yahoo62278 (Legendary)Let's start1. When and why did you become interested in cryptocurrencies?"Prior to me coming to the forum I was a poker dealer in a number of private cash games around my area. A buddy of mine introduced me to Seals with Clubs poker in 2013/2014, which was a poker site dedicated to bitcoin users. I started playing there on my off days and started to become interested in this bitcoin project."
2. When and why did you buy your first bitcoin?"I personally have never purchased a whole bitcoin. I bought a little here and there to play poker on the Seals with Clubs site. Bitcoin was pretty cheap then, my biggest purchase was somewhere in the .1-.2 range late 2013."
3. How did you get on the forum?"I had stumbled across a site called Luckyb.it in late 2013 and got into plinko. Users were always talking about bitcointalk in their chat, so I finally took a look mid 2014. In the beginning, I really wasn't too interested in the forum as I was pretty much clueless about bitcoin and the conversations going on here. It's a lot to take in as a 1st time visitor and easy to feel lost when browsing."
4.1. Why did you start working as a bounty manager? Is this a hobby or your main job?"When I 1st came to the forum I was looking at ways to make a little bitcoin to fund my online poker playing during days I was home. Wife(GF at the time) told me she didn't care what I did as long as I wasn't blowing the money in our bank account.
Carra23 was 1 of the big signature campaign managers at the time and I was always curious as to what a manager might earn in terms of how hard of a job managing might be and how well the pay was.
I had stumbled across updownbot site and had been talking to the owner a lot on private chat when he mentioned he might be looking to promote his site, did I have any ideas? So mid September of 2014 I took a shot at managing his sig campaign on the forum along with a couple giveaways.
At 1st it was definitely a hobby. I was dealing poker 5 days a week and making pretty decent money. Wasn't ready to be a stay at home worker and had no clue if this bitcoin idea was gonna net more or less money if I decided to do it full time.
Took me a couple years to really go full time with managing. At 1 point I was managing 12-14 campaigns at a time and employing well over 700 forum users per week some weeks.
I don't really consider myself as a "bounty manager" as I have only managed 4-5 bounty campaigns. Yes I will manage a bounty campaign for the right people, but overall 90% who have came to me looking for a manager have been rejected."
4.2. How do you pick out the projects you work with? Do you agree to work for payment in project tokens?"Most signature campaigns that I have ran have been for fairly reputable sites. If a site has any sort of confirmed scam accusation I had usually passed on the offer(yobit and Betnomi being the exceptions).
Choosing a company requires doing some research on the particular company(especially bounty campaigns). Talking to the owner and getting a feel for what kind of person/company they are is pretty big as well. If they act a little shady in our initial conversation I usually pass.
I'm always willing to give new companies a chance, but the second they start holding customer WD or anything like that a manager should stop any and all advertising for them until a valid explanation is given as to why and it is rectified.
Do I accept tokens? I will accept some sort of split in payment x amount of btc/x amount of tokens in some cases but I usually expect a larger amount of tokens to make up for a poor market. I will not accept tokens that are not listed."
4.3. Tell us what parameters of candidates do you look at when recruiting them for a signature campaign?"Prior to the merit system being introduced, I open every applicants profile and check if they are even active in posting. Then I look at the boards they post on. Will they be helpful to a company? Do they do a lot of posting back to back(Burstposting)? Do they post across multiple boards? It's really useless to hire a bunch of users that only stick to the discussion boards(or as I like to call them, the spam boards).
With the merit system being introduced, I like to look for users who are actually earning merits each week or within the past few weeks when a campaign opens. That helps to gauge a little as to whether or not a persons posts are actually read and gives a company a better chance of their signature being seen IMO."
4.4. What is the risk of a bounty manager and what is his responsibility?"Any bounty/campaign manager has their reputation at risk at all times. Every move you make is watched.
I remember master-p was my preferred escrow in the early days. Guy ended up stealing something like 30+ btc from users, 6 of which were mine for 3 campaigns that were running. A new account popped up realmasterp or some bs and paid some of us back. I ended up losing around 2btc from the whole deal and paid participants from my pocket. My biggest fear at that time was people wouldn't trust me, which pushed me to make it right with the users.
That is when I decided I would hold funds for campaigns from that point on and companies would pay in advance for any services.
A managers responsibility is 1 to make sure they check out the company before taking a job. Don't just accept any offer that comes your way trying to make a name for yourself. You'll likely find yourself in the shit manager category doing that. If you make rules in a campaign, stick to them 100%. I don't care if it's me in your campaign or some lower ranking unknown Sr member. Treat everyone the same. It's not about being friends with everyone. You have a job to do, do it.
Actually look at users posts each week and determine if they're doing the job you are paying them for. If not, remove them and tell them why they were removed. If you get a message about a particular user, look into it. Some messages are going to be malicious attempts to get someone removed from a campaign so a spot opens, but some are good reports. Always look into a report and act accordingly.
When a company gives you money, make sure you pay participants in a timely manner."
4.5. Does the forum need to set additional rules for signature campaigns?"I think if a manager is doing their job, then there would be no need for the forum to step in. Companies need to do better research and hire a good manager vs just hiring the lowest rate offered. You get what you pay for in this business.
Companies risk money, reputation, and character by taking a chance on new managers who haven't proved they're even able to do the job."
5. What do you think of the current Merit system and signature campaigns? Do they harm the forum?"Trick question right? The merit system has probably made a few users leave the forum( heartbreaking I know). There are a good number of users that could care less. I believe it has done what was intended and filtered out some shit users. Although I also believe some have found ways to manipulate the system by buying merits, but they'll be caught eventually.
As far as signature campaigns, I think they're great for the forum. Let's not get in to the spam they can create. We all know there are users that come here just to earn money. Let's think about the fact that Signature campaigns generate users for the forum. How many users would be here if they didn't come looking to earn a dollar? How many companies would come here to advertise via signatures or forum ads if bitcointalk wasn't the biggest bitcoin forum around?
I think having campaigns has also increased awareness of bitcoin. 3rd world, 2nd world, or 1st world country doesn't matter. Campaigns generate a revenue stream and help in all economies.
You take away campaigns, you lose half the users if not more. You start losing advertisers because they start feeling like it's useless to advertise on a dead forum.
I've seen multiple respected users that would love campaigns to go away, but I think all that would do is kill the forum and eventually there would be 100 users visiting here cause there wouldn't be very much new content being provided. If you guys want a place to hang out alone, make your own forum IMO."
6. The most useful forum topic? Most helpful users?"
Unofficial rules IMO is the most useful topic. I think anyone who visits the site should be directed to these rules and made to take a test to show they actually read the rules. Randomize the questions so someone cannot make a cheat sheet.
Most helpful users? Where to begin? LoyceV , suchmoon, tranthidung, TECSHARE, Quickseller, Jet Cash, The Pharmacist, Talkstar, Yoshie, and the list goes on and on. Sorry if i don't name everyone. There are so many that step in and try to help, it really just depends on the type of help you need."
7. 3 things you would implement on the forum?"I'm not sure i have 3 things I would implement, but i'll give it a shot.
1. I would like to see users have the ability to have admins or a board of DT be able to get neg trust removed if it is unwarranted. People tag for some petty stuff on here and it's kinda ridiculous. There are also cases where a person leaves a tag on a user and disappears forever.
2. Managers should have to be mentored for 6 months by a reputable manager before opening their own service. This will never in a million years happen but it would be nice.
3. DT reduced back to theymos handpicked users. Too much drama surrounding the trust system. Probably gonna be too much drama no matter what, but I liked the old system better."
8. Do you trade on exchanges or invest in projects?"I trade tokens I may be paid by companies on different exchanges, but it is rare since I rarely accept tokens."
9. Tell a story about your big profit or big loss?"Mentioned this in a question above referring to master-p"
10. What do you think about the DEFI ecosystem?"What?
You'd think 1 of us being asked these questions would have researched this by now. I personally do not follow this though."
11. Is your anonymity a vital necessity or precaution?"When you start gaining a reputation here, blackmail attempts and other dumb shit start happening. Privacy is important to some of us."
12. The last cryptocurrency book you read?"Crypto Taxes Made happy by Mario Costanz. Tried educating myself more on taxes to save a buck here and there."
13. Advise 3 cryptocurrencies/tokens for investment in the next 1-2 years?"I'm not an advisor on investing, I would not want someone to invest on my advice and lose their ass."
14. How much will Bitcoin cost at the end of 2020?"Likely somewhere between 9800-11000."
Thanks to
yahoo62278 for the interview!
The end.
