Right, things like the EITC and UBI do welfare with much less government overhead and better incentives for the recipients.

EITC is basically like increasing the wages of low-income people, so it doesn't disincentivize work. Under the current rules, if you have 2 children and your income is in the best range for EITC, the government gives you a refundable tax credit (ie. it's identical to the government just writing you a check) equal to 40% of your earned income. So if you earn $8/hr, after EITC it's like you earned $11.20/hr. The income limits are phased, so it's never rational to avoid earning more income. In addition to being a welfare system, this is also a subsidy for businesses, since they can pay lower wages while having their employees receive a higher effective wage; due to this, EITC is the most popular type of welfare among Republicans.

The payout rates and income limits for the current US EITC weirdly depends entirely on how many children you have. It has pretty low income limits across the board, and for childless people it has especially low rates and limits.

In general, if welfare is inevitable, then things like the earned income tax credit are the best ways to do it. IMO it makes sense for libertarians to be willing to to trade expanding EITC for reducing regulations and other forms of welfare.

EITC expansion wouldn't address the current problem causing the economy/market to freak out, though: people are "cocooning" because they're afraid of getting coronavirus. If the government just gives people money through EITC, tax reductions, bailouts, etc., then people will probably just put the money under their mattresses. If the government's goal is to pump up the stock market, they should borrow a ton of money with low-rate 100-year bonds and use it to give everyone a special sort of insurance where if you get coronavirus, then 100% of your medical expenses and lost income related to this (up to a cap) are covered, and you also get some fixed life insurance coverage. (I don't support this, but I think it'd be most effective way to artificially prop up the economy.)

It'll be interesting to see who the 2024 Republican nominee will be now that Trump has changed the party. Pence literally believes that he has been chosen by God to be president someday, so he'll eventually go for it, though he's a Mitt Romney Republican, not a Trump Republican. It's unclear if he could win the nomination or the general even if he had Trump's endorsement. I would expect Trump to favor endorsing a family member over Pence, if any of them actually want it. The Trump children are more likable than Pence, and could more easily claim to be continuations on Trump's legacy, though with different "flavors": Ivanka would be a more Dem-leaning candidate, Eric Trump and Jared Kushner are more stable, and Trump Jr. is even more extreme. And of course we'll probably have people like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz running again.

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

- Your ads are guaranteed to be up for at least 7 days.
- I usually try to keep ads up for no more than 11 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

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 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 @ 0.5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 0.4 BTC and 1 slot @ 0.5 BTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 0.5" means 2 slots for 0.5 BTC each. Not 2 slots for 0.5 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, like "5 @ 0.1 and 1 @ 0.5".
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 0.01.
- The bidding starts at 0.01.
- 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.
- 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. 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:


Payment, etc.

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.
[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).

Auction ended, final result:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
1 0.13 BitDouble.io
8 0.12 FortuneJack

At this point she seems to be intentionally trolling the Democratic establishment, which I certainly respect. She's burned a lot of bridges (eg. she'll probably be primaried for her Senate seat), so I wonder what her future plans are. It almost looks like instead of aiming for higher political office, she's aiming to get a primetime show on Fox or something.

PMs are like emails. It's rude to publish a PM without permission, but you won't get banned for it.

It's shocking how much changed over the course of a few days. Disappointingly, it seems that this will now most likely become a repeat of 2016: Sanders vs <establishment>, establishment wins the primary, Sanders immediately falls in line, Trump wins the general. Boring...

Biden is a terrible, terrible candidate in either the primary or the general. He can barely get a comprehensible sentence out, his record isn't too different from a neocon Republican, his current policies aren't too different from Hillary, etc. But now he's the only establishment option. It's possible that he'll perform so poorly at 1v1 debates and in public that Sanders will be able to win, but IMO it's not that likely, and my fantasy of a contested convention seems especially unlikely. (If Sanders does win, maybe they'll try to change the rules in order to steal it from him, or do other shenanigans, though? I can dream...)

It may honestly be strategic for Biden to refuse to go to any debates or even appear in public anymore. He was able to win because people were in a panic about Bernie and had forgotten about just how awful Biden's been for the past year, but they'll probably soon be thinking, "Oh God, why did we settle on Biden of all people?".

I used to think that Biden vs Trump would slightly favor Biden. Biden's brand represents a return to normalcy, a steady hand at the wheel, a continuation of Obama's presidency, etc. -- things that are pretty popular after Trump's chaos --, and Biden is much more likable than Hillary, even now.  But after seeing Biden's actual performance and clear mental decline, I think that Trump will destroy him on the debate stage and in any other context where there is not a filter between Biden and the public. Trump will constantly talk about Ukraine, the "creepy uncle Joe" stuff, Biden's record, etc., and Biden has proven that he cannot handle this at all effectively. On the other hand, Bloomberg will apparently be throwing tons of money at Biden (though that totally failed in the primary...) and maybe also manipulating the stock market to hurt Trump. At this point, I'd give Biden a 15% chance of winning the presidency if the economy is looking OK, and a 50% chance in a recession.

With Biden, a recession becomes less likely, so the chance of a Democrat winner also becomes less likely. If Sanders was a big probability, then there was a risk of a death spiral of "market goes down -> fear that Trump will lose & Sanders will win -> market goes down even more over fears of Sanders -> etc." If the Democrats' only goal was to win against Trump, then they should've gone with Sanders for this and other reasons. That said, I thought even before the virus that a recession was entirely possible in the second half of the year (mostly due to the reliance on and unsustainability of the constantly-expanding liquidity injections), and it's even more likely now with the virus actively damaging this unstable economy.


Early on, there was a lot of overlap between Warren and Bernie voters, but now I'm not so sure. Doesn't everyone know by now that Warren isn't just a female younger Bernie, but is an institutionalist Democrat first and a progressive second? IMO she retains support only among people who are OK with that (which turns out not to be that many people), and I think that her voters would've split something like 40% Bernie / 30% Bloomberg / 30% Biden if she'd've dropped out.

Warren will never endorse Bernie: she'll either stay to the end and hope for a miracle, or endorse Biden.


I don't think so. Biden's team will want to pick someone who both already has a large base of support and who ticks a lot of demographic boxes. Pete is gay, but that's probably not enough. I'd guess Stacy Abrams or Kamala Harris for VP, both of whom are black women: two very important demographic boxes to tick. Stacy Abrams is considered to be part of the progressive wing of the party, so choosing her would be seen as attempting to unify the party, though I don't think that the establishment wing actually cares about that, so I'd put my money on Harris.

Pete will probably get a good cabinet position, which will bulk up his resumé for when he inevitably runs for president again someday.

This month 131 users were eligible.

Old:

New:

I will not accept your bids.

Current status:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
4 0.06 BetBTC
1 0.06 cocoadreamboy
2 0.06* btb88.com
1 0.05* BitDouble.io
1 0.03 adsmedic
* = would be reduced by price flattening if the auction ended now

The auction continues.

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

- Your ads are guaranteed to be up for at least 7 days.
- I usually try to keep ads up for no more than 11 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

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 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 @ 0.5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 0.4 BTC and 1 slot @ 0.5 BTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 0.5" means 2 slots for 0.5 BTC each. Not 2 slots for 0.5 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, like "5 @ 0.1 and 1 @ 0.5".
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 0.01.
- The bidding starts at 0.01.
- 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.
- 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. 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:


Payment, etc.

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.
[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).

Auction ended, final result:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
1 0.08 BetBTC
2 0.08 btb88.com
6 0.07 sportsbet.io

That's what I'm hoping for.

In my early teens (under G.W. Bush), I was very supportive of the Democrats. Partly this was because I was an idiot at the time, but partly it was for good reasons: the Democrats were pro-civil-liberties, pro-free-speech, anti-war, etc. The Democrats of that era at least gave the perception of "live and let live" (+ various welfare programs). Now, though, the Democrats have basically become the same as the religious, control-everyone's-lives neocons of the Dubya era, but with a weird "woke" religion replacing Christian fundamentalism. They are pro-war, authoritarian, anti-free-speech, supportive of the out-of-control semi-dictatorial administrative state, etc. I don't like the Republicans, but at least they have a bit of a pro-freedom philosophy buried somewhere within them. The Democrats on the other hand have become completely worthless from my perspective.

If the nomination is stolen from Bernie, then the Democratic party will implode. Nature abhors a vacuum, though, and we will not see the Republicans win every single race from now until the end of time. Instead, in 4-8 years we will hopefully see a completely changed Democratic party, and I'm hoping that this will be a more worthwhile one. Probably it won't be one that I particularly approve of, and maybe it'll be even worse than now, but I'd like to roll those dice and hope for an improvement.

(I also just enjoy seeing chaos in government/politics...)

Bloomberg was utterly destroyed in the debate, especially over the #MeToo stuff, which Democrats are sensitive about. He looked like a lost Republican who somehow found his way onto a Democratic debate stage. (Which is in fact sort of what happened...)

Now the question is whether Bloomberg is at 16% in the polls mostly due to real support that was only sparked by his spending, or mostly due to throwing boatloads of money at very-low-information voters who won't be affected by this or any debate. If the former, this debate performance will probably sink him, and maybe Biden or Pete will take up the "not Bernie" mantle. (Note that Pete has the most delegates at the moment, even though the media has seemingly forgotten about him.) If the latter, Bloomberg can continue on, but it'll be challenging for him in the general, since a huge segment of his party will hate his guts, and it's looking like Trump will be able to tear him to shreds. On the other hand, if he can buy the Democratic nomination, I'd feel as though he might also be able to buy the presidency. One major thing he'd have in his toolkit would be that he could use his money and market knowledge to make the stock market do whatever he wants -- probably he'd be able to create a huge crash & continuous downward trend starting a few months before November.

Since I want a contested convention, I'm hoping that someone other than Sanders wins Nevada, though I'm not sure who that'd be. Maybe Biden can pull it off? He had a decent debate performance.

Those are possible under the current framework. For limited numbers, you can just stop accepting codes after a while. For random winners:
 1. Have people send you a Bitcoin address along with their code instead of their mailing address. Also have them save a copy of their code just in case.
 2. Every time you receive a code, publish a hash of it.
 3. Choose a winner from the public list of hashes using an acceptable method. The winner should contact you with a signed message using the Bitcoin address you negotiated before. As a fallback, they can also just give you their code again, since only they should have it, though I'd be uneasy using this as the primary method of authentication.

I think that this feature is very niche. Maybe I'm wrong, but I expect to get on average fewer than 1 giveaway-creation request per month. So I don't want to create a big, complicated system for it.

If it's Bloomberg vs Trump, it'll be weird. Bloomberg will be able to throw an unlimited amount of money at this, and a ton of people absolutely despise Trump (some for good reasons, others for bad reasons), so he could win. But Bloomberg is basically George W. Bush's third term. I used to call myself a progressive ~15 years ago, and I would've despised Bloomberg even more than Trump. Furthermore, Trump will probably attack Bloomberg from the left on several issues (eg. Trump doesn't care about the deficit, unlike Bloomberg, so he could support both tax cuts and welfare expansions). Bloomberg vs Trump will be an ex-Republican running basically as a Republican, but in the Democratic party, versus an ex-Democrat running basically as a Democrat, but in the Republican party.

Bloomberg is definitely the worst-case scenario for Bitcoin, BTW. Bitcoin represents everything that Bloomberg is against, and he is very effective (unlike Trump), so as president he'll be able and eager to ramp up regulations to 11 with the explicit goal of squeezing Bitcoin to the point where it can only exist in the shadows.

Nobody's seen such a giveaway, so you wouldn't have known about it. I set it up previously for a giveaway that someone was going to do, but which never happened (yet?).

Previously, I set up a very simple system for letting someone do a giveaway without creating a link between your forum account and your mailing address, but this particular giveaway either hasn't happened yet or it completely fell through (not sure), so the system was never used. In case anyone else ever wants to do a private giveaway, you can do it like this:

 1. PM me with a list of all user IDs eligible to receive something in the giveaway, or an exact set of conditions which users must meet in order to be eligible (eg. "any user who joined before <x time> with merit above <y> and activity above <z>").
 2. I will create a URL like https://bitcointalk.org/giveaway.php?id=123 for you (note: 404 currently). Everyone who wants to receive something in the giveaway has to go to that URL and get a giveaway code.
 3. They send the giveaway code to you along with their mailing address, and you'll verify the code at another bitcointalk.org page. You also have to keep a list of already-used codes so that people can't reuse them. You should publish some out-of-band way of accepting codes, such as an email address or a Google Forms form: if you only accept codes via forum PM, then people have to create throwaway accounts to PM you, which is annoying. You absolutely must not send someone an item without a code, even if they PM you from an account you can see is eligible for the giveaway, since otherwise someone could also send you their code anonymously and end up getting 2 items.

This breaks the link between recipients' forum accounts and their addresses: bitcointalk.org doesn't know the address sent to the giveaway operator, and the giveaway operator can't tell from the giveaway code which user they're talking to, only that they're eligible for the giveaway. In order to identify someone, data from both bitcointalk.org and the giveaway operator would have to be combined. Codes will be completely deleted from the bitcointalk.org server & all backups after about 6 months. Note however that the giveaway operator will have a list of addresses, and they will know that all of those addresses belong to people on the list of eligible people, so if there are only a few dozen recipients and a few hundred eligible users, it's very far from "anonymous". (There are some more fancy things that I could've done to make the whole thing a bit better. Blind signing could be used to make it secure even if bitcointalk.org was compromised, for example. But it's a pretty niche feature, so I just wanted to whip something together quickly.)

I'm not sure that anyone will ask to set up this sort of giveaway, but I wanted to mention the possibility. If more than a few people ask me to set these up, I'll probably make it so that anyone can set them up themselves.

The thread is restored.

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

- Your ads are guaranteed to be up for at least 7 days.
- I usually try to keep ads up for no more than 11 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

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 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 @ 0.5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 0.4 BTC and 1 slot @ 0.5 BTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 0.5" means 2 slots for 0.5 BTC each. Not 2 slots for 0.5 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, like "5 @ 0.1 and 1 @ 0.5".
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 0.01.
- The bidding starts at 0.01.
- 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.
- 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. 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:


Payment, etc.

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.
[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).