enough teams and avenues to build on the crypto economy. There is still a conspicuous absence of Bitcoin based products to capture the user base of this new economy as they are mostly dependent on Smart contract abilities. I am not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing, in the long run.

Greetings @Best_Change and The Sig Syndicate..!

Thanks for the opportunity. I have updated the signature and donned the cap. Happy to be here and get to know everyone. Lets do this..

Hello Hhampuz and Team Roobet,

It was great to be associated with one of the best Sig campaigns on the forum by the most generous and engaging platform, and the best campaign manager there is.

Best_Change have given me an opportunity and I will be switching to there campaign. They are a decade old exchange aggregator. I am excited to join the new group and will miss Roobet and the fellow participants here.

Wish you All and Roobet, All the very Best. Keep Rocking Mr. Roo!!

Dude...He is not just "Some individual". Was the anonymous Dark Knight of Gotham just some individual? He was Bruce Wayne loved by Jim, Alfred and Selina.

I would love to see more of these "Just some individuals" try and play ring-keeper the way Theymos did during the Segwit debate on the forum as well as reddit. That was a time of great battles though. Now, Bitcoin is mainstream and the baton has been taken over by known faces like Jack and Saylor. There are Alt-chains everywhere and the forum doesn't need saving anymore.

Lighten up though. I am sure Theymos isn't gonna sue facebook. I heard the "Meta" news and it was the most surprising, yet laughable thing to happen. Zuck apparently handed a rough deal to the Winkelvoss brothers by stealing there idea to create facebook. Now he comes along and just steals another one of the ideas that, one could say, the twins helped nurture.

Also, as facebook's main platform has gone to obscurity, they have kept their relevance by being the surveillance eye (Whatsapp and Insta) for the powers that be. Now, they want to use a good idea, turn it on its head and make the metaverse centralized too. That shit is unbelievably ridiculous. Lets just see how much of it actually becomes successful. They sure have the money and the marketing machine.

Is it just me or does anybody else notice the vastly inferior quality of posts by "hugeblack" over last sometime? I don't really like to pick up fights but I think this account was pretty well-read and had a good writing style. Whatever happeed.

Concerning Wash trading, this is just another one of those "things" about crypto that get discussed endlessly just because they are just evolving. Wash trading refers to bots buying and selling constantly on an exchange to make it appear like there is huge volume (Amount of Buys/ sells taking place). Stuff like this happens because the market participants in crypto don't really have actual information to judge a project with, like what have they delivered? What is the distribution, whether its a legitimate team...All that stuff doesn't matter.

People want hype and the assurance of a CEX listing with the illusion of trading. Thus the scammers opt for this tactic. This is just stuff copied from the traditional markets so nothing to see there.

Its just that there needs to be some kind of cap at how many products of the same type can launch and how anon can a team be. With the memecoins and rug-pulls, its as if there is no limit to the appetite for risky products..

Mannnn....Back in the day, I am sure this forum was a fine, strange f****ng place.

Just imagine that some of those people are probably the top 10% hodlers with 100s of BTC..

The new signature looks pretty. I like the new avatar too. More of a serious, peaceful, professional look.

Understanding US Debt is one of my aspirations.

When you talk about your usual run-of-the-mill, third world country defaulting on its debt, the meaning is pretty much straight-forward. Countries have debt from International institutions or other countries on which they need to make regular interest payments. Failing to pay up amounts to default.

Now, who does the US owe fund to? To its own public, it seems.

This makes it pretty difficult to figure out what exactly does this mean. Some of the biggest creditors are the retirement and social security funds. This is because common people keep funding these by putting apart of their continous savings into it. These "Pension funds" are essentially cash cows. Thus, they buy up bonds from the government in return of the cash.

Now if the US govt defaults, guess who loses? These funds. Because then the debt held by them will lose its value and it'll be a situation of their funds having made a "bad investment" by investing in US Bonds.

Isn't that neat? The Govt gets to fund itself from people's savings. If it defaults, its the people's savings that gets hit.

On further reading, this gets funnier. Apparently the US can only default on its debt, if it breaks its debt ceiling. The Congress votes to increase this ceiling. If it can't do it with bipartisan agreement, that will mean a debt default. This is supposed to spook the markets and lead to a financial crisis. The only threat is the "sentiment". Nothing else. This essentially means that as long as USD is surmount, nothing bad can happen.

The situation this time around is a little bit different with China starting to gain ground. Even then, I don't think any of the major financial institutions, pension funds and banks that hold US debt are ever going to get spooked and move their investments elsewhere. So, these headlines are little more than click-bait; AND a trick to make you learn about this crazy system.

Bitcointalk Profile: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1107844
Amount of merits for the last 120 days: 110
BTC Address: 3JuLhwcn7q3njUAQmefEfZhk9GPvHGMXUY

Thanks for the possibility..!

EDIT: Updated address. Thanks!

It is the same story as everything else. Don't expect Indian Babus to come up with a revolutionary new regulation system for which there is no precedent. Now that the Infrastructure Bill is becoming law in the US, you can expect that the same wording will be paraphrased and taxation of crypto activites will be done. Our brilliant minds now have a starting point so i expect them to come up with something soon.

It'll be a miracle if they do anything original like taking into consideration the investors and identifying the fact that Bitcoin is open-source software and the legitimate currency of internet.

What i expect is that you will soon find the name of India in "List of countries from where participants are banned", when you next check a launchpad.

So whatever happens is upto the great leader and the great party, but can somebody please tell me that what the hell does Vishwa Hindu Parishad has to do with cryptocurrency regulation.

What standing do they have to proclaim that "they are all illegal except those issued by state". I keep seeing these half-educated morons talking with authority on crypto-twitter while a lot of vocal idiots support them without giving a thought what the issue is really about. The problem is that everybody connected to one of these saffron organization consider themselves an expert on everything. They also seem to harbor illusions that they are the only ones who have India's interests in their minds and everybody else is selfish.

This has become state policy now. This will cost us more than what a lot of people realize.

Congrats OP on keeping the thread alive and there has been some great advice in here. From, "I live in a poor country but need 3;6 million USD to retire" to "Own your own house, have a couple bucks in the bank, dont drink". Lively discussion indeed.

One thing I would add is that financial stability depends a lot on where you live and that is something you should be open to change if you are 23 years old. If you are in a country/ jurisdiction with great public services then you may be well off without having millions of dollars in the bank and would just be living an enjoyable life in a safe setting. The desperation for the millions comes from a history of instability and insecurity. We have all been there or have heard of stories about someone close being in that situation. When having money would really have made a lot of difference for them.

This becomes less important if you are in a great society and have a close bunch of people who will look out for you as well as you look out for them. Thus, on top of financial stability, I think everybody should give thought to deciding a place they think would match their aspirations and desires and then try to own property, preferably land there.

A very useful thread for those who are in Alts. In fact, the Mods should probably have a separate mental health and support section for people who are in Alts and NFTs. A lot of people have shared already. The problem with Alts isn't just rugpulls. Rugpulls are the most obvious form of treachery. The most annoying are those slow rugpulls where the team will slowly stop communicating while dumping the tokens and keeping hopes alive. Then there are the obvious failures which you know in your heart will fail but you continue with them.

It is indeed hard to deal with. Thankfully, I haven't had too many such instances because I never invested too much into Alts. I only ever try to be part of community and find ways to earn, rather than invest. Its a very slow grind and is one of the reasons I have not really made much despite being in this space since 2017. I see it as pocket money but I'd be lying if i say that I don't mind that straight up degens have made it.

I have just accepted that I don't have the kind of risk-appetite needed for this. Those who can take the risk and then get out with the profits have to be mentally very strong because you WILL lose money. There will be missed chances that will eat away at your soul, lol. This is definitely a tough space and a tough spot to be in. I wish there were no rugpulls and no scammers who collectively work in teams to play their game of deceit on whole communities.

I just hope that hell has a special place reserved for those idiots. LOL.

If you have been rug-pulled and lost money then just know that you are not alone. There are a lot of us and I understand. Just accept that in life, you win some and you lose some.