That's technically true, and obviously it goes the other way with losses, but I think the nitpicking goes against the spirit of OP's post.  Know what I mean?

The title of this thread reminds me of that old one that goes something like "we are the new wealthy elite, gentlemen".  To that I say you'd better hope this new ATH isn't followed by an enormous crash, as has happened with bitcoin several times before.  It jumped a few thousand dollars in less than a day, and looking at bitcoin's price chart on CMC I get kinda nervous.  Granted, it's the king of crypto and probably will be for the rest of our lives....but nothing keeps going up in value like this for long:



Gadzooks!!

OP, you probably should move this to the Speculation section--where I'm sure a thread like this will be in good company with all the others now that a new ATH has been reached.

It's funny.  I took a long nap, and one of the first things I thought of was what bitcoin might have done while I was asleep.  I kind of figured it'd remain stagnant, but nope.  Hard to fathom that it's above $71k, and I'm hoping the price doesn't go exponential lest we get another 2017-18 scenario.  Guess we'll see.

While pondering your question, I can't actually think of another discussion forum I've been a part of that's had such an odd and arcane trust system as bitcointalk does, so I'll be damned if I can think of an answer.

But we both know how Theymos rolls.  It's not exactly like he acts like the forum is beneath him, but more as if he's above all the petty nonsense that goes on here, so he's not prone to engage in personal attacks (of which I've seen many through the years).  I guess you could call that thick skin but when you're the boss, criticism has a much different level of effect than it would if you were just a regular member.  People here with no power at all who let attacks slide off them as if they were nothing get more respect from me than someone who's essentially unaffected in any meaningful way by jabs, insults, trolling, etc.

Well, I've played around with a lot of wallets, and the ones that stick out to me are Mycelium, Trust, and Ledger.  Over time it seemed like the wallet devs just kept adding all of this extraneous stuff that's just bloat to me, and it always gave me an icky feeling seeing it.  I mean can you imagine if the bitcoin core wallet suddenly contained a link to some partner's site where you could exchange BTC (or whatever service you can think of)?

Hopefully the people at Bitbox don't start going down that road.  We can debate the merits of that insurance service all day long, but where does that kind of partnering end?

Hm.  I'm puzzled as to why anyone who'd get a HW wallet would also sign up for insurance like that, especially when it requires all sorts of personal information.

And I have to say that when it comes to wallets--from software ones to hardware--the simpler, the better.  I'm not a big fan of all of these services a lot of them are offering, and in some cases who the wallet maker is partnering with.  I suppose you don't have to see any of that on HW wallets if you're not using the manufacturer's app (like Ledger Live), but it'd be so nice if you could use their apps without it looking like there's someone on the other side actively trying to sell you a bunch of shit.

I'm a fan of Bitbox, though, at least until or unless they lose people's trust like Ledger.  Hope that doesn't happen.

Yeah, the same phenomenon has happened at other exchanges with withdrawal problems (like Yobit).

I didn't realize HitBTC was still in business, as at least some of these Wild-West-days exchanges have closed down shop for good, e.g., SouthXchange, some others I can't remember, and StakeCube which was but then didn't close for good. 

Anyway.

You aren't posting in the wrong place, but you are posting a scam accusation in the incorrect format and instead your post just comes off as a rant with no evidence.  Try doing it this way.  It's good that you're raising an issue about a shady exchange, and I'm sorry you apparently got scammed, but without proof this thread isn't going to help you or anyone else.

Good on you for linking to that site, which is fantastic for keeping track of where all the BTCATMs are--and said locations have definitely expanded over the past few years.  Right now there's at least 5 of them in my town, whereas when I made a thread about my first time using a BTCATM (and why can't I find that thread??) there was only one, and it wasn't working.

But coinradaratm doesn't give any indication as to whether these machines are being used or not.  Around here, I'm in the gas stations where they reside all the time and never see anyone using them.  In NYC, though?  I betcha at least some of them get used a lot.  But NY is a pretty crypto-unfriendly state if I recall correctly, even though they were supposed to be big supporters of it.  Eh.  The ATMs have existed for years, so I'd imagine they're not going to go away anytime soon.

Sure, you can absolutely do so--if you're so unconcerned with your privacy that continuing to use any Ledger product lets you sleep at night.  That Recover debacle wasn't just about the service, remember.  It was that Ledger divulged that they can gain access (or effectively have access) to your private keys, which was previously thought to not be the case.

OP, I know you have not a small tinge of paranoia about you, so I hope you're aware of what the real story is regarding Ledger.  I haven't seen you post about the Recover crap and "private key exfiltration" nightmare scenario, so if you aren't aware of what a shit company Ledger is just read through some of the Ledger-related threads here or go to their subreddit and read some of the threads from a few months back.

Ditch that Ledger for something else, that's my opinion.  Dkbit98 has dropped some solid suggestions, but at this point I don't know how much I trust HW wallets anymore.  But that's my own paranoia and technical ignorance speaking, both of which I have a lot of.

On that point, I'd say "who cares?" because bitcoin is a different thing than a forum discussing bitcoin--even if it's the forum where everything got started.  Plus I would mention that Bitcoin Discussion is one of the worst sections here in terms of readability, and I don't think it's ever been because of rampant shitposting by high-ranking members.  In any case, Blackrock has diddly-zip to do with what Legendary members are posting here. 

And the impression newcomers get?  Most new members are only here to earn money, shitpost like crazy, and would rank up as fast as they could if the merit system didn't act as a gigantic barrier.

Oh, but it's much better than it used to be prior to the merit system, when members could create any number of accounts and rank them up simply by posting regularly for a long enough period of time.  I've got a problem with giving demerit powers to any members here, no matter how trusted they seem or how long they've been here.  The merit system isn't perfect, true, but I'd hate to see all of the potential abuse of demerits become real once one of those trusted members starts a feud with someone else....or just imagine whatever scenario you like.  DT members have turned out to be scammers, liars, you name it.  I'd rather have something closer to a democracy (or a meritocracy) than what sounds like an oligarchy.

Yeah, and if it's the post I'm thinking of (which I responded to earlier), the argument was basically that merit sources shouldn't be managing sig campaigns.  Sure, there could potentially be problems with that dual role depending on who the person is but I haven't seen any evidence presented that icopress in particular would take advantage of his position as merit source in some way, and a hypothetical argument like that just doesn't hold any water as far as this application is concerned.

While we're all debating this crap, none of us know what's on Theymos's mind with respect to the merit system, how it's functioning nowadays, and whether new merit sources are needed.  I don't even know when the last merit source was added, but it was probably a long time ago--and if it was recent it was probably to replace one or more sources that dropped out.  It'd be so nice if Big Boss Man would descend from the mountaintop with his tablets and, if not drop some commandments on us, at least give the community a state-of-the-merit-system address.  Curious minds like mine would love to know what's happening.

Kind of like dogecoin and all those other altcoins that have some rate of inflation, even if the rate decreases over time?  Yeah, I wonder how those are going to fare years from now.  Then again, there's no guarantees about bitcoin either (though at this point it seems like nothing can kill it).  Both the USD and bitcoin have value because people agree that they do, and if you look at it that way I'd say bitcoin is on shakier ground since it doesn't have a superpower government's guarantee that the face value of a bank note is worth what it says--and yeah, I'm ignoring the debt issue and constant money supply increase here, but hopefully my point is taken.

I'm always hearing about the US's debt and the devaluation of the dollar, but I'm curious how the US compares to other countries.  I don't think I've ever seen a data dump on any other country's debt or money printing before.  The latter might be a peculiar trait of the US economy and the Fed's idiocy, but every country has some amount of debt I believe.  Is the US at the head of the pack, so to speak?

I've skimmed through this thread to see if there was anything relating to existing sources getting more sMerits but didn't see anything (and I could have missed it).  My monthly allocation seems to have been upped in the past month or two, but I'm not sure exactly what I was getting to begin with or after I begged for more.

OP actually brings up a valid concern so long as membership here keeps growing (and as long as newcomers make merit-worthy posts, which often isn't the case).  I'd never considered merits in the context of an expanding user base before--but it obviously hasn't been too much of a problem, as there haven't been nearly as many merit begging threads, or threads in Meta about merits in general, as there used to be.  So for now there doesn't appear to be an issue with the merits being circulated or the performance of the merit sources.  The latter I have to make an assumption about since Theymos hasn't ever discussed how he thinks sources are doing.

I've no way to know if what you wrote is true (I also have no reason to doubt it), but I appreciate getting information about other countries from members who live in them, or at least know what's going on in them.  The Western media usually never reports news from Africa unless there's a huge story going on, and even then I expect about 40% of what's reported is either false or otherwise inaccurate.  So thanks for chiming in with that; there's no way I'd understand anything in the Nigerian local section, so this is as good a section as any to talk about anything economics-related.

Again, this section is about economics in general, not North American economics or topics specific to any region.  And there's at least one person here (me) who appreciates learning about what's happening in other parts of the world.

I'm more or less apolitical and don't really keep up on world affairs (I don't even pay attention to local affairs, so that should tell you something about my apathy), so I'm ignorant about what you're referring to regarding Muslims and China.  I am curious, though.  Not trying to come off as lazy, but I don't trust search engines to give relevant results anymore--do you happen to have any links that might educate me?

But this is about a boycott on China, right?  That I do have an opinion on; Muslims in certain countries might be able to do that easily enough--and personally I'd love to do a one-man China boycott myself--but when I look at 80-90% of products available on Amazon, what I see are cheap Chinese imitations of better-made stuff, which you can usually identify pretty easily by their bizarre brand names like KAIWEETS, BOENFU, SPEEDWOX, COOFANDY, etc.  Chinese knockoffs have started dominating every single category of items on Amazon that shopping there has just turned into a frustrating, hit-or-miss experience.  And that's just one website; shit from China is ubiquitous, so it's really, really hard to carry out a boycott on a country whose primary export seems to be low-cost lookalike goods sold in every imaginable place.

So I guess the question is whether I'm worried about the US government dumping its seized BTC on the market all at once, thereby causing said market to crash?

Nah.  By the way, what about all the other governments in the world?  Do they have control over bitcoin seized from criminals (or alleged ones) or gotten through some other means?  It's hard to imagine the US is unique in that they've caught people doing illegal stuff and took their bitcoin as their own.  Not sure if there's any data on that, because if there is I've never heard any mention of it.

Also, I thought at least some of that bitcoin (and perhaps various altcoins, too) was auctioned off from the Silk Road bust, though I'll admit I haven't been paying much attention to any of that.  But again, I'm not worried in the least.  If you really wanted to inject some fear into your paranoid heart, just imagine Satoshi coming back and dumping all the coins he mined onto the market all at once.  That might cause a wee bit of chaos....and then the market would recover as usual.  Fear not.

I wouldn't go that far unless it was explicitly stated that the person who vouched for the borrower would be responsible for the debt in case of a default.  What I would say for certain is that the reputation of the person who vouched for the borrower might be called into question if the borrower turned out to be a scammer.

That word "vouch" can mean different things in different circles of people--in some, it can mean your life if you vouch for the wrong person while in others it might mean far less.  So I'd say there's really no concrete answer to your question, yahoo62278.  If you're strictly talking about forum matters, I'm going to stick with what I said in the first paragraph, i.e., that it's a reputational risk one takes when vouching for another member unless other terms are stated outright.

Mm....I'd say a lot of people have heard of ETH since the ETH/USDT pair is reported on a lot of financial websites and probably in the WSJ as well.  Nevertheless, I agree with you about its uselessness.  That whole ICO craze was based on Ethereum, and it was so full of scams and pie-in-the-sky ideas whereby blockchain technology can be used to solve problems in any industry.  And what happened?  The whole thing came crashing down, and the same thing is or will happen with NFTs (which are idiotic IMO).

Who cares if BCH or BSV fans attack bitcoin?  Those are two altcoins out of thousands, and they're not even the only forks of bitcoin out there.  Bitcoin is king, so sayeth the market, though I have to say that other coins make for much better forms of money in so far as the network fees are much less, confirmation times are shorter, etc.  But who's using bitcoin as money anyway?  Not many people as far as I can tell, so let the bitchers bitch.

If I didn't know better (and I don't), I'd say the above post was AI-generated since it's totally generic and either comes from the mind of a simpleton shitposter or Tmoonz had some sort of "help" in the writing of it.  

I keep hearing that AI is getting better and better by the day and that pretty soon any online writing job--like blogging, journalism, etc.--is going to be done by AI.  That's fucking frightening to me.  And considering how many people participate in sig campaigns here and who, before AI was around, put in the least amount of effort possible, I have to think a lot of them are now just using programs to make posts that seem on-topic for any given thread and go undetected by members who happen to read them.

Technology is not going to make this forum better, I tell you.  Not even if that New Forum Software ever gets released--and that's a big LOL right there.

OK, but was that because of his use of AI or for some other reason?

I am no conspiracy theorist by any means, and I try to think about things as critically as I can without being as pessimistic as I feel, BUT I've always had a suspicion about Satoshi and the creation of bitcoin--specifically, I've always thought he's not an individual but a group of people, and in either case he or they work for some government agency.  The NSA is possible, but there are so many branches of the government that might be interested in creating a form of money like bitcoin that it's hard to say.

Bitcoin was launched in 2009, which was right around the time that the entire economy was in jeopardy because of the housing/banking crisis.  That could be a coincidence, but combined with the fact that Satoshi just vanished and nobody anywhere has been able to figure out who he is....yeah, that leaves me suspicious.

I see this thread is about a day old, and I'm never really sure about the time difference between bitcointalk and NYC where Coinbase is traded on the NYSE, but today their stock is down 2.14% as of right now.  (note: I haven't read the last page of this thread; someone might have already mentioned that, but I doubt it)

That's probably due to Coinbase's little 'technical glitch'--which isn't a glitch but sheer incompetence on Coinbase's part.  And the people freaking out about this are probably ignorant about crypto and finance in general.  They might have thought they'd been hacked, but there's no way Coinbase would get away with either stealing funds or letting a customer's balance go to zero without explanation or reimbursement.  They are accountable to the SEC and who knows how many other government agencies, after all.

And no, people should not be storing their crypto on any exchange, even Coinbase.  But there's always going to be a non-zero number of people who do exactly that.