Now I'm not sure what sociability and shenanigans mean, at least in the context of this thread.  I will nevertheless thank Fox-on-a-Pop for their ongoing largess.  A toast to all the cyclers and the team sponsor! 

Performance enhancing stuff (PEST) is not banned, I assume.  I've never been required to piss in a cup, don't you know.

Where's that picture of the account farm from a few years ago?  I thought I had it downloaded, but I can't find it.

OP, you've gotten good answers to your question but I'll just add this: if coins/tokens are found to be sent back and forth between bounty hunters and those accounts in turn get accused of being alts, it's because there's been so much documented abuse in bounties that it's safer (and probably more accurate) to assume it's a case of someone abusing a bounty by using multiple accounts than it is to think tokens--usually worthless--are being sent to friends, family members, or whoever.

TL;DR: History has shown that those suspicions and accusations have usually been proven correct.

See why there was a need for the English on CC's website to be cleaned up?

I'm still remaining neutral, but how is it that two escrows can suddenly become unavailable for a job that doesn't require them to do much of anything at this point?  Are the funds (that 0.005BTC) under one person's control or what?  It seems odd that anyone would leave a project that they were an escrow agent for before it's even gotten started, or two of them would simultaneously become unavailable, as OP put it.

If they're being replaced, it sounds more like they didn't want anything more to do with Casino Critique than they're just too busy. 

Thanks for making this thread, OP.  I'm all out of sMerits, so I'll have to owe you some.

Anyone who knows me on the forum knows I'm no expert in the workings of these things, but I made a trade with a member a while back for a couple of these wallets (which he also got from the Miami conference).  That led me to look into them a bit further, and I'm pretty sure I came across the video you linked to and I came away with the impression that the Arculus is not a trustworthy wallet. 

The packaging and the wallet are great, and it's a neat collectible in my eyes, but there's no way in hell I'd ever use it.  And I'd also love to hear others' thoughts on it, though I'm pretty sure I know what I'm going to read.

What?  OP might think the two stories are intertwined, but the hiring of all those IRS agents may or may not have anything to do with crypto--but the new DOJ lawyers clearly will. 

I'm not sure exactly what Biden thinks an addition of 150 lawyers to the Justice Dept. is going to accomplish, but we're going to find out one way or another.  That seems like a pretty small team if you compare it to the entire US population.  The IRS addition is much more substantial, but even then it's not even clear what the effect is going to be--or, to state that more clearly, who's going to be the target for all the new anticipated audits. 

Interesting to see the drop in those audits broken down by income level, because you certainly can't get the truth by watching/listening to mainstream media outlets with political agendas of their own.  What the hell happened to journalism in the past 30 years, anyway?  Cherry-picked facts mixed with appeals to emotion, that's all it is these days.

Personally, since I'm an avid reader of the forum, I wouldn't be interested in a blog dealing with forum happenings.  In fact if I wanted to learn what Theymos or the mods have to say about things, or about any forum developments that I might have missed in sections I have on ignore, the Youtube channel would have been perfect.  I'm still confused as to why so much time and effort went into creating that channel only for it to be so quickly abandoned (or at least it appears to be abandoned).

And certainly I can't speak for other members, but I'm betting that the vast number of them who are only here to earn money through bounties/campaigns/whatever would be about as interested in reading a blog as they are the posts in whatever threads they're posting in--which is zilch.

So my vote is for no blog.  If the Youtube channel is any indication of interest in extra-forum stuff, it'd be dead on arrival.

You said you're new to the forum, so you're obviously not aware that this is a common occurrence and has been for years.  But I don't know who exactly is in the 1xbit campaign right now, but I'd be willing to bet that most of them are either throwaway alt accounts or members who never had a positive reputation on bitcointalk to ruin, so getting a red tag from a DT member doesn't bother them in the least.

How long has this campaign been running, anyway?  I'm sure I can find out just by seeing when this thread was started, but it seems like it's been running for way longer than I figured it would.  Ugh.  Reminds me of Yobit.

Well said, very well said indeed.

I don't know for sure, and I'm not sure how many people are on the fence about investing in CC, with the deciding factor being the single member of the team remaining anonymous.  Now that I'm writing that thought out, it probably doesn't matter too much--but at the very least it'd put this controversy (no matter what its importance) to rest.

No, of course they're not.  But as I said, even without knowing the legal names of the people behind the bitcointalk usernames, those usernames have positive/neutral/negative reputations associated with them.  If this was a project where they said they weren't even naming the team by their bitcointalk usernames, I'm pretty sure there would be no faith that it wouldn't turn out to be a scam (and rightfully so).

I wasn't criticising anyone's jadedness by any means, believe me.  People have good reason to look on any crypto project with extreme skepticism because of all the BS that went on during the ICO mania and all the crap ideas and outright scams that said mania birthed.  

There's only one member who's choosing to remain anonymous (at least as far as I know), and personally I don't think that's too big a deal since all the money CC collects isn't being held by just one person, and also because there are some reputable members attached to the CC project.  Even if it was just Hhampuz and DireWolfM14 running the show, I'd trust that this isn't some rip-off attempt.  But that's just my opinion, and once again I'm remaining neutral.  My point is that the member who's behind the official CC account isn't of huge importance; the other members obviously trust him/her, and there's an escrow team in place to safeguard the project's funds.

That said, it would be so much better if that person disclosed their identity.  It'd put this discussion to bed at the very least.

Well, that's what it's going to boil down to in any case.  I'm not sure if the small amount that's been raised so far is due to this controversy or not, but I bet it's not helping.

That's true, but by our actions we and others have built up reputations over the years without requiring our identities to be known.  I think you'd agree that a bitcointalk username is associated with a certain reputation, assuming one has been established.  So if you don't even know someone's online identity, you can't gauge how trustworthy they are.

But as I've stated before, aside from the one anonymous member the other team members are known.

I'm going to admit here what I was too red-faced to admit in a previous post, which is that I had forgotten this thread existed and had no clue whatsoever it had morphed into the Cycling Club campaign thread.  I never realized that Foxpup was posting updates like the above, and I've been thanking him every week via PM instead of here.  Also, it looks like I posted in this thread before but I went through the first 25+ pages and can't find anything.

I believe I know the reason for my ignorance.  To the best of my recollection, I'd made a post somewhere (maybe here) saying I'd gladly rent out my avatar, and Foxpup graciously reached out to me (I think via PM) and invited me into this sexy little circle that I've been both a part of and completely absent from since March of 2020. 

Regardless of how long this goes on for, I just want to thank Foxpup for doing this.  It's really meant a lot to me, and that's no joke. 

Thread bookmarked, and I suspect I'll check in here to be sociable.  It's hell out there in the rest of the forum, lemme tell ya.

Absolutely, though if it concerns problems with Casino Critique itself I don't think I could be of much help.  But I'm going to remain optimistic that there's not going to be any need for that.  I'm also hoping the project turns out to reach some level of success--but I get the feeling that whether that happens or not depends on the team raising enough money to get started, and like I said, judging from the number of chips sold so far there hasn't been much interest.  

I do know that much of what's on the roadmap is vague, and CC's revenue goals are lofty to say the least.  I think if they laid out a concrete plan with details as to how they're going to attract partners, sponsors, advertisers, and whatever else it might make it way more enticing to potential investors.  I think I suggested something like that when I was doing my editing.  The thing is, people have become jaded by all the scam ICO projects that promised everything and delivered nothing that they're reluctant to buy into some profit-sharing program that doesn't have a detailed prospectus, trusted bitcointalk members or not.

Unfortunately, I've got no control or even a say in any of that.  I don't even have experience in gambling or business, just writing, so my role was small and is most likely finished--unless they do launch the review site, need an editor, and decide to reach out to me for assistance with proofreading and such.

I gotta tell you, my impression is that there's no money to get started, much less bribe anyone to keep secrets.

Foxxy, if I write here the thought I have in my head after clicking on that link, you might then require an IQ test for the Cycling Club team--so I'm not gonna write it.  Suffice to say, I am content to eat my words and my hat and hope that we're still cuddlebuddies.

I've got so much retard in my head, it's laughable.

I don't have any data to look at--or know where to find any, for that matter--but I'm assuming that right now there's a very high demand for campaign/bounty participants, so it's almost like 2015 where you just check the Services section, apply, and *boom* you're in. 

For those of you who weren't here in 2015, Yobit had a strong presence, as did Secondstrade, both of which would basically accept anybody into their campaigns.  I'm not even sure if they had a limit as to how many participants they accepted.  And man, if you'd saved everything you'd earned by being in one of those for a year or two, you'd be strollin' round yo nebbahood like a pimp-ass boss righaboutnow.  Yobit paid 30k sats/post IIRC and you could make 10 posts/day.  If anyone knows the actual numbers on that, please feel free to check me, but that's what I remember.

Yeah, that's what I remember as well.

I mean, come on....the forum has had the same basic layout and only tweaks to its functionality since its inception (from what I gather, anyway; I was not here in 2009).  Why change it now?  The late 2000s look it has sort of represents the staying power that bitcoin itself has, and if bitcointalk suddenly had a totally different appearance, it would be jarring to say the least.

Not to mention that I don't actually believe there's ever going to be that new forum software we've all heard so much about for so many years.  I think that's Theymos's idea of an extremely prolonged April Fool's joke.

Lol.  Is that the account he used in his ban appeal thread?  I remember making comments there, but for the life of me I cannot recall the name of the account he used, though I recognize the Dic3L0v3r name.

I supported naim027 in that appeal, as I thought he was making decent contributions to the forum--and that was well before I heard about Casino Critique.  He didn't get a lot of supporters, and I understand why his name doesn't immediately instill trust in someone seeing it attached to the project.  But as far as the CC slogan goes, it would be kinda-sorta awkward to write "The brainchild of a group of reputable Bitcointalk members, except for one or two whose trustworthiness is disputed.".

I've stated that I believe that the team behind Casino Critique isn't looking to scam anyone, and I'll hold that belief until I see evidence that suggests otherwise.  I am not, repeat not, giving it my personal seal of approval, as I haven't been a part of the creation of the project aside from making sure the copy on the CC website is legible.  

The team members (I'm assuming) are communicating and planning on Telegram or wherever, and I haven't been privy to any of those communications, so unless I knew what was going on behind the scenes I'd never state with confidence that anyone should invest with them.  On the other hand, I find it unlikely that all of those members are colluding to scam the chip buyers.  There are some I do trust, like Hhampuz for example, and collectively they'd be ruining a bunch of reputations that took a long time to earn if they were doing something untoward, and strictly from a practical viewpoint it doesn't seem like it'd be worth it--unless they did raise 7 or 9BTC or what have you.  Those charity abusers from a while back proved that big sums of bitcoin can be tempting and cause reps to be ruined.

Whatever happened to those guys, anyway?

In any case, I've disclosed my involvement and the extent of my endorsement (which is to weigh the risks vs. the potential profits and is essentially neutral) of CC.  Hopefully if anything bad did go down, people wouldn't think that I profited or that I caused anyone to get scammed.  And seriously, if any members here do think I'm promoting CC or doing something wrong, let it be known and we'll discuss it.  I'm an anonymous username on a discussion forum, so my reputation is all I've got.

There isn't one person behind the Casino Critique project; it's a team, and those team members (aside from the one member writing from the CC official account) are listed on their website.  If you think it's Royse777 behind the Casino Critique forum account and don't trust him, act accordingly.  But also realize that he wouldn't have complete control over any funds the team has, so IMO it's really a moot point.

Oh, wow!  I remember that debacle (though fuzzily) and also that aTriz was fairly trusted prior to his public disgrace and shaming.  However, everything he did he did on his own and not with a team of forum members assembled.  I'll have to go back and re-read that thread to refresh my memory.

Those are decent suggestions, OP, but they assume the worker has enough space in their house/apartment to dedicate to their working remotely.  Think about all the people who live in one-room apartments around the world.  There's no practical way I can think of to make a workspace and a living space (though I've never had to before).

Dressing professionally in spite of the lack of need to would be a boost to productivity I'd think.  I've heard phrases like "dress for success" and "the clothes make the man" all my life, and they've gone in one ear and out the other, but I do know there's a psychological benefit to putting on a shirt and tie (if you're a man) or just generally not dressing like a slob if you're focused on work.

How I envy those people who have big houses with spare rooms that can be turned into offices.  Wish I had something like that.

Necessary, no.  Beneficial, you'd be surprised.  Maybe those people in the picture are the exception, but honestly....just based on that photo, there's no way to know how productive they are or if it would help them to dress up.  I bet you it would.

OK, so I should have clarified my statement:  if you assume that what's in the T&C section is true and that the members of CC aren't trying to pull off a scam here, then the risk is basically the same as investing in any business that hasn't gotten off the ground yet.  You believe it's a scam, and I've given my opinion on that and I'm not going to strenuously argue that point, since I can't read the minds of the people behind CC and I don't have any more knowledge of how they're going to operate than you do.

I disclosed my participation because I don't want my reputation tarnished in any way should something bad happen, and it's later discovered that I had something to do with the project.  I'm not, in fact, part of it; I just did the editing, since the website is in English and they needed someone proficient in that language.  I wasn't even in control of what went up on the site.  I just made suggestions, which may or may not have been accepted.

This is the first time I've ever been involved in a crypto project in any way, and even though I had reservations about jumping in (because I'd be putting my reputation at risk by being associated with a gambling website, which is way outside my area of expertise), I figured it was a small role and YOLO, right?  

All that aside, I wish CC the best and do hope they prove the naysayers wrong.  It doesn't look like they're raising a lot of money based on how many chips have been sold, so I'm curious as to how they're going to proceed should they not raise anything close to 7, 8, or 10BTC.

To eddie13's point: at least there are bounty/campaign managers making sure participants get paid.  You might think they're contributing to scams or whatever else, but for the most part they handle large amounts of money and can be trusted not to abscond with it.  If you or anyone else acknowledges that campaigns and bounties are an important part of the crypto economy (and important to the forum itself), then you'd be hard-pressed to argue that we'd be better off without them.

This is going to be my last post in this thread, as having to butt heads with stubborn and bitcoin-blinded members gets tiring.

MSTR's bitcoin purchases are straight-up gambling, there's no two ways about it.  Taking on debt to buy it instead of returning any profits to shareholders (though I don't think there are any since there's no P/E number to be found that's not negative) or plowing it back into the core business is irresponsible--and I'm telling you that all the red flags you need are right in front of you, in addition to Saylor "stepping down" as CEO just after an enormous hit to their financials, due to...guess what?  Saylor's bitcoin buys. 

And Saylor's 2000 settlement with the SEC for misreporting financial results.
And Saylor being sued by the DC AG for tax fraud.
And this (from my brokerage's analysis page):


And I could probably list more red flags, but I'll leave it at this.  I have little doubt WeissLaw is going to be the first to bring on the shareholder lawsuits, with one caveat to that sliver of doubt:  if bitcoin starts to rocket upward, the MSTR shareholders might be inclined to forgive and forget.  But right now?  When you've got a 5-year price chart that looks like this:



Well, I warned you.

OK, so my knee-jerk reaction would be something you don't want, nutildah, but the idea above isn't a bad one.  The problem is I've developed a bias against NFTs to the extent that bile starts defying gravity and makes its way from my gallbladder and nearly through my epiglottis whenever I see or hear anything about them.  And why?  It's because of all the videos I've watched about them and the irrational valuation put on 99.999% of them.  If these were treated like trading cards back in the 1950s like you said, with people trading them amongst themselves out of passion for the NFTs themselves and not like trading cards from the 1980s-now, then I'd support this.

But given my bias and everything I've learned about NFTs, I want no part of these or any other ones.  Speaking for myself, I don't need some sort of recognition on bitcoin's blockchain that will be forgotten about years if not months from now.  Yeah, it'll be there for all time, but if there aren't any eyeballs pointed at it, then it holds no value to me.  Hell, even if they were I still don't care.  These are just not something for me.

Bitcoin is a store of value, for one.  NFTs are retarded digital art being pumped and dumped by even more retarded retards, and I'm surprised the hype has been sustained for as long as it has.  For another thing, bitcoin and NFTs are just....different.  Fundamentally so.  In their purpose, their function, and their future prospects.

I can't speak for the team, but participation in the profit sharing (by buying chips) is anonymous, so there's really no way for Casino Critique to know if someone is buying chips using different addresses.  In addition, the rules state that using multiple addresses is prohibited but they didn't specify in writing what would happen if they found out someone was doing that (that I remember, anyway).  

The above really has me wondering where all your bitterness is coming from.  There's certainly a risk in buying chips, and that risk is that there won't ever be any revenue to share.  That should be clear if you read the terms and conditions page and the details of the revenue pool setup, so there's nothing being withheld as far as I know.  

Unless the team really did get together and cook up a scheme with a scam website, scam advertising, and all the rest--which I seriously doubt, given the reputations of the bitcointalk members listed on the CC site--this is simply some people who want to start a business reviewing online casinos.  

So we'll see.  I'm not sure what happens if a small amount of money is raised through the chip sale, i.e., if they're going to go ahead with the plan or return the money or what.  For the life of me, I can't remember if that was covered in the terms & conditions page.

Bah, it's always been like this.  Well maybe not all the time, but I'd say for most of the time I've been a member here there's been plenty of reputation-smearing drama in this section.  I don't mind it at all, as it offers up opportunities to debate issues and establish whether people can be trusted or not.  Sometimes if you don't challenge things or even talk about them, assumptions are made that can be completely wrong.

By the way, have you seen what's popular on Youtube these days?  It's non-stop besmirching of everything, because that's what people watch.

That was one of the goofiest posts I've read in a long time--so much so that I think it deserves merits.  I must warn you, however, that I'm not one to mistake post length with post quality.  Keep that in mind since I'm periodically reviewing your post history for you.

Speaking of things I appreciate about the forum, humor is one of them and it doesn't seem like there's been a lot of it lately, at least in the sections I frequent.  Granted, bitcointalk has never been a forum infused with laughs, but there was a time when members like TMAN, Lauda, and others would drop bombs on people and hilarity usually ensued.  Even some of the more persistent trolls like cryptohunter were funny in their own way (but goddamn I'm happy he's gone), or weirdos like Fwdxlsh, mammabitcoin2u, and that strange dude who would write English in such a strange way and say things like "I am the PRO LOANDER of this place".  Anyone remember the name of that member?  His posts were always, always funny.  Gleb Gamow and MPOE-PR as well, and they're both gone.

My point is, whether writing in witty or biting English or just spewing gibberish, there were members who used to make their presence known just by writing entertaining stuff.  Nowadays?  Eh.  Meh.  Bleh.