Will’s guest post last week got me thinking about my own churning and MS origin story and how that shaped my approach. This is an extended version of a story I shared at the MEAB meetup in June, so apologies if it sounds a little familiar to some of you! 

The origin story

Somewhere in between the organized chaos of Usenet servers and early P2P clients that the uncs and old heads are familiar with and the shiny “may as well be Netflix and Hulu and Spotify combined” interface of a fully loaded Plex server that we have now, we had private torrent trackers. Private trackers were a welcome respite from the relatively unmoderated high seas experienced on the big trackers back in the day like The Pirate Bay, ExtraTorrents and Torrentz. 

I’m getting nostalgic just typing this, thinking about how much time I spent as a teenager and young adult building a reputation to get invites to niche trackers like Kraytracker, Brokenstones and PunkTorrents. Being chronically online before that was a term shaped my musical tastes and developed the skills that turned into both my career and my MS skillset.

As great as all of those private sites were, there was an undisputed holy grail private tracker for people that were really into music: what.cd. Born in 2007 the same day that spiritual predecessor Oink’s Pink Palace was shutdown, what.cd was a cornucopia for music fans. Beyond that, it functioned as a lively community full of banter and a strong competitor to last.fm. 

The major reason that an invite to what.cd was such a hot ticket was the barrier to entry. Signups didn’t periodically open like they did on so many trackers like that back then – you were required to take a fairly comprehensive interview on audio formats, spectral analysis, general torrenting and more. I read the official interview prep guide front to back, and eventually gained entry. 

The site essentially looked like a better version of the iTunes music store at the time, where you could search by artist and find every single version of every single song they’d ever released. Plenty of artists even openly uploaded their content, knowing that the potential new exposure was worth any loss in digital download proceeds.

Pictured: An example of the thoroughness of a what.cd album listing – every release, in every format.

The only reason that the site was such a utopia was self-moderation derived from strict adherence to a minimum download to upload ratio – essentially, that you were sharing as much as you took. 

While that was easy to do on a “private tracker” like Demonoid as you just had to leave your PC on, that didn’t cut it on what.cd. A balance credit on upload to download ratio was extremely valuable, so competition to earn it was fierce. 

Smart folks rented “seedboxes” aka remote servers to ensure that they were the chosen seed when a new person downloaded a torrent. I was a kid when I got into what.cd, so that wasn’t feasible for me.

However, I was able to keep my account in good standing and well above the minimum ratio for quite awhile until what.cd’s untimely demise in 2016. Why? One of the most fun parts of what.cd was the bounty system – users with a surplus of upload credit could offer it as a bounty in return for a file that wasn’t on the site already (although this situation was few and far between).

This bounty system probably led to the eventual seizure of the site due to certain high profile bounties that were fulfilled like law enforcement tools and unpublished J.D. Salinger manuscripts, but it was also what kept me alive. For some reason, a true audiophile wanted a FLAC lossless version ripped from a fairly obscure album that I had already preordered because I had found the band on one of those other niche trackers. 

I probably checked the tracking on that CD 1000 times in the week it took to get there, terrified that my best shot as a kid of building upload credit would be gone before it got there. Thankfully, I was probably one of only a handful of people that preordered that album, so I secured the bounty that tided me over for the next 7 or so years. 

The MS application

Now, what does any of this longwinded story have to do with MS and churning? I’d wager quite a bit. It’s easy to draw parallels between the “high stakes” world of 2000s/2010s torrent trackers and the private spaces where MS knowledge is now shared. 

Regarding barriers to entry, most of the valuable places to openly discuss the game aren’t exactly open to new people anymore. Whether that is a public advertised place like a private group associated with a blog or podcast or something unlisted like a like-minded probe group, you aren’t going to be able to find exactly what you’re looking for with zero effort like you could with the Pirate Bay or Demonoid back in the day.

It’s even easier to tie the upload to download ratio idea to MS. This game operates exclusively on reputation and trust – people are much more likely to share sensitive things with you when you can show you’ve brought original ideas to the table yourself. 

One thing I hear often from beginner and intermediate MSers is that it can be intimidating to share something in a group or room with people that are more advanced than you. I understand that feeling (and it’s why I’m such a big proponent of finding a probe group at your level to grow together). 

But in the spirit of my own story – sometimes you don’t need an expensive seedbox or an extensive collection of music to share something that is extremely valuable to someone. Even the biggest whales can’t check under every stone. 

Whether that means probing a credit union, uncovering an esoteric quirk in an award travel program, or something else, don’t assume you don’t have something valuable to share. And if all else fails, do the MS equivalent of the what.cd interview prep guide – read as much as possible to understand as much as you can before asking questions. 

I’ll leave you with the quote on the homepage of virtually every torrent tracker built using Gazelle, a framework originally built by the what.cd team:

You’ve stumbled upon a door where your mind is the key. There are none who will lend you guidance; these trials are yours to conquer alone. Entering here will take more than mere logic and strategy, but the criteria are just as hidden as what they reveal. Find yourself, and you will find the very thing hidden behind this page. Beyond here is something like a utopia. 

This is a mirage.

Dzięki!

In a resounding continuation of the theme of the year thus far for churners and MSers, a fresh wave of shutdowns hit this morning. As always, sorry to those affected, especially to a very well respected member of the community that was creating a lot of win-win opportunities.

But the blog isn’t called chasing shutdowns (although it may be soon), so let’s get back to some actionable advice. This one is more for folks in the beginner to intermediate range, but is a helpful thing to keep in mind for more advanced people as well.

As you work your way up the MS ladder, you’ll eventually find yourself in a situation where you have to float money. The most common occurrence is with something like a buyers group – you are fronting the money you paid for the item until they get around to paying you out. 

Normally, this isn’t a big deal since only the worst buyers groups take so long to issue payment that you have to pay your credit card bill first (or they have a cashflow problem and you should stay far away), although it’s not fun from a psychological perspective.

There’s other less obvious things that could kind of count as a float risk – even an asset like points that haven’t been cashed out yet that were earned in a way likely to cause ire with a bank is floating, in a way. 

However, this post isn’t about floating – it’s about the perception of floating and a mindset you need to get out of unless you want to get shutdown for kiting (but let’s be honest, you’re probably going to get shutdown for something else because it’s 2025). 

Another aspect of becoming a bigger fish is that your money tends to be spread out. Between a myriad of targets, the multitude of bank accounts you probably have open, maybe even parked funds for a bonus, there’s a lot of places your money could be.

Earlier in your churning career, that’s going to feel uncomfortable. You’re used to a hub account where the displayed balance is what you have – no need to break out a calculator to determine your cash reserves. 

Keeping track of a bunch of balances is annoying, I won’t deny that. Using a budgeting tool like Monarch can help to a degree, but once you’re advanced and have a new car’s worth of money tied up in some obscure fintech you’re not sure even physically exists, it’s going to take some actual manual math to determine your net worth. 

But here’s the thing – obscure fintechs and memecoins aside, the vast majority of banks, credit unions and other places you are moving money between do show up on budgeting tools, while money owed to you by a buyers group or precious metals dealer does not.

That’s because you aren’t actually floating money in this case – while it’s not in your hub account, the money is still yours, and you can control it. That’s not the same as floating the dollar value of 25,000 Amazon Fire Sticks to a rented warehouse in New Hampshire. 

The reason I say all of this is to help you keep these intermediary accounts and targets alive longer. I see a lot of people losing valuable liquidation options and helpful bank accounts, and it’s often due to erroneously feeling a need to get it back into a hub account as quickly as possible.

Again, I understand the psychological urge to run the loop and have your money back where it started. But you need to resist that urge – ironically, the true way you’d lose control of money in a separate account is doing something suspicious to get your account locked.

So what’s the move? Well, most normal people do things like pay bills or buy stuff with an account – not deposit and withdraw in quick succession like you’re trying to take part in this famous festival in Ahmedabad. 

Next time you pull up your hub account and cringe at a lower than expected balance, take solace in the fact that you’re keeping your plays and loops around longer by practicing patience and being thoughtful in how you move money around. 

Heeding this advice will help you keep some of the secondary platforms that are often low hanging fruit around longer.

ચીયર્સ!

With all of the crazy stuff going on in churning and MS right now, I wasn’t planning on posting anything this week. But hey, it’s Thursday, we’re more than halfway through the week, and most of us still have all of our fingers and toes.

Instead of talking about what’s going on, I decided to go with a little bit of Thursday levity in honor of Halloween.

I usually start my day in my home gym, affectionately known in my household as “the house that H1 2025’s favorite deceased debit loop built”. In between sets, I play Wordle, the Mini Crossword and Connections on New York Times. But not Strands, because Strands is the worst.

Today, I made a fun little churning/MS themed version of all 3 to play. They’re designed to go from pretty easy (Wordle) to fairly diabolical (Connections).

I’m not embedding them in the blog post because I’m not sure that would work, but you don’t need an account on any of these sites to play / sorry it’s driving elsewhere.

• Wordle (easy)
• Mini Crossword (medium)
• Connections (very hard)

For anyone who can solve the Connections (without playing it twice) or can do the crossword quickly, let me know! I’ll hook you up with 5 whale doubloons. What are whale doubloons you ask? You’ll see.

A whale doubloon, probably

There’s been a lot of mainstream media press on churning in the last couple of weeks, and whenever that happens, there is collective trepidation in the community that this is a bad thing that is going to cause too much exposure to the hobby. 

I do get that, especially when the publications are household names like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. There will always be some level of journalistic interest in churning, because it’s such a niche hobby that flies directly against standard advice when it comes to credit and finances. 

However, I don’t think churners and MSers have a ton to worry about. First off, the average American isn’t cut out to churn, let alone MS. It’s really hard to succeed if you have credit card debt, a poor credit score, limited credit history, or some combination thereof (unless you love Capital One, of course!). Hell, I knew about churning for years before I could start because I couldn’t get approved with my paper thin credit file.

I also think that there is a tendency to assume that a surface level article in the NYT is going to be some huge lightbulb moment for the big banks that they’re being taken advantage of. They’re well aware – the 2025 war on happiness™ is clear evidence. 

But the big banks are loving this widespread adoption of ultrapremium credit cards. The universal praise that Amex is getting for the (actually somewhat thoughtful) refreshment of the two Platinums is helping to make up for anything they felt they needed to recoup in February. Maybe not all big banks though – Citi gonna Citi, after all.

At this point, I think that Brian Kelly could be Time Magazine person of the year and it wouldn’t really change the game all that much for people in the know. And Amex, Resy and Lululemon would be laughing all the way to the bank. 

If you still don’t agree with me, that’s fine, I won’t continue trying to convince you. The only thing you need to read to understand the gigantic chasm in understanding of what is possible is the comment section on the NYT article. 

I don’t want to paint with a broad brush, but at a very high level, you’d assume people reading and commenting on the NYT would be more likely than average to have the financial tools necessary to succeed at churning. I don’t think it matters with these attitudes.

TDC mod dan_s won the caption contest he didn’t realize he entered: “It definitely helps to read NYT comments with an image in your head of an upper middle class white person sipping their coffee with a slight face of disgust in their 2500 sq ft upper east side condo typing the comment”

Using your discretion

On the flip side – while churning has fully entered the cultural zeitgeist, that doesn’t mean we need to be reckless when discussing it. And while I’ll discuss what I think is my own responsibility as a goober “blogger”, we all have a platform with social media and need to be responsible with it. 

Anyone that is creating public content about the hobby should be using common sense when deciding how explicitly to call something out. It doesn’t matter how small your audience is, especially during an age of brainless LLM indexing. 

There are zero awards given to you for killing a play, and you stand to make way more money hitting it together with your readers or listeners. And if you think I’ve overshared, tell me. I’ll take it down, no questions asked. There’s no need to double (or triple, or quadruple, or quintuple) down that it’s ok to share. 

But we all have a voice and platform to share opinions (or plays) thanks to places like reddit and Twitter. You might think it’s innocuous to post about something that is widespread but not public due to your low readership. But when you’re responding to someone with 300k followers or on a subreddit with 500k subscribers, you’re greatly increasing the chances of blowing that play up.

There is no clout to be gained by sharing something sensitive publicly, although it is a great way to never be trusted with sensitive info again. So many things are on life support at this point that aren’t being talked about in the NYT – what do we get out of shining a light on it?

There’s a particular play I’m talking about that has been the subject of this issue in multiple places the last couple of weeks. It’s not some secret Hardbody 3.0 unicorn by any means, but it’s an important part of the profit equation for a lot of downstream plays. What is there truly to gain from talking about it in a place that is easily indexed? 

None of this is to say never publicly talk about churning, but just to use some discretion when deciding how to talk about it. It’s better for all of us that things stay alive as long as possible, lest the war on happiness claim yet another victim. 

Na zdraví!

Editor’s note: A big thank you to my friend @mforch who wrote this inaugural guest post live from Porto, Portugal. He comes to MS from the real estate and AP world and has a unique perspective on the game. Enjoy the post!

Greetings from Porto! Yeah, I know, you didn’t ask for a guest post, but I’m dropping this one anyway. Why? Because some old-world plays offer real-world similarities that are too good to keep secret. This game has a way of making you see the matrix (great movie), even in the old world.

I was on a tour here in Portugal today. Most of the crowd? Facts in one ear, out the other. Me? I kept seeing the dead plays. It was the most interesting part of the day to me.

First up, the legendary Window Tax. This brilliant piece of legislation taxed buildings based on the number of windows. The Play: People literally boarded up their windows and disguised them as doors.

Even better? We learned how the Port wine shippers set up their massive storage cellars across the river in Vila Nova de Gaia. Why? To dodge Porto’s city taxes. Pure, unadulterated, geographical arbitrage. They physically moved their business to exploit a jurisdictional loophole. Genius.

Look, the past never perfectly repeats itself, but it sure as hell rhymes. If you find yourself in a city with some ridiculous new restriction, if you’re a gambler, flip a coin. If it lands on Tails, scale your operation on the other side of the river. If you have a lot of Windows™, make them look like doors.

Get out there, scope the landscape, build your own cellar. The world is full of loopholes if you know where to look.

-mforch