Those scammers are clever and no doubt innovative as well, but if long-time bitcoiners are still getting scammed?  IMO they're taking on too much risk--maybe because greed is clouding their judgement and they're straight-up gambling.  Anyone who's been around the bitcoin space ought to know enough to be wary in the extreme, know what I'm saying?

My opinion aside, I'd like to know who all these experienced bitcoiners are who're falling for even sophisticated scammers' tricks.  Given that this thread is in Bitcoin Discussion, my first instinct is to suspect that a topic like this might be mostly BS.

Don't know about that--seems like as good a section as any to put a thread like this into, and I happen to agree with OP to some extent. 

But what else could we have expected when bitcoin slowly went mainstream and its valuation crept up over $100k?  Governments, and especially large financial institutions, are always going to co-opt something as innovative as bitcoin.  That said, I wouldn't have predicted we'd be where we are today when I first started lurking on this forum and learning about BTC (and cryptocurrency in general).  But all of my silly little predictions made in the past decade were proven wrong, at least as far as bitcoin's price goes.

None of us can change what actually happened.  The real question in my mind is whether bitcoin can be taken back, out of the hands of the big players who no doubt want to see wealth stay with the wealthy.  On that point, I'll say no more except that I'm not overly optimistic.

Someone tell me if this isn't true, that when Ledger announced the Recover option they inadvertently disclosed that they can access the private keys from Ledger devices (except for the Nano S), and that this was always true regardless of whether someone used that service or not.  This is all coming from memory, as well as the update that included the Recover option being important as well.

I read all about it at the time, and it was enough to make me decide never to use any Ledger product, ever.  If the above is even mostly true, then data leaks are the least of Ledger users' worries.  So far nobody has reported any of their crypto going missing (into Ledger's hands I mean), but who knows what might happen down the road?

And also if there's truth to the above, I don't know why anyone who cares about security and/or privacy would support them.  However, I'm going to await confirmation of my memory of the Recover debacle or any arguments against.  My mind is open, but damned if I don't think I'm right on this.

One shouldn't do that; however, Theymos has made it known that as long as any case of merit abuse isn't egregious he isn't going to have the moderators do anything about it.  Cases like the one you've shown have been a reality ever since 2018 when the merit system was created.  It's good detective work on your part, but as some others have said, just let it go.


Let it out, man.  Scream it from the hilltops until your vocal cords are raw and your anger directed toward the DT list is exhausted.  At least I assume that's what you're angry about.

I beg to differ if only for myself, young whipper snapper.  I meet far more young people whose arrogance indicates that they're burdened with the delusion of great wisdom than I do 'older people' so frail in their judgement regarding an investment into something as byzantine as bitcoin.  And while I don't know anyone's age here, I've seen a great many scams take place on the forum.  And on all of those fly-by-night exchanges that came and went in the past decade.

Blah blah blah.  I don't doubt for a minute that crypto crime is increasing, but that's only because adoption has increased in tandem.  I also think the intent of that report might be some misdirection by the FBI.  Why?  The government has a lot of agendas these days and by showing data such as that, they're giving themselves, other agencies, and those fucking corrupt politicians permission to act on it. 

To save the children, don't you know.  I'll be in my bunker.  Somebody wake me when everything is sane again.

I'd be buying these as collectibles, not as any kind of crypto news source; perhaps I'm wrong, but I suspect that's why you purchased them.  As such I'm less concerned about the quality of the writing and more so about paper quality and the magazines being able to withstand time and the environment--in other words, paper quality all else being equal. 

There might come a day when magazines of any kind are no longer printed, so I see stuff like Bitcoin Magazine and Passphrase Magazine as being a part of crypto's *relatively* early history, the same way I view the crappiest of card-type HW wallets available on Amzon or ebay to be a similar part of the same history.  If nobody preserved any of these things, they'd eventually be lost to fading memories and/or ancient posts on bitcointalk.

Call me crazy....because I can't dispute that descriptor....but that's how I structure my meager collection.

Cool!  If you wouldn't mind, when you receive them could you possibly check back on this thread to let me (and anyone else who's thinking of ordering from them) know what your thoughts are?


I'm also curious as to what you think of the magazine.  As I said, it doesn't seem like there are that many collectors of print-related stuff relating to bitcoin/cryptocurrency--or at least if there are, they're quite skilled at keeping silent.  I might just place an order regardless of reviews since the prices are very reasonable, but as always I value everyone's opinion here.

Thanks!

Fat boy thermos planted a sadistic jif in our front yard today.  He's prolly still lookin to get a yard of penis, aint gonna get it, so he's up there somewhere in his ivory tower like a noog nog.

That's the truth.

Nothin fair no how about this throwback of a discussion place if it was running around pretending to be a crack house.  What kinda name is theymos anyway?  Ol' pharmacist gimme the skinny fore he stole my wallet, told me that that fat bastart admin of admins tried to coerce certain things from him, sort of with the authority of a government plant that woulda pig stuck a hoe inna back seat of her Hyundai if he was a cop.  

You understand what all I'm sayin?  None of this here's got nothin t o do with color or lack of it or how it changes once you been spied on for who all knows how long when you thot there was privacy.  Aint none of that, but there's a tangentium.


Ey yo, how much you makin from this place?  Hire me an I'll kick some ass all over the forum.

Ey yo, blah blah blah.  Tell it to the mothafuckin' cops when they pull yo ass over for runnin a red.  In my hood they just beat yo ass like rodney king and it don't even attract cameras or coverage.  They stole my pot too.


The real query is why yo ass suck so bad.  That prolly why you still in infant colors.

Yo send that fool my way.  I'm putting money out onna street at 5 points/week.  My bitch breaks kneecaps and will also give syphillis to the gonorrhea on yo tonsils should you make the unwise move of not gettin me back my duckets.  A large dark phallus in turn makes a perfect torture tonsil spoon.

That's all you git.


All y'all's boolshit roll off me like H20 on a ducks ass, but that 17 merits is only because this dick ass forum don't allow 16.3.

So now you know.  An you know how much I paid f'dis account?  Lemme put it this way, I had to put my fine ass bitch out on the street to afford it.  Original owner was cracker bastard to the max.

Oh fuck yeah, feels like I'm a str8 up baller.  Any fool tells you bitcoin ain't 'bout the money is yappin' out the side-a his mouth.

You bitches didn't know this account was sold a long time ago?  Ig'nint reprobates, cretins, polyamorous zoophiles and the whole preverted lot of you can watch my phat stacks while you be stayin' po.

Just a quick question to the fine folk in the Collectibles section.

Don't know how I stumbled across the website for Passphrase Magazine, but I did and being an old-school, low-budget collector of crypto ephemera I'm thinking of ordering what they've got to offer.  I searched this section, but the only mention I found was in this thread and there wasn't much about the publication.

Question is:  Have any of you ordered from them?  Do any of you all own any issues?  My sense is that magazines aren't that hot of an item around here, but this still is where the expertise is at.

Thanks!

Definitely not dead.

People have been clamoring after positions in signature campaigns for as long as I've been a member here, so that's nothing new at all.  I don't even think post quality has gotten worse in the last decade; if anything, the merit system has cleaned up a ton of crapola that existed prior to 2018, including account farming, alt accounts abusing campaigns/bounties, and more.

At least with the existence of signature campaigns (which I'm not a huge supporter of but am not blind to some of their benefits), conversations keep going and the good posters are incentivized to post (along with the shitposters, too, but with the help of some very dedicated members who report zero-value posts, the moderators do their best to keep a handle on that).  Imagine bitcointalk without campaigns.  I've had what I think is an accurate snapshot in my head for years now, and it's one depicting a near-dead discussion forum, very similar to many other forums related to crypto.

So yeah, I hate to say it but all of that signature advertising is actually helping bitcointalk from being buried six feet under.


Even with that, I highly doubt it would keep 75% of members from staying and posting regularly.  The forum would probably lose far more than that if campaigns suddenly disappeared.

I'm the government.  I want both nuts.  And if you've ever rented them out, you owe taxes.  I'm going to need the renter's information so I can tax them as well.  In fact, gimme everything you got.  Gimme gimme gimme gimme.....

*OK, I'll knock that shit off real quick*

Every fucking day the news gets bleaker, more depressing, and it seems obvious that not just the US but Europe (at least) is headed toward a totalitarian, dystopian way of life.  And I've been asking myself and others what I can do about it, me being basically a pissant with no power or influence, and so far no good answers have emerged.

Age verification on bitcointalk?  I've learned never to rule anything out, but man I am hoping that doesn't happen.

No idea what's running through that man's mind, but compared to his last term as president this time he doesn't seem to know what the fuck he's doing--with anything.  And for someone with that much power, it's frightening.

A better question than OP's would be why Trump hasn't been impeached yet.  Or at the very least why hasn't there been more resistance to his delusions of becoming a dictator? 

But as to OP's query, I don't think anybody here has enough information to judge why Trump is doing what he's doing.  The stuff that gets shared within his inner circle doesn't get reported in the media, so we're all trying to figure things out with seriously incomplete info.  If that's true, why even bother?

LoyceV, I would just like to say that your data affects me in such a way that I find I am unable to stand up straight *ahem* in polite company until my head detumesces.  At the next Merit Cycling Club shindig perhaps I shall explain in more graphic detail.


Oh to be back in 201X again, eh?  Take heed, young ones.  Time starts to fly when you get to be a curmudgeonly old coot.  Sometimes I don't even zip my fly. 

My point is: thanks for the excellent merit data dump, brother-in-arms.

I don't think anybody here is reading what I'm writing, because I know damn well I'm being clear as a bell.

I am not buying these wallets to store any kind of cryptocurrency.  My initial question was just about whether that Ballet wallet's description was legitimate.  Some of you are seeking merits, but others I know aren't.  I'm locking this thread since there's obviously no more discussion to be had.

Now DireWolfM14, I just have to say that I've learned not to use any sort of HW wallet or storage card (like the Ballet) that was purchased from Amazon or a similar retailer, and certainly not ebay.  My interest in these is purely for my own, perhaps incomprehensible, view of them as future pieces of bitcoin history.  Even the really obviously scammy ones, although I definitely do my best not to support the creators of such turds.

One day I might have a collage of Ballet-type wallets hanging on my wall.  The future hasn't been written yet.