30 days ago was Jan 30. Since Jan 30 you've sent 391 sMerit. Your merit source is 300. So you're out of source merit and are spending your own sMerit.

Also, I just realized that spending your own sMerit also counts against your source for the following 30 days. That's a bug, but I'm probably going to have to completely rewrite the sMerit-calculation algorithm to fix it...

The state of anonymous file-sharing (and anonymous Web hosting) is very poor. The most commonly-used solution is Tor hidden services, but those have terrible security. They are weak to intersection, timing, and DoS attacks. Plus, Tor is fundamentally centralized, relying on a fixed set of Tor directory authorities to manage the network. I have no doubt whatsoever that the NSA & friends could easily find the true IP address of any Tor hidden service. I think that they only hold off on doing so in most cases because they like to build a false sense of security while holding that tool in reserve.

The ultimate solution to this is IMO to switch from a network architecture of "point-to-point" to a network architecture of "distributed data-store". Instead of having clients talk to a server somewhere (even behind 7 proxies), you should have the "server" upload their data to some "anonymous cloud", and then have clients download the data from that cloud, without ever needing to have any sort of connection to the server machine. This nicely addresses the most serious attacks against Tor: intersection & timing attacks against the server are much more difficult, since the server does not need to be online or sending data at the same time as the client, and DoS attacks are handled by the system itself.

Freenet and GNUnet are distributed data-store systems. Freenet even has a number of websites and social networks which function on the data-store model. It is possible to redo nearly every website under this model, though it is a major change.

But one major problem with Freenet and GNUnet is that their security (especially in Freenet's case) is ad hoc: they basically jam the system with a bunch of obfuscation and hope that it works. I have no confidence whatsoever in their security as a result. They're both probably especially vulnerable to sybil attacks when used in their opennet modes. They're also very slow, and they would probably fail to provide censorship-resistance if seriously challenged.

---

What I propose instead is something like the following system. (Note however that this is only a half-baked idea...)

Data stores

There are a handful of data-store-servers, each internally centralized. The job of one of these data stores is to maintain a key-value data-store, provide it for people to download either in full, via something like rsync, or via a private information retrieval (PIR) scheme. When PIR is used, it allows clients to download one or more keys from the server without giving the server any information about what keys were downloaded, providing the client with perfect anonymity even when the entire connection is observed by an attacker.

Data store descriptors

Clients will download "data-store descriptors" describing a number of data-stores. Eg:

It is not important that clients have some particular combination of data-stores. They can download as many of these descriptors as they want, whenever they come across them. The core software for this system might come with some built-in, but more could be added by the user.

Data-stores can charge for uploads and downloads. This can be done perfectly anonymously using blinded bearer certificates, or less-perfectly via eg. Bitcoin-Lighting.

Uploading data

You want to upload song.mp3.

1.Encrypt it with a random key.
2. Break it into fixed-size chunks, say 16kB in size.
3. Choose at least 3, but maybe more, data-stores that you know about.
4. Download all or a large random selection of recently-uploaded data on each of the chosen data-stores.
5. For each of your chosen data-stores, randomly classify each as either Original or Derived, but at least one must be Original.
6. Assume that you're using exactly 3 data-stores. Let your data be D, and the data at each of the data-stores be X, Y, and Z. Between 0 and 2 of X, Y, and Z will already be known. Randomly select the not-yet-known values so that D = X+Y+Z. For example, if you chose Y as Derived and X&Z as Original, you would randomly choose X&Z such that X+Z = D-Y. Prepare to upload the new data block(s) to the data-store(s). (You can use any reversible operation to combine the data; maybe addition isn't ideal.)
7. Repeat steps 5-6 for each block of data.
8. Create and prepare to upload your metadata block, which will have a table like:
If your table is more than the block size, you can put a pointer to a continuation block at the end of it. (Or structure it as a tree.)

Finally, you should upload all of the blocks that you have prepared to upload, but you should do it in a random order and spread out over time. The more time you put between each block, the more difficult it will be to connect the blocks together.

Then you'll get a CHK URI that you can give to people which looks something like:
CHK@store1+store2+store,key1,key2,key3,decryption_key
eg. CHK@alpha+beta+gamma,SVbD9~HM,nzf3AX45,yFCBc-A4,bA7qLNJR7IXRKn6uS5PAySjIM6azPFvK~18kSi6bbNQ

PIR schemes don't give anonymous uploading natively, so there will need to be some onion routing thing between you and the server. But higher latency is OK here, and there are alternatives to Tor's naïve onion routing such as Riffle, so I think that this can be made very anonymous.

Downloading data

You were given a URI like the one above which leads to song.mp3.

1. You need to have previously downloaded descriptors for all of the data-stores in the URI.
2. From each data-store, download the listed keys using the anonymous PIR scheme, and add the data together. This will get you the first block which lists all of the others
3. Download all of the other blocks in the same way.
4. Once you have all of the blocks, concatenate them together and decrypt them with the decryption key in the URI.

Plausible deniability and censorship-resistance for data-stores

The key advantage of this scheme compared to things like Freenet is the plausible deniability and censorship-resistance for the ones storing the data. On Freenet, if you're running a node and someone gives you a CHK that they say is a copyright violation or whatever, it is technically possible for you to expunge that CHK from your node, and so maybe you could be forced to do so. Same for Tor hidden-service DHT participants.

But for a data-store in this scheme, if someone gives you a CHK that they demand be removed, they can say that some data in your data-store is being used by that CHK, but they can't say whether that data belongs to that CHK. The data may have been uploaded by someone else entirely, and if you delete it, you may break the original CHK which is totally legitimate, as well as any others which subsequently used that data. It's like creating new content by pasting together words cut out from a newspaper. I suspect that this aspect will make the system totally immune to DMCA takedowns and similar.

Because of this plausible deniability and censorship-resistance, an increased level of centralization can be accepted. You can more reasonably have a few dozen extremely fast, powerful data-stores rather than thousands of nodes on home Internet connections. This eliminates sybil attacks (on nodes) and improves the speed of the system. And while there are few data-stores, they are not an integral part of the system as a whole (ie. they don't "vote" or anything), and they can be fairly easily replaced if necessary.

Extra thoughts

It's maybe not necessary for each block's components to be stored on separate data-stores.

A CHK will stop working if any of its data-stores goes down. I wonder if, instead of addition, you could use an error-recovery scheme such that you only need 3 of 4 components of each block, or something like that.

Data-store blocks might have an expiration, but it should be either uniform across the data-store or very coarse-grained.

Data-store keys should be short, do not need to be unpredictable, and do not need to be user-definable. Data-stores might assign sequential keys starting at 0, and fill in gaps as blocks expire.

The best practice currently is to give people P2SH SegWit addresses when people are paying you, but to support/allow sending to bech32 addresses when you're paying people. bech32 addresses are strictly superior except for issues of backward-compatibility, so eventually everyone will switch over, but it'll probably take a few years; it shouldn't be a format war situation unless someone decides that they hate bech32 and come up with a totally new alternative.

The minor software bugs will eventually get worked out. It's still new software. C isn't the greatest choice of language, but it can be made to work with enough persistence.

I agree that it is in some ways unfortunate that most people are focusing entirely on LN rather than other methods of fast & cheap off-chain payments like hub-and-spoke, federated sidechains, or blinded bearer certificates. While LN is the most decentralized off-chain solution that's been proposed AFAIK, it's also by far the most complicated. Even though you can sort of use it now, I'm not so sure that we're going to be seeing ordinary people using it regularly in the next year. And even if we do, it'll only be to pay established merchants, since no solution has yet been devised for LN payments where the recipient is offline; in practice, this will prevent peer-to-peer LN payments (eg. forum trades) from being practical.

LN will probably be the long-term solution to Bitcoin payments, but in the short-term I've long advocated for federated sidechains, which could be an ultra-simple drop-in replacement for on-chain Bitcoin transactions, or blinded bearer certificates, which immediately provide perfect anonymity as a side benefit. Both of them are much simpler than LN on a theoretical level, though both have the cost vs LN of increased centralization. I was really hoping that RSK would provide a federated sidechain usable for fast & cheap payments in this way, but so far I've been disappointed there. And nobody is working on blinded bearer certificates AFAIK.

(But I'm not working on any of this stuff, so I can't complain too much...)

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^[1], banks, funds, or anything else 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.

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 0.02.
- 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.

---

[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.

Sorry, no ICOs.


Sorry, too ICO-like.

Auction ended, final result:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
1 0.22 walleting.services
3 0.22 FortuneJack
1 0.22 quedex
4 0.20 ColorlessK

I think that the whole concept of discussion has degenerated a lot over the last 10 years or so. People are increasingly stuck in cesspools of groupthink, often on platforms like Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook where it is very easy for companies to manipulate the group's thinking by exploiting flaws in the platform. The Russia-Twitter thing is making news now, but that exact same sort of thing is being done constantly, on all subjects, and on all major platforms -- often for for-profit reasons, but also sometimes for political and/or nefarious reasons. Meanwhile, traditional "trusted sources" (eg. news outlets) are nearly all incredibly biased and clearly uninterested in the truth. It's a worrying trend.

Maybe the existence of "champions" is sort of a crutch that people use to get some truth when everything else they're looking at is garbage. 99% of what you hear on the major platforms is false, so you have to have someone you consider trustworthy like eg. Andreas help you filter the signal from the noise. But while this is better than just exposing yourself to the raw noise unguided, and I would not discourage knowledgeable people from acting as champions, it is a point of trust/centralization. There's also the problem of how your trusted sources are themselves supposed to reliably arrive at the truth when they're also surrounded by garbage all the time; they'll have the advantage of knowledge, experience, and some high-quality connections, but it's still difficult.

I wish that I had a fool-proof way of solving the underlying problems of discussion and truth-finding, but I only have some ideas for making things a bit better, not a complete solution.

That said, I agree that it would be beneficial for more people to create more good information and guidance.

(BTW, when talking about decentralization, you have to keep in mind that the complete elimination of centralization would be a dystopia in the same vein as Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron. You are the sole central authority of your own thoughts/feelings/actions/statements. Some people have a harmful knee-jerk reaction against pretty much anyone doing anything because it is "centralizing".)

There aren't enough reports there. Here are the top reporters over the last 90 days, unhandled reports only:


Even if you look at the handled reports over the last 90 days, only a few people have more than 10 reports.

Report bad posts even if you perceive that nothing is being done, as report stats are one of the primary methods I use to look at how moderation is going in a section, and to assess potential new moderators. Pay attention to your report accuracy; I see a lot of reports marked bad in the French sections. (If you think that a report is incorrectly marked bad, complain about that to your local moderator or in Meta.)

It turns out that it was quite expensive to maintain that data, and people have complained about it previously as a privacy concern, so it's likely to stay disabled for a long time, at least.

Currently it's the same as I described here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=914641.0 . That's from 2015, so maybe it could be improved. Also, instead of hard-forcing people to set trust as I described there, I think I'd instead have the trust link be red on every person, saying something like "Warning: you need to set your trust!".

If I was made emperor of the US but I was for some reason forced to maintain some level of statism rather than tearing the whole thing down, I think I'd resolve entitlements by:

1. Shut the programs down completely.
2. Calculate a dollar amount that people are "owed" due to "paying into" the programs.
3. The federal government owns 640 million acres of land (28% of the US landmass). Distribute as much of this as possible to the people owed money in entitlements, proportional to how much they're owed.

Example: Say that 600 million acres of the 640 million acres can be disposed of. The social security trust fund has received a total of about $20 trillion over its history. So for every $33k that you personally contributed to the trust fund, you'd get an acre of federal land chosen randomly (which you can sell if you don't like it). Or something in that general vein.

This would IMO be more honest than increasing the social security retirement age to 80 or whatever they'd have to do to get entitlements under control now, it'd put an end to the disastrous programs once and for all, and it'd reduce the government's size / control over assets.

(There's zero chance of them actually doing this, of course.)


I'm more imagining 90% of banks and other financial institutions collapsing. Deflation seems like a comparatively minor issue. But getting rid of this cancer on the economy would be worth the short-term pain IMO, even from a statist perspective. I think that there'd be pure economic hell for only a year or two, and things would be better than before within a decade, on net.

Trump actually talked about partially defaulting on treasuries (ie. a "haircut") during his campaign, so maybe it's not entirely outside of the mainstream. Some have speculated that he's pushing for all of this spending because he knows that the whole debt & USD system will collapse at some point, so he wants to build up long-lasting capital in domestic infrastructure and military equipment while the ponzi scheme is still running. (I don't really buy this theory personally, though.)

I don't have an opinion on this particular issue (Lauda has many good ratings, but also several that seem too trigger-happy), but I have been getting very annoyed about how centralized the trust system is. The reason that I made it a complicated trust network instead of a centralized list/database is so that it'd be decentralized and subjective.

I've been seriously thinking about reopening the idea of enforcing user-defined trust lists via suggestions, etc., deprecating DefaultTrust.

The idiot Republicans in the US congress just massively increased spending. Over the next few years, the yearly deficit will probably double from $600 billion to $1.2 trillion as a result. I have very little faith in congress, and there's a long history of the Republicans and Democrats working together to recklessly increase both military and domestic spending, but even I was surprised by just how ridiculous this spending increase was.

Previously most people would say that although they didn't want to balance the budget this year, in the future it could be balanced. Republicans would sometimes lay out plans to balance the budget in 15 years or some such nonsense. But people will soon be realizing that this is never going to happen now. In a few years just the interest on the debt will be 5% of GDP or more, and this will grow exponentially.

I think that this will come to a point of crisis within the next decade. How do you guys see things playing out? Several possibilities come to my mind:

 - The US prints money like crazy, probably to the point of hyperinflation.
 - The US explicitly defaults on its bonds. This'd basically be armageddon for everything in contact with the fiat financial system (eg. banks, stocks, retirement funds, etc.), worldwide.
 - Taxes are massively increased. Income tax increases probably wouldn't be sufficient; they'd probably need a national VAT of 15-25% to even begin to bring the budget in order. But there are serious political and legal impediments to such a thing.
 - I really can't see them cutting spending in any significant way, but maybe it'd be possible if tons of politicians were replaced and/or the crisis grew large enough.
 
What I'd recommend they do is default on the bonds and just live with the few years of massive fallout, while simultaneously cutting spending massively. But there's very little chance of that. The hyperinflation route seems most likely to me.

(In any case, it's probably good for crypto...)

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^[1], banks, funds, or anything else 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.

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 0.02.
- 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.

---

[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.

Sorry for ending this so late.


As I told you via PM, your thing is very similar to an ICO; I need to think about the whole issue more, and I will not be accepting your bids until further notice.


Looks too much like an ICO, sorry.

I will clarify the "ICO-like" stuff in the rules for future rounds.

Auction ended, final result:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
1 0.22 walleting.services
2 0.20 quedex
2 0.20 zilions
2 0.18 Stunna
2 0.18 ChipMixer

A couple of months ago I heard someone on Bloomberg Markets saying that all assets were inexplicably rising at the same time -- stocks, real estate, collectibles, BTC, etc. And now it seems that all assets are falling at the same time. What is the underlying reason for this? One explanation that comes to mind is that people are selling all of their other assets in order to buy into the falling stock market. Or is it some underlying economic thing with the fiat economy?

P.S. I totally called it in this post:

It's a DDoS.

I think that tagging may be appropriate in particularly obvious cases, or particularly egregious cases involving hundreds of merit points and several posts. But generally you should start out by assuming good faith, and only change that opinion as the evidence really piles up. Tagging someone immediately after an instance of apparently-inexplicable meriting is too trigger-happy IMO. Even if it is a case of illegitimate merit, even hundreds of illegitimate merit points are not much of a problem IMO, so you have to ask whether it's worthwhile to possibly make a mistake by tagging someone who is merely suspicious.

Now, I'm not 100% sure that actmyname's ratings are outside of what I would consider appropriate, which is why I didn't take action to immediately remove him. But from what I've seen, it does seem likely that he is too trigger-happy.

It's too early to get a clear picture, but my thoughts so far:

First, most people complaining about merit are constantly posting garbage, and should not rank-up. The forum is not a welfare system; you don't run through a few hoops and then get paid for doing something that nobody actually wants. I like that good forum members can make money, especially when said forum members are in poorer countries and this is a major opportunity for them. I very much do not want to destroy the sig-ad/airdrop/bounty "industry". But I am not going to tolerate people posting garbage upon garbage. If the merit system completely fails and I can't think of anything else to replace it, then my next step will probably be to completely remove all ways for forum users to make money from posting (eg. removing signatures entirely).

Maybe there are ways for people who were making money by posting garbage on the forum to make money on other sites with easy bounties, etc. (For example, I don't know if they're actually any good, but https://bountyhive.io is currently advertising on the forum.) But people should use the forum to talk about these money-making ideas, not as a way of making money itself. Once you spend a lot of time here, you may be able to make some money here (which is great!), but you should consider this a far-off hope, not your primary objective.

BTW, if anyone has any ideas for simple things that these ex-nonsense-posters could usefully do to make money, I think that this'd be a good project right now. There are apparently quite a few people who were making money on the forum and could use guidance. Even though their past activities were not good for this forum, I doubt that they are useless in general.

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Merit awards may be too spotty/uneven currently, though it's still too early to say. In addition to continuously adding more sources, if things could still use improvement in this regard in a couple of months, I may do something like decay old sMerit and unused source merit and randomly redistribute the decayed merit. How the random distribution would work would magnify past merit -- so perhaps you would get an increased chance of winning extra merit for every post you've made which has at least 1 merit, but certainly you would not get any extra merit if none of your posts was ever merited.

Merit sales, transfers to aliases, back-and-forth trading, etc. are not much of an issue. All illegitimate merit will decay, and will account for a tiny and very expensive fraction of the total merit economy. It's basically a rounding error; fight it where convenient, but waste no sleep over it.

I think that actmyname has been too hasty with some of his negatives, but I haven't had time to look carefully enough into it to justify making forceful changes. I did exclude actmyname from my trust list, so another DT1 could remove him from the default trust network by doing the same.

Things are awfully quiet right now. We're going to need some real spicy headlines like:

Mark Karpeles to reopen MtGox; initial balances set by lottery
Bitcoin Core devs call for reducing the max block size to 100kB. "Fees are too damn low!"
Tether announces that USDT is now paying 7% weekly interest