Oh snips, I missed diss heah post.  Don't know where my brain's been as of late, but if you check the bargain bin at your local dollar store and see some funky misshapen glop of goo, PM me ASAP so's I can get it back in my skull.

Congrats, Frankolala!  Pleasure to assist you in ranking up and I know I'm not the only one.  But more importantly, you made the posts that earned the merits.  If I didn't think you were writing anything worthwhile, I would likely have sent you a PM like the following:

So I wasn't giving you the bitcointalk equivalent of welfare merits and the same is true for most merit-givers I'd imagine.  My point is that you played the humble role well, so let me pump up your ego for you.  Done and done.

I've got no golden dog in this fight, so for your sake I hope you're right--and you probably are; I've been watching the precious metals market since the 2000s, and all of those claims (by people who want to sell you metals) that gold/silver are great inflation hedges are just blatantly false as a general rule. 

Sure, depending on when you bought in you might get lucky and gold could be acting as a hedge, but that same statement could be true of bitcoin, stocks, or anything else.  The key of course is what price you bought the asset at.  That's always the key point.

But who knows?  If people expect gold to hedge inflation, it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy if they start buying it.  Me?  I'm not touching it--not that I could afford it anyway.

I would add here that the above piece of data shouldn't be viewed as a slight against boomers or slackers--I'm pretty sure if you replaced "cryptocurrency" with any asset that even comes close to the volatility and risk that crypto has and asked people closer to retirement age if they'd want that in their portfolio they'd say thanks but no thanks.  There are plenty of people in those generations interested in crypto, but when it comes to retirement, it's a whole different beast.

And I know I'm not the only one here who's thinking that crypto and managed retirement accounts are super icky to say the least.  I still don't even understand why anyone would want physical precious metals in an IRA, but maybe that's just my perpetual ignorance.

Now that's just downright mean.  If I were the sort of person who cared about tut-tutting others about their treatment of others I might have called you out on that stronger than I did--fortunately for all of us I'm an extremely narrow-sighted person who can barely peep past my own needs, so you go on and wish everything to be shat upon by birds.

All kidding aside, I'm glad this thread got bumped, because I was hoping someone would once again spark up some discussion on the state of the channel.  From the very start I was wishing it nothing but success, and it certainly did look like it had some momentum behind it (or at least creators who cared about what they were making).

Here's to the channel hopefully not being dead.  But if it is, perhaps we can make a limited edition silver coin commemorating such a short-lived nugget of gold.

To be fair, what I think tranthidung was disputing was specifically your assertion here, which you didn't provide evidence for either:

And if we're talking about the "99%" statement, I would only say that if that were true the forum would be nearly identical to Yobit's cryptotalk.org back when they were paying people to post on it.  True, I don't have any hard data either, but I read that forum now and again and I would have estimated (generously) that 1 in 100 posts wasn't of zero-value; the rest were exactly what you'd expect from the worst of bitcointalk's bounty hunting shitposters.

Yeah, could be.  I'm not sure which he's most upset about though, the yet-to-be-Legendary problem or the forum quality one.  And if he's really only here to spam (which somehow I doubt, given how long he's been a member and despite the inactive periods), the quality issue wouldn't even be a blip on his radar.

Ouch, that's harsh--but I don't live there and you could be spot-on for all I know.

Is there a major counterfeiting problem in Nigeria?  One of the points mentioned in the article is that new banknotes with enhanced security features make it much harder to counterfeit.  That is actually one tangible way upgrading a country's paper money might help the economy, but if the problem isn't rampant then I wouldn't expect to see much of an effect.  And yeah, aside from that I don't see how the new notes are of any real help to Nigerians--they're not even harming them by representing a devalued currency; they're just neutral in their impact as far as I can see.

Wonder if they've got tracking devices embedded in them.  C'mon guys, we all know that's coming if not here already.

It's pointless to have created a thread like this one in the first place--you've been here long enough that surely you must know how the trust system works and that red trust is there to stay unless the giver of it decides to have mercy on you (which doesn't look like it's going to happen in JollyGood's case, and Lauda is effectively gone forever as far as any of us know).

Since you weren't banned, you fortunately have the luxury of making a new account in good faith, and nobody's going to give you shit about that unless it's discovered and it gets new negs from JollyGood or whoever else.  I think you're just going to be beating your head against a rock, hoping for something that's never going to arrive.  

I'd also point out that your account isn't ruined because of the feedback.  You might not be able to get into a signature campaign, but you can do everything else with it.

Edit: 
Ah, I take that back about JG.  But even if he removes his neg, I don't think you're going to be satisfied with a neg from Lauda (is he/she on DT still?), nor is that one going anywhere.

I detect an overriding sense of jealousy here, apart from the legitimate complaints you have (and you do have some).  If you've been here since 2014, it's obvious why you haven't reached Legendary yet, i.e., you just didn't post enough before the merit system was implemented.  I know you know that, so I'm not sure why you brought it up--though again, I think it's jealousy and/or a feeling of being left behind because of your own inaction.

I'm not sure I entirely agree with you that there are too many Legendary members, but the prestige of that rank has definitely lost a lot of what made it such a thing to shoot for.  On the other hand, for the vast majority of newcomers it's still nearly unattainable.  It'd be nice if Theymos added at least one more rank if not several, but he doesn't seem inclined to do that, so there's not much the community can do.

The state of the forum is truly bad, but I'd say only in certain sections and only if you're not using your ignore list to alleviate some of the frustration.  But I'd also argue that (at least for me) I find it much more tolerable than it was prior to the merit system.  You remember what it was like back then, hopefully.  There were so many blatant account farmers spread out through so many sections it was unreal, and they were the lowest kind of shitposters imaginable.  Right now the quality isn't even close to being as bad as it was back then.

Yep.  I've been saying the former for years, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.  This forum is proof of it--and there have already been quite a few members who have tried to or successfully have farmed reputation to nefarious ends.  Luckily that isn't a widespread problem right now and typical members are skeptical enough to see through those attempts before they come to anything.

That's sort of what I heard as well--but that story doesn't really ring true in my ears, mainly because I've never heard of a company selling an asset just to see if (or prove that) the market for that asset is liquid.  Since this is Elon Musk we're talking about, I'm assuming there was some other reason that's not being made clear.  If it was Micheal Saylor or a CEO of some other reputable company, I'd still be skeptical, but with Musk?  Yeah, I'm not buying it.

It doesn't matter how much doge or btc he buys or sells; he knows he can move any crypto market with just a tweet--and that's a sad state of affairs IMO.

Yeah, he's a bag of shit and I tagged him--but I'm not sure how much good it's going to do, as he just registered the account and will no doubt either start over with a new one or simply ignore any negative trust.  Anyone looking to buy the services he's selling likely wouldn't care about any negs given for the nature of said service.

Still, I'll also say "good catch" to OP for finding this asshole and bringing him to the attention of the community.  His posts ought to be scrubbed from the forum if you ask me.

Ucy, I don't know if this is what you're talking about here, but I just reported two posts (this being one of them) by the same member who'd inserted links into his posts.  They're not even referral links, but I thought they were inappropriate since they had nothing to do with the thread they were in and could only be advertising.

I don't know if that's against the rules, but I don't think this forum needs any more advertising in posts.  What if that were allowed?  My guess is that new campaigns would spring up around "post links" or whatever these are called.  Anyway, if that's not what you're talking about then I apologize (but it does sound like related).

My reports were marked as "good" though obviously the posts weren't removed.  I'm not sure why that is.

Those recommendations are nothing new at all, except I've never seen the time frames broken down like that.  Usually I see that everyone should have 6 month's worth of cash set aside for emergencies, and that seems reasonable.  I'd think even dual-income households should put that much away, assuming they can afford to.

Me?  I'm not doing much of anything to prepare for a recession, but that's only because I've got so little money to work with.  But for argument's sake, if I did I'd be stocking up on non-perishable foods and other household consumables (like shampoo, soap, and the like) to hedge against inflation.  And I'd do that right now, because inflation is already getting bad.  Christ, a little thing of cream cheese is over $5, and that's outrageous!

Thanks for dropping that link.  I have my own profile bookmarked on BPIP, but I rarely browse statistics like that and I was surprised to see Lauda still way at the top (#5) long after he/she left the forum.  I guess I'd forgotten how many posts Lauda had made.  And though I don't browse the altcoin sections anymore, Amph is a name I remember well from my early days on the forum--not in a good way, either.

And not to go way off-topic, but whatever happened to gentlemand?  I imagine nobody knows, but I used to like reading his short, bitingly witty posts and he just seemed to suddenly disappear.

Lastly, it's nice that members' DT status is listed right near their usernames on that list.  Man, I should really spend more time on BPIP.  It's such an awesome site, and I'm such a neglectful retard.

I just watched a video about Zuck and the metaverse which was very critical but also very much on point in so far as it was convincing.  Apparently Meta is touting the metaverse as some kind of workplace solution, and if that's the case then I think it's so far into the overkill realm that it's ridiculous.  I don't think any businesses have been crying out for a VR solution to holding meetings or anything like that--and that's on top of the shitty quality of the graphics that have been shown so far.

This whole development process seems like it's turning into a nightmare for Meta, which pleases me greatly as I twirl my evil moustache and clap my gnarled hands together, awaiting their demise.  They are an atrocious company that deserves to fail, and the quicker the better.

Hell yeah it's real.  Before I started that thread in Meta with my rules for post review requests, I was only getting a handful every month and I was accumulating earned sMerits in the hundreds and never running out of sauce sMerits.  There were long periods when I wasn't doing a great job as a merit source, or at least not as good as I wanted to.  After creating that thread, I suddenly got a ton of "targets" for merits, and I'm chronically out of both sauce and earned sMerits.  But honestly, I prefer the current situation (though it'd be better if I had enough sMerits to keep up with the requests).

Not sure what you mean exactly.  You're talking about it being hard to get rid of your sMerit stash by the last day of the month?  Didn't you create a thread that's similar to my offer?  I would think there'd be no problem whatsoever giving away as many merits as you're able to.

Yeah, that's certainly appropriate text but I was just wondering whether deceased members should get red or neutral trust on their profiles to alert the community in the event the account becomes active again.  After looking at pandukelana2712's trust page however, he's already got some negative trust for things other than the most recent loan he took out (the ones from game-protect), and I doubt those are ever going to be removed--so in this particular case, the point is moot. 

I kind of agree that mods should lock an account if there's enough evidence that the member died.  But wasn't pandukelana2712's relative supposed to repay the loan?  Is that between DarkStar_ and the relative, or was that relative expected to gain access to pandukelana2712's account in order to do so?  Just curious.

I doubt they're going to be reading this, especially if it's in English and they don't speak the language (that's just an assumption, could be wrong), and since he died a couple of years ago hopefully their grief has lessened somewhat.

I didn't know him, but obviously he made an impression on a lot of members here, and I hate to hear of any member dying--whether I liked them, didn't like them, or didn't even interact with them.  It's a large community we have here, but somehow a member's death seems to make it a lot smaller in my eyes.

Should negative or neutral tags be given in a case like this?  I can't remember what's been done in the past when a member has died, and it seems like a neutral might not be enough to alert someone that the account shouldn't be active--but it also seems unwarranted, even if the text in the feedback is just a death notice.

You know something?  I'd be willing to bet that most of these plagiarists have alt accounts waiting in the wings in case one of them gets banned for plagiarism or whatever else, sort of like naim027.  I never got the sense that newcomers were ignorant to how things work on the forum when they register, probably because they were referred here by a friend or family member who's told them all about bans, ranking up, and everything else.

So I don't think changing the ban system would help things much, even if it would normally make total sense to do so on a normal forum without financial incentives to post.

Yeah, wouldn't that be awesome?  I worked for PrimeDice, Yobit, 1xbit, secondstrade, and a whole bunch of other crypto projects/exchanges/mixers/whatever, and my references are....anonymous bitcointalk members.  Yep, that'll fly if I'm out there trying to land a job in the real world.

"Forum advertising" is such an oddly unique phenomenon.  It's certainly not a real job and yet I have no doubt whatsoever that there are many people here who support themselves with their earnings--so in that sense it really could be considered real work (but not "formal" like OP phrased it).  And man, when bitcoin was going for $50-60k you could have earned a considerable amount of money just for posting.  If you were in campaigns prior to bitcoin being that high and had saved what you earned, you could have been rich.

Not me, though.  I'm a fuckin' idiot on idiot steroids.

I don't know how I missed this thread, but I stumbled across it while doing a post history review for a member.  OP is on my ignore list, which I haven't added to in quite some time, so that sparked a suspicion in me that he's a lousy poster--and after taking a look at some of his older posts, I found ones like these:


I didn't look at anything more recent, so I don't know if OP still writes as though he's texting, but if he's seriously asking why he hasn't ranked up....c'mon, bro.  It's obvious you missed the boat in the time you had before the merit system came about, plus you're basically a shitposter.  Question answered.