Topic: Merit system vs KYC registration? (Read 646 times)

Authorities: Do you comply to KYC regulations?
Entity: Sure do. In fact, that's the first thing we did. We collect as much vitals on our users as humanly possible with the intent of selling the data on the Darknet using the excuse, "Oopsy! We've been hacked." In Cryptoland, the name of the game is Inside Job. Wanna play? Here's a link to our signup form. Trust us!

I also use Tor just like nullius, and theymos is pro-privacy so I doubt you'll ever see KYC stuff in here.

theymos took a big enough of a compromise going the Cloudfare route to stop the insane ddosing which it seems unfortunately he didn't manage to mitigate any other way. He also made the compromise of adding that annoying Google captcha. I can understand these compromises, but KYC would be overkill and directly against the spirit of Bitcoin.

Treat anything Bitcoin-related as a potential scam as anyone smart will advise you to do. Using Tor/VPN is basic because anyone could try to get your IP and proceed to try to dox you, let alone if you are stupid enough to upload a pic of you holding your ID. Not safe here and not safe on any of the exchanges, which is why I stopped using them. ALL exchanges will eventually be hacked and their databases posted on the darknet. Not fun.

The merit system needs to mature. The merit comes from the merit sources, so even if people at first merit underserving posts, it will eventually come to an end.

Taxing my memory, I think also-two-spaces-after-a-full-stop Satoshi echos your sentiment.   FWIW, at least your posting habits are such that you'll never be on anybody's radar.  

In that spirit ...

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/User:Nullius


One more thing. I'll pay if you tell me which Internet pipes you use that don't travel through ...

Unfortunately such cases when a weak post get merited became so usual that this problem just cannot be stayed covered. I think the main problem here is multiply accounts, where a present move merits from one old profile to a new one. The idea that you suggested seems good to me and fair, I hope creators of Merit system will take it in wiev and do something about it.

Reading the previous comments more than an hour I found out that the above rank helping each other doing investigation. Merit system seems cleaning the garbages in this forum. Hopefully this post of mind is not shitpost.

Come on.
Someone has question with regards to Merit system, let's give him a solution rather than taunting him.
 A person is trying to get possible outcomes to obsolete the drawbacks of merit system so everybody is happy and stop complaining about this unique concept of Merit system. He is a junior member right now, it means he don't know about all the parameters and he is here to learn something.
Look at your journey right now. You never failed in your life?
When you failed in the past, then someone came & told you are crab or something else. How do you feel at that time.
So stop criticizing & give him a solid reason to their question.
If someone don't know about something we have to came & Help that person. So he will try to learn and explore something.

Coming to the answer  
It is not possible that a KYC will be applicable here.
You should have to elaborate each factors why are you thinking so.
A suggestion to you next time you should have to give reason why you ask the question?
If you do so everyone will be connected with you and give all the possible outcomes that you will definitely clear your doubts.
All the best!

Apology HabBear that i could not explian the meaning of KYC Registration.  I meant to register here with full proofs that a person should allow one account per user. The Hoard of making posts is very fatal in earlier. People making no,of profiles at a time and do rubbish post because they only want to increase it activities.
 surely I don't explain my self.

First off I am a 75 year old "him"

Now to cover some of your points.

I don't feel that I've been screwed out of legendary status. I invented the term LAMP to differentiate between Legendaries who obtained rank by shitposting and promoting their sig bounties, and legendaries who make valuable contributions to this forum.

I have suggested a lot of ideas because I remember the forum as it was when I first joined. At that time the forum was well moderated and very valuable as an educational source. Right now it is an omelette, and it is very difficult to find some topics as they can be buried in a variety of boards. The merit system is clearly being abused, and I don't think the soup kitchens and food banks are a good way to overcome the problems of moderation in the current forum.

I give out my points as I see fit, and I can't remember the post in question, but obvously I considered it to have some merit at the time. Actually I think I did post a justification somewhere.

I don't promote any sig campaigns. I have looked at a number of them, but I have decided to use my signature to promote sites that I believe in, and not those that pay the highest bonuses. These are unlikely to be any of the over-saturated campaigns advertised here, Because of this, there is no advantage in my being promoted to Legendary. The sig limits are the same for Heroes and Legendaries.

I think your posts are far more targetted towards the acquisition of merits than any of my posts, and I'm sure that the promotion to Legendary is of much greater importance to you than it is to me. I would be grateful if you could stop attempting to trash me so that, in my own small way, I can continue to help Bitcoin Talk to return to the valuable training resource that it was a few years ago.

1 - not everyone speaks english as their 1st language, and the OP cannot post this thread in a local section.

2 - A variety of KYC-like proposals have been discussed over the years to allow for people to do certain things, however the political views of most of the long standing members around here would probably be against this. I understand that other forums and marketplaces do require KYC to enable various functions.

3 - Similarly, many people have made proposals preventing members from having multiple accounts via various technical means.

I don't agree with the OP, however to classify something you disagree with to be a "shitpost" and to describe someone you disagree with as a "scammer" both blindly, does nothing other than make this plan an echo chamber.

You seem to know your privacy stuff. I respect people who work on their opsec.

Agreed. I dislike the merit system as a solution for the problems that we've been facing, given the other simpler solutions that could have been implemented. However, my dislike of the system is not going to manifest itself in giving merit to someone who wants KYC on a crypto-forum.  

The reason he gave OP merit is because I called out the Jet Cash for giving him merit. Had I not gotten involved, he would not likely have given any points here. It's quite obvious and most people are just sick of his vendetta bullshit (hence his -1k rating).

People who do that should explicitly be banned from participating in any campaigns. People who are desperate for money via campaigns are up to no good and are contributing to the problem.

Here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/known-alts-of-any-one-a-user-generated-list-mk-iii-2021-q2-2544574. Tl;dr: User and his alts got busted for shitposting and abusing campaigns. He then proceeded to claim that *his whole family* is behind those accounts, i.e. 1 person per account. I don't buy it. Abuse is abuse.

I'm guessing it's a reference to this: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/known-alts-of-any-one-a-user-generated-list-mk-iii-2021-q2-2544574

Not sure what the notarized documents were supposed to prove. Notaries or not, on the internet, you can be a dog. If you go back earlier in the thread, he volunteered photographs of himself (and wife) which were then used to dox him.....

What if the uploaded data is not his?

I don’t know what you mean by “certificates”, but I presume you refer to some sort of identity info.  There is a thriving black market for such things.  —  (Edited to add:)  This could be an easy means to “cash out”.

(Somehow, I overlooked this before.  Thanks for highlighting it.)

Can you add link to that thread ? Was it added to show identity proof to a campaign manager ?

No, no, no!  Mixing Tor and non-Tor use for the same login is a privacy cardinal sin, the kind of thing you find in FAQs on foot-shooting and “what not to do”.  It has already happened that I advised a user here to totally abandon his account and make a new one, after Google refused to serve him a login CAPTCHA and he gave up and signed in via clearnet; I doubt he heeded me, but what I told him was sound.  Please do not ever advise people to do this, much less consider it as a basis for policy.

(Perhaps I read too much into it, but if you meant more than explicit in the word “find”—no, an open wifi hotspot should never be mixed with Tor use.  I mention this, because it’s also FAQ fodder.)


Interesting.  Do you have stats on how much abuse is actually coming through Tor?  I’d presume much, but I wonder how much; it is never good to proceed based on assumptions.  As for abusive account signups specifically, is the current fee not enough?  That would surprise me, given the economics of spamming and the nature of the payment method (no stolen credit cards!).

There is always a delicate balance when abuse issues collide with the privacy interests of legitimate users.  One of the things I most appreciate about this forum is its friendliness toward Tor users, with good precedent insofar as theymos says that Satoshi “always used Tor” (I presume with no mixed clearnet use!).  I am also keen on fighting abuse; I actually didn’t use my account for eight months after signing up, because the quality here has been so bad that I didn’t want to waste my time.

If you’d care to discuss this further, perhaps on a new thread, so would I.  I have not inconsiderable expertise on the Tor side.  I also have some substantial longstanding familiarity with net.abuse issues, though not much at all with those specifically affecting this forum.  I’d like to help somehow.


I think ultimately, the merit system will succeed if and only if it becomes a social solution applying technical tools, rather than a technical bandage applied to a bleeding social wound.  That’s why I’ve been so intent on posting about this in Meta lately.  Technical obstacles can be hacked and gamed around.  A cohesive merit culture would not be so easy to fool.

I saw a guy uploading certificates and other personal stuff in another thread on this forum so yeah people in dire circumstances are fucking desperate for money and could do anything. I am not sure which group is bigger - the one consisting of narcissistic douchebags or the one comprised of desperate earners.

People can first find a clearnet connection to sign up with first then use tor. I wouldn't be against users signing up via tor paying a (bigger) fee, and have in the past suggested that all connections are blacklisted once used to sign up via, but a user could then bypass that by paying a fee or buying a member rank etc to whitelist it for themselves. The point is to make it so creating multiple to hundreds of accounts just isn't financially worth it but people should be able to have one or two or as many as they can afford or pay for. I guess with the merit system the number of accounts you can have now for signature campaigns requires more work and will slow farmers down greatly but I think people will still find ways around it by trading or buying merits etc.

(Funny, that.  I was just now perusing forum archives, trying to learn more about the trust system and DT.  I got quite an eyeful about QuickSeller... and here he is!  It figures that he gave merit to OP.)


I understand that your blind hatred for Lauda can sometimes make it difficult to exercise critical thinking; but a post in broken English vaguely describing a half-baked, nonsensical idea somehow, implicating KYC privacy-rape in an unspecified manner, does indeed meet common criteria for being described as a “shitpost”.


(Boldface supplied.)

...thus, deterring the spew of illiterate morons who use this forum as their personal free money machine.  Works for me.

This is not an exchange, it is a forum. We do not need KYC.

I understand that your pill addiction can sometimes make it difficult to exercise critical thinking, however there is a difference between a "shitpost" and something you disagree with.


I believe the ultimate purpose of the merit system is to make it more difficult to earn via signature campaigns if you are unable to make coherent posts.