To be honest this whole discussion looks incredibly childish to me. I see insults, I see threats I see wild speculations about sock puppets.
I am sorry for you, McClintock, that you obviously speculated with money that you needed for your family. I don´t think that was in any way wise and everyone will tell you that you should never invest what you can´t afford to lose, but it still happens to a lot of newbies. I don´t think that you can blame anyone for having lost your money, as you lost it on your choice. You bought in high and sold low.
Personally I don´t think that whole Bill Still thing was in any way good for Quark. I am also not a fan of Bill Still´s work because he is often demagogic and I don´t see how he can ever become part of an intellectual debate over crypto. The whole Bill Still & Max Kaiser support was good for speculators and many people "won" money while many more lost. And yes, that attracted pumpers and dumpers. From what I know, Max Guevara, the developer of Quark, didn´t profit of this development because he simply didn´t have a lot of coins and didn´t sell. Others have or may have sold to gain money.
It is said but true: speculators exist (probably the mayority in crypto) and they exist with basically every cryptocurrency. I have only a small stake in Quark and I became part of the community because I understand it as a platform where you can develop things and there were and still are people who want to move things forward, not just for the short pump but long term. But yes, unfortunately there are always people who want to make quick money and they served well to those who always claimed that Quark was premined, pump&dump and so on (ironically these arguments were not applied to coins like Darkcoin, only by people of the Quark community who were pissed that people who complained about Quark started investing in Darkcoin - at least it appeared to me this way).
With regard to Quark I don´t find it fair to blame Quark for the individuals who come supportin it. I find the discussion from both side at least disturbing and would be glad to see how you come back to a normal discourse.
+1
this comment is to rational for this topic - with regard to Bill Still, He created a documentary that in a manner changed the world, he has some personal views that deviate from mine also but he has said himself he is not perfect i'm not perfect , and all he is trying to advocate is freedom.
if you look at his recent discussion with Bill Binney i think you can see that he himself is understanding how bad things can get (have got) but to his defense on the other side of that, Bill Binney is still (as he said himself "alive") so this kind of proves that the USA is not a full NAZI (you choose the "ism" i don't care, STASI etc) state , just very close, and by definition the "west" might be able to come back if enough people inside these institutions just passively stop supporting the vast deviation from law, and in the US case the Constitution.
this ironically highlights the importance of "protocols" and the mechanical nature of a "trust less" system. -
the Constitution is a "Protocol" and the law is either IN line or OUT of line with it, it was generally agreed to a long time ago and although its been attacked a lot its is still very robust at its core.
