I'll misquote Greg Carlin "Think of how brainwashed the average person is, and then realise that half the population are more brainwashed than that."

If that half of the population got a text message letting them know they could watch themselves being auctioned online, they'd be over the moon if they fetched a higher price than the guy (or gal) before or after. 

They'd be texting their mates to let them know their good news.

After that they'd be only too happy to have their number tattooed across their forehead, and demand the the Government provide the service for cheap.

I've installed pywallet on Debian bookworm
You may need to do this :

attempting to install python-dev causes lots of problems

install build-essential python2-dev python-bsddb3

edit #!/usr/bin/env python to #!/usr/bin/env python3

$ pywallet needs 'bsddb' package to run, please install it

install python3-bsddb3

$ ./pywallet.py --version
./pywallet.py:22: UserWarning: Python 3 support is still experimental, you may encounter bugs
version says pywallet.py 1.1
(or is it 22?)

EDIT : pywallet complains if the wallet version is > 81000

I've been following ARQ on Telegram, and had a look at Tradeogre to see if I could find some background before attempting a trade there.
The thought came to mind that if most of the trades take place there, that then becomes a possible single point of failure.
I had a look at bisq but it looks like ARQ has never traded there.

I'll be interested to hear if anyone has any thoughts on Tradeogre and the people behind it, and I'll probably try a few small trades and see how they go.

In the style of putting some money where my mouth is, I'll put up a couple of trades on bisq to see how that goes.

Sooner or later, ARQ will need some wider access to trading.

I had a look at the https://arqma.com/ and the trade advice.
Citex - are they still doing arq?
Tradeogre : to buy = 0.00000058BTC
CREX24 : not allowed?
Bisq : who knows?? 0.000001btc? 

https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/arqma : 24 hr $0.01148195 / $0.01405379 0.00000056btc

WOW!
You finally got there.

I'll have to see what the market for the coins is like.

The new bad news is that the USA is asking for trade information on all digital assets.
I do not think that will fly but they may have no alternatives if they want to crush alt currencies.

And Thanks.

I'm thinking of setting up maybe a Raspberry PI with four hours of battery backup.
An outline specification of hardware and other things needed would be useful.
That may have been discussed in the chat, but I don't follow that.

This is something else that the Project will need to think about : Management.

I suggest you have a look a BISQ's management.
I'm not suggesting that you adopt it, but you need to think about Management.

BTW, I have no investment in BISQ or Tether or Binance.

I'll mention that I would have invested in the BARQ Presale but something went wrong.

This is about finance and trading. Bear in mind that the banks can conjure dollars out of thin air. This is why I see Tether as a threat to bitcoin.

The world is awash with money, but fewer and fewer people are getting it in their hands. Tether's market cap is $42Bn, so where did that money come from? and why?

https://crypto-anonymous-2021.medium.com/the-bit-short-inside-cryptos-doomsday-machine-f8dcf78a64d3
“Me: HOLY $#!@”
“Since illiquid markets repel crooks, the illiquid startup ecosystem turns out to be largely (though not completely!) free from crooks. That’s part of what makes it such a pleasure to work in, but it also means that the community has never developed a great collective radar for fraud: it hasn’t needed one.”
“I believe the startup community is about to have its fraud radar recalibrated. That recalibration — and the exorbitant fee the market will charge for it — will be mandatory for anyone who holds a meaningful amount of crypto.”
“My guess is that maintaining the Tether peg on Kraken represents the single biggest ongoing capital expense of this entire fraud. If the crooks can’t scrape together enough USD to prop up the Tether peg on Kraken, then it’s game over, and the whole shambles collapses. And that makes it the fraud’s weak point.”

The latest data says that Tether has the finance it needs to balance its books. In some ways that is more worrying than if they had found fraud.
What I am saying is that when ARQ succeeds this is one of the problems it will face

This is going to seem a bit random, but I'm hearing about this more often, and the reasons for this are nothing to do with crypto. Just adding some colour to the picture.

https://toresaid.com/fullepisode.cshtml?epid=810

/quote
1h1m25s      us to tumble, we're the only one left standing. And for some reason, the selected administration, by the corporations that are making bank on this are like, Don't worry, we got this, We're shutting up. Anybody who refuses to fall in line, we got the New York Times emailing people, we
1h1m43s      will cancel them so hard, the banks will cancel you because they're gonna lose a lot of money. If this doesn't fly through, they'll lose a lot of money. A lot of money. Now, I wanted to say something, I don't think I mentioned this. But for the past week, you know, having phone calls and everything's
1h2m4s      monitored, you know. And those that are around me know, I've had to call my bank more than three times a day to unlock my debit card. I'm not kidding you. Not only did they have to unlock my debit card, but when I call to unlock my debit card, the banking professional then block my other card, on my secondary
1h2m28s      checking account to it was the most insane thing. And I was at the airport at the gate complaining as to, you know, this is too crazy. Like I called my bank and said, What's going on? I call Tom block a card, and then you block the other one that wasn't even blocked. And when I called they were like the
1h2m46s      previous person said that the owner of the account said to block it, I was like, No, I didn't. That's scary, that there are people that are doing that. It is very scary. So they have to keep on blocking my things constantly. I'm not concerned about it, as long as the service meet over seiza. So it's a big
1h3m6s      deal. It is a very, very, very big deal. And this has been happening to me and you know, it's funny, I was traveling with counterpart right. And counterpart was getting on another flight. And, you know, when it was I went to, to pay for what was I getting? It was coffee, and it was blocked? Or
1h3m26s      no, no, it was the the magazine that I wanted to read. I was going to pay for it. It was blocked. I was like what the heck. And he was like, again, again, again, I call the bank. He's like, Oh, I'm sorry. Again, again. So we get to my, my gait while I'm on the phone. The other one is, and my counterpart
1h3m48s      clearly said, I told you, they're messing with you. They're gonna keep doing this. I told you, they're messing with you. They're gonna keep doing this. And guys, even without using it, they're constantly doing this. This is just how dangerous it is. The corporations have a lot to lose.
/unquote

Some thoughts on where this might go.

Some certainty of successful completion is needed. Can 10 people with 35 BNB each be found and willing to commit prior to Presale?
To do that, the Marketing and the Sales Pitch need to be in place.
Marketing is essentially the Story : What is unique, what has already been achieved, the near and long term goals
The sales pitch is the costs and the benefits. This has to be a bit harder, and tailored to the audience.
Would a Binance Visa card be attractive? Which crypto and currencies are favoured? Is the buyer buying for long term investment or short term speculation? Just a few questions.
Getting the Marketing right makes the sales pitch much easier, and there is less to do. Sometimes the product sells itself.
Getting the Marketing right helps select the delivery of the Sales Pitch, and maybe the selection of an influencer.

All this is lost though, if there is not enough support for the presale, and the people investing have to be prepared to stay in even if things go wrong.

All of the Marketing is assurance for the investors and to boost the activity once the sale opens.
It takes time to move money and signalling the way forward and the timing needs to be thought about.
A sale time of three weeks is probably the minimum to do the research, and to move money twice. I know crypto is supposed to be faster, but if the market is crashing, or rising rapidly, will people transfer? or wait?
While the end of the week/month is attractive, everybody wants that time. Mid week or mid month may be better for completion.

People with money are needed, otherwise it does not work; or the goals have to be lowered.

HTH

The 2021-05-30 Presale did not reach its first target. Less than 100 of the needed 350 BNB were proffered, resulting in a failed Presale and return of funds to the participants.

From here, it looks like the Developers relied too much on the code, and on chatroom enthusiasm.
The minimum target approximated to 3 Bitcoin, and although this is not a big ask in cryptoworld, ARQ's capitalisation is now $164K, and ranked 2122, so the launch intended to more than double the capitalisation of the ARQ extended codebase.

The Developers put their code and their roadmap on the table for everyone to research.
But with this new offering much more than ARQ has to go though due diligence.

Researchers have to look at Binance, the world's biggest crypto exchange that is itself rapidly evolving.
Will any of Binance's projects overshadow what ARQ is doing?
Is Binance entirely compatible from financial, and other perspectives, with the aims, objectives and goals of the ARQ team?
Are the legalities of the process proposed Binance - bARQ - ARQ and looked at world wide likely to run into problems?
If there are problems, are the Developers sufficiently resourced to manage the problems and to continue development?

Be in no doubt: these Developers propose something that is truly groundbreaking. With that comes huge risks.
They have built a better mousetrap. Will the world buy it?

As Mike Tyson said "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face"

Will the Developers be back, better prepared, I suspect we will soon see.

Just a follow up. I contacted Theresa online, and the deal went through ok.
WYSIWYG.

you have a pm

War! - The Mother of All Perverse Incentives

If you've read my previous posts, you'll already know what I mean. If not,
the short explanation is this: Government deficits go directly into the bottom
line of the Private sector, big deficits = big profits; and nothing compares
to War when it comes to creating Government Deficit Spending.

This last week saw a couple of articles prompted this line of thought:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-09/productivity-growth-rebounds-q2-thanks-slump-unit-labor-cost-growth
"Annual average productivity change for 2016 revised to 0.1 percent decline from 0.2 percent increase, marking first annual decrease since 1982; productivity gains revised upward for 2014 and 2015 to 1 percent and 1.3 percent, respectively."

Exploring Palantir : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0RPn9Ikh0A
It's long, and I'll leave it to the reader to decide how much to view.
A few take-aways : How much of the future can be predicted five years hence?;
Why is the CIA interested in Winners Lists and in Losers Lists? ;
Those who use AI vs Those that don't use AI - who wins?
Who uses anonymous chat rooms to train bots?

What's bothersome about this discussion is not so much the improved
forecasting, but the implicit power to influence events. This is, above
all else, the reason for the existence of Intelligence Agencies.
This isn't about will bitcoin will rise or fall? (BTW the answer is Yes!)

There is a bigger picture here. The ability to maximise the profitability
of War. And this will not go away quietly into the night. What's surprising
is that the economists aren't all over this like a rash. Something about
difficulties in understanding something when your job depends on not
understanding it ....

Which brings me back to my previous posts .... you'll figure it all out
..... eventually.  

Thanks BobK71, more on that below .....

It seems that my joke about the tomatoes was prescient

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-22/pippa-malmgren-talks-bitcoin-refugee-crisis-and-plunge-protection-team
"The question is whose e-money. So everybody in government circles have been
watching the Indian experience because the prime minister stepped up to the
platform in early November and basically said we are going to move all of you,
a billion people, off paper money and onto electronic money, and we are going
to do it in three months. They did it, and they did it successfully."

Well, she would say that wouldn't she?

Failure is likely defined as "tanks in the streets" though that response is
so 1989 ....

The story about Dionysius as I recall is that when pressed to repay the loans he had
acquired, he called all the Creditors to the Palace, and demanded that they bring
with them the exact amount of debt owed. He the overstamped the coinage with
a two on top of one, and twenty on top of ten. You could sell tickets to watch that :-)

The way things are shaping up in the War on Cash, my expectation is that this time
will be different. Recall that last time, it was possible to hoard cash in advance of
the panic. I suspect that somebody somewhere thinks that removing that lifebelt,
as in India, will somehow cushion the impact of the iceberg on the Titanic, and I
suppose that the exact opposite will be the case.   

@r0ach - " Yea, I read that a long time ago (although the math and economics in it are retarded)."

I'm curious. When, and in what context?
Also, there's very little math in it and the economics are at least as good as some of the stuff
that passes for economic thought today. Again, I'm interested in you thoughts - I see fundamental
contradictions, not flawed processes.   

Joke: A man walks into a grocer's shop and tries to buy a kilo of tomatoes.
The Shopkeeper: "That will cost you $2.00" The man replies "That's a ripoff.
The shop across the road has a notice in the window - tomatoes @ $1.00 per
Kilo!" "Aha," says the shopkeeper, "But he has no tomatoes. If I had no tomatoes
I could sell them for $1.00 per kilo too"
cue laughter.

The point I make here is that the economics of monopoly pricing is often ignored.
It applies to the price of money just as much as tomatoes. The reason Central
Banks have their knickers in a twist over bitcoin is that they could potentially
lose monopoly pricing of fiat money.
What they can do to gold, they can also do to bitcoin. So, bitcoin is unlikely
to go much higher, and more probably will fall in price ... until Central Banks
have monopoly pricing power over bitcoin. 

Think it can't happen ...?

Hermione Granger: "You're saying it wrong. It's Wing-gar-dium Levi-o-sa,
make the 'gar' nice and long."
"The Levitation Charm was invented in 1544 by warlock Jarleth Hobart who
mistakenly believed that he had at last succeeded in doing what wizardkind
had so far failed to do, and learnt to fly."

http://www.stopthecrime.net/docs/SILENT%20WEAPONS%20for%20QUIET%20WARS.pdf

The linked .pdf describes three systems: a model of the economy; methods of
determining the impulse response of economic sub-systems; and an outline of
methods for individual profiling and control. The manual was "discovered" in
1986, and was supposedly written in 1979. It is almost certainly a hoax, and
offers a means of micromanaging the American economy down to the level of
the individual.
That said, the economic model contains certain features that have only recently
appeared in economics papers, hence if it were implemented, it may be at least
as good as other models currently in play. The attraction of the document,
however, is that it offers the reader a measure of omnipotence, at least in
the short run, but unfortunately, where a mistaken belief in one's ability to
fly will result in a swift physical readjustment to the reality of the flyer,
economics offers the possibility of having others pay for one's mistakes. 
In that sense, it could be said that the system is likely to perform exactly
as designed.

I'm posting this here because it may have some relevance to MA's modelling.
If MA had added artificial intelligence to these models, he may have something
that works, at minimum,  in the short run.

Hermione Granger: "You're saying it wrong. It's Wing-gar-dium Levi-o-sa,
make the 'gar' nice and long."
"The Levitation Charm was invented in 1544 by warlock Jarleth Hobart who
mistakenly believed that he had at last succeeded in doing what wizardkind
had so far failed to do, and learnt to fly."

http://www.stopthecrime.net/docs/SILENT%20WEAPONS%20for%20QUIET%20WARS.pdf

The linked .pdf describes three systems: a model of the economy; methods of
determining the impulse response of economic sub-systems; and an outline of
methods for individual profiling and control. The manual was "discovered" in
1986, and was supposedly written in 1979. It is almost certainly a hoax, and
offers a means of micromanaging the American economy down to the level of
the individual.
That said, the economic model contains certain features that have only recently
appeared in economics papers, hence if it were implemented, it may be at least
as good as other models currently in play. The attraction of the document,
however, is that it offers the reader a measure of omnipotence, at least in
the short run, but unfortunately, where a mistaken belief in one's ability to
fly will result in a swift physical readjustment to the reality of the flyer,
economics offers the possibility of having others pay for one's mistakes. 
In that sense, it could be said that the system is likely to perform exactly
as designed.