Might just be that companies wouldn't prefer the image format because it can't be animated and ad blockers pick it up more easily.
There's no archive of that so I can't know for sure for how long it's been there... I just didn't remember any image ads.

But must have been bad memory from me.
I saw on archive.org image ads dating as far back as in early 2017. So anyway, I'll lock this thread.

O be honest it seems rather bearish. Markets failed to overcome the barrier of 10k USD effectively and now profit taking, with some selling pressure from cashing out also pushed prices to lower levers. Support at 9k USD now even looks weak if you look at buy/sell walls on some of the most major exchanges. I really hope that this will be averted and no bearish run is to come any further but it's just too uncertain at this point.

Binance CEO has been especially bullish in spite of the ICO boom falling right through their exchange even in spite of their project listings appearing ambitious at first.
I think his predictions won't be that cose to reality when it'd be time to count gains though. Aside of the fact that prices can't be forecasted, BTC even went on a bearish trend right after his statement. So whoever followed the prediction is actually counting losses right now probably.

I prefer to not hide bitcointalk ads by choice, just a matter of personal preference.
Today it was my first time I saw an image ad. I don't know if this was allowed before but I don't remember seing an image file as an ad in the forum previously. Did anything change recently?

Image of how the ad appears (I censored the logo):


The image of the ad is hosted on the forum. Link

For reference, ad design rules are here.

Actually, diary writing activity, or simply noting down your thoughts on paper, even for discarding them later and not in a diary, is known to have some positive effects on the mind and thinking. Popular psychiatrist and ex Harvard prof. Dr. Jordan Peterson has talked about this in one of his early videos:
https://m.facebook.com/watch/?v=1819316608386321

Don't consider it a panacea though. The psychology of humans is something that's hard to comprehend and study. But for sure, writing what worries you down assists you in the process of overcoming it, at least to some extent.

For me, the question int he OP feels a bit of a loaded one.
Capital for trading and investment shouldn't be a matter of survival, especially with crypto! It should be something of an amount, that based on the trader's income, could be afforded to be lost.

Expecting to always come up with revenues from activities such as trading is an excercice in futility especially when trading new coins. Those cary the most risk as they could go bust very easily. If someone wants to trade regularly with big amounts then markets with the best liquidity and support are the most viable alternative to avert catastrophe like loss of principal capital.

To be honest, no. But some of these campaigns seem very tempting and it drives me to want to do it more. Although I know it's not very appropriate to be tempted by such promotion if I wasn't going to gamble anyway.

Risk managment with cryptocurrency is something tricky.

Standard strategies aren't very useful. It's impossible to diversify within the crypto economy as every single asset in it has huge correlation with BTC.
Also, risk factors are very different. One should stay away from cryptocoins with old and weak networks, or ICOs that are very speculative and with no real work behind them. The characteristics to look out for also vary depending on the type of crypto. Ethereum tokens have different technical challenges from coins with their own blockchain.

If you ask me, it's more about studying technical parameters if you want to compare crypto assets. Sadly or not, there's no market and board overlooking listings in crypto exchanges. Any project could turn scam except community based ones like LTC/BTC etc. Large projects that are run privately are a larger risk. See TRON, crypto.com, Ripple etc.

Do you offer any ways to connect such as obfsproxy so that censorship can be overcome?
Many firewalls are very good at including VPN hosts in their block lists and lately I've been disappointing by several different paid VPN services.

This is never a good idea.
Gambling is always set in favor of the house/bookmaker and borrowing money just to put it on a wager not only increases potential losses, but can even result in financial ruin and bankruptcy as you end up losing more than just cash.

I wouldn't even do it  if the betting was on a 1v1 match and I was the player. Just too many things that can go wrong for such a risk.

I sometimes do gamble and if the earnings come from a casino campaign I'd show them a preference.
But it also depends on certain factors. I wouldn't play dice if my favorite event I can gamble on is playing live, for example.

So this could be a trap for actually gambling too much. In my personal opinion it'd just be better to restrict one's gambling to real life social functions but I know that's not possible for everyone.

This is interesting to hear but as with many directives, countries can be very laxed into forcing entities in their own territory to enforce them.
With banks especially, I've personally witnessed many of them breaking GDPR daily and yet national authorities of many countries do absolutely nothing to stop the, while the liability and potential prosecution is still there for small businesses. It's crazy what banks can get away with.

Why would the price forecast from a CEO of a company in the crypto space be worth anything? He'd be very biased...

Many people say that the halvening is going to affect the price positively but it's just speculation and it's already likely that it was priced in before too! I just think that such predictions aren't to be taken seriously anyway, but coming from someone as biased I think it's just to get the word of their firm out.

As the above posters have noted, distrust is affecting how the profile setting the distrust sees the profiles of others.
If the profile is also in default trust, then it can have an effect on voting for the exclusion of users they distrust. Those users in my opinion should be more careful with their votes as it affects the forum overall.

But other than that, it should be considered a personal preference. In my view, trust list exclusions should only be discussed if and when they come to a point to be blocking a certain user's ranking up to the so called "trust pipeline".

I'm in Greece so I have no benefit over accepting that the U.S. is the biggest economy in the world. It's simply a fact that most blockchain-related enterprises also have their parent organizations doing most of their business in the U.S. also. I'd argue that development of the crypto space is delayed worldwide due to how slow regulation in the world's biggest economy takes is enacted.

If we coult online gambling, I'd say 1.5 years. After some losses that at the time seemed like overdoing it, I took a long break and just sat back wathcing crypto prices.

Other than that, in my coutnry it's pretty frequent that you gamble tiny amounts in social functions, which I'll admit I've been doing frequently but thankfully it hasn't been driving any urge for  me to gamble more. 

Let us not forget the harm the ICO rush and ponzi schemes like bitconnect and FOMO3D also had on the general public.
People like those in minorities who tend to live under financially unfavorable circumstances and face larger discrimination, are also likely to fall for "get rich quick" type scams.
Before you introduce ANYONE to BTC and cryptocurrency, you'd be doing them a service to also offer some SOUND and RESPONSIBLE financial advice. Cryptocurrency carries a lot of risk to hold and loss of capital is a potential outcome that individuals holding crypto assets should always account for.

I wouldn't be surprised if many black Americans heard bad things about BTC if their friends had lost money in a ponzi scheme. Perhaps the truth is for people living in dire financial conditions, that they don't really need BTC in their day to day lives.

I'd take an account for a vouch review if OP is interested. Perhaps a review would help with reputation here.
Let me know OP.

Come to think about it, if you see the difficulty re-target time, it's every two weeks approximately. And that's only because it comes every 2016 blocks, which is a number that if you multiply by 20 (2 weeks, 10 minutes) you get the minutes in a week.

And, on the other hand, block halvings happen almost around every four years. That would be ever 210000 to be precise. Or approximately 2100000 minutes. 2100000 divided by the minute in a year (525600) equals 3.99543378995. This is equivalent time to 126000000 seconds.

I don't know the significance of 126000000, if any, but the 10 minute block time target might have just been part of an attempt to have round numbers in seconds. In programming (don't take my word for it) seconds matter more than minutes or any other time measurement. See for example how how times is calculated with the UNIX system. It's all based on seconds. It's easier to keep track of accurately and derive minutes, hours, days and years from it other than the opposite.

Worth noting that it's in Israel!

I doubt any such case could become reality in the US where it matters most. First of all it's hard to define such things in federal jurisdiction, but also banks would fight it back for sure. What's more, is that businesses know better to move their banking offshore where they have guarantees their accounts won't be closed down. Fur such a case to even be brought to court, somebody would have to sue at fist. But serious creditors are never going to bother as they store funds abroad.