Topic: [Interviews] with Bitcointalk members - page 28. (Read 29908 times)

fillippone (Hero Member)

Let's start

1. When and why did you become interested in cryptocurrencies?

"Long time ago. I think that, being an internet addicted nerd, I “always” knew about bitcoin. But I never really looked into that as I considered it “drug dealer money”. Then in 2013, I read about bitcoin somewhere and given the rise in price I discovered the mining: of course I didn’t understand anything, but I distinctly remember cluelessly setting up an excel spreadsheet considering to buy a bitcoin miner by Bitmain. When BTC spiked from 100 USD 120 USD and difficulty consequently exploded, I decided I missed the boat and closed that spreadsheet for years. The idea of actually buying a bitcoin on an exchange never crossed my mind. Worst decision ever. Sliding door moment. Then, the following year in 2014, a friend of mine, who got into the bitcoin rabbit hole, did some kind of “elevator pitch”, explaining to me the basic concepts of the white paper. Understanding what bitcoin was about clicked something in my heart: since then I am in the “bitcoin rabbit hole” too, with a given percentage of my brain constantly allocated to BTC."

2. When and why did you buy your first bitcoin?

"It was years after that episode. Back then I bought the vast majority of my bitcoins. I bought what I decided was the “right” investment for me. Actually I made an error converting USD and EUR, so I ended up buying something less than I wanted to. I never bought anything more, bar some “pocket money” buying. Again, the worst decision ever. "
As per the "why" part had to do as an hedge against the current fiat system. I do agree with Jameson Lopp: "Bitcoin isn't a get rich quick scheme, it's a don't get poor slowly scheme.". As an European, I was worried about the credibility of the Euro, the fiat currency I was paid with in my daily job, and even if the Euro system were able to survive somehow, I was sure the inflation would get a large chunk of my earnings: if the dollar lost 40% of his value during the last 20 years, I can't see the Euro losing less than that in the next 20. So I decided to take action and protect myself.

3. How did you get on the forum?

"Oh, Oh, here comes the shameful part. I have to admit, I registered here for a shitcoin airdrop. If you research into my first post, you can actually discover which one. Funny thing: I already had a clear idea about shitcoins. I remember knowing about bitcointalk.org, but I never bothered to register and discover what it was about. I was focused on other “things” at the time.
Third and fourth worst decision in three questions. My story looks so sad.
So, when I registered, I remember I struggled to gain my first 10 merits to be eligible for the shitcoin airdrop. Then the love story started."

4.1. What prevents mass adoption of cryptocurrencies?

"Laziness. Bitcoin is a difficult matter itself, in addition to that it requires responsibility taking care of your private keys. People don’t want this responsibility, they want to delegate banks to manage their own money (which ultimately becomes the bank’s money, due to all the KYC/AML rules). Also, thinking about Bitcoin as a MoE, we have to admit user experience with Bitcoin has a great margin of improvement, but as long as paying with bitcoin is worst than paying with a contactless credit card, I can’t see a major mass adoption. LN is a great advancement in the right direction, but it is still technically cumbersome."

4.2. Who do you think will win bitcoin or banks?

"I think there is a bit of misunderstanding here: Bitcoin is not against banks, as commercial banks, it is against banks as central banks. Bitcoin is not against credit: bitcoin is against the unlimited, irresponsible money printing by central banks, who ultimately induces a moral hazard in the whole banking sector. So I think surely banks and bitcoin can coexists. Of course banks will have to radically change the way they are doing business. For sure there is enough space for everyone."


4.3. What is your opinion about the economist PlanB  and his Stock To Flow model?

"I distinctly remember when I first read the seminal article by PlanB. I was already familiar with the Stock to Flow concept, but seeing it so well developed and tested surely was a life-changing moment. I spent the following weeks studying it, desperately trying to find an error or a flaw on it. I submitted that paper to some academic friends of mine, who dismissed the article with an ad-hominem attack on bitcoin, not on the math itself. I opened a threadthread on the forum also, trying to get as much information as possible on it. Still, I am waiting for the first serious flaw. So I do believe it’s going to hold, for the moment, and next halving. The interesting thing is what is going to happen in the following halvings: I can’t see the model to materialise without major disruption in the financial system. Either the model, or the US Dollar is going to break. Interesting times ahead."
 

5. What do you think of the current Merit system and signature campaigns?  Do they harm the forum?

"You must be kidding me, aren’t you? I am a firm believer in the merit system, and I am fully committed to the merit system, in a way that could also be considered excessive. I must admit I have no idea on how the forum was before the merit system was introduced, but I think spamming and account farming, two very deleterious activities for every forum has been greatly reduced. But the big positive side of the merit system is the boost in idea and knowledge circulation system it helped to bootstrap. This is the idea I tried to expose in my infamous merit thread.
Regarding merit signatures, I think it is a good way to spread the idea for good projects, but ultimately it is advertising. This is something that it is a responsibility of the owner of the publicised service and of the campaign manager to select the right quality standard of the poster in the campaign, with different targets.  Obviously poters in the campaign will try to keep a good posting standard, but as we saw, it is not always the case."

6. The most useful forum topic? Most helpful users?

"I came here on the forum late, because i thought I could learn more outside it. But I was wrong (how many times I called myself wrong in this interview?). The level of competence in this forum is incredible. If this was not the case, it would not be the forum used by achow101 or gmaxwell until today. I had very insightful discussions about very different topics on many boards and many users. I think I cannot compile a list: I truly believe every user in this forum has her own competence to bring. Also the most trollish users (bar the minimum “ignore” threshold), has a value, constantly challenging your ideas."

7. 3 things you would implement on the forum?

"I am good with the current forum. I think it has been stable for a long period of time, so “if it works ain’t fix it". The reason to upgrade might come from the competition by other media. A lot of newer users resort to instruments like Telegram/Facebook/Youtube and completely disregard forums. I think each medium has his own prerogatives but the big advantage of forums is the “persistence” of knowledge. You can easily find an answer in the forum: good luck with it with a Telegram channel (where, actually, questions are answered over and over).
I think that new forum features would help to attract more new users.
1.EpochTalk/whatever new platform @theymos deems correct. Giving the forum a 2020 look and functionalities might help in the above mission to attract more “new” users. This should include some more statistics (to say the least include all the bpip.org project).
2. Mobile version. This could be part of point one, but it deserves a specific point. Navigating the forum via mobile is really difficult. I post A LOT through mobile, and I often struggle at it. A dedicated version would help a lot, also, again, to attract new users who usually use their mobile only.
3. As others have suggested: clearly mark a banned user, giving also the possibility to “auto ignore” them. I don’t want to engage in a discussion with/regarding/started-by a banned user, and as a merit source I don’t want to incur the risk of meriting a banned user."

8. Do you trade on exchanges or invest in projects?

"I don’t trade in Bitcoin, I think they are a vital resource to me, and I am not so greedy willing to increase them. Regarding bitcoin I am totally risk averse. All I do is stashing sats, buying a bit here and there when I have some spare funds.
Regarding projects, where with that term I refer to “projects helping the bitcoin ecosystem growth”, I would really like to. But I am not that Bitcoin rich (let alone fiat rich) to afford to invest in them. I have a great respect for all the bitcoin early investors who didn’t just hodl their stash, but spent them in good projects: they now might be richer, but for sure they contributed to help bitcoin become what it is today. Investing in bitcoin projects, not hodling, defines the first class bitcoiners.
Other projects like [ANN] Project! I really don’t care about them."

9. Tell a story about your big profit or big loss?

"I am not a trader, I told you. The only time I traded a little bit was back in the fork season in late 2017, 2018. I remember willing to get rid of all thise stupid forks as soon as possible. So I was trying to extract all the scammy forks from my BTC stash and getting rid of them at the first possible time. Bitcoin Pizza, Bitcoin God, SuperBitcoin, all gone. Of course my biggest trading decision was the timing of the sell of BCH. So, I will forever be grateful to Roger Ver who allowed me to increase my BTC stash of over 20% for free."
 
10. What do you think about the DEFI ecosystem?

"If bitcoin is a Far West, DeFi is a (FarWest)^2. It really reminds, as a general attitude, the ICo frenzy of 2017. No one really understood how an ICO worked, or what was that particular ICO value proposition, or business plan, but nonetheless everyone was ready to throw dollars at them. I think DeFi could be a very interesting ecosystem to develop new services based, or rather pegged to Bitcoin. DeFi could potentially help to bootstrap a new “Gold Standard” based on Bitcoin, where the new Gold is Bitcoin and the new banks are DeFi smart contrat. This is a very futuristic scenario, but I think that the interaction between Bitcoin, DeFi and Banks will be a very interesting one to observe in the future."

11. Is your anonymity a vital necessity or precaution?

"Both. It is very true what @LoyceV said: privacy is a very underrated feature, and once you give it away, it is not possible to claim it back anymore.
I think there are 10 people in the world who know who I am, and I told them my username on the forum when I was still very junior. I don’t know If I would do the same now, and I have instructed them not to disclose my real identity."

12. The last cryptocurrency book you read?

"I justread again the “Bitcoin Standard” by Saifedean Ammous. It is a very good book and it first applied the stock to flow model to Bitcoin, defining it as a hard money. I've read that book again because I started to re-evaluate Saifedean Ammous assumptions based on some of his opinions, in other fields than bitcoins, namely some of his opinions on the COVID- imposed lockdowns. I just wanted to see if some of those bias were present in his book. Fortunately those didn’t, so I still can trust him (while he speaks about bitcoin stuff). I strongly recommend giving this read to any nocoiner: if he doesn’t fall in love with Bitcoin reading that book, he never will.
Another book I would recommend is “Mastering Bitcoin'' by Andreas Antonoupolos, which has a completely different target, focusing on the technical aspects of bitcoin instead of the monetary ones. With a very subtle analogy: understanding a little bit how the engine works, can help you be a better driver. "

13. Advise 3 cryptocurrencies/tokens for investment in the next 1-2 years?

"I told you before I landed on the forum because of a specific altcoin. Please don’t be fooled: I am a Bitcoin supremacist. In my third ever post on Bitcointalk.org I made a clear statement I still consider valid. I have no clue about the other cryptos/tokens, so to me it is Bitcoin/Bitcoin/Bitcoin."

14. How much will Bitcoin cost at the end of 2020?

"I wouldn't be a PlanB Zealot, if I didn’t take the Stock to Flow seriously. So I take this answer from digitalik.net: 25,500 USD.
Also be warned I wouldn’t be a PlanB zealot if I take the model as a literal future prediction tool. "

Thanks to fillippone for the interview!

The end.

Thank you @zasad@. It was a fun interview, and also nice memory trip down the road. I do hope reading these line you understood my true love for bitcoin, and also maybe you get curious about something. Bitcoin is so much learning new things. So while I learned a lot of new things being here on the forum, interacting with a lot of different users, I tried my best with my own threads, to give back something I think I knew better, from my personal history, studies and real life.

After the recession of 2003 and as a member of the financial industry I began researching for a project I was calling, "The Race to Debase" which was writings about how expanding government debt would lead them all to massively print their currencies as a way to devalue them and artificially lower their debt load.  Fast forward to the Great Recession of 2008-2009 and this became more and more clear to see.  I decided that the world's single biggest problem was central banking and began looking into ways I could help combat the problem.  When I found Bitcoin in 2011 it was clear this was the single best solution to the world's largest problem that had been made available to date. I bought into Bitcoin being the way to end banks and restrict government debt expansion.  I wanted to get involved and help grow the infrastructure as a way to spread the word.  I finally had somewhat of an answer to all those who asked, "but what can I do" while debating the disastrous consequences of ever expanding debt loads.



I was involved in Bitcoin for many years before ever purchasing any.  I actually believe that my first Bitcoin purchase was earlier this year as a result of a falling Bitcoin price leaving me under allocated to crypto in relation with my other assets. 



Back in 2011 there wasn't many options if you wanted to discuss Bitcoin.  The forum was the heart of all Bitcoin activity and all Bitcoin projects had active developers that were easily contacted here to exchange ideas.  Sadly, most developers in the Bitcoin community no longer stay active here as the community nowadays is full of disrespectful users only worried about inflating their forum ratings and influence to profit personally.



I started mining the day I discovered Bitcoin back in June of 2011.
It has always been a hobby and a passion to me, but one I felt was important to engage in. 
I pay around $0.07-$0.1 per kilowatt from the grid depending on the time of year, but also operate a solar array in order to further reduce costs and promote sustainable mining.
Looking back, I would say that video cards have had the most potential for profit with the least risk, but for the good of Bitcoin, ASICs are the obvious choice as being "better" for mining.
I don't sell any of my mined coins.  I don't mine for profit, and donate all coins I mine to NastyFans.org to be distributed to seat owners.  This way I am not contributing to the selling of Bitcoin and instead am trading my electricity for Bitcoin that I get into the hands of many to be held.
If you do anything for profit, there is always risk.  I personally think mining for profit is bad for the industry, and people should be mining to help the Bitcoin project grow and secure the blockchain.  Profits are nice, but changing the world for the better is the goal I wish more members of the community had.
Solar energy is still fairly expensive.  While I think sustainable mining is important for the future, it isn't something I see for-profit operations being willing to spend money on.  There is just too many ways to use that potential investment to immediately profit and those who seek profit don't tend to care much about global sustainability.  I hope I am wrong, but I don't see solar being widespread in the mining industry anytime soon, perhaps not in my lifetime.



I think they are good for forum views.  They keep people here active and posting.  The problem is that it overpopulates the forum with typical internet forum users, and not Bitcoin users.  People here value stats on posting and who is earning merit, and don't care about projects that exist on the blockchain or try to advance sustainability in the industry or create innovative Bitcoin use cases.  I am certain satoshi would not have cared which posters have the most merit and would have been very interested in posters that were using the transparent and decentralized qualities of Bitcoin to innovate new use cases.  So I think those things are good for the forum, but bad for Bitcoin.



I don't think there is a single "most useful" forum topic.  I could probably dig and find some topic about Bitcoin banking the unbanked or giving people the opportunity to live debt free but there are so many things Bitcoin could be useful for, it's hard for me to pick one.  I have found there are many helpful users in the Bitcoin Technical Support section and am impressed that they have stuck around to provide this free tech support.  If there were one section of the forum I think satoshi would be happy with, it would be there. 



I don't like the way merit sources were chosen and think that doomed the new DT system from the beginning.  I don't like that members can get into DT1 by social engineering and not their contributions to the Bitcoin community.  I don't like that the forum isn't in control of signature advertising.  I would probably implement some sort of system to make merit sources more fairly determined, remove members from DT1 that have not made any contributions to Bitcoin visible on the blockchain, & have signature campaigns be an opt-in setting where payouts are managed by the forum thus eliminating signature campaign managers and the need to compete for spots in signature campaigns by making as many posts as you can with as many different alt accounts as you can create.



I do not trade on exchanges, nor do I think it is wise to do so.  I handle my traditional investments the same way.  I do invest my time, and energy into projects I think could have a positive influence on mankind.  For example, I think Ravencoin has some lofty goals so I have promoted, invested in, and mined that to help the cause.  I have also spent nearly a decade donating to, developing for, investing in, and promoting the NastyFans project, which I think is a project that is perhaps ahead of it's time and under-appreciated. 



People seem to enjoy hearing about losses more than profits, so I could talk about the time I spent 90 BTC on an order of honey roasted almonds from the Bees Brothers (best almonds I ever ate) or the users I've donated a BTC to for telling a good joke.  Probably the loss that hurt the most was my order with Butterfly Labs.  I was one of the first to order and receive their first ASIC miners, leading to massive BTC profits.  When they started taking orders for their second generation miners, it seemed like a no brainer to be at the front of that line.  Unfortunately, the government got involved after many customer complaints about company mismanagement, causing absurd delays that cost those who ordered nearly everything.  I personally lost about 180 BTC on that deal, and the orders were made on behalf of NastyMining, causing NastyFans to lose out on a significant amount of hashrate that should have boosted donations for seat owners far beyond what was realized.



I think DeFi has a lot of promise, but have yet to see anything truly utilized.  Projects like Namecoin could have had a profound effect on government censorship, yet are ignored because a majority of the community seems to care only about profits, and not bettering the world.  As Bitcoin becomes a tool to collect fees for Wall Street fund managers, I can only hope that something brings this community together and focuses us all on what we can do to make the world a more transparent and prosperous place for all human beings.



I've never been anonymous.  I was ordering things from forum users with my real name and address for probably the first 4-5 years I was a member here.  It wasn't until I started seeing jealously and threats from members who coveted things I felt were worthless, like my DT status, that I decided to start taking precautions to limit the use of my identity.  I don't think it's a necessity to be anonymous, but do feel that being anonymous avoids headaches from immature forum users.



I honestly can't name one.  I've been given a few as gifts and have read excerpts, but from my experience many of those books are written for those who weren't around to see Bitcoin mature or for extremely talented developers, of which I am neither.  When I do try to read articles that come out of places like Stanford I tend to smack my head at how horrible their takes on Bitcoin are.  I try to, "listen to all, follow none" but think seeing the community evolve and how individual projects and users react to circumstances is more valuable than reading a self described "professional" individual's opinion.



The best investment one can make is to pay off their debt.  Bitcoin is a nice second.  I think tokens that return funds from operations to investors could also be interesting, but I don't know of any.  I am always on the hunt for projects that return anything to investors, but have a hard time finding any besides the one that I currently support.



I wouldn't be surprised to see it hit the $20K range, but the real fireworks will be towards the end of next year.



A few things I'm involved with...
NastyFans - A club of Bitcoin users who work together and support each other's innovations to generate and share donations with each other.
Trusted BITCOIN Escrow Service - The most popular escrow service on Bitcointalk.
Minted Seats - Physical coins that earn BTC from donations made to NastyFans.
NastyMining Green Energy Project - Sustainable Bitcoin mining project.
NastyShop - Place to purchase Minted Seats & other products I've created.

arielbit (Legendary)


Let's start

1. When and why did you become interested in cryptocurrencies?

" End of 2013, since it is "currency", it is also a form of money, humans inherently like money, that includes me. "

2. When and why did you buy your first bitcoin?
  
" Didn't buy, I mined when bitcoin is just starting to get ASIC'd and proceeded to mine shitcoins and trade to BTC."

3. How did you get on the forum?

" I read an article about BTC, googled, end up here at bitcointalk."

4.1.When did you start mining? Is this a hobby or your main job?

"  The day I learned about BTC in 2013 that's the day I started mining with my single 5830, then later on I purchased r9 290, and then 280x's.
  
   It was supposed to be a quick money grab, but then it was really a fun thing to do with computers while earning money, I end up not experiencing being in a job."

4.2.What is the power consumption of all your devices? How much does 1 kilowatt of electricity cost?

"  Price and expenses doesn't matter if you have another stream/s of income, let's say someone is paying you 200$ for rentals, when you pay that 200$ to the electric company and you use that 200$ worth of BTC or
   shitcoins as savings or speculation or gamble. Besides I'm small scale miner my mining is just another stream of income. and my total power consumption is blended with the other I things use here in this area.  
 
   This mining thing is global, things are different in each area, people can asses their situation and be the judge of their own actions. bull market brings gains, bear market brings pains."

4.3.What is better for mining: ASICs, video cards, FPGA?

"   Video cards only here since the beginning, so I can't speak about what is better for mining. Typically mine-able coins start with CPU or GPU or both, what surely is better is to get as much coins as you can   "
  
4.4.How to properly dispose of the mined cryptocurrency (how much to hold, how much to sell)?

"  It always depends on the coins, sometimes you have to dump it quickly, hold it, trade it, or save and forget."

4.5.They say that mining is a constant sense of risk (the rate will fall, the lights will be turned off, the equipment will burn out), is it so?

"  It is always a risk, the question is can you afford the risk? If yes then go on. Only people with passion in computers get to last in this game."
 
5. What do you think of the current Merit system and signature campaigns?  Do they harm the forum?

"  Noticed the merit system, didn't use and don't care. harm? people are still talking, scammers still scamming, people still gain and lose money here LOL"

6. The most useful forum topic? Most helpful users?

"  It really depends, If you are mining then it is the mining section, if you are gambling/investing your BTC, then it is the altcoin announcement. Mining devs are helpful since they make mining software but they are getting paid by fees."

7. 3 things you would implement on the forum?

" I don't know and I'm not an expert on platforms. I'm only after Ideas and Profit."

8. Do you trade on exchanges or invest in projects?

"  Yes, crypto will be boring as fuck without them."

9. Tell a story about your big profit or big loss?

"  if you sum it all up the big loss are the shitcoins, and also if you sum it all up the big profit are shitcoins too. you win some and you loose some too  
  
   I'll share only 1 big profit since people love happy stories. here https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/salus/ look at the ROI. BTW thank you Kushedout https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/kushedout-104052
for this ICO, thought this was just classic shitcoining, I dunno.. will try the software when released. "

10. What do you think about the DEFI ecosystem?

"  I heard you can be your own exchange with DEFI, why become an exchange? hmmm..that means you can use multiple shitcoins, that is a good idea, how about the profit?, I will take a look, we'll see... "

11. Is your anonymity a vital necessity or precaution?

"  Anonymous when needed and not anonymous when needed.
  
   Generally, random people in the internet should not know who you are, when BTC is 100-300$ that's a bit okay. Now at 10k it is a bit scary, when and if hits 100k? it is really scary. I even stopped using an exchange where I can't make another account and KYC it because of the BTC address there that is connected to my name, you don't know other people's mind so always take precaution. "

12. The last cryptocurrency book you read?

"  Who reads books these days? you have the internet LOL. If ever I encounter a cryptocurrency book I'll just skim through it I guess, since a lot of info there will be an easy understanding for me. "
 
13. Advise 3 cryptocurrencies/tokens for investment in the next 1-2 years?

"  Anything that looks like litecoin in 2015-2016, small cap, fair launch..grin maybe? (but the emission..   ).
  
   Hey I don't want to cause losses on investards it is like trying to hit the 1% (maybe less lol) a lot are really really shit and there are thousands now unlike then when you can sift through a 100 or less shitcoins. "

14. How much will Bitcoin cost at the end of 2020?

"  BTC may break the ATH or at least return to somewhere around it, halving already occurred and the inflation made fiat less valuable."

15. P.S.

"Making life changing profit should make cryptocurrency people venture outside of crypto and use it as currency. That's what this is all about and I believe it is more viable now and the near future compared to at least 5 years ago."

Thanks to arielbit for the interview!

The end.

things are happening outside this forum, we should keep a sharp eye out there .. well.. profits!, you'll never know, might hit something, always be on the look/hunt.  

yahoo62278 (Legendary)


Let's start

1. 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.

I strongly agree with this. The lack of moderation of the trust system has lead to people being able to leave controversial ratings without consequences. When the exclusion feature was first introduced, a very small number of people were held accountable for controversial ratings, but this stopped fairly quickly. This was noticed and those that wanted to leave controversial ratings left ratings of increasing controversy over time as they observed the lack of accountability.

atriz was not the original owner of his account and he was probably a long standing member when he bought his account. I suspect he is still around somewhere, possibly running a campaign business.

I still have ACCTseller, although I don’t remember it’s password don’t think I have an email address associated with the account, so I probably won’t be posing from it again (don’t have any real reason to anyway).  I still have boelens that defaulted on a loan several years ago and has turned into a time waister in sending single messages about it every several months — I don’t see myself ever disposing that one sadly.

I do try to find good posts to merit as I am still a merit source. Sadly, I find myself sending merit to a lot of the same people every month. I wish there were more people who would make good posts that I come across.

It is usually seen as unethical for a journalist to pay for interviews. It is also not uncommon for journalists to publicly disclose they tried to get an interview but were unable to get one after the person asked for payment.

Why didn't I think of that?
For that price, I'll even give up on this for 2 questions:

Seriously though, was that a serious answer or someone just pulling your chain a bit?

Agreed. It sounds like altcoin advertising inside an interview.

He gave me the chance to post it or let him post it. Same as you.

I don’t need merits so let him post it.

This is a nice thread with a lot of good info.

Learning about Defi is an added bonus. (it is not for me )

To op thanks to all that gave an interview thanks.

Lets get theymos to give one.

DeFi stands for Decentralized Finance. "The new way money is distributed".

Although, I don't think that it should be asked to every person.

I offer any conditions:
Publication of the interview by the user
Individual questions
Ability not to answer any questions
P. S. - Any thoughts can be written

50% do not respond or refuse
I cannot post opt-out lists.
I was even asked to pay several hundred thousand dollars for an interview

I am sure that the publication of the interview by hilariousetc will be an example for many members

Not really tbh. Isn't this forum about Bitcoin anyway? I doubt it's a problem not knowing about DeFi (Decentralized Finance, for more Information just check the linked guide), a financial product which is beeing hyped for a year now.

2017 there was the ICO hype. Now it's DeFi, but one thing hasn't changed: It's still Bitcoin, which is by far the leading figure in the crypto space. And I guess that is, where you should have your knowledge first of all.

I've enjoyed reading all the interviews. I don't know if zasad@ does it to everyone but he gave me the option of posting it myself. I think it would be better it users posted their own so you can merit them if you like their answers. If you wanna merit zasad@ for the questions then just toss some in the op.


At least two  , just like me. He's mostly abandoned that account probably because there's no money in it for him but he's happily still posting away from PrimeNumber7.


Well he was last active a little over month ago so he probably pops in from time to time. I think some people won't ever leave this forum no matter how many bans they get or accounts get tarnished. For some people it's just too lucrative to give up and I can't really blame them. PrimeNumber7 has risen through the ranks quite quickly but people like QS know what to do to achieve that efficiently. I'm sure aTriz would too.

Agreed. I always thought of Quickseller as very knowledgeable.
Just to stir the pot a bit, I missed the question: "How many forum accounts do you currently own"?

I'd be interested to see an interview with aTriz. I'm curious if he's still around with another account. Before making questions for him, I recommend reading this topic.

When all you read and talk about is bitcoin development on bitcointalk and perhaps in other platforms, you'll most likely end up not knowing any updates about altcoins.

About DEFI, perhaps zasad should specify if it's Eth or Tron ecosystem. Justin, like the copycat that he is, also launched 3 defi products recently.

It was even interesting read to go through your interview, which show's you to be an interesting person overall, more interesting than I thought.

You getting painted here in dark light is just some effects of most probably unethical people's opinions online, yet you have an reputation and respect here among many, even if you don't think so.

Hope you have an extremely happy life ahead.

Sorry for the delayed response.

---

It was interesting reading through interviews with many “famous” forum members. This would have been a great initiative for the 10 year anniversary of the forum.

Quickseller (Legendary)

His projects:
Trust System Upgrade
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/trust-system-upgrade-5149330

Let's start

1. When and why did you become interested in cryptocurrencies?

"I first read about bitcoin in 2011/2012 when reading about Silk Road, and subsequently reading their forum. I never traded on SR, and regrettably did not buy any bitcoin back then. I started getting more interested in bitcoin in early-mid 2014 when it was making headlines due to MtGox failing, and the price having just gone from ~a hundred dollars to a thousand dollars."

2. When and why did you buy your first bitcoin?

"I bought my first bitcoin in early 2014 after I read about signature campaigns on this forum, and the ability for people to be able to make a lot of money by chatting on the internet. I used the bitcoin I bough to but a forum account, started posting and was able to earn my money back fairly quickly, even with the price falling at the time."

3. How did you get on the forum?

"At the time, I was searching for articles about bitcoin and found an article about signature campaigns. If I remember correctly, it was an article about how you could earn bitcoin with the new bitmixer campaign. I believe at the time, the campaign was a few months old."

4. You have been on the forum for a long time and spend a lot of effort fighting other old members. Give advice to young members of the forum how to avoid mistakes and conflicts on the forum?

"I would say that it is important to pick your battles. Before engaging in a conflict with someone, you should ask yourself if the outcome of the dispute is important enough for you to spend time fighting with someone on the internet."

5. What do you think of the current Merit system and signature campaigns?  Do they harm the forum?

"The merit system is imperfect, but is superior to the previous status quo where you only needed to post in order to rank up. I often see people trying to play the system in various ways to get more merit, so they can rank up. I also see a lot of merit being given out because of a side someone is taking in a dispute, which I think is unfortunate because it effectively gives more weight to the opinion of those with lots of merit to give out — I see this less as of recently, but I also don’t follow forum drama very closely so I don’t know if this is still happening.

Signature campaigns are a great way to get people interested in and to learn about bitcoin. If it were not for signature campaigns, I probably wouldn’t have learned as much about bitcoin as I have. They do create bad incentives, such as to post garbage. Some people also tend to pull wool over their eyes when a company that is paying for their signature does something less than above board. Overall I would consider signature campaigns to be a net positive."

6. The most useful forum topic? Most helpful users?

"I would consider the most important topic to be the unofficial forum rules because it gives people guidance on how to act in the forum.

There are many useful forum members and most of those who are useful are useful to a subset of people. Tomatocage for example was very useful to anyone who traded in the marketplace, while achow101 is useful to anyone looking for technical information."

7. 3 things you would implement on the forum?

"My trust system upgrade was somewhat implemented with the flag system.

I would suggest rolling out the new forum software. If necessary, theymos should offer a bounty for security weaknesses, employ pen testers and eventually roll it out.

I would also offer more paid ranks. The copper membership allows someone to be a‘member’ and users should have the ability to buy a paid membership that gives the features of a full member, and maybe a senior member (such as the signature privileges, posting frequently privileges and being able to post in the ivory tower)."

8. Do you trade on exchanges or invest in projects?

"Not anymore. I had traded on Bitfinex in the past before they banned US customers, Poloniex long before they were sold, and coinbase."

9. Tell a story about your big profit or big loss?

"I would refer you to my response to this thread. Looking back, I responded poorly and ended up loosing my reputation that was valuable to me personally."

10. What do you think about the DEFI ecosystem?

"Never heard of it"

11. Is your anonymity a vital necessity or precaution?

"A precaution. I am a private person."

12. The last cryptocurrency book you read?

"I don’t read those kinds of books."

13. Advise 3 cryptocurrencies/tokens for investment in the next 1-2 years?

"Any crypto investment is highly speculative. Investing in anything except bitcoin is similar to rolling the dice IMO, and it is far from certain that bitcoin will be successful over the long run."

14. How much will Bitcoin cost at the end of 2020?

"The way 2020 is going so far, who knows."

Thanks to Quickseller for the interview!

The end.

I lost Eth coins in a wallet that refuses to synch.  was not much 3 coins.

I could not fix the issue.

It happened when the big eth rollback was done.

I spent time on it when eth went to 200  then 400 then 600. I spent a lot of time when it went from

800 to over 1000 i gave up on it the coins just sit there.

some place i have a copy of the wallet.

I am not the only person this happened to.  So basically I do nothing with eth.

other the sell it for cash or btc when a person wants to pay me in eth.

So i can see why I know zip about defi.

i read the thread and since it is more trading and an area i personally avoid due to a lack of control over the market.

seems ready to pop its bubble if i see it correctly.

It's not that they dont know. Maybe they probably not interested at all. We dont know for sure if defi hype could last long.

It's a trend hype now in crypto space( most likely everyday I heard since it was become a thing on social media). Here is a good post about it. DeFi - ETH Financial Ecosystem (September 2019)

^{OP created that post no wonder he is interested to include that question about the defi ecosystem. To know the perspective of other users about it.}

been here since 2011. never heard of it either.