As far as I know, only one person is being paid to actually wear this Avatar and that's LoyceV, he has been wearing it for almost 40 weeks now, if someone else is getting paid to wear it, I haven't seen it yet.

I can't deny the fact that if it was ugly, I wouldn't have worn it, but the picture is also like art, it's so ironic and there are many massages passed across as something else, I spend weeks thinking it was a bike cycling club before i discovered what it really meant.

I think we all need to have our own ideologies to do what we do, we have to have a set of personal principles that govern what we do, it too k me weeks of reading old conversations to get the full gist or my own idea about what was really going on and I decided to not just make it easier on other curious people like me, but also to inspire the newbies and those that aspire to rank up, that is my ideology.

2019 is rapidly coming to an end and for some of us, it seems to be doing it faster than we might be comfortable with, 2019 was filled with some highs and lows, 2019 marked my return to this forum, I had a lot of personal achievements and some spectacular failures this year but I am thankful for them all because the successes has been awesome and the failures has been a lesson.

I want everyone to post their 2019 success stories here because it might just be all the encouragement someone needs right now to continue especially for the newbies that are still yet to earn a cent from the Cryptocurrency space, they are the future of this forum and our future movers and shakers.

Since my return to this forum some months back, I have been seeing this Avatar worn by different people in this forum and it made me curious and just as you probably predicted, I went straight to Google to search for the club and what it means (I thought it was an offline bike cycling club ) and I couldn't find a single result so in my free time, I decided to go through the forum and find out what it truly means being the curious person that I am, I decided to get to the root of the matter and discover what it is all about.

My research wasn't as easy as I expected and it took me quite a while to piece together the puzzle, it all started as a conspiracy theory when someone accuses Foxpup (A well known member) of having a club or gang where they cycle merits within themselves in other to rank up or control the forum, I found this absurd for good reason and I am going to mention them below:

For example, anybody who has earned any merit in this forum can testify to the fact that they earned that merit because of a good or helpful post, so imagine if you made. Avoid or helpful post everytime you make a post, not only would your efforts be noticed, but every single of those posts could earn you multiple merits, this is the best way to rank up in this forum and many people has done this successfully, some people started from scratch and are now high ranking members and below are some of them:
BITCOIN4X : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5211323.0
Upgrade00 : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5207053.0
Findingnemo : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5211206.0
Juggy777 : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5204634.0
Cryptoneurbrainboss and so many others has done it too.


What I am basically trying to achieve by wearing this Avatar is to constantly remind everyone that wishes to rank up in this forum that there is no easy way to do.it, there is no magical club to join and cycle merit (because it would have been discovered and busted and your account would be banned), just make quality posts in the forum and you would be getting so many merits that people would start getting jealous of your success and start making wild accusations about a cycling club.

Also, I love comedy and this conspiracy theory is so hilarious that I decided to always keep the avatar as a private joke which is guaranteed to make me laugh whenever I am online and u would keep this Avatar until I decide to join a campaign that makes it compulsory for me to change my Avatar.

My work schedule offline would not allow me to spend a lot of time in this forum but one of my 2020 resolutions is to make Hero member rank by my own steam before next year ends and if I can do that with my busy schedule, so can you, let's do it together!.

EDIT
rosezionjohn just pointed this out to me now.

We have seen some pretty crazy opposition to Bitcoin in the past and I doubt there is a larger opposition that would surpass what we have seen in the past, Facebook was fighting against Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies in general, Google was waging it's war as well, anyways only the future can tell but I have a feeling that we have nothing to worry about, 2020 would likely be our best year yet.

Another decide way of storing your private key is Telegram app, you could save it in your saved messages and because it's cloud storage, it would never delete as long as you login to the app periodically, you could also secure your telegram with 2FA which makes it almost impossible for a hacker to get access to the account, to further secure your account, ensure that the registered phone number is owned by you and you do not share it with anybody because nobody can log into your account unless they have that phone number, this is a method I have been using for years and it has been quite effective for me, I have never lost a privtea key and none of my wallets has ever been hacked.

The telegram bounty groups I have seen are individual bounty managers groups and not a general place where all bounty campaigns are posted, I personally do not even like joining the campaigns of such managers because it is usually overcrowded with little reward except for the few exceptions.

The best place to search for bounties is in the Bitcointalk bounty section, hundreds if not thousands of Bounties are posted on a yearly basis, I want to warn you that about 95% of them would turn out to be useless/scams but that remaining 5% is the reason why we do this, personally I haven't joined any other campaign in over a month since I joined the Cryptotalk campaign and even though the reward is small, it's in BTC and I just do this for fun anyways.

Most times, fake projects usually display red flags that are obvious for anyone to see but the fact is that some bounty hunters are not even qualified to bear that name because they do not even have the slightest idea when research means, so even with the glaring indicators of a scam project, you see them trooping in to promote them and when the expected happens, they start blaming scam projects for making them waste their time.

As bounty hunters, we have our own role to play, as investors, we have our own role to play too and we shouldn't always expect the scam busters to do all the work for us, we should also try our best to do our own personal due diligence on every project we plan to promote to avoid tears.

I left the Cryptocurrency space for years and I returned this year, the journey has not been easy at all with me trying out bounty campaigns and all, but 2019 is still one of my best years yet because I decided to return to the Cryptocurrency space and it has been a fun ride so far, 2019 might not have been a very rewarding year financially for me but I wouldn't trade the knowledge I have gathered for anything because I know it would help me in 2020.

I want to say a big thank you to tk808, the whole Bitcointalk Moderators and administration, the Yobit team and everyone who has impacted my life in one way or the other this year, may we see a better year in 2020.

There is an open Holiday merits thread and I have personally benefitted from it, it's open for all ranks although you have to the post of others that has been made in 2019 but you have found to be awesome.
tk808 : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5212250.0

And one of the most frequent reasons why people are red trusted...
Do not user multiple account in the forum: Do not use multiple accounts in the forum epecially when you cheat bounty campaigns with it, hundreds if not thousands of accounts has been banned or red trusted for this very reason.
Ofcourse there are exceptions but you have to be a very recognised member of the forum like what LoyceV did, he announced his Alt from the beginning and specified a reason why he needed the alt so that he could stay in contact with his mobile device or login in untrusted locations.

Do not abuse the trust system or cycle merits: People want to rank up by all means I n this forum and one of the ways to do that is to meet the required merit for each rank, so this has led many people to try to either buy merits or cycle it within themselves, this is a very bad practice and it is an abuse on the fundamentals of this forum itself because it is goes against the basic principles of this forum which is that only positively contributing members of the forum can rank up.

I am a lover of Ethereum but this post is a blasphemy and goes against all my beliefs, In the Cryptocurrency space, Bitcoin is the god and all others follow, I would never choose any coin above Bitcoin, the founder of Ethereum recently admitted to have sold 75,000 ETH during the ATH and just yesterday, another Ethereum developer sold 90,000 ETH, and this is at a time when the coin price is struggling in a bearish market, does this show that they care about the investors and supporters?
Here is the link to the article: https://www.trustnodes.com/2019/12/26/ethereum-co-founder-sells-90000-eth

I am not saying that you shouldn't love a coin, but you shouldn't blindly support any project especially if you idea of promoting it is to diss a far superior project, without Bitcoin, there wouldn't be Ethereum and that's a fact you can take to the bank.

You didn't expand on your new year's resolution, let me do that for the noobs.
1. HODL: HODL Bitcoin, it's going to be awesome in the near future.
2. INVEST:  Invest in the future of Cryptocurrencies, support good projects but always bear in mind that Cryptocurrency investments are very volatile investments and you should only invest what you can afford to lose, when in doubt, invest in Bitcoin.
3. RESIST: Resist FOMO, it's very dangerous and has turned many whales into rekt plebs, you don't want that to be you in 2020.
4. TRY NEW OTHER THINGS: But never try Ponzi and HYIPs if you've never tried it before because it only leads to tears and frustration, if you have tried it before, then you know what I am saying.

Merry Christmas Everyone.

You might think that the Mods are not working but if you take out the time to check the number of banned accounts in this forum, you would notice that they are numbering in the thousands, ofcourse nobody is perfect and the mods are very few compared to the number of people in the forum or posting in each section, there are probably hundreds of posts daily or maybe even thousands and you really don't expect a single Moderator to tackle them all.

We are all moderators here in our own way and when you notice any user who seems to be a chronic spammer and you don't wanna report them to a moderator, you could simply leave them a feedback and warn bounty managers to steer away from them because they might bring negative attention to their campaigns.

The main fundamental of Blockchain technology is decentralisation and when a blockchain is not decentralised, then it is not a blockchain at all, we should not compromise on this issue at all because we know that Blockchain technology is still in it's early stage and there is still room for improvement, eventually there would be a Blockchain that would be scalable without having to sacrifice the very core of blockchain technology.

I have to admit that I am more of a commenter than a poster and it's probably one of the reasons why I haven't ranked up in a very long time but it's one of my new year resolutions to change this, maybe I could be a Hero member before the end of 2020.

Anyways I would like you to take a look at the profile of someone I noticed who has been giving awesome posts back to back and instead of posting the link to a single post she made, I would be posting a link to her post history.
JessicaVL: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;threads;u=2276234;sa=showPosts

I made a post earlier but I didn't post any links because I was in a hurry, I just commended you on your works so far and how you inspire me, I have compiled below my links to posts that I think are worth meriting, I hope you find them as helpful as I found them or in one case, as hilarious as I found it.

tk808 this post doesn't relate to Altcoins except maybe in a roundabout way but I picked this post as one of my favourites of 2019 because it manages to do what I have not seen anyone do in this forum, we all seem to take things too seriously here and the day I found this as by TMAN was really a very special day for me.

This post made me laugh so hard but what actually makes it special for me is that i found comic relief on a day that was bad for me and I found it in the most unusual of places.. in an ad.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5207070.msg53351001#msg53351001

This link below is a link to the profile of JessicaVL, I have found quite helpful, almost all her posts has turned out to be educative so far and I have great respect for her, this is why I would be posting a link to her post history instead of just a single post because they all deserve our attention y'all.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;threads;u=2276234;sa=showPosts

I know that the Chinese Government said that it's blockchain and not Cryptocurrencies but it seems they are going out of their way to cripple the existing Cryptocurrency infrastructure, it might just be a way to clear away all competition so that when their own coin launches, it would be just them exclusively in their country but one thing they fail to see is that if they are claiming that it's just Blockchain and not Cryptocurrencies, then launching their own Cryptocurrency makes absolutely no sense so I tend to believe that this is just an attempt to clear all competition. This is just an example of Governments being Governments, they claim to want decentralisation but they still want to control the power.

The cloud token project has ended up the way we thought it would end up... And that's with tears in the eyes of it's investors, I saw someone shilling it his telegram group to a bunch of noobs and when I tried pointing out that the token is just basically a shit token with a wallet that isn't even decentralised, he muted me immediately and I joined with another account to see how the drama would end when my prediction becomes a reality, I seriously thought it would give me joy to see it but it's heartbreaking to see people who don't know how the Cryptocurrency space works mourning their losses, people shouldn't fall for Ponzi scams or HYIPs anymore, they never end well.

Another thing is that the technology behind Cryptocurrencies is futuristic and there is no doubt in my mind that Cryptocurrencies would be the next logical step in the evolution of money, which other technology enables you to send money across the world in a matter of seconds? To add to that, it enabled you do that in a completely decentralised manner and all you really need is an internet enabled device and you don't have to fill any single form to open an account or stand in any queue to make a transaction like in banks.

Additionally it takes out the middle-man and this ensures that nobody can stop your transactions once it is initiated, didn't mention the cheap fees too? You could send a billion dollars worth of funds within 5 seconds and with a fee as low as $0.05. Isn't that just too awesome?