Yeah, there's zero chance of the debt being resolved without some big disaster. The incentives just aren't there. Politicians get reelected by bragging about what they've delivered to their constituents, not by endlessly explaining why they tried to defund <voter's favorite project>. So you get things like McConnell's $1 billion gift to Kentucky in the latest budget. To pass a budget, every politician gets to demand increases in the total.

Currently the debt per taxpayer is $187,000, about $9000 of which came just this year. Obviously this isn't ever going to be paid.

You can play with policies to reduce the debt in this little game. For most people, it's pretty difficult to do it while worrying just about your own ideals, but imagine that you were a politician who also had to satisfy your largely-clueless voters. It's not happening.


It won't necessarily be the next generation:
 - By 2025, interest payments on the debt are projected to exceed the military budget.
 - By 2026, the Medicare Trust Fund is projected to run out of money.
 - The median baby boomer will retire in a couple of years.
 - Some predict that we're in a bond bubble that's coming to an end, leading perhaps to much higher interest rates within a few years.
 - China, Russia, Iran, etc. have a strong interest in challenging the USD's dominance, especially as the US becomes increasingly aggressive toward them.

I think that the only realistic end result is the collapse of the dollar through hyperinflation. If interest rates quickly rise or if deficits continue on their current trajectory for 5-20 years, the debt will start to truly go exponential. Once this happens, the Fed will try to rescue the situation by printing money, but this will cause hyperinflation, and the world will lose faith in the dollar. A worthless dollar "solves" the debt situation, but obviously it'd be a world-shaking event which would do enormous & widespread damage.

But because the dollar is currently the world reserve currency, this could take decades if nothing major happens to speed things up.

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, custom fonts, 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], 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.

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 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

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, like "5 @ 1 and 1 @ 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. 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.

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
4 0.06 TrueFlip.io
4 0.05 BC.GAME
1 0.05 BayAreaCoins

Just because I haven't posted doesn't mean I'm not around... I sent 17 PMs in the 9 days since my last post, for example.

There will only be one moderator.

Report history is the most important consideration for a moderator candidate. Over the forum's many years, relatively "newbie" members with good report histories have consistently done much better as mods than veteran, well-respected members with poor report histories. That said, not all reports are equal, so a simple report count doesn't tell the whole story. Also, in addition to report histories, it's necessary to consider factors such as the ability of the candidate to be neutral, their trustworthiness, etc. It's also nice to choose a moderator who people generally already trust/respect, but sometimes this is outweighed by other factors.

If a poll is created, I will not completely ignore the results, but I will also not use it as a primary influence. I'm more interested in arguments people have for or against certain candidates.

Here are the top non-bad report counts for the German sections over the last 6 months, along with the German boards which those reports covered (broader coverage being better).
(My previous list of candidates came from the same list as above, in order, but the numbers have changed since then.)

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, custom fonts, 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], 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.

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 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

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, like "5 @ 1 and 1 @ 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. 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.

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
2 0.03 SlavaVendo
3 0.03 wixiplay
4 0.03 TheQuin

That number of Dem defections is about what was expected. It would've been interesting if the impeachment had been defeated, but that seemed incredibly unlikely.

I heard a theory that the Democrats might never actually send the articles of impeachment to the Senate. Then they'll be able to imply that the impeachment proves that Trump is corrupt without the Republicans being able to respond that he was acquitted. Once he's acquitted, it'll be much easier for Republicans to build a narrative that the whole thing was a witch hunt and a waste of time by the Democrats.

But I think that in any case it's not going to have any huge effect for either side, since in November most swing voters won't be thinking about it anymore. Maybe it'll be a small net help for Republicans in the House elections.

Adding UI elements is very "expensive" in the sense that it's something to which every member constantly has to devote some brainspace. So I can't see adding any kind of split merit score or other UI element, since that'd be a permanent high cost as a result of a one-time thing in the past.

I also can't see decaying non-airdropped merit scores.

I could see decaying airdropped merit, though I'm not convinced of it currently. If it was done, it may be best to do something like this:
 - Your current activity score as of <whenever this change would be done> is recorded, which I'll call EPOCH_ACTIVITY.
 - Your merit score is defined as max(0, AIRDROPPED_MERIT-(CURRENT_ACTIVITY-EPOCH_ACTIVITY)/7) + EARNED_MERIT.
 
So you'd already have had a lot of time to earn merit, and you'd get an additional 7 "activity-days" per point of merit to get back even more. Inactive users wouldn't be demoted.

Here we are again...

These people seem like possible candidates based on reporting records: o_solo_miner, Souri, mole0815, bct_ail, 1miau, fronti, asche, and Lafu. Comments? Do any of them want to be mods? Note that mods aren't paid very much; some local mods make up to a few hundred USD per month.

The section's size only warrants one mod at this point.

It's a bug in the "uBlock filters" filter list: complain to them. They're blocking every <span> containing the text "advert" with the rule: bitcointalk.org##:xpath(//span[contains(text(),"Advert")]/../..). This is such a general rule that there isn't much I could do to prevent it from blocking posts.

Ironically, I could easily make it not actually match the ad area, since unlike post contents, I control that...

Another shocking election! I guess the spirit that caused the original brexit result and the Trump election isn't dead yet.

The EU is authoritarian and economically-intrusive, and I think that moving government power to more local levels tends to provide on-net-better outcomes than otherwise, so if I was a UK citizen, I definitely would've been a brexit supporter. That said, I'm not very optimistic about the UK's future. I feel like the UK's politics (ie. the feelings of the average person as well as the average politician) is actually 90% aligned with the EU. As a result, the UK is likely to more-or-less continue EU policies, which are anti-freedom and a drag on the economy, but via brexit it will lose the economic advantages it gained by being a prominent member of the EU.

The only way that brexit will end up being a net positive economically is if the UK adopts a lot of free-market policies that it couldn't have done while in the EU. Some possible outcomes, in order of most to least likely:

• IMO the most likely outcome is that the UK ends up as some sort of EU satellite like Switzerland. (This was basically May's deal.) As such, it will continue to be forced to do what the EU says, but will have less say in how the EU functions. Brexit supporters won't get anything they wanted, and remainers also won't be completely happy. Mostly the pre-brexit status quo will continue, but the UK will have lost a lot from the brexit commotion, and there may also be some continual economic disadvantages to their new status.
• Another possibility is that they hard-brexit but end up keeping 90% of the EU's policies, resulting in an attempt at being a "mini EU" economy. This will leave them in a no man's land where they won't be able to do trade deals with anyone, but their economy will be dragged down by the EU's anti-free-market policies. This'll result in economic disaster, and eventually it'd have to change. Probably after several years of deep recession, the political winds would blow toward rejoining the EU (under much less favorable terms).
• Less likely, the UK could hard-brexit and align themselves pretty closely to the US. This is what Trump is offering. It requires a hard brexit, or something close. Although the US is very far from perfect, this probably would be enough of a free-market shift to be a net benefit for the UK. The trouble is that as I mentioned, the UK's population seems politically aligned with the EU, not the US. When the US's draft trade deal was published some time ago, people in the UK were freaking out about "chlorinated chicken" and "selling off the NHS", etc.
• Very unlikely, the UK could hard-brexit and not align themselves with anyone, but drop almost all EU policies and become a free-market haven like Singapore. This'd be excellent, but it seems unlikely.

I'll continue watching with interest...

At the moment I'd give Trump an advantage, but I wouldn't bet much on it. Biden is currently the clear favorite for the nomination, and although he's a shockingly poor candidate, Trump has several must-win states with close polls. There are many plausible paths for Biden to win vs Trump, even if none of them look particularly probable right now IMO. Also, there's some chance of Bernie or Buttigieg winning the nomination, and I think they'd have much better odds than Biden vs Trump. I also still see an elevated chance of recession in 2020, which would hurt Trump a lot.

If you want to nitpick the bet construction: There is no one "electoral college meeting". Each state has an electoral college meeting at separate places and times; the electors there write down their state's votes and send them to the House of Representatives, where they are tabulated sometime in early January. There's a small chance of odd occurrences here:

First, there's a small but not-safely-ignorable chance of a 270-270 tie, or of a third-party candidate getting votes and creating a non-majority. Then the (incoming) House decides, but they vote in a weird way which (at a quick glance) probably favors the Republicans.

Second, on a majority vote in both the (incoming) House & Senate, a state's electoral votes can be completely ignored on the grounds that the state's electoral votes were not handled legally, such as due to an election conducted contrary to state or federal law. You could imagine this happening if one side wins both chambers of Congress but not the presidency, and they can point to some sort of "election interference" (as both sides like to complain about) in one or more states. This would make your bet particularly ambiguous, since Congress would be saying that some of the electors are not actually proper electors.

They will be counted in forum calculations referencing earned merit, but merit sent to/from (Bitcoin Forum) aren't considered on most (maybe all, don't remember) merit-stats pages.

Although I tend to align with their political bent, zerohedge is a terrible source. Most of what they report/repeat is rumor that never pans out. If you live life with the attitude of, "my enemies suck and will fall apart on their own, LOL!", then you live in complacency and usually end up losing your fights.

I think that China more-or-less accepts Western mainstream economics, so I doubt they believe that a gold-backed currency could work. They also know that challenging the dollar's dominance in such a direct, explosive way would be an unbelievable escalation which could very well lead to at least some kind of hot war. If they did create a gold-backed cryptocoin, it'd probably be heavily locked-down, probably more like their existing internal payment systems than anything like Bitcoin. (I have heard that the Chinese population has some affinity for gold-as-money.)

It would be incredibly interesting if China created a gold-backed cryptocoin usable cross-border. It'd probably be a big hit worldwide, and would definitely erode the USD's (and US's) influence. It'd be especially cool if they did it via blinded bearer certificates like I described here.

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, custom fonts, 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], 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.

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 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

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, like "5 @ 1 and 1 @ 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. 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.

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
2 0.11 absolutely-positioned [flattened to 0.07]
2 0.06 absolutely-positioned
1 0.05 lightlord
2 0.05 EnergiCrypto
1 0.04 Best_Change
1 0.04 lightlord

Rejected, it looks like you're going to advertise an ICO-type-thing.

Not all slots are bid-for. The current status is:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
1 0.11 absolutely-positioned [would be flattened to 0.05]
2 0.11 EnergiCrypto [would be flattened to 0.04]
1 0.04 Best_Change [would be flattened to 0.03]
2 0.03 SlavaVendo [would be flattened to 0.02]
1 0.01 Best_Change

Note that you can bid at multiple prices, like "1 @ 0.11 & 5 @ 0.02".

The auction continues.

Making a popular decentralized forum is a worthy goal. (Making unpopular decentralized forums has already been done...) But you should start with that goal in mind. If you start with the goal of creating some attractive new token, then you're just going to create garbage. I'm not sure that a decentralized forum would have any use for any cryptocurrency/token at all (ie. not even BTC integration), and certainly it wouldn't need a new token/coin.

A good heuristic for identifying actually-useful projects is: if it has its own token/coin, then 99% of the time it's a cash-grab which is at best a mashing-together of old tech in mildly interesting but ultimately unsustainable ways.


"Governance" is a red herring. If it's one-person-one-vote, then you have classic problems like rational ignorance and unjust oppression of minorities. Fiat currencies like USD are the result of democracies. If the governance is more like stock ownership, then you tend to get a pretty centralized setup where a small handful of people set the rules from the beginning of the system to the end. You can create that kind of centralized/semi-centralized system a lot more efficiently without a big blockchain system.

One of the main advantages of Bitcoin is that it is simply not governed. No majority or central authority can force any participant to do anything: each person decides for himself. In decentralized systems, this non-governance should be the ideal. Structure the system so that nobody (not even a majority) can force anyone to do anything, but so that it is still useful. This is a big challenge, far moreso than having a central authority be assigned or elected. If you have to resort to any sort of governance within the system itself, then you've failed to create a robust decentralized system.

I've considered that before, but it raises several questions:
 - Although bumps every 24 hours are allowed by the unofficial rules, should they be allowed? Bump posts are worthless on their own, and their existence is really a dirty hack. The modified bumping system on some boards is a better model, but doesn't fit all boards.
 - Although "reserved" posts are allowed by the unofficial rules, do they actually serve any real purpose? I tend to think that their only legitimate purpose is to allow for future expansion past the 64k limit (which is kind of lame to begin with), and 95% of the time they end up being useless in that respect.
 - Especially when several hours separates two posts, multiposting can sometimes be the natural flow of the conversation. For example, if some news has happened since your last post, it'd be natural to make a new post rather than editing the old one.

The purposes of the unofficial rule are:
 1. Prevent excessive bumping, which is unfair to other topics.
 2. Prevent people from monopolizing pages of topics, which is unfair to other posters.
 3. Prevent padding of postcounts and similar, which is basically spam.

Quite often, a person will multipost without having any of that abuse in mind. In these cases, it causes unnecessary friction when their posts are deleted; they feel as though they are being persecuted by mods, or like someone is reporting them for this kind of "parking violation" as a way of attacking them. But we can't look inside a user's mind, so it's difficult to determine "legit multiposting" from possible abuse, and it's easy to err on the side of just deleting it and telling them to consolidate their posts. Not ideal, though.

I've been thinking that a more ideal solution would be:
 - Get rid of the unofficial rule.
 - Prevent posts within 24 hours from bumping the topic, which addresses purpose #1.
 - Prevent posts from being made when the poster has made more than 3 of the topic's last 6 posts in the last 24 hours (or something like that), addressing purpose #2.
 - Only allow one post in a thread to count toward post-counts per 24 hours, and perhaps hide/limit signatures in the excess posts as well, addressing purpose #3.
 
I think that the first three would be fairly easy to implement, but the last is more difficult. Also, it'd be nice to get rid of the 64k limit, but that's also difficult to implement.

The status quo is not terrible, so the matter is low on my to-do list.