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101  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Bitcoin in 10 years, 9 years ago - from Theymos reddit AMA on: July 13, 2022, 04:26:20 PM
It's an interesting look back, though my predictions don't strike me as especially prescient or anything.

IMO it seems less likely now that Bitcoin will be replaced as a base-money/digital-gold asset. Bitcoin's network-effect and reputational advantage is too strong at this point. Any replacement would have to have overwhelming advantages over Bitcoin, with Bitcoin failing to compete against these advantages for years. I don't see ETH as a likely competitor in the base-money niche, though there is clearly intense demand for easy-to-use smart contract capability, so until BTC smart-contract tech advances to compete with that, ETH will have a place. It's definitely possible for off-chain BTC smart contracts to work just as well or better than ETH's smart contracts, but the development of this has been slow. And CBDCs are in a completely different niche, and don't compete against Bitcoin.

I've never been opposed to hardforks if they are uncontroversial and are phased in very slowly, though I underestimated how much could be done with softforks. There probably will be a hardfork someday, though probably not soon.

On the email-address thing, IIRC I was specifically thinking of a hub-and-spoke payments system where everyone would have a Bitcoin wallet provider of their choice (possibly self-hosted), similar to how everyone has an email provider like gmail and it's also possible to run your own email server on your own domain. You'd trust a small amount of your total BTC with your wallet provider, and small everyday transactions would be done in a process like this:
 1. You tell your wallet provider to send to client@wallet.com.
 2. If your wallet provider is wallet.com, then they just do an internal debit/credit, with no on-chain transaction.
 3. If your wallet provider has a payment channel open with wallet.com, then they debit your account, adjust the payment channel to move the BTC to wallet.com without an on-chain transaction, and wallet.com credits their client account.
 4. If there is no existing payment channel, then a payment channel is opened, requiring some on-chain transactions. This would require an automated negotiation about how large the channel should be and how the fees should be split between the wallet providers, though these fees would presumably be just a small cost of doing business for the wallet providers rather than a per-transaction fee for the end-users.

The idea was that you'd still send large transactions on-chain, similar to wire transfers vs ACH transfers. This would only be for small everyday transactions.

This is somewhat similar to LN, but LN improved upon it in almost every way.
102  Other / Meta / Re: DT update log on: July 01, 2022, 07:57:42 PM
This month 133 users were eligible

Old:
Code:
theymos
HostFat
OgNasty
yxt
qwk
cygan
Foxpup
philipma1957
babo
Cyrus
peloso
Welsh
Mitchell
vizique
wwzsocki
jeremypwr
yogg
stompix
Avirunes
buckrogers
Buchi-88
Lesbian Cow
willi9974
JayJuanGee
DaveF
examplens
minerjones
BitcoinPenny
bitbollo
bill gator
LFC_Bitcoin
o_solo_miner
sandy-is-fine
klarki
actmyname
The Pharmacist
DarkStar_
SFR10
TwitchySeal
phishead
TryNinja
ekiller
condoras
Lafu
Coin_trader
crwth
webtricks
Ale88
duesoldi
bobita
Vispilio
Baofeng
be.open
krogothmanhattan
JollyGood
RaltcoinsB
roycilik
El duderino_
KTChampions
Trofo
Coin-1
icopress
bavicrypto
GreatArkansas
sheenshane
o_e_l_e_o
3meek
logfiles
Agrawas
GazetaBitcoin
Maus0728
TheBeardedBaby
tranthidung
tvplus006
coinlocket$
mole0815
witcher_sense
bitmover
DdmrDdmr
morvillz7z
Husna QA
fillippone
abhiseshakana
madnessteat
The Cryptovator
lovesmayfamilis
DireWolfM14
TalkStar
1miau
The0ldl_lser
YOSHIE
Ratimov
geophphreigh
zasad@
Rikafip
Lachrymose
FatFork
NotATether

New:
Code:
theymos
HostFat
OgNasty
yxt
qwk
mprep
Dabs
philipma1957
Cyrus
Welsh
ibminer
Mitchell
vizique
wwzsocki
Timelord2067
EFS
yogg
dbshck
greenplastic
stompix
hilariousandco
arulbero
Avirunes
Buchi-88
Lesbian Cow
willi9974
JayJuanGee
NeuroticFish
achow101
examplens
nutildah
minerjones
sapta
yahoo62278
bitbollo
zazarb
o_solo_miner
sandy-is-fine
Real-Duke
klarki
LeGaulois
DarkStar_
SFR10
TryNinja
johhnyUA
BitcoinGirl.Club
ekiller
Lafu
polymerbit
buwaytress
crwth
webtricks
duesoldi
Kryptowerk
julerz12
bobita
nullius
Baofeng
be.open
imhoneer
krogothmanhattan
JollyGood
roycilik
KTChampions
Coin-1
icopress
bavicrypto
GreatArkansas
Veleor
sheenshane
o_e_l_e_o
logfiles
GazetaBitcoin
TheBeardedBaby
tranthidung
coinlocket$
mole0815
witcher_sense
bitmover
DdmrDdmr
cabalism13
Lakai01
morvillz7z
Husna QA
fillippone
abhiseshakana
madnessteat
The Cryptovator
lovesmayfamilis
DireWolfM14
1miau
Harkorede
The0ldl_lser
efialtis
geophphreigh
zasad@
Lachrymose
FatFork
NotATether
bullrun2020bro
103  Other / Politics & Society / Re: Juneteenth....WHY? on: June 20, 2022, 05:56:52 PM
I don't like identity politics: you shouldn't be proud of things that you had no control over, and you shouldn't consider yourself to be part of some political tribe based on your race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. So I'd support getting rid of things like Black History Month or Women's History Month. But I think that the idea of Juneteenth is worthy of a federal holiday if anything is. Slavery was a very evil institution; it's worthwhile to remember the harms that were done (without blaming anyone alive today for it), and it's worth celebrating the fact that despite slavery being commonly accepted throughout most of history in most parts of the world to varying degrees, humanity in general and the US in particular were able to move the moral bar forward and finally recognize slavery as evil. If I listed some of humanity's biggest achievements throughout all of history -- the things that actually mattered and show IMO what we're even here for --, recognizing slavery as evil would be near the top of the list, and it happened relatively recently.

That said, there are two things that bother me about Juneteenth. First, the name sounds incredibly stupid. I don't care if this is what they historically called it: it sounds ridiculous, and you can't tell from the name what it's even commemorating. Rename it "Freedom Day" or "Emancipation Day" or something. Second, there are too many federal holidays. Get rid of some of the more useless ones like Labor Day, Presidents' Day, or Columbus Day.

On a similar matter, my initial reaction to hearing that they were going to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill was pretty negative. Whoever came up with this idea almost certainly did it with the mindset of, "We only have white men on the money, but we need to check more identity boxes than that. Can we find a non-white LGBT woman or something?", and that sort of identity-based thinking is a stupid reason to do anything. But I later came to at least not hate the idea. After reading some of Tubman's biography, I came to think that she was in fact an impressive figure who exemplified some of America's best qualities. Maybe there are better people than her to pick for this, but she's not bad. And Andrew Jackson was one of the worst presidents in US history, so I don't mind diminishing his prominence, and in fact I wish they'd remove him completely from the $20 bill rather than keeping him and adding Tubman as they currently plan. (If they were going to diminish Jefferson or Franklin, who I actually respect, that'd bother me more.)
104  Other / Meta / Re: CloudFlare is blocking simple PHP code posting! on: June 19, 2022, 07:40:43 AM
Could you fix the concat error I linked to above while you are at it? Putting concat-() without the "-" in to any post will lead to the same CloudFlare warning page.

Fixed.
105  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Technical Support / Re: Why is this code yielding something like this? on: June 19, 2022, 07:24:10 AM
As others have mentioned, when you're dealing with floating-point numbers, different numbers can have the same internal representation. 10000000/pow(10,8) returns 0.1, but because this is stored as a floating-point number, it has the same byte-level representation as 0.10000000000000001 as well as infinitely many other numbers, and when echo converts this float to a string, it chooses that particular value to display. round returns a float, so that doesn't fix the issue: in this case it outputs exactly the same thing that it takes as input.

sprintf('%.8f', $satoshiValue/pow(10,8)) will do what you expected round to do because it returns a string instead of a float. There are other ways to address the issue, but that's what I'd do.

What PHP version do you use? Mine is 7.4.

The exact behavior of floats might depend on the CPU, OS, compiler, C library, and PHP version. You can't rely on any specific behavior.
106  Other / Meta / Re: CloudFlare is blocking simple PHP code posting! on: June 19, 2022, 07:05:43 AM
Fixed, thanks.

I never intend for posts to trigger that sort of "blocked" message, but Cloudflare has hundreds of rules, so sometimes it happens, and it's difficult to track down when it does. If anyone runs into this again in the future, please email both of these things to the bugs email address linked on the contact page:
 - The "ray ID" at the bottom of the "blocked" message.
 - Exactly what you tried to post.
107  Other / Archival / Re: What do you expect from bitcoin in the second half of 2022? on: June 16, 2022, 02:13:54 AM
A big part of the downturn in BTC's price is that liquidity is being sucked out of the system to an extent even larger than is generally realized. The world is starved for liquidity. I expected a crash like this:

I'm bearish for the first half of the year because most of the world is transitioning from unprecedentedly easy money to, relatively, extremely tight money, and crypto feeds off of easy money more than anything. People talk a lot about interest rates, but it's that plus slowing growth, much lower government spending, and rapidly ending QE. Worldwide, the brakes have already been slammed on the economy, but people haven't quite realized it yet. I think that sometime in the first half of the year all liquid assets including BTC are likely to fall off a cliff. It then might quickly recover within days, or this might lead to a frenzy of panic selling which lasts a couple of months. I think that this crash will be an excellent time to buy, though, and we could see ATHs toward the end of the year.

My record of price predictions isn't great, and so I don't personally make large bets based on my price outlook. My prediction above will definitively be wrong if we get to July without a major crash, or if interest rates peak and then start to constantly fall without a crash in liquid assets.

When central banks add liquidity, they add bad liquidity. It gets thrown at useless things like wasteful government projects and zombie companies. But even with rates at 0%, credit is still either completely unavailable or very expensive to disfavored industries, people without the right connections, people in disfavored countries, most projects without collateral, etc. If you had some great business idea, do you think that you could get a big loan for it? The lack of good liquidity is a form of tightness which has been strangling the world economy. So when central banks and governments stop doing incredibly-loose things like sending people checks and start mildly tightening monetary policy, we get tightness on top of existing tightness. The world can't handle it.

Crypto is one possible solution to the liquidity crisis, since it offers a form of liquidity that's available to those that are excluded from the USD system (eg. El Salvador). I haven't personally experimented much with DeFi stuff, and I think that 90% of it is probably a scam, but this area has major potential vis-à-vis the liquidity issue, and BTC is the best monetary base for a DeFi monetary system. This can add the "good" liquidity that the world is starved for, having been fed only central banks' "bad" liquidity for years.

The recent crash is basically what I expected: a liquidity crisis causing almost every liquid asset on Earth to crash. But I expected it to be worse, and in fact I expected it to be so bad that it would cause the Fed to stop tightening. This crash wasn't nearly bad enough to make them hesitate, especially with inflation so high (higher than I expected in January). I suspect that we'll get one or more additional rounds of liquidity-crisis selling like this, though I'm not sure.

If things get so bad that the Fed stops tightening, that's good for BTC because BTC feeds on easy money. But if the Fed is seriously going to let rates go up several more percentage points, then BTC probably has a lot more to fall. We'd have to eliminate the portion of the price which comes from easy money and FOMO-buyers before rising on other fundamental strengths. In that case, I'd expect BTC to keep falling until monetary policy becomes restrictive across the board (ie. rates +/- other effects such as the balance sheet put us above the neutral rate, in nearly every sector and situation). After that point, I'd guess that further rate increases would not be particularly harmful to BTC, and could in fact help BTC. In other words, even if the Fed keeps tightening, I think that BTC can still perform well, eventually.

At the moment, my base case for the second half is that the liquidity crisis builds to such an extent and causes so much pain that the Fed seizes on some excuse such as a deceleration in CPI (but still staying very high), and they stop tightening. This will be bullish for BTC in several respects: easy money will flow into BTC, the Fed's failure and increasing financial repression will undermine the USD, inflation will boost the "BTC as an inflation hedge" narrative (even though it hasn't actually worked recently), and BTC+DeFi as a new global monetary system will emerge as a solution to a major problem. ATHs are still possible this year, but probably more likely is a drop even lower from here (to just under $10k, perhaps?) and then an increase toward the end of the year back to the $30-40k area.

As always, note that my record of predictions is not very good, and I don't personally make large bets based on them if I can avoid it.
108  Economy / Auctions / Advertise on this forum - Round 352 on: June 16, 2022, 12:58:28 AM
The forum sells ad space in the area beneath the first post of every topic page. This income is used primarily to cover hosting costs and to pay moderators for their work (there are many moderators, so each moderator gets only a small amount -- moderators should be seen as volunteers, not employees). Any leftover amount is typically either saved for future expenses or otherwise reinvested into the forum or the ecosystem.

There are 10 total ad slots which are randomly rotated. So one ad slot has a one in ten chance of appearing. Nine of the slots are for sale here. Ads appear only on topic pages with more than one post. Hero/Legendary members, Donators, VIPs, and moderators have the ability to disable ads; these people don't increase the impression stats for your ads.

Design & ad restrictions

Ad text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may not link directly to any NSFW page. No ICOs[1], loggable mixers[2], banks, funds, or anything that a person can be said to "invest" in; I may very rarely make exceptions if you convince me that you are ultra legit, but don't count on it. Ads may be rejected for other reasons, and I may remove ads even after they are accepted.

See the ad design rules for info on designing forum ads.

When advertising a new service, you should always check with me in advance whether your service is OK. I will sometimes accept bids of people who don't do this, but such people are taking the risk of being rejected at the last minute. It's also a good idea for you to have me check your ad's HTML+CSS in advance, especially if this is your first time advertising.

Duration/timing

 - Ad slots won in this auction will run from noon July 29 (US Eastern time) to noon August 30. (32 days.)
 - This auction will end sometime between July 20 and July 26, but July 25 is most likely.
 - You must pay within 48 hours of the auction ending. Only Bitcoin is accepted. If you fail to pay in time, your ad slots may be resold, and in cases where I feel that you're acting in bad faith, I may even give you a negative trust rating.
 - You must send me a valid ad (ie. one not breaking any of the styling or other rules) before noon July 28. If you fail to send a valid ad in time, then the ad round will start without you, and you will be "burning time". You can still send an ad after the deadline, and usually this ad will be put up fairly quickly, but no particular timeline is guaranteed after the deadline.
 - If extended downtime or similar issues cause your ad not to be displayed for a long time, we generally give prorated refunds (USD-denominated) for the lost time, but this is not guaranteed.

Stats

Exact historical impression counts per slot:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstats

Info about the current ad slots:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfo

Auction rules

New members are likely to have their bids rejected unless they PM me first, telling me what they're going to advertise. New members might also be required to pay some amount in advance. Additionally, if you have never purchased forum ad space before, and it is not blatantly obvious what you're going to advertise, say what you're going to advertise in your first bid, or tell me in a PM.

Post your bids in this thread. Prices must be stated in mBTC per slot. (10 mBTC = 0.01 BTC.) You must state the maximum number of slots you want. When the auction ends, the highest bidders will have their slots filled until all nine slots are filled.

So if someone bids for 9 slots @ 50 mBTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 40 mBTC and 1 slot @ 50 mBTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 50" means 2 slots for 50 mBTC each. Not 2 slots for 50 mBTC total.

- When you post a bid, the bids in your previous posts are considered to be automatically canceled. You can put multiple bids in one post, however, like "5 @ 10 and 1 @ 50".
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 2 mBTC.
- The bidding starts at 2 mBTC.
- The auction ends at an arbitrary time between July 20 and July 26. Times closer to 8:00AM July 25 (US Eastern time) are more likely.
- If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first.

If these rules are confusing, look at some of the past forum ad auctions to see how it's done.

I reserve the right to reject bids, even days after the bid is made.

Price flattening

At the end of the auction, after the winning bids are all determined, I will do a "price flattening" operation. This has no effect on which bids actually win, but is instead just meant to make the prices actually paid by bidders more equal. For each bid, in order of lowest to greatest price/slot, I will reduce each bid's price/slot to the highest value which is equal to or only the minimum increment greater than the next-lower bid. This allows you to bid higher prices without worrying so much, but you still mustn't bid more than you're willing to pay. Example:

Code:
This:
Slots  mBTC/Slot  Person
    6      200       A
    1      160       B
    1       80       C
    1       80       D

Becomes:
Slots  mBTC/Slot  Person
    6      84       A [step 4: reduced to 82+2=84]
    1      82       B [step 3: reduced to 80+2=82]
    1      80       C [step 2: same as the next-lowest, unchanged]
    1      80       D [step 1: the lowest bid is always unchanged]

Payment, etc.

You must pay for your slots within 48 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slots may be sold to someone else, and I might even give you a negative trust rating. I will send you the payment information via forum PM from this account ("theymos", user ID 35) after announcing the auction results in this thread. You might receive false payment information from scammers pretending to be me. They might even have somewhat similar usernames. Be careful.

[1]: For the purposes of forum ads, an ICO is any token, altcoin, or other altcoin-like thing which meets any of the following criteria: it is primarily run/backed by a company; it is substantially, fundamentally centralized in either operation or coin distribution; or it is not yet possible for two unprivileged users of the system to send coins directly to each other in a P2P way. The intention here is to allow community efforts to advertise things like Litecoin, but not to allow ICO funding, even when the ICO is disguised in various ways.
[2]: A loggable mixer is a service marketed primarily for improving transaction privacy which accepts full custody of cryptocurrency for a time and has the technical ability to log where the cryptocurrency comes from and goes to (even if they promise not to log).
109  Economy / Auctions / Re: Advertise on this forum - Round 351 on: June 16, 2022, 12:57:20 AM
Auction ended, final result:
Slots mBTC/slot Person
1 26 Coinbox1
2 24 waveriderp
1 24 bitblade
2 22 CrashinoAffiliates
3 20 BK8.Official
110  Other / Meta / Re: Warning in PM, is this a new feature? on: June 16, 2022, 12:48:46 AM
I won't risk opening any link if I get such a warning, maybe I'll delete it or report it to the mod.

If we could automatically detect phishing with 100% accuracy, we'd just prevent the PM from being sent. These warnings can appear on totally legit PMs; they just mean that you should be extra careful. Also, note that often accounts are hacked and used to send phishing PMs, so don't rely on the fact that the sender is trustworthy.
111  Other / Meta / Re: Happy Birthday theymos! on: June 16, 2022, 12:44:53 AM
Thanks! Smiley

I hope he's not too busy to see the market candle blown by the storm.
Probably everyone is busy with the candle sticks ( on Bitcoin price chart ). Cheesy

The market has gifted me with a great buying opportunity. Wink

Damn, time flies so fast... 31 already. It looked like theymos was in his early 20s just few years ago.

People have long expected me to be in my 40s, and I'm getting closer and closer to meeting those expectations!
112  Other / Meta / Re: DT update log on: June 02, 2022, 04:44:50 PM
This month 121 users were eligible.

Old:
Code:
theymos
gmaxwell
malevolent
qwk
cygan
fronti
mprep
Dabs
Foxpup
Carlton Banks
philipma1957
babo
Cyrus
Welsh
ibminer
Mitchell
Ticked
wwzsocki
Timelord2067
jeremypwr
EFS
stompix
hilariousandco
Avirunes
buckrogers
Buchi-88
Lesbian Cow
willi9974
achow101
DaveF
examplens
minerjones
irfan_pak10
yahoo62278
Royse777
zazarb
bill gator
sandy-is-fine
Real-Duke
klarki
The Pharmacist
LeGaulois
DarkStar_
SFR10
TwitchySeal
phishead
TryNinja
BitcoinGirl.Club
ekiller
Lafu
Coin_trader
crwth
webtricks
Ale88
duesoldi
bobita
Vispilio
Baofeng
be.open
imhoneer
krogothmanhattan
wolwoo
JollyGood
RaltcoinsB
roycilik
CryptopreneurBrainboss
El duderino_
KTChampions
bavicrypto
GreatArkansas
sheenshane
o_e_l_e_o
3meek
logfiles
Agrawas
Maus0728
TheBeardedBaby
tranthidung
coinlocket$
dkbit98
bitmover
DdmrDdmr
Lakai01
Husna QA
Bthd
fillippone
abhiseshakana
madnessteat
The Cryptovator
lovesmayfamilis
DireWolfM14
Corrosive
1miau
YOSHIE
rxalts
efialtis
Ratimov
zasad@
Rikafip
FatFork

New:
Code:
theymos
HostFat
OgNasty
yxt
qwk
cygan
Dabs
Foxpup
philipma1957
babo
Cyrus
peloso
Welsh
Mitchell
vizique
wwzsocki
jeremypwr
yogg
stompix
Avirunes
buckrogers
Buchi-88
Lesbian Cow
willi9974
JayJuanGee
DaveF
examplens
minerjones
BitcoinPenny
bitbollo
Royse777
bill gator
LFC_Bitcoin
o_solo_miner
sandy-is-fine
klarki
actmyname
The Pharmacist
DarkStar_
SFR10
TwitchySeal
phishead
TryNinja
ekiller
condoras
Lafu
Coin_trader
crwth
webtricks
Ale88
duesoldi
bobita
Vispilio
Baofeng
be.open
krogothmanhattan
JollyGood
RaltcoinsB
roycilik
El duderino_
KTChampions
Trofo
Coin-1
icopress
bavicrypto
GreatArkansas
sheenshane
o_e_l_e_o
3meek
logfiles
Agrawas
GazetaBitcoin
Maus0728
TheBeardedBaby
tranthidung
tvplus006
coinlocket$
mole0815
witcher_sense
bitmover
DdmrDdmr
morvillz7z
Husna QA
fillippone
abhiseshakana
madnessteat
The Cryptovator
lovesmayfamilis
DireWolfM14
TalkStar
1miau
The0ldl_lser
YOSHIE
Ratimov
geophphreigh
zasad@
Rikafip
Lachrymose
FatFork
NotATether
113  Other / Meta / Re: Is the code used to generate a new address in the copper membership open source? on: May 25, 2022, 08:28:07 PM
There's nothing fancy going on. The Bitcoin-specific part of the payments handling code is only 94 lines, and most of this deals with interfacing with bitcointalk.org. It uses Bitcoin Core via JSON-RPC; specifically, the only two JSON-RPC commands bitcointalk.org uses are listreceivedbyaddress and getnewaddress.

You could create a page which displays a user-unique address and says how much that address has received in like 10 lines of PHP if you use a JSON-RPC library. However, in reality you need to handle a large number of edge cases (eg. overpayment, underpayment, very-late payment, etc.), so I recommend using BTCPay Server, which tries to handle all such edge cases in reasonable ways.
114  Economy / Auctions / Advertise on this forum - Round 351 on: May 12, 2022, 05:03:28 PM
The forum sells ad space in the area beneath the first post of every topic page. This income is used primarily to cover hosting costs and to pay moderators for their work (there are many moderators, so each moderator gets only a small amount -- moderators should be seen as volunteers, not employees). Any leftover amount is typically either saved for future expenses or otherwise reinvested into the forum or the ecosystem.

There are 10 total ad slots which are randomly rotated. So one ad slot has a one in ten chance of appearing. Nine of the slots are for sale here. Ads appear only on topic pages with more than one post. Hero/Legendary members, Donators, VIPs, and moderators have the ability to disable ads; these people don't increase the impression stats for your ads.

Design & ad restrictions

Ad text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may not link directly to any NSFW page. No ICOs[1], loggable mixers[2], banks, funds, or anything that a person can be said to "invest" in; I may very rarely make exceptions if you convince me that you are ultra legit, but don't count on it. Ads may be rejected for other reasons, and I may remove ads even after they are accepted.

See the ad design rules for info on designing forum ads.

When advertising a new service, you should always check with me in advance whether your service is OK. I will sometimes accept bids of people who don't do this, but such people are taking the risk of being rejected at the last minute. It's also a good idea for you to have me check your ad's HTML+CSS in advance, especially if this is your first time advertising.

Duration/timing

 - Ad slots won in this auction will run from noon June 23 (US Eastern time) to noon July 29. (36 days.)
 - This auction will end sometime between June 13 and June 17, but June 16 is most likely.
 - You must pay within 48 hours of the auction ending. Only Bitcoin is accepted. If you fail to pay in time, your ad slots may be resold, and in cases where I feel that you're acting in bad faith, I may even give you a negative trust rating.
 - You must send me a valid ad (ie. one not breaking any of the styling or other rules) before noon June 22. If you fail to send a valid ad in time, then the ad round will start without you, and you will be "burning time". You can still send an ad after the deadline, and usually this ad will be put up fairly quickly, but no particular timeline is guaranteed after the deadline.
 - If extended downtime or similar issues cause your ad not to be displayed for a long time, we generally give prorated refunds (USD-denominated) for the lost time, but this is not guaranteed.

Stats

Exact historical impression counts per slot:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstats

Info about the current ad slots:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfo

Auction rules

New members are likely to have their bids rejected unless they PM me first, telling me what they're going to advertise. New members might also be required to pay some amount in advance. Additionally, if you have never purchased forum ad space before, and it is not blatantly obvious what you're going to advertise, say what you're going to advertise in your first bid, or tell me in a PM.

Post your bids in this thread. Prices must be stated in mBTC per slot. (10 mBTC = 0.01 BTC.) You must state the maximum number of slots you want. When the auction ends, the highest bidders will have their slots filled until all nine slots are filled.

So if someone bids for 9 slots @ 50 mBTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 40 mBTC and 1 slot @ 50 mBTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 50" means 2 slots for 50 mBTC each. Not 2 slots for 50 mBTC total.

- When you post a bid, the bids in your previous posts are considered to be automatically canceled. You can put multiple bids in one post, however, like "5 @ 10 and 1 @ 50".
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 2 mBTC.
- The bidding starts at 2 mBTC.
- The auction ends at an arbitrary time between June 13 and June 17. Times closer to 8:00AM June 16 (US Eastern time) are more likely.
- If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first.

If these rules are confusing, look at some of the past forum ad auctions to see how it's done.

I reserve the right to reject bids, even days after the bid is made.

Price flattening

At the end of the auction, after the winning bids are all determined, I will do a "price flattening" operation. This has no effect on which bids actually win, but is instead just meant to make the prices actually paid by bidders more equal. For each bid, in order of lowest to greatest price/slot, I will reduce each bid's price/slot to the highest value which is equal to or only the minimum increment greater than the next-lower bid. This allows you to bid higher prices without worrying so much, but you still mustn't bid more than you're willing to pay. Example:

Code:
This:
Slots  mBTC/Slot  Person
    6      200       A
    1      160       B
    1       80       C
    1       80       D

Becomes:
Slots  mBTC/Slot  Person
    6      84       A [step 4: reduced to 82+2=84]
    1      82       B [step 3: reduced to 80+2=82]
    1      80       C [step 2: same as the next-lowest, unchanged]
    1      80       D [step 1: the lowest bid is always unchanged]

Payment, etc.

You must pay for your slots within 48 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slots may be sold to someone else, and I might even give you a negative trust rating. I will send you the payment information via forum PM from this account ("theymos", user ID 35) after announcing the auction results in this thread. Potential advertisers are common targets of scams and spearphishing. You might receive false payment information from scammers pretending to be me, etc. Be careful.

[1]: For the purposes of forum ads, an ICO is any token, altcoin, or other altcoin-like thing which meets any of the following criteria: it is primarily run/backed by a company; it is substantially, fundamentally centralized in either operation or coin distribution; or it is not yet possible for two unprivileged users of the system to send coins directly to each other in a P2P way. The intention here is to allow community efforts to advertise things like Litecoin, but not to allow ICO funding, even when the ICO is disguised in various ways.
[2]: A loggable mixer is a service marketed primarily for improving transaction privacy which accepts full custody of cryptocurrency for a time and has the technical ability to log where the cryptocurrency comes from and goes to (even if they promise not to log).
115  Economy / Auctions / Re: Advertise on this forum - Round 350 on: May 12, 2022, 04:52:41 PM
Auction ended, final result:
Slots mBTC/Slot Person
2 16 CrashinoAffiliates
4 16 Hhampuz
3 14 Panxora_COO
116  Other / Meta / Re: $1 000: If you can move or delete a post that you are not supposed to be able to on: May 09, 2022, 03:08:10 AM
I don't think that this should be eligible for a security bounty in any case because things are essentially working as intended: you're supposed to be able to move topics out of Auctions, and you're supposed to be able to edit posts outside of Auctions.

Edits are not allowed in Auctions mainly to prevent people from being able to edit their bids, in replies. I suppose there is a potential issue with collusion between the OP and auction participants, and perhaps there are edge cases where the OP could somehow do evil by editing or deleting their own posts in the thread, so I made it no longer possible to move your topics out of Auctions.
117  Other / Politics & Society / Re: [report]Rov V Wade overturned on: May 03, 2022, 08:34:15 PM
The way I see it, abolishing Roe would insert many local and state governments in to what should be an issue between doctor and patient and have no government involvement whatsoever.

Taking the localism issue in isolation: The less power any particular government has, the less total harm any one of them can do, and the less incentive there is for outside forces to corrupt the governments. But because we're talking about a prohibition on any government creating a bad law, rather than the creation of some federal law/program, I do find the argument against localism somewhat appealing here. Would I support restricting the 1st or 2nd amendments (which I unreservedly support) to only federal laws rather than federal+local laws? I think that I would in fact support limiting the scope of the 1st or 2nd amendments in this way, as it would reduce the scope of the federal government's power, though when I consider this isolated, extreme example, it makes me a lot less comfortable.

On the abortion issue in particular, I'm even more happy with localism because there is never going to be anything approaching a nationwide consensus on the abortion issue, so localism here gives people an opportunity to vote with their feet.

Your "between doctor and patient" point is why I said in my previous post that pro-abortion people are bad at messaging. That comes across as being utterly dismissive toward an act that anti-abortion people honestly see as downright murder. You are never in a million years going to convince anyone with that sort of messaging. If you want to be more effective at convincing people, you should drop the "just a medical choice like any other" language and instead:
 - Give arguments for why abortion is not murder even in the 2nd trimester (eg. data on brain development).
 - Point out that if anti-abortion people actually believe abortion is murder, then it makes no sense to allow abortions in case of rape or incest, which are overwhelmingly seen in polling as acceptable situations for abortions.
 - Give stories of people whose lives were in some way saved from tragedy because they could have an abortion.
 - Give stories of people who died or whose lives were ruined because they were prevented from having an abortion.
118  Other / Politics & Society / Re: [report]Rov V Wade overturned on: May 03, 2022, 05:25:27 PM
I'm not sure that the draft is actually at all indicative of the final decision. It'd be very natural for one of the conservative justices to write a draft where they imagine a "dream decision" where they get exactly what they want using exactly the justification they want. The liberal justices probably also have drafts which they've been working on for years where they get exactly what they want. The leaked draft does have 5 names attached, but that part could very easily be faked.

I don't have a very strong opinion on this issue one way or the other. I'm opposed to abortion, but I'm not sure if my idea of utopia would have any legal barriers to abortion.

Legally:
As I understand it, Roe v. Wade was based primarily on the argument that prior to the third trimester, the 14th amendment's right to privacy prohibits any government in the US from interfering with the mother's personal health decision. What I like about this argument is that I like the court interpreting the 14th amendment very broadly. You really should be able to use the same argument to fight against drug laws, vaccine mandates, etc. The existence of this contradiction between Roe v. Wade and many non-abortion-related anti-personal-freedom laws could be used to weaken those latter laws, which would be good in my book.

What I don't like about Roe v. Wade is that it inserts the federal government into what was previously a local issue, and I prefer localism. The trimester system is also obviously completely arbitrary. The court decided that the fetus is basically just a part of the mother's body before the third trimester, with zero personhood. I hate these sorts of arbitrary lines which nobody will ever agree on. Conservatives believe that Roe allows for murder, and some liberals think that Roe didn't go far enough, allowing mothers' rights to be infringed via abortion restrictions in the third trimester.

Politically:
The Democrats were always going to use this as a campaign tool. Since everything else is going so poorly for them, this is about the only thing they have. I hope you all like this issue, because we're going to be hearing about abortion 24/7 until November.

Polls have shown two contradictory things:
 - The majority of Americans oppose overturning Roe.
 - The majority of Americans support certain restrictions on abortions which would be prohibited by Roe. (For example, "Do you support banning abortions once the fetus has a heartbeat," and many similar questions like that.)

This shows that Americans don't actually understand what Roe is. The abortion debate will therefore primarily be a battle of defining what the Court actually did. Are they an extremist court who have overturned a long-standing status quo that we've all lived with for decades? Or have they just allowed common-sense restrictions on abortions - restrictions which the majority of Americans believe in? There's a lot of room for either side to succeed or fail on their messaging here. My perception is that the pro-abortion side has historically been worse at messaging, but that may be because I am mildly anti-abortion.

Democrats hope that this will turn things around for them, but abortion usually scores pretty low on polls of top issues among voters, and it's a more important issue for Republicans than Democrats. On the other hand, abortion tends to be a more important issue for the key suburban-women demographic, and this might be the "something, anything" that will get the Democratic base to turn out.

My guess is that this will be a noisy issue, but it won't actually have a big effect in elections.
119  Other / Meta / Re: DT update log on: May 02, 2022, 06:45:07 PM
This month 122 users were eligible.

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Ticked
wwzsocki
Timelord2067
jeremypwr
EFS
stompix
hilariousandco
Avirunes
buckrogers
Buchi-88
Lesbian Cow
willi9974
achow101
DaveF
examplens
minerjones
irfan_pak10
yahoo62278
Royse777
zazarb
bill gator
sandy-is-fine
Real-Duke
klarki
The Pharmacist
LeGaulois
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SFR10
TwitchySeal
phishead
TryNinja
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ekiller
Lafu
Coin_trader
crwth
webtricks
Ale88
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bobita
Vispilio
Baofeng
be.open
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wolwoo
JollyGood
RaltcoinsB
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El duderino_
KTChampions
bavicrypto
GreatArkansas
sheenshane
o_e_l_e_o
3meek
logfiles
Agrawas
Maus0728
TheBeardedBaby
tranthidung
coinlocket$
dkbit98
bitmover
DdmrDdmr
Lakai01
Husna QA
Bthd
fillippone
abhiseshakana
madnessteat
COOLCRYPTOVATOR
lovesmayfamilis
DireWolfM14
Corrosive
1miau
YOSHIE
rxalts
efialtis
Ratimov
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Rikafip
FatFork
120  Economy / Speculation / Re: Elon Musk buys Twitter on: April 26, 2022, 09:26:56 PM
It's momentarily funny to watch some leftists freak out about this, but this is probably a bad thing long-term. Elon might end up improving Twitter as a platform, but I don't consider Twitter to be particularly important. And Twitter will end up being a massive distraction for Elon, whose genius could be better applied to so many other things. It's impossible to run this sort of platform while pleasing everyone, so he's going to end up hated by the public and targeted by politicians in the same way as Zuckerberg, even if Elon's policies for Twitter are somewhat different than Zuckerberg's for Facebook. He's going to piss off 70% of people no matter what he does. This also seems like part of a trend of Elon becoming increasingly interested in politics, and playing the political game is a massive waste of anyone's time.

It'll probably end up being a huge waste of money, as well. Twitter has always been a garbage company for investors, and it's hard to imagine him improving Twitter's business enough to make it worth what he paid.

If I were a Twitter user, one thing I'd be worried about is that Elon's statements make it sound like he might want to "KYC" everyone to eliminate "bots". This I think goes in exactly the wrong direction. One of the main reasons social media has been so poisonous to society is that people feel like they are constantly on a stage. We need more outlets where people can say what they actually think and see what others actually think, without any fear of being "cancelled". We need more anonymous communication, not less.
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