Glad you bumped this thread, bro!  I remember it when it was started, and this is part of what I had to say at the time:

In 2022, all of those things I mentioned above still hold meaning to me and I still have them all.  In fact, I was just looking at the Zepher pennies about a half hour ago by coincidence.  Minerjones was gracious enough to send me some capsules, so I keep them all encapsulated and in a dollar coin tube.

Yeah, wow!  I think I tuned out after I saw Theymos's first reply and then the back-and-forth between members who could get a project like this done--at that point I realized there was nothing constructive I could possibly add.

I will say that I'd love to see this come to fruition, and it doesn't matter if the coins are giveaways or for sale.  Like I said in 2019, I'd be happy to buy one.  There aren't any bitcointalk collectibles out there that come to mind, and I think there's a need for one like this.

I had a big LOL after reading the above.  Seems like everyone all over the internet these days treats racism as a crime worse than murder or sex crimes, so it's a refreshing display of free speech when someone like dhru9 puts all of his prejudice on display for all to see.  Maybe it's not racism, but it's a close relative.

But aside from the fact that there's so little logic in your argument linking people of the same nationality and/or income level to their trustworthiness, how are you making the leap to Vod?  I'll admit my memory is pretty bad, but he didn't scam anyone before he left the forum, did he?

I'd also add that there have been many, many scam busters active on the forum over the years.  Some of them turn out to be just what dhru9 said; some of them are genuine.  You just don't have enough information to jump to the conclusion that shasan is being dishonest--and I doubt that's the case.

Not sure I agree bitcoin (or any crypto) is a hedge against inflation--or even if there really is a good one, like precious metals.  In investing or even stocking up on durable goods for the future, everything depends on what price you bought in at.  And like my doubts about there being good inflation hedges, when exactly is bitcoin "significantly low"?  It's not like you can look at its price/earnings and get a ballpark sense of whether it's undervalued, like you could with a stock.

I'm guessing there were people who thought bitcoin was cheap at $63k.  Whoever bought at that price hasn't been hedging anything, much less making a profit.

OP, generator prices can be seasonal or fluctuate during crazy weather.  Did any of that come into play in your example?

Did you miss the part where I'm indirectly involved in this?  Don't care; keep posting.

Uh....ok.  I'm not overly concerned that people are going to lose their shirts given how much money has been raised so far, but one of the questions that's been in my mind from the beginning is exactly what I asked, i.e., whether the team is going to refund the chip buyers or keep them on as profit-sharing investors.

And excuse me, why should I ask anyone anything privately?  If you've got criticism about what's going on in my brain, why don't you PM me?  Better yet don't, because I don't care.

Yeah, and criticizing valid criticism is a great way to drop posts....dude, you're better than this.

A'ight sucka, you really wanna go down that particular road? 

Enjoying the show?

Notice how I can barely extent my arms enough to aim that piss-shooter inn'a cup?  Don't you have some surgery you have to be at, Dr. Dre?  We can get back to the unauthorized webcam sling 'em at a later point.  Y'all need to scrub up, especially post-piss-peepshow.

Hey man, if nothing else you could just watch me do it.  Just sayin' now, there's that.

Chuck D say: Word Up. 

There are so many factors that determine how many merits any given member will earn over an arbitrary time frame, but it is of fundamental importance that you post relatively frequently if you expect to get noticed--and then of course on top of that, your posts have to somehow stand out from the typical excrementitious posts that might sandwich said posts so hard that readers can't scroll fast enough to get past the stinkers.

In Sandra_hakeem's case, she's been here almost a year but hasn't even made 120 posts.  That just isn't going to cut it--if you're looking to rank up, that is.  Nobody's forcing anyone to do anything.

I've always bought into the notion that higher-ranked members tend to earn more merits, because it seems almost self-evident to me.  Older members have a lot more invested in the forum, are likely more knowledgeable (except for goobers like me), and know what kinds of posts are worth it to make.  Newbies....who the hell knows?  They don't have a good history on bitcointalk, that's for sure.  But there are always a bunch that keep at it, keep climbing the ranks, and end up becoming established members of our fine forum.  They're just rare, that's all.

LOL.  I had to go back to see why the hell I even wrote that--but I believe my point was that Stalker22 was talking about wealth disparity, and with anonymous people on a forum or basically in any situation where you don't have complete information, you don't know for sure who the "haves" and "have-nots" are.  I wouldn't doubt that some folks would see my profile and notice how many posts I have, how long I've been here, etc., and draw conclusions about how much bitcoin I own.  I know I've done it with other people.  But if anybody did assume I've been hoarding bitcoin since I registered....not even close.

So that's that.

We'd have to define "tiny" but take a look at how many posts I've been making weekly for the past 6 months or so.  I used to be jacked up every day to be part of whatever conversation was going on, but my passion has waned (probably because of some RL stuff).  

But no, if you saw what passes for my bitcoin wallet you'd know I'm not lying or being unreasonably humble.  No Lambo for me, and I wouldn't even be able to buy a decent gaming laptop!

Foxpup is the furry Godhead, though.

No shocker there.  Just for fun, I'd been watching the GPU market since probably late 2020 when--I kid you not--I learned what a GPU is.  I'm very much a tech retard.  I never had a sense of what prices were before then, but I bought my first GPU to start participating in the Folding@Home project, and later on the BOINC project out of Berkeley.  It was a crappy GDDR3 2GB GPU, but it worked and was fun to experiment with.  That must have cost me like $60 (and was probably too expensive, but I didn't know any better).

And as I kept watching, seeing ETH's price rise and the cost of GPUs going up, it blew my mind.  At this point I don't even know what a reasonably priced 1660 Super should sell for because I've been looking at inflated prices for so long.

As far as the energy cost goes?  You just wait.  It might not be profitable to mine anything with a GPU at the moment, but the minute that changes....cards are going to sell out and this whole controversy is just going to get silenced.  After all, ETH is just one coin out of many.  It's a big one, but it's far from the only one that could be GPU-mined.

Lastly: think of all of those banks with all of those branches across the globe, keeping the lights on 24/7.  I'm pretty sure that cost has been calculated, and though I don't know what it is I'd be willing to bet it's not even close to what bitcoin mining consumes.

Ugh.  I guess there's an argument to be made that knowing if you crossed a political border doesn't give away your ID and hence it's anonymous (but the definition of that word would have to be agreed upon, which it seems silly to do)....but that doesn't excuse the fact that only being able to use the Arculus in the US is just a really bad "feature".

I think there are people/companies who know there's going to be a big market for slick wallets with abhorrent security features--much like the Ballet wallet.  The manufacturers very well may not have the intention of scamming via the scheme you described, but there just no way for any of us to know. 

I'm sorry, this is going to sound very negative but the Arculus deserves to fail as it stands.  If you addressed the security concerns instead of all the "trust us" stuff, you might have a decent product to sell.  I have a couple of them, and they're attractive.  But as I said before, there's just no way I'd ever use one to store any crypto on.

Sure, anyone can see the funds haven't moved, but that doesn't mean anything as far as the escrows are concerned.  They might have relinquished control over their keys or signature piece or however it works without anyone knowing about it.  Know what I mean?

Well....Jesus....there wouldn't have been all of this controversy if all of the team members were identified from the get-go, because that seems to be where the vast majority of it stems from.  If CC doesn't go ahead with the public IBCO, it won't be strictly because of that; it'll be because there wasn't much interest in the project--but any potential interest was surely stifled by the lack of transparency on display.

So the chip buyers are fucked?  Or potentially so, at your discretion?  Haven't those two escrow cosigners stepped down or have otherwise become unavailable?  Why would you let them choose what to do with those funds?  Why wouldn't you return everything to the chip buyers if there's not going to be a profit-sharing deal?  Those escrow people haven't done any work as far as I can see, so there's no reason why they should keep the funds as a "service charge".

I asked for a fee up-front for my editing work, and even though it was a pittance, I insisted on it because I figured something like this might happen.  That said, let's hope for a good outcome.

I'm not sure my question was answered or if I just didn't understand.  Whoever bought those 5 chips (in addition to the people who received giveaway chips) are still going to be sharing in a revenue pool or not?  I just wanted to clarify that they are or aren't, regardless of how much money is raised.

I've never used or been part of a 2-of-3 signature wallet, but I think I'd be correct in assuming that if one or more individuals no longer want to be responsible for signing transactions for that wallet, they'd have to relinquish control over their part, correct?  Would I be mistaken to assume that those two escrow agents who've left the project have already handed over what amounts to full access over the Casino Critique wallet to someone else?

I'm just asking here, because I admit I don't understand fully how things are being carried out behind the scenes.  And assuming the escrow issue gets taken care of, and it's only 0.005BTC we're talking about at the moment....the day may yet be saved as far as regaining transparency and/or trust.  It'd be much, much worse if the team had thousands of dollars in their account--but I think if you're claiming to be "100% honest" (that was the original slogan), the more communication the better.

Oh, the US has always been horrible with exit strategies, let's face it.  It has yet to deflate a bubble without causing it to explode; it hasn't figured out a way to finance the country without taxing people to death and overspending....to put it bluntly, the government needs to be a hell of a lot smaller, and it needs some brighter economists working for it (and by "it" I mean the American people).

Meanwhile, prices keep going up every time I go to the grocery store, which is at least twice a week.  It's frustrating.  I hope all these new IRS agents go after the big tax evaders instead of watching these $600 transactions, which I find to be ridiculous to say the least.

This is a 2-of-3 signature security thing you've got going here, right?  It would be very concerning if the two escrows who either left or don't have time to be escrows still have that much control over the project's funds, wouldn't you say?  And I'm not sure what you're saying: what happens if new escrows aren't found?  Are those two team members going to be the escrows after all or is control over the funds going to be distributed in some other fashion?

What's going to happen to the 0.005BTC if that's all that's raised?  Is the team going to try to get the project started, will refunds be issued, or what?

I'm bumping this thread because in the past week I've been inundated with requests for post history reviews, and my sMerit supply simply can't keep up with what I'd give out if I had an unlimited supply (or even an extra 200-300 right now--are you there, Theymos?).

So instead of having to PM people individually or in a group--which I don't like to do for anonymity's sake--I'm making the announcement here that if you PMed me within the last 7 days it might take a while before I'm able to review your posts.  It's such a fucking pain in the ass when I'm stuck like this, and if Big Bro is reading this, perhaps he might think of me on a day when he's in a good mood and airdrop me some sMerits.

Also, word has obviously gotten around the gambling "community" that I offer this service, and I've been looking at members' merit profiles, i.e., where they've gotten merits from and who they sent them to.  I'm seeing a lot of the same names pop up again and again, and I'm warning you: if anybody is abusing the merit system and is trying to get me to facilitate said abuse, I will swoop down like some extinct flying-winged creature with razor sharp claws and will make a sandwich out of your eyes and lips. 

We've got some very good researchers on the forum who can link accounts far better than me, and I won't hesitate to ask for help from them if I start getting funny feelings.

In addition, I'm also raising my standards for quality posting in the gambling section since I'm seeing so many posts being made there, and many are obviously done just to satisfy the members' casino campaign's quota.  And remember: post length =/= post quality.

Yeah, it would have been nice but would have made OP's job a lot more tedious.  I appreciate the data dump, by the way, and though I still have a bunch of post histories to review and only about 8 sMerits to my name, I'm going to give most of those to you, OP.

Speaking of not being familiar with members....wow.  There are a lot of them in the 2500+ earned list that I rarely see anymore or just plain aren't familiar with at all.  I'll have to check out what sections they're posting in--and it'd be so nice if it turned out to be a local board, wouldn't it?  I'm still getting the feeling that merit sources are badly needed in all of the non-English sections.

Agreed--despite how much garbage a lot of people who wear them bring to the forum, those signature ads also incentivize the really good posters to post more often, which almost ensures that threads don't end up dead and that there's always some topic somewhere worth participating in. 

I mean, look at other crypto discussion forums (take your pick).  If you look at the first page, oftentimes the most recent post was from a day or even a month ago.  I'm afraid that if Theymos were to suddenly ban campaigns and bounties, bitcointalk would suffer a similar fate.  It might not, given how popular bitcoin is compared to even the hottest altcoin, but I can almost guarantee you traffic would drop off a cliff.

Besides, there's always the option to put signatures and avatars on ignore if you find them obnoxious.

Wouldn't using a VPN only allow OP access to Binance's website and not necessarily allow him to withdraw funds?  What if Binance requires KYC and the only thing OP has is a Malaysian ID?  I'd think at that point Binance wouldn't allow him to do anything if indeed they've cut off service to the entire country.

And if that's the case, why wasn't it made known that this was going to happen?  That doesn't seem right, at least not for a big, reputable exchange such as Binance.  They should have at least let Malaysian customers withdraw their funds prior to shutting them out, no?

I was wondering those same things in my last post, and I'm not quite sure why that info hasn't been disclosed.  But since nobody has told me to be quiet about the content of the communications I'm receiving I will say that I was asked to be one of the new escrow agents.  I turned that down, as I don't have enough information about the project's details, e.g., how exactly they're going to proceed in the event they don't raise as much capital as they need, how they plan on turning a profit, etc.  

And the most important reason: I don't want my name involved with a project over which I have no control and basically don't know anything more about than the rest of the public.

Hopefully the official CC account will do just that.  However, I don't think I'd be alone in thinking the wheels are coming off this project as we speak--and not in a scammy way, just in a business sense.  There's still only 0.005BTC that's been used to buy chips, whereas the goal apparently is still to raise 7BTC.  If that's the amount needed to get the project rolling, I suspect it's not going to be achieved.

What should be clarified immediately is whether the funds CC currently has are under the control of a single member or if there's still an escrow system in place whereby those funds can't be spent unless there's an agreement between multiple team members.  That info would either ease people's doubts or increase them, but it's something that should be made known.