Normally I wouldn't agree with that statement 100%, but considering the fact that every time something like the FTX debacle goes down it brings crypto closer and closer to being highly regulated, I've softened my stance on trying to protect people from making potentially bankrupting mistakes--at least to the extent that it can be done without also being paternalistic (which was mentioned in the other thread about putting a warning header on bitcointalk).

Unfortunately, all it takes to really get the message about keeping your funds on exchanges or yield farming sites is just a few days' worth of reading on the forum, and I'm kind of pessimistic as to how much any of us can help.  Still, I'm all for having a thread (anywhere on the forum) or a banner or something similar.  As I said before, it can't hurt and can only help.

Man, this thread needed a bump--I forgot it even existed or how good the advice was in it.  Interesting that I wrote this back in 2019:


This was well after the merit system kicked off, and it seems as though the changes the system made as far as post quality were pretty long-lasting, because all of that is still true to this day (and I even got a new pair of glasses since that post).

Indeed.  If these exchanges' customers had complete information about what's happening behind the scenes, none of them would have lost money in the last two disasters, i.e., FTX and the Terra Luna/USTC meltdown.  Unfortunately I doubt that's ever going to happen.  The average investor, whether it's in stocks, crypto, real estate, or whatever, never really knows what's happening with the big players that have the power to bankrupt everyone--and I don't think any amount of regulation is going to change that, either.

I've been following news about this situation, and I haven't yet gotten the impression that Binance is in danger.  In fact, the feeling I got is that CZ is at least partially responsible for FTX collapsing (and he had every reason for wanting them to).

I don't use Binance and have never owned BNB or any other exchange's coin, and I never will.  I'm not opposed to altcoins as a general rule, but I've seen enough crap go down with the biggest, most popular exchanges over the years that any coin or token associated with any of them is off the table as far as I'm concerned.  Any exchange can collapse, and as dkbit98 said, we don't know what's happening behind the scenes and most likely won't see it coming.

I don't know a hell of a lot about that coin, but given that it's not tied to an exchange like BNB or FTX's coin I doubt it's going to just implode and go to zero.  Obviously there are plenty of people who've got no problem buying coins like that, just as there are too many people willing to keep their funds on centralized exchanges, out of sheer ignorance or because they accept the risks involved in doing so.

Again?  I'm not sure if bitcoin has stopped going down (though it seems to have paused for a breather).  And those stablecoins, man....I don't really understand what function they serve except as a place-marker for cash on exchanges or why there are so many of them.  Frankly I don't give two shits what happens to them, and the more attention the government pays to them and not bitcoin, the better.

Yeah, I don't know any of that either.  As I said in another thread, I hadn't even heard of FTX until this whole thing went down (though I might have heard their name here and there).  Regardless, this debacle did have a big effect on bitcoin that can't be denied, and I'm hoping people aren't losing faith in crypto in general and bitcoin particularly.

I wouldn't jump to those conclusions based on this article or anything Ford does.  If they were making a van-home for homeless people....they just wouldn't.  I think what they're capitalizing on is the whole "van life" trend, which has become quite popular in the past few years.  Jet Cash is living out his retirement in his van or RV if I'm not mistaken, and I've seen tons of videos on Youtube by people just cruising around whatever country they're in, having a great time.

They already make camper vehicles and such, and this just looks like Ford is scaling down the size of the vehicle being lived in according to what's trendy.  I just don't see this as evidence of an impending economic apocalypse or anything of the sort.  There's plenty of evidence elsewhere that it's coming, but not from Ford.

That's an absolute truth--if no bank is too big to fail (which is true), you'd better believe there's not a single crypto exchange in existence that couldn't fail based on its size. 

All of this shit that's been going on for years, from Mt. Gox to the Terra Luna debacle right on down to FTX's ship going down is bad for crypto in general, and certainly for bitcoin.  When people start losing money because of exchanges and various companies that are involved in the crypto space, it attracts the attention of lawmakers.  And what's the job of lawmakers?  It's to make laws.  We're never going to have fewer laws as far as I can tell, only more, and because of all of these shenanigans those lawmakers are going to crack down on what's essentially been a very free market.

In fact, I'm very surprised that crypto has been allowed to exist with such little regulation for as long as it has.  Having said that, I don't know what regulators are planning on doing, but I suspect it's going to make trading a lot more cumbersome.

But all of that aside, I don't think Binance is in danger of gong bankrupt anytime soon.  They're probably one of the exchanges that very much has their act together--especially when you compare them to a lot of these smaller ones whose ownership and other details are opaque.

That's true, but just having a warning like that--which, if a newcomer doesn't understand it's meaning might Google it--isn't really being intrusive, paternalistic, or anything like that.  It's a piece of wisdom that anyone in the crypto space should have firmly lodged in their head.  Seriously, that phrase above all others I can think of is the most important thing someone who owns crypto should have guiding them.

I support this suggestion fully, though obviously it all depends on whether Theymos wants to add something like that.  Something like this certainly couldn't hurt, and it'd probably be easy to do.

One would hope so, but keep in mind that there are a lot of members active on this forum, and it'd be nearly impossible for all of them to be adhering to the wisdom in the NYKNYC statement.  Like I said, what harm can it do?

Hmm....this actually doesn't sound like a bad idea, and I'm not even sure that if it were to be implemented that people would just start up new threads with the same topic, because if there's already one going with 1000 pages, a new (essentially duplicate) thread could be reported to the mods and nuked. 

Then again, most of us who like reading things on the forum avoid mega spam threads like those in question so I'm not sure how much of a problem they really are.  And although duplicate threads could be avoided, I've no doubt members in bounties/sig campaigns desperate to meet the maximum post count would find a way to do so somehow, and that might present a different problem that's hard to predict exactly.

Good suggestion, OP.  The only problem is that it seems like Theymos isn't listening to proposals from the community all that much.  We did get the "OP" tag, which is probably one of the least useful ones I'd seen in years, but aside from that there haven't been any new methods made available to combat shitposting in a long time.  Keep your fingers crossed, though.

I've saved nearly every cellphone I've ever owned, and I know I posted pics of at least one of them in some other thread in the HW wallet section.  I think two of them are Nokias, but I'll have to look at which models they are.  Going by the pics you posted, I think mine are way too old to be used as wallets (and I'm not sure I'd use them as such anyway, given that I have some HW wallets I already don't use).

Damn fine idea here, though, in a low-profile and stealthy-type of way.

Yeah, I'm not sure about mine either.  I know I can't get any of them to power up, but it could be that the batteries are dead.  One of them is so old that I think it needs a charging dock that I've long since discarded.

Really?  I certainly don't remember it that way at all, though I admit my memory is faulty more often than I'd like it to be.  Lauda didn't exactly rage quit the forum, but I could have sworn that, like Vod, Lauda started leaving some very questionable feedback and I began to lose trust in him somewhat.  I'm just too tired and/or lazy to go back and look at Lauda's trust page to verify that.  Perhaps I will later.

I also knew of Lauda and some others before I became a member, as I was a lurker for months before joining and found the drama here to be more than a little bit interesting.  It's been dull as of late, but man....when something pops off, bitcointalk can be the most entertaining site on the net.

To be fair, people have been calling the DT list flawed for a very long time, especially when it came from the top down, i.e., before Theymos changed it to the rotating system we have now.  I think it's worse now, and it's gotten to the point where being on DT is practically meaningless (which isn't how it used to be).

I agree with that.  At the same time, there's always been a need to define a set of members who've demonstrated their trustworthiness, especially since this forum has always scammers stacked up from the floor to the ceiling, coming out of the cracks in the woodwork, and jumping out of the cereal box when you open it.  I couldn't say if it's gotten better over the years, but the DT system always did have a purpose, even if its setup was highly flawed.

Anyway as I've said before, my trust list now consists of exactly this: ~DefaultTrust.  I've opted out of the game I no longer care to play.

Word up, homey.  I'm not sure what other CEOs are profiting off the backs of plebs, but after learning a bit about this Binance/FTX situation I'm fairly confident CZ is a prime offender.  And I'm still figuring out what went down--if you'd asked me what FTX was yesterday, I would have drawn a blank, because I'm not sure I'd even heard of them until this debacle.  Is that weird or what?

It might be unbelievable, but just look at all the shitcoins on the market and the valuations some of them have.  We were in a pretty raging bull market for a while there, and that's usually when even the shittiest of shitcoins get blown up like a ton of TNT.  I never thought BNB would ever reach $60, and yet here it is today trading for $275.  When you've got true believers buying coins they're in love with, rational investing goes flying out the window.

I'd say you're wrong under certain circumstances and depending on how you define "manipulation".  I'm also going to assume you're talking about the market for bitcoin only. 

When average investors act in concert (during periods of panic selling or severe FOMO), they certainly can move the market--but that's not manipulation, it's just market forces in action.  And bitcoin's market cap is high enough that I don't think a single whale could move it at will.  I'm not sure how much bitcoin you'd have to dump on the market (or buy) just to get the price to move, say, $100--but I would think that it'd be a massive amount.  When bitcoin's market cap was much smaller it was easier for whales to manipulate the price if they wanted to, but even with the price now at $16,250 I don't think it's feasible. 

And man I'm such a pleb.  I don't think I'll ever move past pleb status.

Eh, I couldn't even say it's risky since I don't know exactly what OP means--switching your job for "full-time investment in cryptocurrency" just doesn't compute.  I'd say if you've got a job, stick with it if you want to eat.  If you're trading crypto right now or have been in the last couple of days, yikes!  I can't imagine doing that as a job, but I bet you there are members here who do just that. 

Now is the time to be saving money IMO, particularly if you have a job that might be in jeopardy.  This economy is really spooky if you ask me, so that old advice of having at least 6 months worth of living expenses set aside for emergencies sounds very wise (if you can manage it; I never could).

Nah....even if I had that account I wouldn't do anything with it since I don't need an alt and obviously wouldn't be able to transfer all of my stats to that one.  No worries, but thanks for the support.

I may have pissed Theymos off somewhere along the line, who knows?  So I wouldn't assume you wouldn't get your request for a name change granted just because my request got ignored.  Theymos probably has way more respect for bitcoin/crypto experts who know the technical details of how the sausage is made, which is a category I don't fit into.  To him, I'm sure I'm a nobody and believe me I get it.

No harm, no foul.  I'm locking the thread, so thanks to all of y'all for your input!

Well, that's what I thought Theymos might be thinking.  I find it hard to believe (though certainly not impossible) that anyone else would find this thread getting bumped so annoying that they'd create an account with the name I wanted.  In the back of my head I kind of figured someone might do that....but I probably should have just done it myself.  Oh well.

I wouldn't have expected anything different.

Yep, some things aren't fair or right and there are massive dicks all over this forum.  But a name change denial (even by the route this one took) isn't the end of the world, and I appreciate the feedback I got from everyone, either for or against my request. 

Theymos's non-response really didn't shock me, and if you stick around long enough you'll see that he runs the forum in a very hands-off kind of way--sometimes in a standoff-ish way.  I'm cool with that, so don't get upset with him on my account.  I actually love the amount of freedom we've all got to express ourselves, which I attribute to his style of administration.  You won't find that on many discussion forums.

I'm going to leave this thread open for a few more hours in case anyone wants to squeeze in their opinions, and then I think it'll be time to lock it up for good.

Probably even cheaper since you wrote that post.  Woke up this morning and my eyes nearly popped out of my head when I checked bitcoin's price which at the time was somewhere around $17.5k--and as I write this, it's even lower.  I'm not sure if this is a dip being caused by the FTX/Binance fucking disaster or the start of something worse, but I have a feeling that you're right if you compare bitcoin to fiat.

And why do people do most of their shopping (as they claim to in the poll) on Black Friday?  I get that that's when you can get all the good bargains, but dealing with all of the lines in the stores and the crazy people and the chaos....ugh.  Anyway, we'll see what really happened once the numbers come in after the day itself.  People would indeed be smart to cut back on all the gift-giving, even if they're the most generous individuals on the face of the earth. 

I get the feeling that economic armageddon is coming, and you might be right about it being worse than 2008.  I remember that crash very well, and I didn't see it coming at all (probably because I was never into real estate).  Right now I think we all see it coming; it's just a matter of when and to what extent things collapse.  Good times.

True, very true--but aside from Mt. Gox's relative dominance, has there been a bigger collapse of an exchange?

As far as the "don't use a token you created as collateral" statement goes, I don't know whether to agree or disagree with that, because I don't think it matters so much who created a token used as collateral as it does the token's volatility and/or potential to drop like a stone if put under enough pressure.  And frankly, using anything other than a stablecoin as collateral is extremely risky.  Even bitcoin is notoriously volatile, and just look at what would have happened had you used it to secure a loan last month or even last week.  Yikes.

You'd think anyone with significant amounts of money invested in crypto would know this, or even just average investors who know the history of crypto exchanges....but apparently not. 

I'm just learning about what's happening between FTX and Binance, and I don't know about the rest of you but it looks to me like Binance pulled a pretty dick move, even if it was against their biggest competitor.  Good luck to any of you who've got funds on FTX. 

I'm not even in that category, and yet sometimes I still lament what I could have had if I'd just bought and held bitcoin when it was available for $2-400.  I seriously can't think about it for long without going into full despair mode.

I used to know this fact but forgot it: when did signature campaigns really kick off here?  For some reason I thought it was before 2012 (I recall reading the first thread in which signature space was offered up for advertising), but if that's true then the membership count given in the OP seems really low.  I'd be really interested in seeing a graph of time vs. member count with the start of sig campaigns marked on it.  Probably membership exploded, but I'm not certain about that.

Anyway nice data presentation, OP.  I think I'm out of sMerits, but I'll check and if so will give you some.

That's definitely true, and I think it holds for most professions (not sure if construction workers and auto mechanics wear suits to interviews, but maybe someone can clue me in on that).  I've never worn anything less than a shirt, tie, and nice shoes to a job interview. 

And as far as in the workplace goes, I hate dress codes but I also understand why companies have them--especially for men, who can't get away with some clothing choices women might be able to.  I agree that if you're working in a job in which you're dealing with the public (or with clients) it's crucial to dress professionally.  Whether you like it or not, you represent who you work for in the eyes of whoever is dealing with you on a professional basis.  What are people going to think if you show up to a meeting or to work dressed like a slob?  They're probably thinking "Company X lets their employees get away with looking like this?".

There was a thread recently dealing with your style of attire and how it impacts your work ethic.  Aside from how it looks to the public, don't you just feel better, more confident, when you're dressed up and ready to conquer the world?