If you go back a few years, Bitcoin is still significantly in the green. Whereas, every single fiat to exist isn't. That's simply because of its deflationary design, but a lot of people don't look at the grand scheme of things, and instead focus on the now, and a little bit in the past. Comparing Bitcoin's price in a year or two's time frame is rather pointless. If we did the same with fiat, it'd be down just much less so because it's been around a lot longer.

I can't wait until the masses find out that in theory Bitcoin should continue to increase in value, while their fiat is guaranteed to be subject to inflation, and therefore continue to make them poorer as time goes on. Probably, won't happen though.

To be fair, the recent price dip isn't just because of one exchange. It's a compounding effect involving a declining worldwide economy, i.e a global recession. War which has fuelled fear, but also dwindled resources for the every day person. Recovering from a global pandemic which pretty much stopped the world at one point.

So, while the word on everyone's mouth right now is Ftx, and how that's made Bitcoin drop further, Bitcoin was already struggling at that point (like pretty much every investment during this time), and the reasons are pretty much easy to identify.

Plus, we're now going into the Christmas period which historically people are shorter of cash, and therefore less investment is pumped into things like Bitcoin. So, some people might think that the investors are losing faith because of these compounding events, but in reality things are currently tight because of those events, and after we've recovered from them, Bitcoin will likely see a recovery from there.

So, while I do get your point about one exchange being irrelevant, the compounding effect can't be underestimated, and technically we're in unprecedented times due to it. That doesn't mean Bitcoin's going to fail, but I think it's important to establish this isn't just about one exchange.

I'll be putting my predictions up closer to the event, however here are my early leans:

Israel for the reasons discussed at length above. Zhang Weili will likely have the advantage, since Carla will look to wrestle, but I've said before that Zhang's grappling ability is underestimated, and she has a rather large frame for the division. I think Dustin wipes the floor with Chandler, I'm quite surprised that the odds are so close as they are. Chandler is good, and has constant pressure, but Poirier has been absolute brilliant for a number of years now, beating some of the biggest names in the game.

The only chance Chandler has in my opinion would be through volume, but then I can't see him lasting with what Poirier is going to throw at him, at least last, and pump out the same volume as he usually does.

Yeah, a lot of that goes on, and we should probably crack down on it a little more. You could probably if really wanted go, and report over a thousand reports a day, just on these types of posts. It's quite clear that some of them have never even watched the football game they're commenting on too, they keep it extremely vague as an attempt to go unnoticed, and I imagine it does actually trick the campaign managers that don't watch the sport either.

A little bit too heavy handed in my opinion, since pretty much everyone on the forum has had a post deleted at some point, whether it's from breaking the rules or replying to someone that has broken the rules. I think it would be better to implement a shadow ban system or review system is probably the better word for new users. That means we're somewhat introducing a newbie jail again, but it would be far less restrictive. Plus, I think we have the moderators to cope with the current amount of users signing up, and posting to be able to review them in a decent amount of time.

This doesn't fix the existing users talking utter crap in the mega threads, but I think we just might have to pay a lot more attention to this sort of thing, and crack down on it.

The thing is the financial rewards should only be considered bonuses, and shouldn't really effect the running of the community event all that much. Obviously, give some consideration to it, especially when it came to users meriting users for voting for them, however that made sense without the financial aspect anyhow. However,  at the end of the day it's a bonus, and not a guarantee that you benefit financially for winning.

However, the coefficient just seems wrong to me. Either you prevent previous winners from winning or you don't. While, I do like the idea of seeing new faces of the winners list, I think that's rather down to the community rather than anyone else. If users want to see new winners, then vote for new users, and not the popular choices. A rule change probably isn't necessary in this case, at least for me.

I said it the other day, but eventually this won't happen. Since, opening a centralised exchange in the first place will be considered a shady act, since there's no reason why peer to peer can become the mainstream trading route. There's the issue of escrow, and making it simple enough for people to use, and unfortunately I don't think multisig is the answer there due to the complexity that it adds to the transaction.

Ultimately, the only reason we tolerate, and don't learn our lessons about centralised exchanges is that they're by large very convenient due to the simplicity. It's one of the biggest questions you get asked by people who don't know about Bitcoin. "But, how easy is it to buy something with Bitcoin", which of course what they're actually asking is how easy is it to exchange, and turn into real (from their perspective) money. Centralised exchanges make it incredibly easy to do that within a few minutes.

However, peer to peer exchanges don't have that simplicity or speed. Unless, you've found a trusted seller, but even then you're likely ignoring certain security recommendations during the process. That's where we should be looking to develop, making peer to peer exchanges more convenient, and simple to use.

The only issue I see with peer to peer exchanges is governments not liking the idea of them, due to the fact that people could potentially money launder easily. Since, centralised exchanges will be reporting their books to the authorities, whereas peer to peer isn't doing that, it's down to each user to do that. Which of course, they/you should be doing, but the government will definitely see issue in the potential for people to cheat the system or go undetected more easily there.

It's most certainly a alternative to banks, which I believe we've largely achieved. Basically, the only other alternative would've been cash, but then you're dealing with physical security, which a lot of people can't afford.

Bitcoin, you can secure you a reasonable degree, and it's fairly easy to do so, especially with the innovations with software as of recent. Still, we've probably got a long way to go before this important point/usage becomes more mainstream knowledge.

As an alternative to fiat, sure. However, it probably isn't going to be as widespread as a lot of us first thought. There's likely to be too many stumbling blocks in the way, and I think the governments of the world will probably make it very difficult to achieve. Not impossible, but incredibly difficult I'd say.

However, I don't think that was the intention of Bitcoin in the first place, and instead is achieving exactly what it set out to do, today.

I guess it depends on the mega thread. One's like discussing soccer, make a lot of sense. However, there's a bunch of mega threads that are basically obsolete since every single thing that could be discussed have been discussed. Yet, users continue to participate in discussion, mainly the build their post counts. This is most evident in the Altcoin Discussion thread, but it happens else where too.

Limiting signature past the 1000 page probably wouldn't help all that much. I think the solution would be to better moderate these mega threads. Whether that's through increased manpower, community helping out or being a little more restrictive on mega threads. The latter probably being the least ideal solution.

Some fighters just seem to have the number of certain fighters. Izzy's career is still one of the best we've seen, whether it's kickboxing or MMA. He's basically done it all, and is renowned for his skill. Not only that, he's known for his technical style even within a organisation which has the most elite, so while it might be a bit of a black spot as you put it on his career, I don't think it's embarrassing. The absolute worst outcome for Izzy is he dominates all five rounds, but gets knocked out close to the end. Since, that's like a carbon copy of what happened before, he dominated the fight until he got knocked out, basically both times.

It's nice because it's probably going to be the first fight in a long time where I get those pre fight jitters. I'm excited for that.

It's interesting to see. I guess I'll wait until his walk out before I confidently back this; however, it might just be that his previous opponents he didn't think they stood much of a chance, which he proved on the night. However, Alex has knocked him out twice before, so it's a different kettle of fish so to speak. Might be taking it a little more serious, and therefore we might actually see the best of Izzy.

I just want it to be a good fight, I don't want any flash knock outs, I want to see Izzy pressed, and under pressure, and as long as it's a good fight I won't be too upset of any result. Naturally, I'm routing for Izzy, but I must admit I've quite liked what I've seen from Alex before inside, and outside the octagon.

Even if you took the current moderators, and used them to sort of define a moderation standard, you'd still be introducing centralisation there, since users would have to opt in on who they trust to moderate, the majority would pick who's the most popular out of them, retrospective to their actual moderation work.

Basically, for it to work you'd need a ton of statistics, a transparent way of showing what was moderated, and why, and then you can't bring in the current moderators as moderators for the decentralised forum, since that's introducing centralisation to a decentralised system, even if you get to choose who to follow for moderation.

Also, I think selecting multiple moderators to follow, and then seeing or not seeing content based on that would be confusing for everyone. Most new users struggle with the layout, and functionality of Simple Machines forums since they aren't used to it, let alone a system which would be confusing even for the most senior of users of that system.

Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see a limited trial (albeit I wouldn't want to participate, just watch) run just for the carnage as I previously stated, but realistically I don't think it would work very well. I guess for a community that talks about how much they love cars, it works better. However, Bitcointalk in particular is quite a large, and complex set of users, that basically attracts people from all walks of life. That in itself adds complexity.

Since, people are significantly invested into Bitcoin. Bitcoin is new, hasn't really been done to this scale before, and therefore there's always a chance that it fails. It's not a currency like USD or GBP that's basically backed by the government. Bitcoin technically is backed by the belief of the community, and that's pretty much it. Obviously, there's a reason why that belief exists, and I don't think it'll ever completely go. However, you can understand when someone is significantly invested in a new technology, a new idea that when it does dip it causes panic.

I can understand that, and I've been around a while. I personally aren't that concerned. This is just natural variation for as far as I'm concerned. We've seen similar in the past, and there's a compounding effect going on right now.

While I do think we'll be fine, and will see it increase to levels before, it's still understandable when people do panic. It has taken me years to develop the resilience I have to the price, it definitely doesn't come over night.

It's approaching the Christmas period, I don't have the data so this is just an assumption, but I would've thought the majority potential investors would've already invested by now, since the Christmas period is notoriously expensive. Unless, you're talking about high profile investors, which are more likely to believe in a recovery than not.

If you're talking about every day investors, this might've happened at the perfect time. Investment might have been low anyhow, but we would've recovered from this news a few months into the new year, and that'll be when we see more investors.

That could mean that we see a further drop though. However, that's just a prime time for us old timers to accumulate more, right?

I imagine they pulled out upon looking at their books. I also imagine that a lot of exchanges are running at a deficit, because they're pumping money out of the company rather than keeping reserves in case of a sudden price change. Unfortunately, the people operating the businesses seem to want to line their own pockets rather than keep the company stable, and prepared for the worst. I'm not sure if it's because running an exchange attracts certain type of people or not.

Anyway, the point being FTX wasn't doing too well obviously, and Binance thought it would be unrecoverable or at the very least too expensive to recover. If they want to expand, they could easily create several sister companies, and operate under a different name on the surface.

It'll recover, it'll just take time. A lot of people are losing money due to it, and that causes fear. Then for the ones that aren't losing money, are seeing the news, and then the price starts going down due to fear. It's a common cycle that we've seen before.

Any exchange that goes, will be replaced. Unfortunately, probably by a equally as bad exchange. Eventually, we'll transition to exchanges without wallets implemented, and only temporary holdings. Hopefully, eventually peer to peer exchanges become the norm, and therefore we avoid a lot of the losses that people are subject too, and therefore won't have these headlines any more.

Bitcoin has been tested, unprecedented times now being compounding by the FTX news. It'll probably either hover around this amount or go down a little more. However, I'm quite confident in a recovery, but probably not until sometime in the new year.

Which you'd basically have a voting system for users to vote on users that should be banned, which sounds absolutely brilliant in practice. However, when it comes to reality, it'll be a shower of shit (for a lack of a better term). Considering how many disagreements users generally have on a forum, mix that in when there's financial gain to be made, you'd have a disaster in the making. You'd not only have disagreements which would result in feuds in terms of moderation, but also you'd have users looking to censor certain users to benefit from it financially. I hate that we always seem to talk about signature campaigns, but they're usually the best example.

For example, if you had someone that is in a high paying campaign, they could be subject to report abuse by using alt accounts. At least, with a centralised figure you have some sort of quality control. That also eliminates alt accounts abusing the moderation system.

Basically, for moderation to work on a decentralised forum with as big of a community as we have, it would have to be implemented absolutely perfectly, and even then most users don't want to contribute to moderation, and just want to browse, and discuss, which is absolutely fine. However, when it comes to relying on the community to moderate it'll likely be misused more than it's used for legitimate reasons.

It's like the saying; "absolute power corrupts absolutely" - John Dalberg-Acton, now that isn't always the case for everyone. However, when everyone has access to power, which could be artificially increased via alt accounts, you'll have a problem on your hands which wouldn't be easy to rectify.

It would be interesting to see it implemented just to see what sort of carnage pursue, but in terms of usability in the long term, it probably wouldn't work. At least, for a community of this size, and diversity. Then obviously, you mix in the financial side of things which always tends to cloud users judgement in the first place.

On a side note; I'd like to see shadow bans be introduced to the forum anyway. There's some situations where I think it could be beneficial. Specifically new users, but then that does increase the workload on moderators as posts would need to be reviewed in a pretty quick time scale in my opinion for it not to become too detrimental to new users.

It would probably be beneficial, but I can't see it happening any time soon, at least officially. Dare I say it; I think eventually something will be developed for phones. Although, that's just my personal thoughts, don't think I have insider information, because I don't .

However, I think that all depends on if/when the new forum software gets released. I can't see it being done for Simple Machines Forums. That would be a waste of resources, unless the new forum software gets pulled for whatever reason.
 
I don't login via phone, but do use it to browse exactly in these situations, in fact I probably do most of my reading on it. However, the browsing experience without logging in, with a normal browser is absolutely fine. I can see smaller phones having an issue, but if you've got a somewhat large phone, or use a tablet then it's absolutely fine.

The problem comes with posting, but if you aren't logging in you don't need to do that.

Izzy is a different fighter now though. You only have to watch it back, and you'll see Izzy do things he basically never does any more in the UFC. Plus, he's much less open to get attacked. He's mastered the distance management. The only time I really saw him struggle in recent fights was when he moved up the division, and Jan beat him. Although, that's because of the threat of a takedown. Alex isn't going to have that, or at the very least we don't think that will be his approach. If Alex takes Izzy down, I'll be absolutely shocked. Since, Izzy has some of the best takedown defense in the division, obviously moving up that wasn't so obvious since he was outweighed by a significant amount, which ultimately meant he lost the fight.

Izzy was even losing the striking battle against Jan due to the threat of a takedown. He'll be much more comfortable against Alex than Jan. Plus, he's basically dominated Alex before getting knocked out, so it's not like he doesn't know he can beat him. Due to this, I honestly believe we'll see Izzy fight the safest he's ever fought. I don't think Alex is the type of fighter to put it all on the line either, and chase that confrontation.

It might be boring for us fans, but Izzy is going to do what he needs to do to secure that win, and it'll likely be point fighting. I'm somewhat confident of the decision win from Izzy. It's just the odds aren't all that enticing. If they were closer to 2.80 I'd probably go for it.

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Username: Welsh
BTC SegWit Address: bc1qaxh0dcgl3zwpujd5sn3xzqpc9jveu3znz6s3x6

I'm catching up on all of this, so forgive me if this has been determined before. What does proof of reserves actually mean, as in I know what it means per say, but what sort of proof is actually considered proof?

As suggested, couldn't the numbers just be fudged, and therefore you're none the wiser anyway. However, an exchange simply appears better since they're being transparent. Seems like the richer the exchanges, the more likely they'll be able to reassure customers they're safe to use, by giving the illusion they're backed by a ton of money.