They can, and there are several forks who basically pre-mined their own fork to then sell those coins for a profit. Pretty shady if you ask me.

One of the larger forks that did this was Bitcoin Gold.
They explained it themselves here, https://bitcoingold.org/premine-endowment/


I believe that there also was another fork that credited themselves with all coins that satoshi is said to have mined, but i can't remember which one that was from the top of my head.

Their contact page also has a captcha that isn't working. Contacting their support is ironically impossible.


I think it is more plausible that they simply exit scammed their "investors" as it is obviously a ponzi scheme.

The site looks like a copy of https://adbtc.com, but they added a nice MLM flavour to it, essentially making it a ponzi scheme. A lot of google search results that turn up when googling this domain call it "legit", but i sincerely doubt that when you have a catchphrase of "The Magic will happen" and no explanation where you pay the refferal earnings from.

If i may ask, how much did you invest into this site?

The transaction link you provided really is pretty useless w/out more information.

This is what walletexplorer.com returns, https://www.walletexplorer.com/wallet/378d7e436d0d228d

It seems that some of your coins have ended up here? https://www.walletexplorer.com/wallet/0003f70860fa7922 Which looks like some kind of exchange.

Generally speaking an adress belongs to you/your wallet when you have the corresponding private keys for it.
What wallet are you using? Most non-web wallets will show you whether or not an adress belongs to you (Bitcoin core, electrum) with some simple commands.


Yep, i'm pretty sure he got scammed one way or another.

https://gph.is/1g7unR9

It's not impossible, but you can't do it as a newbie without the copper membership.  (This is done to prevent abuse. You also can't post normal images as a newbie.)
There should be no issue for Jr members to do so though..

If you still feel the need to have access to posting images/gifs as a newbie, read more about the copper membership here, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2385104.msg24371150#msg24371150 which grants you these abilities among some other stuff.

Let me break this down in some clearer english;

You bought 0.005 BTC from a site such as coinbase. -- Right?

You then "won" 0.5BTC from "bitcoin.org" and you have to pay a fee to claim your prize -- Right?

You then send the 0.005 BTC to the adress specified by the user who told you you had won 0.5BTC, as a fee to claim the 0.5BTC -- Correct?

This sounds to me like you got phished/scammed. https://bitcoin.org/ doesn't give away bitcoin. If you have already sent the bitcoin (0.005BTC) to an adress you don't own, it is presumably lost. Chances of recovering it are almost nihil.

Also, bitcoin.org in itself isn't a wallet. I can't really wrap my head around how you got on such a site in the first place. Mind PMing me the exact domain so i can take a look?

Besides that, your last 100 posts have been in the altcoin section, which is a board that Chipmixer does not pay for. I doubt you'll get in.

Because in the future the interest in bitcoin will either rise/fall, causing less/more transactions ( as there is a bigger userbase/(Or smaller, but obviously most of us don't think so.)) While the transaction capacity stays the same. = resulting in higher fees.

The correlation between the sat/b and $ value of the transaction fee is entirely dependent on how "big" your transaction is.


If bitcoin is going to become more widely adopted, and doesn't take "counter measures" against that (LN), then yes, there is a huge possibility fees will shoot through the roof again. Especially since the most bitcoin users have some sort of one-up mentality regarding fees, causing them to spiral extremely quickly.


More demand and the same "supply"(=transaction capacitity.)

What's your faucet? I'm quite curious.


Whether or not faucets are profitable from a user perspective really boils down to how much your time is worth.



I doubt that this "depends" on your selling skills, but rather how much convertable traffic you're getting and what your site looks and functions like. Just saying.


Well, google should be your first step; https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+create+a+faucet

There's dozens and dozens of guides and free templates out there that you'll be able to use. A complete newbie to programming could make one.

As to the metrics, most adnetworks either ask you for your google analytics, or your alexa ranking.

I'm a little bit out of date on the current meta, but i'm pretty sure faucethub.io is still pretty popular, you can see their most "popular" faucets here -> https://faucethub.io/faucets/BTC

I will definitely look further into this, and research a bit more on current regulations, as it is rather vague for me atm.


1. I have seen charts on other exchanges that kind of function like Shapeshift etc, and i feel like it really is a hit or miss. (eg, litebit.eu's implementation.) If implemented correctly it could indeed be a nice addition.

2. I personally am also missing an exchange where i would be able to simply cash out bitcoin -> paypal, (without using KYC), but i feel like there are probably a lot of AML laws that prohibit this very thing without KYC. So i really doubt that this is possible without the implementation of KYC, but who knows.


Evercoin.com isn't available yet? (At least not on desktop?)

Godex looks pretty good, except for the fact that they say they take .5% commision, but when you calculate what the actual price of BTC -> ETH is, it becomes obvious that they're adding another ~1-2% to that 0.5%. Am i missing something here?

Seems like most other instant exchanges (Shapeshift) also do this. I guess it's either due to volatility/they want to make some more $. Interesting.

Makes you wonder what he paid the 4 developers of Skrilage $100.000 a month for, for year(s) straight. https://archive.is/npFQF

It really seems like a lot of potential and money went down the drain here that could instead have been used to fix the current forum.

---

(Note that i am just an outstander looking in though, so correct me if i'm wrong. It just looks really bad.)

IIRC, Is this the github of epochtalk (Bitcointalk 2.0??), https://github.com/epochtalk/epochtalk/, and if it still is, is this still actively being used? It looks pretty dead..  

Just a side note -- buying existing projects from throwaway accounts will lead to nothing but you being scammed.  

Either you will never receive the project/code, the project will be half done, or the code/project is so horrible that it's just useless.
Ps PS. Your URL shortener is definitely NOT worth 1.5 BTC That script is used by almost every copy pasta URL shortener, and you have absolutely no traffic!
https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/adb.tc


Also, if you need to invest 75% of your equity into advertising, it is pretty clear to me that you're in an (over) saturated market. With 24 bitcoin you'll probably never be able to get a hold of your competitors. I doubt that it is even worth trying.


Simply "co-operating" is just not going to work on  a forum where everyone is anonymous and basically has nothing to lose from scamming you. Personally i wouldn't work/hire (with) anyone that has offered to do so yet based on their word that they'll "Complete X project".

Adding KYC to this forum would really destroy purpose/ideology this forum was once build on.

Furthermore, the forum as of right now can barely recover hacked accounts that have signed messages that prove ownership.

I really wouldn't be so sure that this would drastically improve with KYC. I honestly only see downsides. People hacking my/other accounts and misusing their name/doxxing them, extorting them, the forum's database could could get hacked, the list goes on and on.

I'd agree that the trust system could potentially be abused rather easily. I know instances where people indeed were able to simply buy DT1/DT2 trust for a couple bucks.
(See the email service of TBZ as a prime example of that.)

But, i don't see any other system that could work, and i think that this system is pretty self-evolving, (In the last couple of months, i have yet to see any (imo) unjustified positive feedback.)


Totally disagree. Moderators already have a hefty workload, and they shouldn't be the ones to judge, for obvious reasons.

Disagree. You want to give ponzi promoters a pass? Or the people that are promoting autobuy links?

The system in most cases becomes rather useless if we have to wait until the ""crime/scam" has already happend.

I personally suspect a lot of cloud mining sites/sites where you can rent hash power are used by money launderers to (obviously) launder money.

If so, running a profit wouldn't be a necessity (receiving/generating clean money would).

You mean something like this?

https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/30996/how-to-receive-swap-tokens-on-a-new-solidity-contract

The scenario here though is that the user needs to swap their tokens manually. Not sure if that's something you want.

Yup. https://bitminer.io looks exactly the same as https://startminer.com, which indeed makes it clear that this is either a template, or owned by the same people.

If you simply google bitminer.io, it becomes pretty clear that they are a scam. There's several threads on the forum about them, see

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1789851.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1580717.0

Startminer.com has the exact same business model as bitminer, which means that they'll stop paying sooner or later, just like bitminer.

(Although it seems like they've already not been paying for a long time/selectively scamming customers, see https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1870027.new)

The README.md of https://github.com/aceat64/EasyBitcoin-PHP states the following;



I don't really understand why you included the /wallet.dat/, changed the '' into "", and put both the IP and port in one syntax. I'm not an expert, but that might be wrong.

Try changing


To


And see if that changes anything.

I'm thinking (Or rather fantasizing ) of creating a service where you could exchange bitcoin -> most altcoins & vice versa. Now i know that this market is very saturated, (Shapeshift.io & Changelly.com)

But i think that there is still a place for such a service, where there is more attention to lower fees, more accepted/tradeable coins, and more privacy/anonimity.

I was wondering what the community here thinks about the currently already existing instant exchanges such as Shapeshift & Changelly. If you use them, are you content with them? Are there things you wish that were different about them/are you missing features when using them?

I'm really just testing the waters here, i'd love to hear your opinions.

Well, there are certain "network" rules. I think you are referring to mining here, right?

If a miner tries to bypass these rules, say he tries to add a transaction in his block that isn't signed correctly, the nodes will simply reject his block, making all of his work invalid.

( Which would cost him a lot of money, hence why it doesn't really happen).

Most of these rules can be found here, https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Protocol_rules

I've read about this a little bit, and from what i can find, they're the exact same as with PoW coins.


It is explained a bit more/better here, https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/8172/what-happens-if-two-miners-mine-the-next-block-at-the-same-time


Note that they're using the POW (bitcoin) perspective here, although that doesn't really matter.

The definition as per blockchain.com,