I forwarded your questions to the dev on Discord, but I can answer the second one: currently, Ethereum is *not* resistant to a 51% attack. That said, it is all but immune to one given the massive amount of hashrate it would require, and Vitalik it working on a new consensus algo that would require 99% of the nodes to be compromised (which sounds suspiciously like what Dero has already...).

The actual amendment that pertains here is the 4th - prohibition against searches and seizures without probable cause - but border crossings are an exception, even for US citizens returning to the US. You can still refuse to be searched but you won't be allowed back into the country.

IANAL, but I don't think a law compelling US citizens to supply computer or phone passwords to US border/customs agents would fly; citizens of other countries would be fair game, though.

Setting aside the tin foil hat stuff, to truly manipulate a market you need deep/liquid derivatives trading (e.g. - options AND futures). See, for example, the overwhelming tendency for the S&P 500 (e.g. - SPX/SPY) to close under its high calls or over its high puts on each expiration (a looser interpretation of "max pain theory"). The exceptions are usually from delta hedging, which occurs when a security's price strays well beyond the high calls/low puts and market makers scramble to buy/sell the underlying, respectively, to close out their underwater options contracts.

Now I'll probably go back to lurking as I've done for the past few months or so.

Yep, that's the primary counterargument I expected. The ATLANTICO example has more of a classic spam megathread kind of feel, but the EvenCoin and SafeInsure examples are, I feel, much more insidious in that they give the appearance of a genuine conversation occurring until you really pay attention to what is being said, e.g. from the EvenCoin thread -

Post 2662 makes a typically generic assertion found in most spam megathreads:



Post 2663 then responds to that generic assertion with a generic question:



Post 2664 provides generic answers to the previous generic question - I mean, what crypto doesn't "support cross-border transfers"?:


Etc.

In order for a thread to maintain a position on the first page of the altcoins/announcements subforum it needs a post every 10 minutes or less, something that seems unlikely for all but the most followed projects and/or ones undergoing some controversy. For a project too small to show up on CMC, however, the more likely explanation is the use of paid bumping. Previously I found plagiarism or duplicate posting (ie - when someone writes the exact same response in several thread) to be most common, but the last few days I have noticed a new technique which appears to be a fake conversation. That is to say, two or more people seem to be having a conversation because they are asking/answering a series of questions between them, but this conversation does not seem to be authentic as it is strictly about generalities and often times doesn't even make sense.

Unfortunately, this behavior (absent plagiarism or duplicate posting) does not seem to be excluded by the (un)official rules hence I thought I'd present my evidence here and get a discussion going on how to address this going forward. Below are a few threads whose conversations seem fake and the users who appear to be involved based on posting more than two generic questions or answers to the thread:


The first two examples - EvenCoin and SafeInsure - seem to be employing the same group of people: BTCFaucets, CoinNextE, amanai, bitokman, guarino, 12coins, SamuelN, peetah, Tiny_Prism, boomertoo, kk777, Klacik.

The 3rd example - ATLANTICO - is run a little differently as it is less of a conversation and more just random postings (mostly from people on the sig campaigns for GigTricks and EraSwap): Justenjoy1903, Anya Doreen, Maryqueen Finez, HappyCaptain, imopogicute, 25espia1994, larry1994, clarise123, pogicute1234, 123pogi123, jackielim

I have already reported some of the users above for plagiarism or duplicate posting (though the latter is less clearly an infraction*) but if they haven't plagiarized or posted the same post to multiple threads I'm not sure what to do. A few months ago a similar situation occurred with the RoomDao ANN - discussed here Bumping RoomDao ICO ANN - and that thread was nuked by mprep, but some people argued that bad actors or competitors could report threads for paid bumping to get them nuked for their own benefit. I dunno about that - "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" springs to mind.


EDIT - got clarification that duplicating one's own posts is treated the same as plagiarism by hilariousandco:

Sure you can contact marlboroza - you just need to earn yourself a single, solitary merit first. That's not asking much, is it?

Or, one could use their f'ing brains and not get triggered over minor cultural mismatches, especially if you're running a business that ships internationally.

You want to see a real insult? Try explaining the Yulin festival to a Westerner. See how long it takes before you are doubled over from a kick to the kidneys.

I've reported quite a few of these type of posts over the last 2 days - where a user writes the exact same two/three sentence reply in multiple threads - but so far none of the users (or posts) have been nuked.

And on that note, since this is Welsh's thread and he's a moderator in altcoin/announcements, I have a backlog of 43 unhandled reports mostly for plagiarism and duplicate posting as described above. Also, several of the users I reported appear to be engaging in paid bumping as they are having nonsensical conversations among themselves: amani, BTCFaucets, btokman, Klacik, CoinNextE, Tiny_Prism, etc.

Really, the threads themselves should be locked as happened in the Roomdao case I relentlessly pursued a couple months ago.

EDIT - originally posted in the wrong thread so I moved it here.

Yeah, two key things you did different from me: you bought at a much more attractive price - I was wrong, my average cost was closer to 0.01 per BITB, or $50 total - and you bought way more of it. I have considered buying more over the past few months to give me a better chance of sprouting, but seeing as this project doesn't do anything new or have an interesting use case I haven't bothered.

I bought 5000 BITB in two lots of 2500 back in March and February, spending around $38 total, IIRC. It's now worth $16 and I haven't received a single sprout in all that time, despite that the wallet has been synced and running more or less continuously on a laptop I set up specifically for running wallets. So, this experiment has played out exactly as I expected based on the amount of money I was willing to put into it... 

It's dead, Jim...

A lot of the projects I have been following for months seem to have all but abandoned their ANN thread while still having a very lively Discord server (e.g. - TRTL, DERO). Discord is great for chatting but not so great for in-depth discussions or disseminating news (lol - no one clicks the stickied posts) while the ANN thread is less good for developing a sense of community but much easier to have a real discussion. In other words, the two media are complementary, not substitutes for each other.

Hmm... well, I hate to be the one to say this, but the OP has proved once again that old-school trolling always works.

You've persuaded me that locking is better than nuking. While nuking spam megathreads would harshly punish the spammers, it would also discourage those who participated in good faith, which kind of misses the whole point of a forum, hence I am convinced.

That said, the thread I reported is still accumulating shitposts...

I said marketing has been crap because there basically hasn't been any, though I don't entirely agree that there is no point to marketing except during a bull run. In fact, it has been my experience that marketing is most important during bearish periods - along with product development, of course - to pull away from the weaker competitors and establish mind-share.

Since I made the post above, some progress has been made in formulating a new marketing strategy by Joshy and Cryptonator1337 on the Dero Discord channel. I'm an engineer so about the last person you want to ask how to market something, but at this point even putting sign-spinners on a few street corners would be a step up.  

Maybe, but that's why I said there would be some short term pain. Besides, any other solution than us reporting entire threads for deletion will require changes made to the staff and/or forum (e.g. - hiring more mods).


The thread I provided as an example above didn't start off as a spam megathread, but it certainly became one at some point in its 58+ pages, hence I don't think preemptively nuking threads is the right approach. Also, there won't be any pain suffered by the sig campaign spammers unless you let them spam for a bit first.

What clearly isn't going to work is what @Lafu did - reporting hundreds of posts in one thread. That's way too much work for all involved and, besides, this is a fail in principle: we should not be spending as much or more time fighting spam as it would cost to simply read it.

Might I propose a not-so-radical solution that can actually be accomplished without the intervention of staff?

We need to report the OP of spam megathreads in bitcoin discussion while hilariousandco needs to trust our assessment and nuke the thread.

Once enough threads are nuked the shitposters will miss their sig campaign quotas and not get paid.

And once they don't get paid enough times they will quit joining campaigns.

There will inevitably be some butthurt from legitimate posters, especially those who participated in the first few pages of a thread, but think of this as short-term pain for long-term gain.


EDIT - I've reported one thread in bitcoin discussion as a test case - "What if Government bans Bitcoins?" [sic] - which I've quoted the OP in case the thread is, indeed, nuked:

Don't forget the hookers and cocaine! Can't let XMR have all the fun!

I guess this bozo thinks that ETH going from $1300 to $200 is just a refreshing dip?

Also, read the referenced posts in his negative trust - what a scumbag!

Looks like Dwarf 2.0. If you send the OP money for this thing before a trusted BCT member has reviewed it then you deserve to lose your money and be made fun of mercilessly until you rage quit the forum.