To my knowledge, that isn't true for every coin and I've seen notices on Coinmarketcap that Yobit wasn't allowing withdrawals for certain ones.  True, I haven't seen that many complaints about them lately, but I'd assumed that's because people smartened up and stopped using them for anything other than gambling.  As an exchange, they're a joke.

Aren't they based out of Russia?  That was probably stated here, but I'm pretty sure that's true and I wonder how the war is affecting them.  And lastly, it still blows my mind that they're still in business after all these years.  Better exchanges have come and gone and yet Yobit is still around.  Nutty, just nutty.

True, but we all know Binance isn't a ghost company--it's very much real, and it's a massive crypto exchange.  But man, now that they're under a microscope who knows what's going to be discovered?

To the questions posed by OP, I can only say that I don't have sufficient information to judge what state Binance is in or what its future is.  Kevin O'Leary seems to have it out for them, and he's apparently an influential person who might be able to influence politicians....but whether he's going to is anyone's guess.

None of this attention and none of the actions of SBF or statements by CZ are doing any good for crypto as a whole, IMO.  The whole space turned very ugly in less than a month.

I thought the same thing initially, but what I've come to realize is that SBF was doing a whole bunch of things wrong with FTX customers' funds, and he deserves to be prosecuted for that.  If anything, CZ simply hastened what was eventually going to happen anyway--who knows how long SBF would have gotten away with using customer funds for his own trading endeavors, but it could have been a long time.  Bernie Madoff got away with his Ponzi scheme for decades, and it was all based on trust.

Regarding Kevin O'Leary and him getting his money back, I just watched a vid on Youtube in which CZ calls him out as a liar and also stating that he had a much closer relationship with SBF than an average FTX customer ever would (obviously true).  I just think O'Leary is a scummy individual based on what I've seen, including his testimony in front of Congress (or senate, I always confuse the two).  He wants revenge against CZ and Binance and has a loud enough voice that he might do crypto more harm than good.

Edit:  O'Leary called Binance a "massive global unregulated monopoly".  That's absolutely not true if you look at how many crypto exchanges there are.  That statement is idiotic, damaging to crypto, and completely self-serving.

No they don't mention any details about what this freelancing work is exactly, and that kinda pisses me off.  It's almost as if they're withholding that info because they don't want to give people ideas.  Grrr.

This is one good thing I can say about millennials and whatever the newer generations are called--the traditional work structure sucks ass and always has, with the only difference being that previous generations accepted it as the expected norm.  Now I'm really wondering what everyone is doing for side-hustles.  There are obviously a lot of people earning crypto here, but I don't think they represent even a tiny fraction of the entire population as a whole.  But I'd imagine that trading crypto is big (risky as well, and I don't know if many traders even make a profit), and earning passive income from various PoS coins is really popular.

That sucks, but I can't say it hurts to know someone in the position to give you a job in my country or any country for that matter.  Nepotism isn't exactly confined to any specific geographic area.

Thanks so much--I really appreciate the gesture, but you don't have to give me merits that I didn't earn because of what I posted.  I'll put the sMerits to good use, though.

B-b-b-but that'll mean standing up and walking away from my crappy PC!

One love, homey.  Thanks for the props, pops.

I feel like the town drunk next to your expertise, and I don't know what work it is you're referring to that I'm doing.  I'm still subscribed to your Youtube channel, though I don't log into anything Googly anymore for sanity reasons.  And hey, I'm a New Englander and you're close enough.  We can be rude and obnoxious to each other, and if I ever travel down the pike to wherever it is your crib is located, I'll drive like a complete asshole.  Not like a Masshole, mind you.  Those drivers are worse than New Yorkers (or at least a close tie).  Nothing personal, DaveF.

Yep, yep, yep, and yep.

Signature campaigns have a lot to do with this phenomenon, and I'd noticed it even before I officially became a member back in 2015.  I was lurking, just trying to get a sense of what the bitcoin community was like, and I was flabbergasted to see the structure of some of the threads, i.e., the lack of back-and-forth discussion that you'd expect to see when people are talking about a topic and presumably reading what others have to say.

I'd say I'm very much guilty of this, but it doesn't have to do with campaigning as much as following up on posts I've written.  It's just laziness on my part, and I don't get alerts or anything like that.  But if it's a thread I'm extremely invested in, then I'll pay attention to it.  Most threads don't meet that qualification lately, though.

And Poker Player, if you're a member of this forum and aren't at least a little bit conspiranoid, you're either a newcomer, aren't paying attention, or don't give a shit about bitcointalk.  Same goes for cynicism as regards motivations and posting habits of members in campaigns or bounties.

I don't visit many other non-crypto related forums anymore, but boy oh boy did that used to be a thing--and it probably is still a thing on discussion forums that allow it.  Goddamn is it annoying to have to scroll through dozens of posts like that, and I've just taken it for granted on bitcointalk that nobody is going to get away with just posting "+1" or those other useless phrases you mentioned, but it's thanks to the rules we have here that crap like that doesn't pollute threads even further.

OP, I liked how you presented this in a kinda-sorta fun way.  Hopefully any newbies reading it will take all this information to heart, because it's spot-on.

On a related note, I haven't seen many ban appeal threads lately.  I just noticed that; could it be that rules are being broken less?  My noodle will ponder that all night until the coffee is gone.

Nobody is taking advantage of me, but it's tiresome having to PM people when they haven't read what I've written in this thread and the other one where I laid out the rules--but I fully understand that things I've written could have been missed.  But man, with offers like the one I've made you wouldn't believe how many god-awful posters just try their luck to see if they can score some merits.  Obviously those folks don't know me very well.

To the bolded part above: no, Theymos has made it clear that he's not planning on increasing any merit source's monthly allocation of sMerits, so that's not something I'm going to continue pressing him on.  If the community isn't making a big stink out of the ranking up process, then it's a good bet that it's running smoothly enough.  Maybe not perfectly smooth, but the system is doing its job--and yes, it's to inhibit shitposters from ranking up, which they'd be hard at work trying to do if it weren't for the big, bad merit barrier.

Also: I'm not giving out merits anymore in this thread, so I'm not incentivizing people to post here.  Just looking for honest feedback and for members who might be thinking of PMing me to see it.

I'm bumping this thread because I've been getting PMs from people who don't meet this qualification:


I am not taking any new requests for post history reviews and until further notice I'm only doing reviews for members who've been consistently PMing me--specifically for the last 3 months (since September).  Any member who doesn't fit into that category and sends me a PM is just going to have it deleted without reply.

Currently I'm waiting for my sMerit allocation to refill before I start doing more reviews.  I've got roughly 50, and once I get my normal monthly allocation I'll start up where I left off.  I'll leave this thread open for a while in case anyone has questions and so that people have time to see this.

That's certainly possible, though I've never read or heard about owners of cryptocurrency having their houses broken into because of it.  It's a big risk for a number of reasons if you're a thief, much bigger than trying to just break into a house to steal cash and physical valuables. 

At least on the bright side no coins were hacked (though I'd hate to have my personal data stolen, too).  Gemini obviously needs to beef up its customers' data security, but I'm guessing the hackers tried to get access to crypto as well and weren't able to because of Gemini's safekeeping methods.  Yay?

I'm sure this isn't the last time we'll be reading about one of these data hacks.  Even enormous corporations like Sony and Target have been successfully hacked.

Never heard of Bitcoin Group or the bank they're buying (though I'm not German, of course).  However, I'm not sure how big this news is, because based on the article Bankhaus von der Heydt was already dealing in cryptocurrencies:


And $15 million for a bank is dirt cheap if you ask me.  I wonder if their crypto business somehow got them into trouble financially.  Interesting, but the title of this thread is pure clickbait.

I'd be very surprised if that happened.  And if I understand it correctly, the outcry against Ulbricht being imprisoned isn't/wasn't exactly extensive.  It'd be much less so for someone like SBF, who lost so much money for so many people through incompetence and downright idiotic (and I'm assuming illegal) use of FTX customers' funds.

SBF also hasn't been sentenced yet like Ulbricht has, so we'll have to see how this all plays out.  I figured it might take at least a few more weeks for a case to be brought against him, but I betcha the authorities were worried he might find a way to disappear.  It'd be hard to argue that he isn't a flight risk.

Life in prison without the possibility of parole for a financial crime does seem extremely harsh, no matter how much money was lost.  I don't recall anyone getting that sentence after a big financial collapse.  The bankers and mortgage agencies didn't even get punished at all back in 2008-09, and if SBF's lawyers are any good they'll get him off with much less prison time.  Jesus, most murderers and rapists don't even get LWOP.

No, but this is a question that might be asked by any community member and I don't think it's an unreasonable one, even if OP has no vested interest in the answer.

Only had 1 sMerit left else I would have given you more, so don't take it as an insult.

I always wonder what happened to Flying Hellfish (when I think of moderators at all), because if I recall correctly he was so stoked about becoming a moderator and then just disappeared.  That might be a tad bit off-topic, but it's not something I'm going to start a thread about.  I just wonder if he burned out on the job or got turned off because of the accusations against him of censorship and whatnot.

There's no way it can be an easy job to try to keep any of the sections here clean.  But in any case I'm fairly sure Theymos has a handle on what the forum's needs are--and if he didn't, I'm sure the existing mods would make it known.

Absolutely agree--and I'd point out that there are a lot of gamblers in crypto who know what they're talking about, whether it's sports betting, online crypto casinos, or even....cockfighting.  *ahem*

I assume that's partially why those two gambling sections were created in the first place, although that's a piece of forum history that I'm in the dark on.  Pretty sure Gambling and Gambling Discussion were both here when I registered in 2015.  In any case, I do see a lot of thoughtful posts in both sections, whether they're made for the sake of campaigns or not.  In fact, I tend to see much longer posts with more thought put into them than I see in many other sections, so it's clear a lot of members are passionate about the threads they're posting in.

There have also been a few threads dealing with gambling addiction that I found myself sucked into, even though I'm not a gambler.  Anyway.

That's the thing: I don't think some merit sources see the postition as an honor--particularly those who didn't apply but who were made sources back in 2019 (I'm one of them).  I'd imagine the people who went through the trouble of creating an application thread and got accepted do see it that way, but not everyone had the same path to becoming a merit source.

And yes, any merit source who isn't circulating merits at an acceptable rate (but who knows what that is?) should be replaced.  The problem is that nobody knows what Theymos is thinking or if he's keeping an eye on the data.

One good thing is that there hasn't been an outcry from the community that it's become way too difficult to rank up.  I'd think that if there were far too few merits going around, members would be creating threads in Meta stating as much (or they'd be starting up obvious merit-begging ones).  So the system might be running pretty smoothly.

Yeah, but they're so cute!  Lol.  I remember reading really old threads here, and vanity addresses used to be a pretty big thing--I don't know if they still are, but it'd be pretty damn hard to create anything cool out of a segwit address unless maybe it starts with a 3.

On a related note, if you import a Mycelium seed phrase into Electrum, you have to choose BIP38 and then you get a choice of address types, legacy included.  That confused the hell out of me back when I was much more ignorant about these things (I'm still ignorant, but less so because of the collective wisdom of bitcointalk experts).

Yep, it does feel like an obligation--but truthfully I can only speak for myself.  Other merit sources have become inactive and maybe don't feel like it's a "job".  The only reason it seems that way for me is because I'm an ardent supporter of the merit system and I want to keep the merits circulating. 

I'm sure you remember what the situation was prior to Jan. 2018, with account farmers and all the shitposts that resulted from people trying to rank up a million accounts in order to sell them or enroll them in campaigns or bounties.  Theymos's solution was both brilliant and unexpected--I remember having the flu really bad and waking up, checking the forum and seeing Meta explode with dozens of threads about this new thing called the merit system.  I thought I was hallucinating because of my fever!

Your idea might be a good one for trusted members, but there would certainly be attempts to buy sMerits to send to alt accounts, friends, and who knows what.  However, Theymos sent me a PM recently (after he changed my username) in which he said he had no plans to increase any merit source's monthly sMerit allocation--so I'm guessing he thinks there are already enough merits circulating and won't go for it.  Just a hunch.

Just because SBF hasn't been locked up yet doesn't mean law enforcement isn't building a case against him, which I've no doubt they're doing.  That takes time, and I'm assuming whatever alphabet agencies are investigating him are going to use all of these recent interviews against him when the time comes.  I don't remember how long it took for the Enron execs to go to prison, but Skilling and Fastow were free for a while after the collapse, and Ken Lay died before he was brought to justice.

Be patient, and hopefully SBF will see the inside of a prison cell.  There's certainly enough evidence against him, but you never know what kind of deals can be struck with lawyers behind the scenes.  The justice system is totally fucked.

Oh man, don't get me started....I see some of these young Youtubers who seemingly have a very low-level vocabulary and can't pronounce words that anyone in their 20s who graduated high school should.

They all seem to repeat the same buzz phrases, like:

Virtue signaling
Rug Pull
Narrative
Nothing burger
Copium
Unhinged
Cringe (as a noun)
Self-insert
Clout-chasing
Punching down
Gigachad

...and others, as if they get all of their education from other Youtubers.

Frankly I don't care if SBF doesn't read books, and I don't see the relevance to this other than to further destroy his image (note: I'm not defending him, just criticizing the media a bit).  He did graduate from MIT, right?  The guy is no idiot even if he acts and speaks like one, and he clearly does both based on interviews I've seen.  I've been wondering how he got himself to where he was, atop one of the largest exchanges in the world.  The conclusion I've come to is that he had to have had some business or political connections--perhaps through his parents--in order to achieve what he did.

But man, once he started running FTX he made some seriously amateurish, foolish, and downright irresponsible decisions with his customers' money.  All of these interviews he's doing now are just putting giant nails in his coffin.  That in itself baffles me, because you'd think he'd realize that.

Ugh, I couldn't agree with you more.  A lot of people asking me for post reviews are in gambling campaigns and thus I've been obliged to read about FIFA-related stuff more than I ever would (which is to say not at all, since I'm not a soccer fan).  If a thread is several thousands of pages long, I'm not sure anybody is reading what anyone else is writing.  I'd say these threads are where most sig campaigners go to drop posts in the gambling section.

I have seen (and merited) some posts in the FIFA threads where members appear to be genuine fans and know what they're talking about, but for me it's hard to tell.

The counter-argument here, of course, is that if any of these threads are locked more are going to pop up in their place.  That may or may not be true, but I don't think there ought to be so many dealing with the same subject and going on for so long.