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Short answer: Yes, mostly.

Long answer: Each forum user belongs to several groups in three categories: one primary group, one post group, and any number of additional groups. Your group membership looks like this:
Primary group: Donator
Post group: Legendary
Additional groups: (none)

A typical newbie's membership looks like this:
Primary group: Regular member
Post group: Newbie
Additional groups: (none)

By paying the fee and then visiting the paid-promotion page, you get the Copper Member and Whitelisted groups added to your additional groups section. (The Whitelisted group is what gives the reduction in time-between-posts.) So the two examples above become:
Raize
Primary group: Donator
Post group: Legendary
Additional groups: Copper Member, Whitelisted
Example newbie
Primary group: Regular member
Post group: Newbie
Additional groups: Copper Member, Whitelisted

Once you're in the Copper Member group, the promotion page gives you the option of "wearing" that membership. I posted a screenshot of this before. Once the example newbie does this, their group membership looks like this:
Primary group: Copper Member
Post group: Newbie
Additional groups: Whitelisted

(And using the same form, you can revert to the previous state.)

However, if your primary group is manually granted, such as Staff or Donator, then you will get an error when you try to do the above operation. It's not allowed to go from a manually-granted primary group to an automatically-granted primary group automatically. If for some reason someone wanted to wear Copper Member instead of Donator or whatever, they could contact an admin and we would probably do it. But it would be purely be an aesthetic thing: any additional privileges a non-newbie would get (I think there are none) are granted just by having the group in your additional groups. (Newbies need to have Copper Member as their primary group to escape the image restrictions, though. That only looks at your primary group and post group.)

Starting with this auction, I am no longer allowing ICOs to advertise. Sorry if any potential advertisers are disappointed by this.

99% of ICOs have basically the same website, and their ideas often seem half-baked. It gives me a bad feeling. I'm sure that many ICOs are OK, but I don't have the resources to do the amount of investigation which should really be performed. I will consider allowing some ICOs again in the future if reasonable certification services are created so that when I ask ICOs, "Are you legit?" they just have to say, "Yes, look at these certifications we have from these trustworthy certifiers: ...", and I'll be able to comfortably believe them.

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.

Ads are allowed to contain any non-annoying HTML/CSS style. No images, JavaScript, or animation. Ads must appear 3 or fewer lines tall in my browser (Firefox, 900px wide). Ad text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may not link directly to any NSFW page. No ICOs, banks, or funds; 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.

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, and only for people using the default theme.

Duration

- Your ads are guaranteed to be up for at least 7 days.
- I usually try to keep ads up for no more than 8 or 9 days.
- Sometimes ads might be up for longer, but hopefully no longer than 12 days. Even if past rounds sometimes lasted for long periods of time, you should not rely on this for your ads.

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

Ad blocking

Hero/Legendary members, Donators, VIPs, and moderators have the ability to disable ads. I don't expect many people to use this option. These people don't increase the impression stats for your ads.

I try to bypass Adblock Plus filters as much as possible, though this is not guaranteed. It is difficult or impossible for ABP filters to block the ad space itself without blocking posts. However, filters can match against the URLs in your links, your CSS classes and style attributes, and the HTML structure of your ads.

To prevent matches against URLs: I have some JavaScript which fixes links blocked by ABP. You must tell me if you want this for your ads. When someone with ABP and JavaScript enabled views your ads, your links are changed to a special randomized bitcointalk.org URL which redirects to your site when visited. People without ABP are unaffected, even if they don't have JavaScript enabled. The downsides are:
- ABP users will see the redirection link when they hover over the link, even if they disable ABP for the forum.
- Getting referral stats might become even more difficult.
- Some users might get a warning when redirecting from https to http.

To prevent matching on CSS classes/styles: Don't use inline CSS. I can give your ad a CSS class that is randomized on each pageload, but you must request this.

To prevent matching against your HTML structure: Use only one <a> and no other tags if possible. If your ads get blocked because of matching done on something inside of your ad, you are responsible for noticing this and giving me new ad HTML.

Designing ads

Make sure that your ads look good when you download and edit this test page:
https://bitcointalk.org/ad_test.html
Also read the comments in that file.

Images are not allowed no matter how they are created (CSS, SVG, or data URI). Occasionally I will make an exception for small logos and such, but you must get pre-approval from me first.

The maximum size of any one ad is 51200 bytes.

I will send you more detailed styling rules if you win slots in this auction (or upon request).

Auction rules

You must be at least a Jr Member to bid. If you are not a Jr Member and you really want to bid, you should PM me first. Tell me in the PM what you're going to advertise. You might be required to pay some amount in advance. Everyone else: Please quickly PM newbies who try to bid here to warn them against impersonation scammers.

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 BTC per slot. 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 @ 5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 4 BTC and 1 slot @ 5 BTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 5" means 2 slots for 5 BTC each. Not 2 slots for 5 BTC 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.
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 0.02.
- The bidding starts at 0.1.
- I will end the auction at an arbitrary time. Unless I say otherwise, I typically try to end auctions within a few days of 10 days from the time of this post, but unexpected circumstances may sometimes force me to end the auction anytime between 4 and 22 days from the start. I have a small bias toward ending auctions on Fridays, Sundays, and Mondays.
- If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first.
- Bids are considered invalid and will be ignored if they do not specify both a price and a max quantity, or if they could not possibly win any slots

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.

You must pay for your slots within 24 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.

Auction ended, final result:
2 0.52 Gunthar
7 0.50 ICOMANAGER_FR

Global Crypto Bank is not allowed to advertise here, as I mentioned last time.

Lydian.io is also not allowed since they have negative trust from my perspective.

Current status of the auction:
Auction ended, final result:
2 0.52 Gunthar
8 0.50 ICOMANAGER_FR [tentative, need info]
1 0.50 BitMixBiz
2 0.48 Hero_Token
4 0.44 Stunna

The auction continues.

I would consider it if it became a widespread, spammy problem, but I don't think that many people are confusing Bitcoin with Bcash on this forum. If someone is fraudulently passing off Bcash as Bitcoin, the most appropriate response is probably to give that person negative trust.

I consider the name "Bitcoin Cash" to be deceptive, but that's on the people behind it: I don't consider it deceptive/fraudulent for people to merely refer to that cryptocurrency as Bitcoin Cash.

Once you have it, you get the choice:

Maybe someday, but the forum doesn't really need extra income right now, and if I was going to do that I'd want the membership to have several real extra benefits.

By popular demand, newbies can now pay to have some of their restrictions lifted. If you pay the fee, you become a Copper Member, and you can post images. That's the main point of this: allowing newbies to post images. Additionally (and these might change depending on how things go), Copper Members currently have these bonuses:

- Some of the same permissions as Member-rank members, such as reduced signature styling restrictions. (But none of the PM-related restrictions are currently lifted, such as the style limit or per-hour PM limit.)
- Your "you must wait ____ seconds between ___" counter is reduced by 75%. So if you're naturally of Newbie rank, you only have to wait 360-75% = 90 seconds.

If you paid an "evil IP" registration fee, then whatever you paid (in BTC terms) is subtracted from the upgrade fee. If you paid a registration fee a long time ago, you might even get a free Copper Membership due to the increase in BTC price. Just visit the link at the bottom of this post to check whether you have it already.

I am aware that for most people the benefits of this membership are pretty lame. This membership is only intended to fill a specific niche; if you don't need it, don't buy it. It is not intended to be the lower-cost Donator/VIP alternative which I've talked about before as a possibility.

I wrote the system so that I can easily add additional paid memberships in the future, but I might not ever do so. Not sure.

You can buy it here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=credit;promote

Unfortunately, I think that you misunderstand the system. Given the trillions of different gender identities, we have adopted a coding system in which each gender identity is assigned a 64-bit number. For example, and only for illustration (I do not wish to presume your wingspan), Apache-attack-helicopter-gendered people would need to input the easy-to-remember code 0x9b68d151aeefa34f. In order to maintain compatibility with legacy systems, however, this is done by submitting the form multiple times with different genders. For example, in this case you would input Male Female Female Male Male Female Male Male Female Male Male Female Male Female Female Female Male Male Female Male Female Female Female Male Female Male Female Male Female Female Female Male Male Female Male Female Male Male Male Female Male Male Male Female Male Male Male Male Male Female Male Female Female Female Male Male Female Male Female Female Male Male Male Male. Simple! Now, it may seem discriminatory to assign Male 1 and Female 0, but not to worry! The coding is designed so that you can also input the inverse and get the same result. And to avoid left-handed bias, you can also enter it in opposite order. In fact, you can just put in whatever sequence of entries you want and the result will be the same.

So you see, bitcointalk.org is in fact the most progressive website ever, and I am ashamed to live in a world in which this system isn't yet codified into law.

- XT
- Classic
- Unlimited
- S2X

Who next?

Honestly, it's a bit disappointing that none of these actually got to the point of a miner-backed attack, since they would've lost, and that would've once-and-for-all put an end to the "miners control Bitcoin" narrative. Oh well.

A lot of companies showed their true colors here. Some stuck their necks out in the right direction and deserve recognition. And some were clearly working against Bitcoin, to varying degrees. We should make a comprehensive list at some point.

To everyone who helped fight against S2X in any way: thank you for defending Bitcoin! While I have little doubt that these companies will try something again, I think that the community is progressively getting "immunized" to these attacks, and the attackers need more and more resources to put up the same fight. Hopefully this one will be the last really dangerous one for a while. We must always remain vigilant, however.

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.

Ads are allowed to contain any non-annoying HTML/CSS style. No images, JavaScript, or animation. Ads must appear 3 or fewer lines tall in my browser (Firefox, 900px wide). Ad text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may not link directly to any NSFW page. Ads may be rejected for other reasons, and I may remove ads even after they are accepted.

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, and only for people using the default theme.

Duration

- Your ads are guaranteed to be up for at least 7 days.
- I usually try to keep ads up for no more than 8 or 9 days.
- Sometimes ads might be up for longer, but hopefully no longer than 12 days. Even if past rounds sometimes lasted for long periods of time, you should not rely on this for your ads.

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

Ad blocking

Hero/Legendary members, Donators, VIPs, and moderators have the ability to disable ads. I don't expect many people to use this option. These people don't increase the impression stats for your ads.

I try to bypass Adblock Plus filters as much as possible, though this is not guaranteed. It is difficult or impossible for ABP filters to block the ad space itself without blocking posts. However, filters can match against the URLs in your links, your CSS classes and style attributes, and the HTML structure of your ads.

To prevent matches against URLs: I have some JavaScript which fixes links blocked by ABP. You must tell me if you want this for your ads. When someone with ABP and JavaScript enabled views your ads, your links are changed to a special randomized bitcointalk.org URL which redirects to your site when visited. People without ABP are unaffected, even if they don't have JavaScript enabled. The downsides are:
- ABP users will see the redirection link when they hover over the link, even if they disable ABP for the forum.
- Getting referral stats might become even more difficult.
- Some users might get a warning when redirecting from https to http.

To prevent matching on CSS classes/styles: Don't use inline CSS. I can give your ad a CSS class that is randomized on each pageload, but you must request this.

To prevent matching against your HTML structure: Use only one <a> and no other tags if possible. If your ads get blocked because of matching done on something inside of your ad, you are responsible for noticing this and giving me new ad HTML.

Designing ads

Make sure that your ads look good when you download and edit this test page:
https://bitcointalk.org/ad_test.html
Also read the comments in that file.

Images are not allowed no matter how they are created (CSS, SVG, or data URI). Occasionally I will make an exception for small logos and such, but you must get pre-approval from me first.

The maximum size of any one ad is 51200 bytes.

I will send you more detailed styling rules if you win slots in this auction (or upon request).

Auction rules

You must be at least a Jr Member to bid. If you are not a Jr Member and you really want to bid, you should PM me first. Tell me in the PM what you're going to advertise. You might be required to pay some amount in advance. Everyone else: Please quickly PM newbies who try to bid here to warn them against impersonation scammers.

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 BTC per slot. 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 @ 5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 4 BTC and 1 slot @ 5 BTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 5" means 2 slots for 5 BTC each. Not 2 slots for 5 BTC 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.
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 0.02.
- The bidding starts at 0.1.
- I will end the auction at an arbitrary time. Unless I say otherwise, I typically try to end auctions within a few days of 10 days from the time of this post, but unexpected circumstances may sometimes force me to end the auction anytime between 4 and 22 days from the start. I have a small bias toward ending auctions on Fridays, Sundays, and Mondays.
- If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first.
- Bids are considered invalid and will be ignored if they do not specify both a price and a max quantity, or if they could not possibly win any slots

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.

You must pay for your slots within 24 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.

I'm quite a bit behind schedule, sorry about that.

All bids need to be evenly divisible by 0.02. If your bid was not, then I round down to the nearest valid bid amount.


I won't accept your bid for reasons which I PMed you.


I won't accept your bid because you failed to PM me first, and your likely thing-to-advertise looks too high-risk.


I won't accept your bid because you failed to PM me first.

Auction ended, final result:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
2 1.06 craslovell
1 1.06 mynhpark
1 1.06 A1ex
1 1.04 magrospic
1 1.04 Stunna
2 1.04 icomarketer
1 1.00 aTriz

Anyone can create a Bitcoin-derived altcoin like "Bitcoin Gold" (BTG) at any time with no cost. BTG is a scammy cash-grab with no ideology and no economic support, not something serious like Bcash was. That's not to say that it's impossible to make money by trading it, just like with other scamcoins, but I'm not going to get into the habit of writing announcements and guidance for every Bitcoin-derived scamcoin. If you want to do a dangerous replay-unprotected coin-split maneuver in order to claim tiny fractions of your BTC in airdrop value, that's on you.

I will write a guide later for B2X (split time in mid-November), which is more serious. After that, the bar is going to be awfully high to get me to announce similar things.

No, I won't. I consider BTG to be a cash-grab, not a serious fork. It doesn't have any ideology or major economic players behind it. I'm not going to make a big announcement and guide anytime creates a pointless little fork like this (which anyone can do at any time with no cost whatsoever).

I will make a guide for B2X, which actually has some economic support.

To address phishing, I made the following changes to PMs sent by newbies:

 - Newbie PMs will not have the following bbcode tags parsed: font, glow, img, iurl, move, size, shadow, url. Not allowing clickable URLs may be annoying, but it should make phishing a lot more difficult.
 - The warning appears in a different area when you click the "reply to this PM" link in an email (or just reply to a newbie PM).
 - The body of a PM sent by a newbie will not be sent via email. You'll still get a notification, but you'll have to visit the forum to read the PM.

Also, where previously the newbie PM warning was actually attached to their PM (so you'd see it when quoting, etc.), now it's part of the page, and will disappear when the user is no longer a newbie. A bit cleaner. For all previously-sent newbie PMs, you will now see two warnings, though.

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.

Ads are allowed to contain any non-annoying HTML/CSS style. No images, JavaScript, or animation. Ads must appear 3 or fewer lines tall in my browser (Firefox, 900px wide). Ad text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may not link directly to any NSFW page. Ads may be rejected for other reasons, and I may remove ads even after they are accepted.

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, and only for people using the default theme.

Duration

- Your ads are guaranteed to be up for at least 7 days.
- I usually try to keep ads up for no more than 8 or 9 days.
- Sometimes ads might be up for longer, but hopefully no longer than 12 days. Even if past rounds sometimes lasted for long periods of time, you should not rely on this for your ads.

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

Ad blocking

Hero/Legendary members, Donators, VIPs, and moderators have the ability to disable ads. I don't expect many people to use this option. These people don't increase the impression stats for your ads.

I try to bypass Adblock Plus filters as much as possible, though this is not guaranteed. It is difficult or impossible for ABP filters to block the ad space itself without blocking posts. However, filters can match against the URLs in your links, your CSS classes and style attributes, and the HTML structure of your ads.

To prevent matches against URLs: I have some JavaScript which fixes links blocked by ABP. You must tell me if you want this for your ads. When someone with ABP and JavaScript enabled views your ads, your links are changed to a special randomized bitcointalk.org URL which redirects to your site when visited. People without ABP are unaffected, even if they don't have JavaScript enabled. The downsides are:
- ABP users will see the redirection link when they hover over the link, even if they disable ABP for the forum.
- Getting referral stats might become even more difficult.
- Some users might get a warning when redirecting from https to http.

To prevent matching on CSS classes/styles: Don't use inline CSS. I can give your ad a CSS class that is randomized on each pageload, but you must request this.

To prevent matching against your HTML structure: Use only one <a> and no other tags if possible. If your ads get blocked because of matching done on something inside of your ad, you are responsible for noticing this and giving me new ad HTML.

Designing ads

Make sure that your ads look good when you download and edit this test page:
https://bitcointalk.org/ad_test.html
Also read the comments in that file.

Images are not allowed no matter how they are created (CSS, SVG, or data URI). Occasionally I will make an exception for small logos and such, but you must get pre-approval from me first.

The maximum size of any one ad is 51200 bytes.

I will send you more detailed styling rules if you win slots in this auction (or upon request).

Auction rules

You must be at least a Jr Member to bid. If you are not a Jr Member and you really want to bid, you should PM me first. Tell me in the PM what you're going to advertise. You might be required to pay some amount in advance. Everyone else: Please quickly PM newbies who try to bid here to warn them against impersonation scammers.

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 BTC per slot. 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 @ 5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 4 BTC and 1 slot @ 5 BTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 5" means 2 slots for 5 BTC each. Not 2 slots for 5 BTC 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.
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 0.02.
- The bidding starts at 0.1.
- I will end the auction at an arbitrary time. Unless I say otherwise, I typically try to end auctions within a few days of 10 days from the time of this post, but unexpected circumstances may sometimes force me to end the auction anytime between 4 and 22 days from the start. I have a small bias toward ending auctions on Fridays, Sundays, and Mondays.
- If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first.
- Bids are considered invalid and will be ignored if they do not specify both a price and a max quantity, or if they could not possibly win any slots

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.

You must pay for your slots within 24 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.

You guys don't have to manually cancel bids. The auction rules say:

Auction ended, final result:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
1 2.48 GladuCame
1 2.46 thehun
1 2.46 GAT_Chris
1 2.44 mynhpark
1 2.44 SocialCloud
1 2.44 Latium
3 2.42 Bitcomo

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