I request support for Flag #1627 on #2790027 “Curiosity123”.  Reference topic; see specifically this post.  Thank you.

I have created Flag #1627 on #2790027 “Curiosity123”, with this post as the reference.  Please support the flag.

There is a big difference between copyright and trademark.  Please don’t confuse the two concepts.  This is an excellent catch by morvillz7z for what by definition is the very essence of trademark infringement.  On the face thereof, Curiosity123’s advertising fraudulently misleads consumers and damages the mark of sportsbet.io.

The flag is important:  This type of rip-off advertising is most likely to mislead newbies and casual users, exactly the types of people who are protected from a high risk of losing money by the Type-1 flag warning banner.  I will also red-tag the account.

If evidence is presented linking this to #1297942 “YohannHermann”, then that account (and any other alts) need flags, too.


Please look up “confusion”, “dilution”, etc. in a legal dictionary.  It is a textbook case, since sportsbet.io has made it clear that the usage is unauthorized by them.  (Full quote below for evidence.)

Though it may be arguably true that copyright is technically being infringed, the big issue hereby is misleading consumers with a familiar logo which, in turn, is thus damaged.  In the overall context, I do not even think that copyright is worth discussing.  (I now have my quasi-legalistic hat on; my principled opposition to copyright is irrelevant to the opinion that I just expressed.)


If such a thing were practical here, then this would be one of the good uses for an “intellectual property” lawyer.  It is definitely worth a red-tag, and also a Type-1 flag!  It is a deliberate attempt fraudulently to mislead consumers, in a way that damages the brand of sportsbet.io by stealing their reputation.

Anybody who rips off a logo in fraudulent advertising ipso facto presents a high risk of losing money.


Excellent hypothetical illustration of the issue here.  The resulting trademark infringement lawsuit would be epic—and it would probably conclude in summary judgment for the plaintiff, since there is no way that the facts could be disputed without perjury, or frivolous litigation, or both.  Open and shut.

This would also be cause for a Type-1 flag on Toyota’s forum account; the flag could be withdrawn only if Toyota were to produce adequate evidence (such as a PGP-signed contract) showing that Mercedes-Benz had authorized this use of their mark.

---

Full quote for evidence that sportsbet.io has explicitly disclaimed authorization of this use of their logo (also look & feel, etc.):

Quote from: sportsbet.io on April 09, 2020, 01:01:15 AM

Hi guys,

This is a clear rip off of us, Sportsbet.io

We have no idea who these people are, or why they are so in love with us. Ill be sure to pass the flattering feedback back to our designers.

Please be very careful when entering this site... this is no doubt amateurs being lazy and just looking to rip you off.

any questions or queries, message me personally and ill respond to everyone.

regards,

Steve,
sportsbet.io
e-sportsbet.io

I think that this can be called an accidental case of, “I taint an alt!”






There is nothing to “fix”, because it’s not broken!  Nobody in the world is obligated to make blockchain analysis easier.  To the contrary, I and others spend much time deliberately confounding blockchain analysis.

Coins.ph is not providing privacy here; and I don’t want to inadvertently start some stupid rumour that this is a feature.  It is not.  It is just a side effect of how they apparently handle their wallet.  But this does raise another question:

Will it be called “chaos” or a “mess” or “intolerable”, if/when CoinJoins get more popular—and more sophisticated?  E.g., would this be “chaos” when scaled up to as many users as privacy advocates can get involved?  Hypothetically, what if a Filipino privacy advocate started doing something like this, and many members of his local forum got involved?

https://joinmarket.me/blog/blog/coinjoinxt/

---

Yes.  There is just nothing to bust here—and insofar as has been shown on this thread, there is nothing wrong with the exchange.  (Not that I approve of keeping bitcoins on any exchange, but that is a different subject...)

Dizzying levels of doublethink.  This one is competing with the Americans for hypocrisy:


A considerable exaggeration; but I am not in the mood to quibble over such details.


“DragonDance” thus builds building his accusation of “racially motivated libel” (quoted below) by expressing Turkish supremacism:  Surely, the peoples of all the listed nationalities belong under Turkish rule!

Alas, the world went awry because the Sultans sabotaged their own dynasty.  Those inferior peoples of Europe got away from their true masters, only due to their masters’ own mistakes.  Of course, it had nothing to do with the Turks repeatedly being defeated on the battlefield—and as for internal Turkish politics, nothing whatsoever had to do with the Sultan’s centuries-long dependence for his most élite guard on Janissaries of (unwilling, kidnapped) European origin and extraction.

Anyway, many decades ago (alas), I had thought we had resolved that problem when, in the early Twentieth Century, the Ottoman Turks were allies of some European nations.  And in WWI, at some point, British and Turkish soldiers had their own sort of non-religion-related version version of the Christmas Truce between Germans and British.

Later, the Turks built at ANZAC Cove a monument praising the tragic heroism of the British and ANZAC soldiers whom they had slain at the Battle of Gallipoli.  The inscription, a quote of Atatürk, even poetically reassured the mothers of the their fallen enemies:



That was a noble touch.  Nobler, indeed, than the behaviour of most any government in the world today.  Those Turks, I could respect.

Later, the Australians made the same quote the centrepiece of an Australian monument to Atatürk at Canberra:


Anyway...

If “DragonDance” is what we get a century later, all I can say is that democracy ruins everything!  The Ottomans were moving in a positive direction for political and cultural understanding with Europe, before they were overthrown.  Whatever Atatürk’s thinking may have been, the inevitable result was national degeneration as in all democratic countries:  Now, don’t forget that DragonDance, Vispilio, and wolwoo can vote (!).

Yes, I would prefer to deal with the Sultan—diplomatically if he would be amenable to that, or at arms if not.  (—As Vlad Tepes, if not.)  At least the Sultan was not a psychotic retard.


“DragonDance” then proceeds to, in essence, racially insult a large subset of Europeans on the basis that they are allegedly too Turkish.^{[citation needed]}  Certainly, that makes them oh so genetically inferior to... Turks, I suppose?  For my part, I struggle to fathom the recursive doublethink that must have been required to say this.

Or is that a [citation needed] boast that, by implication, deliberately inflates the numbers of European women raped by Turks?  Pick your poison.


While “DragonDance’s” extreme butt-hurt is mildly amusing, it is leading to very unfair consequences in reputational destruction campaigns against decent people.


It is so very fun to see this in a post made with “ulterior motives based on fake nationalistic sentiment”.

DragonDance, you and your cronies are money-grubbing low-life scum, transparently wreathing your obsession with a high-paying signature campaign in the false aura of national pride.  Any Turk who is genuinely proud of his nation would not drag its name down to an abyss of lies motivated by raw greed and a beggar’s sense of self-entitlement.


The mere mention of Vlad Tepes got him #triggered, I see.  What was that about “extreme butt-hurt”?  Was that a subconscious reference to the direction in which Vlad’s stakes impaled the body?  Vlad will teach you the meaning of “extreme butt-hurt”.


I literally choked on my coffee laughing when I saw this.

What do I need to do to get targeted here?

Oh, and may I please be hit with a Godwin-in-one argument, too?


LOL.  That post made wolwoo a candidate for the Godwin Trophy of the year—and I say that as someone who just last month got into a flamewar with someone who drew an analogy between “Hitler, born in Austria, infected almost the whole of Europe”, and “Tyrol, infecting half of Europe with SARS-CoV-2”, quote-unquote, with blame in both cases on the mentality of Germans and Austrians.

Actually, may I please be able to read the forum without fearing infection by viral stupidity?  Thanks.

---

Obviously, “DragonDance” so severely misrepresents historical and current facts throughout his post, it is beneath factually debunking point by point.  It is typical of him and his buddies.

Now, a spot check of the flags shows mostly, “Support: Hhampuz, Lauda, nullius”.  Cheers to Hhampuz.  I encourage others to please spend a few minutes supporting all of the flags on all known accounts of a forum abuser who was cheating campaigns for money, and unfairly taking slots that should have gone to other individuals (which, I observe, was just as unfair to other Filipinos as to everybody else).

Besides the lack of flag support, something else has been on my mind here:


My perspective:  I am one who most assuredly may be trusted to not engage in any liberal knee-jerk virtue-signalling.  I say what I see.  Here is what I see:

It is a good sign for the Filipino community its members have been speaking up here.  They have not been making baseless accusations of a nonexistent “racism”, as has recently been seen in Reputation from some very vocal bad apples from other places.  To the contrary, they have been putting the blame where it belongs—for they are clearly outraged at the dishonesty of the party who actually did wrong here, whose wrongdoing they condemn in no uncertain terms.

Author supports the flag on Polar91.  Thanks; please support all of the flags!

Quote from: Yatsan on April 08, 2020, 02:19:51 AM

I would like to say that one abuser does not represent the whole Filipino community. We have a lot of great posters and reputable members that have outstanding contribution here in forum just like sir Dabs and Mr.big.

Boldface is in the original:

Quote from: NavI_027 on April 08, 2020, 03:20:09 AM

For the rest of Filipino members out there, please obey the rules at all times. This is not about your reputation alone but the reputation of of our local board as well. So please cooperate .

Author supports the flag on Polar91.  Thanks; please support all of the flags!

Quote from: cabalism13 on April 08, 2020, 09:42:37 AM

Quote from: Polar91 on April 08, 2020, 01:07:30 AM

I know it seems to be wrong with you because you have decent life but if you're on my shoes, I'm pretty sure that you'll do the same.

I will speak to this.

I am currently a student, also not just supporting my food and studies but my whole life ever since I got separated from my family last 5 years ago,  but even before that I was even a service crew on a fast food chain just to ensure that I have some money to spend.

You know what, This excuse is not acceptable [...]

---

Quote from: yahoo62278 on April 08, 2020, 01:40:46 AM

Now I as  manager am not sure I can trust users from the Philippines. Maybe they're all your alt accounts? I don't know if i'll actually ban users from your country, but you see how your actions could hurt others living in the same lifestyle as yourself?

In behalf of the Filipino Community we will do what we can to improve. There are several users who almost consider this as a gift especially now, in this time of crisis. I really apologize,... Our reputation was getting good in these past few months, I know this has a big impact but please consider that there are still good users whose helping our community.

Also to scam/cheater busters, I am greatful for what you have done however it really has effect to the reputation of the local community but don't think that it is your fault. You have just done what you should, continue the good things, expel and bust the cheaters/abusers, it will still be us who'll make a solution to make a comeback for our reputation.

These are exemplary responses from people who are striving to build a better community:  For themselves, for their countrymen, for everybody on the forum—and for Bitcoin.

Quote from: nullius on January 08, 2020, 05:19:48 PM

The Bitcoin technology is easy to duplicate.  But the Bitcoin social movement cannot be duplicated.  It exists because everybody agrees on Bitcoin.  People all over the world, of every race and nationality, of every religion, of every political opinion, all agree on Bitcoin.  Their agreements or disagreements about anything else are irrelevant to Bitcoin.

That is why there is only one Bitcoin.

Quote from: Baofeng on March 01, 2020, 01:40:59 AM

Ang teknolohiya ng Bitcoin ay madaling gayahin.  Ngunit ang kilusang panlipunan ng Bitcoin ay hindi maaaring magaya.  Ito ay umiiral dahil ang lahat ay sumasang-ayon sa Bitcoin. Ang mga tao sa buong mundo, ng bawat lahi at nasyonalidad, ng bawat relihiyon, ng bawat opinyon sa politika, lahat ay sumasang-ayon sa Bitcoin. Ang kanilang hindi pagkakaintidihan o hindi pagkakasundo sa anumang bagay ay hindi nauugnay sa Bitcoin.

Iyon ang dahilan kung bakit mayroong iisang Bitcoin lamang.

Maraming Salamat to the Filipinos who have stood up to lead by positive example.

Yes, amazing—and a neat acknowledgment from the other accounts that they are alts.  More amazing is that according to an incomplete sample, excepting the flag on Polar91 and the first few on the list, most flags are only “Support: Lauda, nullius”.

When the list had only 43 flags, it took me all of 8 minutes, 23 seconds systematically to open Lauda’s support links in tabs in small batches, bulk-support them, and then carefully double-check my work.  (Not counting the time to review the evidence on the thread.)  Yes, I timed it.  *click, click, click*  My mouse was cursing at the cat, but this was not too much of a burden at me—not even at a moment when I was in a hurry, and had no time for forum business (as I do not now).

Please take a few minutes to support the flags.

In that context, the name would introduce a subconscious bias.  But here, “Lauda” is a surname.  Perhaps Niki Lauda’s twin sister was separated at birth—kidnapped by evil mad scientists who had robots raise her to young adulthood, then held her in suspended animation pending the invention of Bitcoin?

Anyway, names aside...

Lauda has always reminded me of... a cat.


^^^ Cat amulet worn by ancient Egyptian women as a symbol of womanhood.  Cf. the ancient statuette of Egyptian fertility goddess Bastet (made c. 400–250 B.C.), which I have recently copied into a thread read by most everybody reading this one.

There is a doctoral dissertation in this for somebody, somewhere in study of the widespread cross-cultural semiotic of the cat as a symbol for womankind.  I have cited other examples.

Quote from: marlboroza on April 08, 2020, 12:13:52 AM

In my language, male will say "bio sam" and female will say "bila sam" (translated to english: "I was") You can start from that  

The -a feminine suffix is sufficiently common in European languages that I have needed to consciously prevent that from biasing me.  I must remind myself that in some languages, -a is a masculine suffix—and in some, it is neither.  Thus although the name “Lauda” rings female in my ears, I have focused on her personality—whereupon I would be very surprised if she were not actually a “she”.  Still, of course, I lack sufficient information to be sure.

I love human puzzles; and Lauda fascinates me.

Please make separate <list> batches (one after the other, as an overall list broken into parts), so that it’s easier (and less error-prone) for flag supporters to keep track of later additions—and I presume, easier for yourself.  Thanks.

The cat just got revenge on my mouse.  I shudder to consider the time that this cost you.

---

QFT.  Both parts.

1965?  Are you serious?  Oh my, you are.  Historical myopia is so fashionable nowadays...

1965 was the point at which the sick modern mentality was taking a triumphal victory lap, long after it had already destroyed the world.  Modernity per se started with the era immediately preceding the French Revolution, and metastasized as a cultural cancer in the Nineteenth Century.  And by the way, fifty-five years (!) only seems like a long time to mental children.  I have the same criticism for the self-styled “conservatives” with whom you no doubt sometimes quibble—the ones who consider the Beatles (or Elvis, or jazz) to be the pure and wholesome music of the “good old days” (!), unlike that awful degenerate noise of the MTV generation and later.

Anyway, save your Gospel preaching for yourself.  Those who think in terms of essentials know that modern liberals and indeed, outright Marxists are substantially indistinguishable from primitive Christians of the Second Century; and the mutually hypocritical flamewars between modern liberals and fundamentalist Christians have all the acrimony of a schism between two sects of the same faith.  That one side has nominally discarded Jesus whilst keeping the same essential worldview, and that one side is Puritanical whereas the other is hedonistic, are distinctions without difference.  I am far from the first to observe this.  (N.b. also that some second-century Christian sects practiced hedonism, and also androgyny and homosexuality; the sect which beat them in popularity swept them under the rug with the rhetorical trick of declaring them “heretics” and “gnostics”, and thus “not true Christians”.)

(I am also not the first to observe that the classical, so-called “pagan” religions were essentially masculine, whereas Christian morality is effeminate.  In the West, the Roman Catholic Church partly avoided this problem for awhile—by partly ignoring the Bible.  Protestants are strictly correct when they accuse Renaissance-era Catholicism of dabbling in “paganism”.  The Catholicism of the Dark Age was much more Biblical, as is modern Catholicism.)

If you really want to find a society of which I approve, then you need to look back to classical antiquity.  Of course, I am not waltzing around in a toga, or pretending to turn back the clock by several millennia.  I study the past, for to build the future—a future that is actually better, instead of a rehash of the same old tripe that you liberals have been pushing for the past nineteen centuries.


$CURRENT_YEAR?


Welcome to A.D. 2020 120.




(...etc...)

Same substance.  Different form.  I also observe that people who preach your message online have the same evangelical fanaticism as any Christian fundamentalist robot, and are equally annoying.  (The Bible-thumpers also do not take it well, when I tell them to go to hell with their liberalism.)

• The desire for a transformation of the self is not new.  It takes various forms.  Excepting a very few cases (such as have always existed at the margins), the overwhelming majority of people seeking a now-fashionable transformation of “gender” are essentially indistinguishable from those seeking other transformations of the soul.  (Remember that psyche means soul, < ψυχή.)  Both there and here, the physical fact of the body is devalued as unimportant, outmoded, obsolete.  (Physical (adj.) < substantive feminine φυσική, nominalization of the feminine form of the adjective derived from neutral φῠσῐς, ‘nature’.)
• Argument from novelty is much more fallacious than argument from tradition, insofar as untested hypotheses are much more unreliable than the accrued wisdom of collective human experience.  (Not that tradition is a reliable guide:  It is less unreliable.)
• The ridiculous notions that history “progresses” through “advancement”, that humans inevitably advance from a worse condition to a better one, and that all the past can be suddenly declared obsolete are all very old fallacies.

Also:


Versus:


For I am a free spirit.

English does not have a third-person singular neuter pronoun that can be used to refer to human beings.  The closest is “it”; but that has always been considered dehumanizing.  Whenever you ever see me refer to an anthropoid as “it”, my intent is assuredly pejorative.  E.g., during the 2018 alia scandal, as the evidence developed, I sometimes referred to alia as “it” (or more appropriately, “he/she/it/they”); insult was thus intended.

Your mistake may or may not be understandable, coming as you are from French.  I must leave it to a French pedant to determine whether or not any French pronouns could be applied in this case, without such an horrific botch as English singular “they”.  I doubt it, since even inanimate objects are gendered (and take gendered pronouns) in French.

Links to what you yourself describe as “a modern dictionary” (i.e., a dictionary fashionably conformed to current fads) will be taken under advisement, as will links to Wikipedia in this context.  (N.b. that without further context, alia were properly called “they”.)


Your rudely condescending appeal to the authority of the OED.com blog in the current year 2020 is unimpressive.  Your link is a liberal polemic; it even uses the philologically repulsive abortion “mansplain” (!).  Disclaimers notwithstanding, it says more about the decay of scholarship at Oxford University Press and the University of Illinois than about proper usage of the English language.

https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they/

Tweet, tweet.

---

Having spoken as nobody will, I am none too inclined to take up an offtopic flamewar more suitable for an English usage forum (or Politics & Society).  I don’t have time for this now, anyway.

---

A bit of pedantic trivia:  The English word “blond/blonde” is gendered, in both its substantive and adjectival forms; and as an adjective, it must agree with the noun to which it is applied:  A “blond” is a blond man; a “blonde” is a blonde woman.  Popular misuse of this word is one of my pet peeves.  The distinction should be unsurprising to anybody coming from French:  The English word derives from Middle French, and its proper usage in modern English continues to correspond to that in modern French.

In correct usage, a similar distinction should be observed between “brunet“ versus ”brunette”.  Unfortunately, “brunet” has mostly fallen out of usage; I suppose that discussion of men’s hair colours may be insufficiently popular.  In colloquial use, the result is a botch.  In formal writing, I would dismiss as illiterate any author who applied “brunette” to a male.

I will not expect for Lauda to reveal publicly whether she is actually a blond, a blonde, a brunet, a brunette, or... a redhead.  Anonymity, etc. ;-)

So...  How will this “reveal” actually work?  I have tried philosophy and psychology.  Also, rubberhose cryptanalysis.  Lauda does not reveal.


I just call her Laura because that’s her version of “thermos”, and it’s a good name:  It speaks of laurels.

Also because if she’s not actually a woman, I will eat my hat.

Cute, ain’t it?  Hitting on you in the manner of a kid who has yet not grown past the point of belligerently insulting the object of his secret crush with a “girls are gross!” speech.


My advice is that he should write his last will and testament.  He couldn’t handle you.



bonesjonesreturns’ mother must have been a degenerate weakling.

---

Lauda does not claim to be female.  Lauda’s sex^* is a secret, unknown even to me.

(* I refuse to use the psychotic liberal word “gender” in application to a person’s sex.)


My previous post on the subject:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5225450.msg53957372#post_nothing_is_impossible

“What everybody else” knew straight from the first day:

Post #2 in pirateat40’s original announcement thread:
Merited by nullius (1)

Promoting Pirate’s Ponzi, and especially basing other investment instruments on it, showed at best extremely poor judgment at the level of at best gross negligence.  I say that, making for the purposes of this post all the most favourable assumptions about you (and ignoring everything else discussed in years of other threads).  Anybody with even an ounce of common sense could have seen that something looked wrong here:

Original topic title: Looking for lenders
Original text, quoted here and elsewhere:

In substantial effect, pirateat40 was essentially claiming to have an extraordinarily large opportunity for arbitrage between the market he was making for his alleged shadowy clientele, and other markets.  If I had such an unusual opportunity, I can think of all sorts of ways to handle it.  They do not include seeking “lenders” on an Internet forum with upfront promises of a return of “1% per day”.  None of it made sense, except as a just-so story for pumping a scam.

I need not remark on what types of persons would hypothetically pay such a high price for Bitcoin on a regular basis, and could afford to keep doing so—and what the potential implications of that may be, if pirate’s story had been anything other than cover for his scam.

And I say that as somebody who took about a 30% hit on his very first Bitcoin purchases (not upfront—a repeated string of market losses), due to wanting absolutely anonymous Bitcoin just on principle!

So as for “what everyone else knew”.  Nobody had any excuse for being surprised, when it turned out to be “the largest scam in bitcoin history”.

OP here:

Of course, you are right, Vod.  I ordinarily ignore “bonesjonesreturns” and the other scum alts, such as “truth or dare” (except when that one gets merit from a highly-trusted user *cough* who demands that his merit decisions never be discussed).

The troll thread to which I replied had been brought to my attention.  It is a textbook example of what I said in my post about economic warfare; and it is a hit-job on three different highly-trusted users, plus a reasonably reputable advertiser.  Regardless of my own opinion or anybody else’s of the persons targeted, it is beyond unfair:  It is disgusting.  “bonesjonesreturns” explicitly called for debate, and followed up with a claim that “nobody has dared to try to refute the evidence”.

Of course, I knew that that was b.s.; but sometimes, occasionally, one must try.  I did my earnest best to address in excruciating detail a bunch of accusations so baseless and frivolous that they are beneath reply, beneath contempt.  Well—let it not be said that “nobody has dared to try to refute the evidence”.  And let it not be said that b.s. is not b.s.!

I probably will not be wasting much further time with “bonesjonesreturns”.

Is this the Objective Standards Guild definition of “objective standards”?



P.S., the “Guild’s“ motto is still bitch Latin.

reserved

Well, that took all of 9 minutes and 37 seconds:

Deleted Post
« Sent to: nullius on: Today at 01:31:37 AM »

I do not usually follow Reputation.  But as I was preparing to make this thread, I noticed this:

Subject:  Nullius the scammer supporter and dumb fuck wishes to excuse scamming come here.

That was said of a post, fully quoted below, which refuted the false accusations against nutildah, before refuting the false accusations against Lauda.  Discussion of Lauda was certainly on-topic, for OP had slung even more mud against Lauda than against nutildah.

Subject:  DT manipulation & economic warfare targeted against nutildah, Lauda, HHampuz, FJ
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5232406.msg54171749#msg54171749
http://loyce.club/archive/posts/5417/54171749.html

---

Local rules:  #2771981 “bonesjonesreturns” is prohibited from posting here.  Others will be moderated at my discretion.  Will be deleted without regard to content:  Posts which quote the whole OP, or which use rapid-motion, brightly-coloured animated GIFs that I deem too visually distracting, or which use too many animated GIFs.

Accusation is the exact opposite of the truth:  Extremely dishonest.

Here is what happened:

• ICOs are bad.  I have always said so, to the point of having a reputation for saying so.
  
  
  Quote from: YuTü.Co.in on February 28, 2018, 05:20:48 PM
  CoinNullius is a military-grade cryptocurrency with 100% anonymity consisting of just one coin cuz there's nothing else like it. Its blockchain is secretly hidden on the Net accessible by ONLY one person in the galaxy whose true identity is unknown. There will be no ICO in distributing fractions of CNUS cuz ICOs are bad, mmmkay.
  
  
  Quote from: nullius on February 25, 2018, 11:38:06 PM
  I have an easier solution:  Don’t ever do “KYC”.  Avoid anything and everything which requires it. [...]
  
  Oh—you said “ICO”.  Well, those are scams which should be avoided, regardless.
  
  
  Quote from: nullius on February 26, 2018, 05:49:52 AM
  Paint Bitcoin with guilt-by-association in the media—how often do you see “Bitcoin” and “ICO” mentioned in the same breath, discussed in the same article, when they are not even remotely related?
• This one used escrow.  Thank escrow that investors got back approximately 55% of their money, in accord with the upfront escrow terms.  That figure would almost certainly have been exactly 0% without escrow.  ← Nobody said this in mid-2018, and “nobody” was not here to say the obvious.
• Over a relatively short period of time from start to finish, too short for 2017–18-era dollar inflation to make a significant difference in this context, investors actually recovered a higher dollar value than they put in.  Sure, they lost about 45% of their BTC; but in purchase-power terms, thanks to, thanks only to the protection of escrow, investors actually came out slightly better than break-even on that horrible clusterfork of a horrid ICO.  Thank you, escrow.
• For escrow, it was a nightmare worst-case scenario:  One party, the ICOers, spectacularly imploding in incompetence and mutual recriminations within the dev team, plus executive theft of the internal database, etc.  The other party, the investors, understandably being... extremely concerned.  Four-figure BTC on the line.  Forum politicians and garden-variety trolls with ulterior motives taking an opportunity to grind an axe against Lauda—specifically Lauda, even though there were four persons doing this huge escrow together.
  
  This is the case in which escrow discovers that they inadvertently agreed to handle ☢ radioactive, ☣ biohazardous toxic waste. 😿
  
  Escrow handled it with military precision, brushed aside distractions, and worked hard to untangle the mess so as to get investors as much money back ASAP as there was remaining, per upfront escrow terms.

I hope that investors learned to listen to Nullius about ICOs.

I also hope that somebody said, Thank you, Lauda.  (—and minerjones, and Blazed, and coinpayments; but it was Lauda who got picked on and is getting picked on here, so I will pick on her, too.)

Escrow did their job; and it is reprehensible for anybody to blame escrow, the neutral third party who provided the protection that they had promised, instead of the people who pitched an ICO with grandiose promises, took a huge chunk of the money at the milestones agreed to in advance, and then promptly delivered nothing but yet another wretched ICO-meltdown drama.

---

---

What, did the anti-Lauda crowd expect for Lauda to use witchcraft to return 100%, or even 1000% of the money to investors?

---

Amazingly, the NVO thread is still ongoing—and nemgun is still trying to rationalize this (!):

Quote from: nemgun on March 18, 2020, 12:50:33 AM

Quote from: cocoadreamboy on March 17, 2020, 03:31:46 PM

SCAM

your opinion

Boldface added:

Quote from: cocoadreamboy on March 19, 2020, 12:14:44 AM

not my opinion. If you say you will do something and take peoples money to do it, but it ends up being a coke fueled nonsense party with NOTHING to show for the creditors except 50% of their money back. THAT is a scam. Over the course of NVO you burnt through nearly 10 million dollars WITH NOTHING TO SHOW FOR IT. That is the definition of scam.

Thank god for Lauda, and the escrow system on bitcointalk. If that didn't exist it would be even more of a scam. You all should be ashamed of your actions. It is obvious your theft left you with little life satisfaction and happiness, so it was all for nothing.

The 2017 craziness in the market was created because we all fell in love with crypto and the possibilities, but you and TON and whats his face did your part to ruin the possibilities and the optimism. All the ICO's did. I don't know what kind of weird shit you guys are in or strange people you hang out with, but I would trade no amount of money to live in your heads. Or your lives. Hungry ghosts.

Everyone gets what they deserve. If only for being human. Harm gets you harm. Good gets you good. What do you think you deserve?

Shame on you.

Wow.  Somebody did thank (god for) Lauda and the other escrows.  I am now a tiny bit less cynical than I was a few minutes ago.

Bitcoin mining is a Poisson process.  Lauda hit the nail on the head by identifying the mathematically precise distributions, for those who want to learn more about how this really works.

The popular expectation that blocks occur on some sort of a schedule is a form of classic Gambler’s Fallacy.  Each calculation of a hash is (pseudorandomly) independent of all other calculations.

Think of it roughly this way:  When an hour passes between blocks, the network hashrate as a whole had a losing streak.  When two blocks occur within one minute of each other, that counts as something tantamount to a winning streak.  Whereas the time since the last block neither increases nor decreases the probability that any particular hash will be lucky next blockhash.  As LoyceV said, you can get a very basic conceptual feel for how this works by playing with some dice.  (I was going to suggest flipping a coin, and counting your H/T streaks.)  And indeed:


The overall distribution of times between blocks, and distribution of blocks in any given interval, will follow the distributions stated by Lauda; however, to expect that we are “due” for a block because it’s been 10 minutes since the last one, or to feel like it’s “too long” since the last block because an hour has passed, is no different than selling a gambling script that essentially tries to measure winning/losing streaks.  Except in very rare circumstances of sudden, significant decrease in hashrate, confirmations do not “lag”.  They simply follow a distribution that is unexpected by those who have been told the technically incorrect information that “confirmation takes 10 minutes”.

(Thanks to o_e_l_e_o for explaining another popular misconception.)