Right, but what happens when what China did becomes a global thing?  It's not like it couldn't happen, even if it happened in spaced-out increments.

Maybe I don't read crypto news as much as I probably should, but I haven't heard much about solar mining farms much lately.  Wasn't there a big one operating, or on its way to be operating, in Texas?  In any case, mining does use a lot of electricity but I've seen comparisons with other things like, say, the entire banking system and bitcoin mining is dwarfed by that.

I wonder if that's because of all the GPU miners who suddenly have nothing to mine profitably.  Is eBay flooded with used GPUs, and it is difficult to buy ASIC miners right now?  Just thinking out loud, but that seems like the logical thing to do for the bigger GPU miners, because it doesn't seem like anything's going to be profitable for quite a while.

I disagree, as strenuously as one can disagree with any sentiment.  Why?  Because all of that corruption you mentioned has been going on since the beginning of mankind, and it's part of human nature.  There are laws regarding corruption in many places (not all, perhaps), and if you argued that politicians, law enforcement, corporate executives, and whoever else hadn't learned right from wrong at an early age, I wouldn't believe you.

The fact is that you can't eliminate the underlying cause, greed, at any age.  It's hardwired into us.  Hell, just look at all the drug prevention programs aimed at youth and how that's worked out.  It doesn't work, because once you tap the pleasure center of the brain, a lot of people will want more of whatever did the tapping.  Add to that youths' natural defiance of authority, and any preventative measures against drugs, corruption, or teenage pregnancy for that matter are doomed to fail.

OK, y'all know I'm no expert here but I've tried the Satochip and it basically just uses Electrum, so if you've got a private key you can import it into the version of Electrum they use (which was outdated when I used my Satochip) just like any other version.  Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's that simple.

What's not simple (or rather convenient) is having to use that card reader, but that's another story.

I'm trying to understand this part of the whole debacle--obviously naim027 was evading a ban with his alt accounts, but what was the meddling he was doing with the AnotherAlt account?  I don't have a photographic memory of all the details like some of you seem to, and though I'll go back and look at the CC thread(s), I'm hoping someone can give me a TL;DR on that.

And I'm also thinking that in light of the new information that's come out, i.e., that naim027 was blatantly ban evading with two alt accounts, that the mods ought to reconsider their decision to unban him.  That might be a wee bit off-topic, so I'll just leave it at that.

You don't need to predict anything about the ranking system--just read my posts above, because I know whereof I speak.  Back when the forum was created, I'm guessing it was no big deal and if you achieved Legendary it just meant that you'd been around long enough and posted enough to get there.  But ever since the beginning of signature campaigns, that changed.

Wait, are you saying the merit system has done more harm than good?  I can't tell if this is a misunderstanding due to language or not, but if that is what you mean I'd say that the really good posters should be well on their way to Legendary if they're not at that rank already.  I won't argue that the merit system has made it harder for everyone to rank up, but it was a necessary evil.  You weren't around in 2015-16, but you were definitely here before the merit system so hopefully you remember how bad the shitposting problem had gotten.

True....but that's always been true, has it not?  Oil and politics have been interlocked for as long as I've been aware of the two, and I'm 100% sure it's always been the case.  But what I'm not certain of is whether the world weaning itself off of oil is going to improve the situation, because energy suppliers of all types (including oil) have--and have always had--extreme levels of power and influence, and those powers are most likely figuring out how to keep their wealth and power if X becomes the new fuel standard, where X could be hydrogen, vegetable oil, solar, whatever.

I know this thread is somewhat old, but gas prices were trending downward for a while there, and now they've spiked.  If you live in an urban area, I'd consider going without an automobile if you can.  It's not only environmentally friendly but it'll have an impact on your wallet that you'll see pretty much as soon as you unregister your car/truck/whatever.  It costs so much to own and operate even the smallest of cars it's ridiculous.

OP, I don't know if you're even keeping tabs on this thread, but with a simple title like "education" and no monitoring for shitposts you've left it wide open to bounty hunter-spammers who are obviously taking advantage of a drifting thread to drop one-liners all over the place.

Please lock this up, as I think it's served its purpose.

No, it's not--but as far as I can see it might as well be, because now the data is out there for whoever wants it.

This is going to sound like I'm a complete ignoramus (arguably true), but what companies are in the chain analysis business and what do they do with the data they collect?  You're not talking about law enforcement, are you?  That question might be off-topic, but not much.  

And yikes, this whole thing has been a complete shit show from the beginning.  I wasn't even aware of Celsius until it imploded, and I was definitely surprised to learn that so many people had money invested with them.  

Yep, that's pretty shit if you ask me.  Question: what's RTP in this context?  I'm too lazy to visit the thread from which this shitty shitpost originated from, as my eyes have been exposed to too much retina-burning nonsense as of late.  "Return To Player"?

Anyone check the rest of Peanutswar's post history?  I'm wondering if it's filled with crap like the above.  There's so much of it in the two gambling sections, it's unreal.

I remember Libra, but for some reason diem is only ringing a low-volume bell in my head.  Anyway, if you're comparing those two against whatever their Metaverse turns out to be, I'm not so sure the cryptos were better ideas or not.  Maybe for Facebook, but not for the general public--but I guess we'll never know since the US government wouldn't let them get off the ground.

Am I reading between the lines correctly here?  Are you saying Meta might be pulling an Enron or something illegal of that nature, like accounting fraud, quarter-stuffing, and all that crap that corporations do to make their stock look attractive to big investors and/or line the pockets of the corporations' executives' pockets?

I honestly hadn't thought of that, since Meta/Facebook hasn't shown any evidence of doing that in the past (or at least I haven't picked up on it).  Then again, a lot of financial chicanery doesn't get detected until the house of cards comes tumbling down--just like in Enron's case.  Don't know if you're right or wrong here, but it'll be interesting to see what comes of all this money Meta is throwing into the black hole.

Just giving my $0.02 once again, but I still don't think Royse777 or any of the CC team members are or were trying to scam anyone.  I was pissed that Royse777 tried to silence criticism from yahoo62278, but other than that I don't have any issues with him.  

Regardless of him concealing his true identity with respect to the CC project, there's still the fact that he's only one member and the funds are protected by their escrow system (to the best of my knowledge).  Naim027's involvement was known right from the beginning, too.

You're right about that, and though I understand why Royse777 wanted to hide his identity I kind of figured it would be revealed one way or another.  Members here are justifiably suspicious, tenacious, and aren't stupid.  There's not a lot that can be hidden for long if they start digging.

I haven't read the whole bitlucy drama in excruciating detail, but my impression from the start is that Royse777 never scammed anyone.  If he was guilty of anything, it was making some wrong decisions based on his judgement of the information he had--and kept getting--at the time.  I gave him the benefit of the doubt, because I'm not sure how I would have acted in his shoes, and we all know hindsight is 20/20. 

Seriously.  I regret ever supporting him, and honestly I'd much prefer that permabans remain exactly that unless there are extraordinary circumstances--which, in the case of naim027, there really weren't. 

NoorulHuda, I'd say I wish you luck but I'd be lying.  I'm not sure why you haven't gotten the message yet, but if I were you I'd give up your quest to get unbanned.  I think your argument is full of shit and you certainly aren't such an important part of bitcointalk that your account needs to be restored.

Oh man, you don't know what you're missing. 

I see a lot of problems with your suggestion, with the first being the maintenance of such a thread.  There's no way any moderators are going to have time to do a job like that--nor should they when there's so much crap that needs to be swept up off the filthy floors of some sections.  But even if it were just a volunteer (or even a team of volunteers), the task seems like it'd be a never-ending one, not to mention an organizational nightmare. 

Think of how many members there are on bitcointalk.  Millions.  Who chooses which statements by which members are important enough to be quoted in a thread like what you proposed?  It almost hurts my brain to think about it, sort of like contemplating infinity for too long.

I'm not saying those lying-ass liars that lie around lying 24/7 don't need to be called out on their falsehoods, but I don't see it being done like this.  By the way I just looked at when you registered, PowerGlove, and I could have sworn you were around for a lot longer than you have been.

Well to be fair, anyone could have been behind an account with that username.  Did any of us have any reason to suspect that it was naim027?  If there was, I sure as hell missed it, though I knew it was Crypt0Soul's alt account.

If there were any DT members who gave Poker Player a neg for negging Royse777 and/or naim027 and his alts, I think they'd be making a mistake by doing so.  Not a big enough mistake to warrant an exclusion from my trust list, but this is a case where there shouldn't be any trust retaliation--Poker Player laid out his reasons, and IMO they're solid enough to justify him leaving a neg.

That said, I have no idea who's on DT these days.  Probably almost everyone posting in this thread, right?

From what little I've seen on Youtube (mostly that video of Zuck's lifeless avatar giving the grand tour of the Metaverse) it does indeed seem stupid, even for hardcore tech-heads, gamers, and/or whoever else might be interested in VR innovation. 

I know it's been a long time since Zuckerberg "created" Facebook, but maybe he's let things go to his head and thinks he can create demand for something like that.  But whatever the case may be, it sounds like Meta investors aren't happy with the black hole those billions of dollars are going into.  I mean Jesus, that's a lot of money for any company to be spending on R&D, and if it's not clear to shareholders exactly what the money is being spent on....there's a big investor-relations problem there.

Let that company and all its projects die, and the quicker the better.  Facebook/Meta is just one Big Brother out of several that needs to be blown out of the water.

As far as Casino Critique is concerned, naim027's involvement wouldn't matter to me much, even after he was revealed to have those other alt accounts.  It's not the worst offense in the world to have concealed that fact, even though it wasn't honest.  The fact is that he's not the only team member, and he's certainly not running CC (to the best of my knowledge; I've been fooled before).

I'm pissed only because he hid the fact that AnotherAlt and Cryp0Soul were his alts, and he was asking for post history reviews with the naim027 account still appealing a ban.  He made no secret that those two accounts were under his control, but he hid the fact that the naim027 acccount was also his, likely knowing I'd never give merits to either alt if I knew it.

Yeah, that sounds like a sayonara from somebody who knows they're finished on the forum.  They usually write something like that or go out in a fit of rage.

I imagine the mods are well aware of that, and it might make sense to report one or two posts by the same member violating the rule with a note telling the mod to look into their post history--the same goes for any other kind of reporting when you're dealing with someone with multiple, repeated violations.  It's efficient, and I think Hilariousandco once suggested it to me back when I was doing a lot of reporting.

And the gambling sections....*whew*.  When I'm doing post history reviews I often find myself looking at posts in threads with tens of thousands of pages.  When you've got threads like that, shitposters and violators of rule 32 know they can basically get away with whatever they want to. 

On the other hand, I do see valid discussions happening between members (or what looks like it, anyway), so if there was any good reason to be posting multiple times--but not consecutively--it'd be that. 

OP, if I were you I'd give up on spam megathreads as far as reporting goes.  I know I did, because there are just too many rule breakers and only so much time in the day to devote to a problem that's been around for years and shows no signs of improving.  But that's just me.

Why am I not surprised?

Good for yahoo62278 for implementing this; there's been talk over the years about campaign/bounty managers requiring a certain number of merits to get in to the campaign/bounty, but as far as I know there haven't been any real barriers put in place to keep shitposters out.  This is the first I'm hearing of a merit requirement to stay in a campaign.

It's obvious OP is fishing for merits here, so I'd advise people to look at his post and threads like this in that light.  It's not easy for the average person who's on the forum to make money to earn a single merit per week, so I'm expecting there to be more threads like this created by people desperate to stay in any campaign with a rule like yahoo62278's.  

I'm assuming this is the first time there's been a requirement like this, right?  As I said, I've never seen one like it before but I don't pay attention to various campaigns' rules.

And yours is how a child would reply.  Yahoo62278 is being responsible to the forum, and I respect him greatly for that.  Requiring participants to earn a single merit in a week isn't such a sadistic restriction as you make it out to be, nor is he doing it to inconvenience the members in his campaign.

Is that the main privacy concern, or is there more to it than someone having members' mailing addresses?  

I'm probably being an ignorant fool with respect to privacy, because I'd be interested in forum merch--though whether I'd buy something would heavily depend on what it is.  I wouldn't buy a t-shirt or any kind of clothing, but something like a coin, a deck of cards, postcards, and things like that I'd buy in a heartbeat (if the price is right, of course).

And not for nothing, but I'm really hoping someone creates a commemorative coin for bitcointalk's 15th or 20th anniversary.  I wish I could help make that happen, but I've got nothing to offer.  But OP, I'd be willing to buy something as long as that something is of good quality and something I can keep as a forum collectible.  Minerjones made those BTC pennies back when Zepher died in 2019, and though I only knew him by reputation they mean something to me because I see them as part of bitcointalk's history.

Great idea.  It might be hard to sell, but I'd love to see something commemorate the start of the merit system.  It's hard to overstate its importance, and it was a major change that had both immediate and long-lasting effects.

Great to see you back, Jet Cash!  Of course I always say that whenever you reappear--though truthfully if you were posting in sections like B&H I wouldn't know if you'd taken a vacation or not.  I've been meaning to learn more about using the lightning network, but I've just been too mentally lazy.

You obviously haven't been active as a merit source in the past 120 days (no criticism, just observation), and that makes me wonder how active some of the lesser-known, or completely unknown, sources are and whether Theymos is keeping an eye on things.  I'd think if a merit source isn't distributing many merits, he might want to think about either adding new ones or replacing sources that aren't active.  I don't know if 33989 merits in 30 days is good or not, though I imagine the community would make some noise if it wasn't. 

On the other hand, aside from the typical threads in Meta about how to earn merits there haven't been any real complaints that it's impossible to rank up in quite some time.  It could be that lower-ranked members have resigned themselves to staying at Jr. Member or thereabouts.  I honestly don't know what to think.