Bitcoin Forum

Domain "bitcointalk.org" was blocked yesterday, 25.03.2020 by Roscomnadzor.

The reason for inclusion in the blacklist was a letter N 2-6-20/2017-07-13-1796-AИ from the Federal Tax Service of the Russian Federation dated 13.07.2017.

Additional information about this case can be found here: https://reestr.rublacklist.net/record/1250933/

As you can find out from the link above, they blocked this thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1620600.0 in which was discussion about BitStarz casino scamming people.

It seems that gambling discussion caused tax services of Russia to ban whole cryptocurrency forum.

strange that they block a crypto forum all because there were gambling ads. they could just bann the gambling sites since online gambling is illegal to them. a message could be banning cryptocurrency  ;D

Indeed. I think that the ads is not the reason why the blacklisted the forum.
In the end, they could just block the cryptocurrency ads not banning the whole forum.
Cryptocurrencies are what they do not want...

Banning the forum is not a good decision by them. I know there are many Russians here on the forum. They will not be liking this decision. I am sure you can still access the forum through VPN if you are in Russia. Anyone who is in Russia can tell us the exact situation.

This really affected a lot of users since gambling is in demand for several betting sites. Russian residents is the huge part of gambling industry whether it's physical or virtual type. Accessing through vpn can be inefficient at all, because the security of the country is very strict and they're aware that through this kind of portal called to be illegal access due to certain restrictions.

You mean talking about gambling(gambling discussion) caused a whole site to be blocked or is betting banned in the Country?
Well, if it's about BitStarz, I think the betting company should be handled by the law in the lawful way.

same thought here because the forum has nothing to do with these scammers,they are only using the platform and we cannot do anything to Hinder them because they are all legit until they turns scamming so how can we protect our forum from these scammers?and Russian Government must not put this kind of restrictions when the Bitcointalk.org is only a victim here and they must do sanctions on the specific sites of gambling and not the whole forum.

Read a lot of article about Russia planning to banned cryptocurrency in their country!

Main reason? just because or maybe they are afraid that the banks are cannot handle the regulation of the cryptocurrency in their country.

The banned might not be cause by the gambling advertisement but could also be the factor here but it would be useless if the cryptocurrency is already banned in their country.

It seems because of this thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1620600.0 I don't speak Russian though so CMIIW.
I thought online gambling is okay there, but now I realize it is illegal. But so many Russian here ;D
Anyway, just use VPN...

This is shocking and surprising at the same time because I have never seen a forum getting banned because of advertisements, and in coming days I believe that we shall find more information about it. Though VPN is always an option but I feel VPN users can be traced, hence if anyone has any safe VPN recommendations which our Russian members can use kindly post those names below.

A countermeasure which they think is effective on their end. But if I'm also them, I'll just completely block the websites directly.

Using Tor would be enough for them to browse the forum. I think the only way they get traced or track down from their country is if they have other accounts from different sites and use the same names over and over.

It could be because of online gambling overall and a lot of bitcoin casino threads can be found in the forum.

lol this is funny because they banned the whole forum instead of the gambling site  . the forum has nothing to do with it if i were to ask  . now this affects forum users from russia  .  by the way is op from russia   ? or he is only concern because if he is from that country i wonder why he can still access this site  but its possible to access block website if we are going to use vpn and other bypassing tools   . as some sites here on my place are also blocked but they didnt know that i can still access it  . still its a big loss for those who are inocent users that dont know who to do this idea

Lol what a decision. Blocking access to a thread created on a site 4 years ago. 

Russian government: What is this, lets see... I don't understand anything so we will just block access to the whole thing. Problem solved.
Use TOR or private socks5 and nothing is blocked.   

This ^^

There are always ways around restrictions like this. Quite petty by Russia to ban the whole site but they have form for these kind of draconian measures.

We all know that for how many years, Russia still don't adapt to what we called cryptocurrency because they think that this is a home for those scammers. Their mindset about crypto is that it will just be a bad influence to their economy as it enter their country. Gambling should be their focus and not the forum itself. It is not only gambling that is focused here in bitcointalk, but also topics that will help our community to understand the value of crypto. They should only ban the gambling website, or they should create an adblocker for gambling sites. The government of Russia is not that easy to persuade to engage in using a crypto to their economy, like what I've said, it is because of those fraud and scammers that can get a lot of victim and abuse the ignorance of people to cryptocommunity.

That's useless they cannot stop gamblers and Cryptocuurrency supporters from log in and accessing Bitcointalk they have a VPN to rely on, and Bitcointalk are all about Cryptocurrency topics it just happen that there are gambling sites that accepts Cryptocurrency so they are part of the category of Bitcointalk there are other countries that should be doing those countries with hard stance in gambling.

The block is most certainly political and the gambling part was just a reason to throw to the public. If there would have been no gambling, they would have found another reason.
And as said, the block can be easily avoided. Just because politics and computer science are not BFF.

Nah that can't just be the reason behind the blacklist, maybe they're cooking up something juicy but just want to use this current reason as an excuse in attacking a cryptocurrency focus forum. The know majority of the discussion ongoing on the forum is more related to cryptocurrency as a whole than any other discussion like gambling, politics etc.

What's Russia government reaction to the cryptocurrency adoption debate, have their reaction been positive or negative. Before now has cryptocurrency related media platforms been attacked? Getting some clear answers to these questions might give us more idea on what's actually going on there.

That's a stupid decision from Russian I think. They could have blocked or ban gambling from their country. That would make sense. They could have simply block all the gambling site as like our country did. That will be a great loss for the gambling industry though, at least for now because most of the gambling sites are now lacking of gambler due to the corona virus affect in all the matches.

Illegal gambling in Russia is a form of government concern for their young population. This is because the rapid growth of physical casinos there is feared to be able to affect many young people who will later become a problem for the government and since then the government has set the status of gambling there as illegal. But I am quite curious about the actions of the government that blocked Russian  access to this bitcoin forum, I think this is ridiculous and I do not expect that the government there will also make illegal cryptocurrency. The government must block online gambling sites without having to block access to bitcoin or other cryptocurrency forum, imo.

Russia's ban on this forum has disturbed me a lot, since yesterday I have noticed a decrease in Russian users, i think gambling in Russia is free, and there are a lot of Russian gamblers in this forum, and many of them are very good. Russia was failed by this ban, but Russian gamblers are able to find a solution to this ban.

Maybe their Government ban the whole forum but there is a lot of alternatives to access this forum, and of those is using VPN, so technically, there is no point on banning the forum just because of those gambling advertisements. There is this saying says "If you really want something, you'll find a way"


Illegal or not, gambling is still gambling. If they truly care about their youth getting infected by gambling, they should turn down all of the casinos in their country, they might ban also the internet down since everything is in google nowadays, if you know what I mean.

The solution is easy if the Russian can subscribe to a VPN plan then he can have access there are free VPN so they can still access the forum , we have a lot of Russian brothers here and they are not here for the gambling sites only but more so on the technology and interest they have on Cryptocurrency which they get their source from Bitcointalk, I'm sure they will find a way.

It's like the Indonesian government blocking Reddit because of porn content there. Agree, it's ridiculous. Anyway, if only for accessing bitcointalk, I think any VPN would do fine. What will the government do? Arresting people for reading/posting on random threads here?

Anyway, AFAIK only online-gaming that is illegal in Russia, physical casinos are okay. https://www.casino.org/blog/russia-and-gambling-whats-the-story/

However, accessing gambling sites is a different matter; it's slightly more serious than just accessing bitcointalk.

Well, it makes sense in a way that Russia has been a strict government about gambling and its discussions, so it is not a shock that they would ban the whole website as well. However, Russian people know about VPN very well because their government likes to ban stuff here and there so they got to use VPN very commonly, a lot of people in nations that likes to ban websites actually use VPN very well, both free and paid versions, I personally live in a nation like that and I use 3 different free VPN because they have a limit and I use them in turns for example so that it never ends and restarts every month.

So, bitcointalk will probably not see all that much drop in users from Russia, maybe a bit of it decide to not come anymore but we will still see a lot for sure.

Yes, I know what you mean. Nothing is impossible, but government efforts are just a form of concern shown to the world that they reject and prohibit gambling activities both physical casinos and online. Regardless of whether or not they obey the rules by their citizens, I am sure there are still other ways to access gambling sites because they still have the internet. Nothing is impossible, maybe it is the right understanding at this time. But clearly I do not agree with the actions of the government there that blocked the crypto discussion site.

I think VPN will also help Russian users access the forum as usual. But still the governments policy of blocking crypto discussion sites like bitcointalk is a mistake for me personally. They must reconsider this blocking and of course all forum users from Russia want the same thing and they want to get the freedom to be able to access the forum and have discussions.

LOL, even if the government has to take decisive action against anyone who violates it, then I dont think the government will arrest, pursue the perpetrators or other anticipatory actions and I dont think this is the right step to take. Accessing the bitcointalk forum is not a crime and I dont think they should do it. Hopefully Indonesia does not do the same thing.

This how Russia ban web-pages. Same was done with larges torrent tracker rutracker.org. It was banned by government on Russian territory, and in few hours tracker released a guide how to visit the page and use vpn or other services. That ban was discussed for months and was evaded in just 2 hours lol.

https://i.imgur.com/ylLGiIR.jpg

As it is said, everything was already shown in Simpsons  ;D

https://www.picturepunches.com/memes/6933/75407-giuhunter.png

Agreed. I visited China a bit more than a year ago and I also recall having problems viewing a number of international websites during my stay there that I managed to almost immediately circumvent with the several paid VPN applications I use, though I did have some problems occasionally because the government's always working to stop VPNs whenever possible. There's generally a pretty high amount of people that use VPNs in countries that have restrictive internet access  even though most of them usually stay quiet about it.

I still find it absolutely ridiculous that an entire forum was banned on their end for just one thread, though. I have no idea what their government's opinion towards cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin is, but I guess it wasn't very positive in the first place for this to happen.

I have visited Russia and in every major city, in every nook and corner you can find illegal casinos. The ban on legal gambling is just one of the tools for the government to get bribes. Most of the illegal casino operators are foreigners (mostly Turks and Azeris) and they pay a certain amount of bribes to the authorities every month, so that they can operate without any harassment from the cops.

The ban will be temporal, it is important to have a moderate lifestyle at the moment. Lets put our money to use on what we keep us alive and those around for this period, after now we can go back. Government benefit from gambling in one way or other and Russia has lots of gamblers. After the pandemic is over and we see no relax move by government then I could have a different opinion.

I guess it makes sense that somebody in Russia had to do something to make it look like he or she had a job to do;) I mean, should they ban Yahoo because it also has some forums where gambling happens? Or should they ban also Facebook because it has groups also dedicated to gambling? I guess,,, it has to do?

They will only ban crypto if they want to be left behind in the world. All the nations who are adopting bitcoins will have a much better future than those who are planing to impose bans.



Why do they ban the things which can never be ban in the modern digital world  :D

The Russians have always acted compulsively when it comes to cryptocurrency. Remember the times when they aren't sure whether to allow bitcoin or not, but discusses the possibility of their own CryptoRuble? I remember. They do this because bitcoin gives financial freedom to those who wields it, and can act in their own volition, buy whatever they wanted without being monitored by the government 24/7. As for the case of gambling advertisement and the forum blacklist, I'm pretty sure or Russian friends would always find a way to access this site and continue doing what they're doing as if nothing happened.

I'm not surprised that they will go to the extreme to the point that they will ban the only hub wherein bitcoin is prominent. It is really a given, IMO.

I have no idea online gambling is illegal in Russia. But b;locking a crypto forum is a lot like killing the crypto information than the online gambling. There are lots of Russians here Vitalik and Sasha of Waves is Russian. Now they'd have to use VPN to access.  Wouldn't stop them from coming here though Russian section is a big community.

In Iran, Azerbaijan, and Turkey gambling is completely prohibited as far as i know,  these countries have been shuttling gambling tourism since a very long time, these people are going to gambling to former soviet countries and Russia, and they are spending money in these countries, gambling income is as important as tourism income.

Yeah. It is funny how governments just ban sites they find illegal and people would just use VPN to continue doing what they are doing. If this is the case then I think some sites like YouTube would ban advertisements about online gambling too, but still, Russians would still be able to access these sites since we have a lot of ways to cover ourselves like VPN and proxies.

That's what I thought; I don't hear much about cryptocurrencies from Russia very often, but I do know a few people in the country that do use BTC. The other major Russian crypto-related piece of news I remember was BTC-e being seized by the US authorities, though that was back in 2016 and it was just one incident.

Strange to hear such news. Why not ban gambling page only? And why not then ban google, as it shows lots if reference links...

This is so stupid to ban only connected page, but not banning main threat? And why not ban every gambling page that refuse to payout? Im confused...

Is it possible to have bitcointalk.org unblocked? Anyone heard roscomnadzor unblock pages?

Wow, censorship in Russia at it's finest. It's just ridiculous. Following Roskomnadzor logic, they should ban Google too, because they had advertisements of scams. But I wouldn't be surprised - I remember they tried to ban Telegram, banned LinkedIn and many other websites.
BTW, I see that decision to ban Bitcointalk was made in 2071 and they banned it just right now. What a fast reaction!
AFAIK, gambling in Russia isn't illegal, there is so many online casinos and sportsbooks in Russia. But this one  wasn't legitimate and it was reason of ban.
I'm sure that your mentioned people always use VPN or TOR to access websites including Bitcointalk, so this ban won't affect them. It mainly affect ordinary people. Offcourse, they can use VPN, but obviously, not all are going to do it.

That's a surprising news  :-\
But are we really sure it's because of gambling? It can be an alibi to censor bitcointalk.org while they don't want to give the real reason.

Not sure how this works? No one over here provides gambling service. Only announcements take place over here. Its not like you can place bets on this forum. Why would discussion about gambling be taxed. Sounds more like people are getting taxed for expressing their opinion which is really sad.
Weird law I would say. But people are smart enough over here. They will eventually find a way ;).

I agree, that's indeed weird law banning everything related to gambling or cryptocurrency discussion. Russians are losing their right to speak freely, freedom of speech is totally ruined. Of course, you can always use some tools to access any desirable website, but there is a problem I can see here. Imagine situation, when you want to visit kitchen in order to satisfy natural food needs. Every time you try to open the door of your fridge, you get a notification that says: "In order to access the food you need to do 10 pushups and 10 situps first". That's not a big deal, though and also this might help you to become sporty guy (or technically savvy guy in our case). But this also creates huge inconveniences.

When the whole world is suffering from coronavirus, there is no need for the Russian governments to take such steps which may directly or indirectly upset people. Even if they want to ban bitcointalk and crypto, can't they wait and delay this decision until the virus crisis is over.  Russian government has taken the wrong step at a wrong time.

Though this ban happened but I don't think the Russian community here will be affected, they can always find a method to still access the site, I'm sure using VPN is possible, right? Anyway, I can't understand why a certain forum is blocked just because it advertise a gambling site, that's very poor judgment because this is a big forum, it's does not promote gambling platforms only.

No surprise there. When you ban something, the demand actually increases. Highest level of drug abuse can be found in those countries which have the strictest punishment for drug usage. Similarly, the worst gambling addiction can be found in those countries, where all forms of gambling are illegal. What happens is that the sector will be forced to go underground and then it will come under the control of various mafias.

Is the ban DNS based or IP based?

If it is a DNS based ban you can simply ignore it by changing your DNS numbers. (8.8.4.4 and 8.8.8.8 for google's DNS)

If it is an IP ban, you'll have to use a VPN.

I hope they knew that bitcointalk is an international forum where we can gather updated information about cryptocurrency. It's a wrong move for them to ban the whole forum if they just wanted to eliminate all the gambling platforms. I think it's better to ban those gambling platforms than the forum itself.

I bet Russians will still use VPN to access bitcointalk especially those reputable members of this forum that is from Russia.

This is basically the truth, bitcointalk is the most important forum when it comes to cryptocurrencies so this is not about a casino or anything like that, they are trying to control the information and in this times of great uncertainty people are choosing to keep their money and this is scaring all the politicians, in my country there are already pleads from them for people to keep spending their money and if this does not happens then the economy will crumble, and if that happens then the people will begin to look for alternatives and bitcoin will be there for those people, as such Russia is taking preventive steps to avoid this from happening.

It is ridiculous indeed, it is like putting a poster mocking Putin on a wall and the response is destroying that building, easy! The owner has to remove it himself or else mother Russia will do it for you. Crap...
BTW in the first place I don't think Russian are logging here without VPN or Tor, didn't they?

Yeah, but according to the VPN law of Russia, even they still use legal VPN, they will still not access bitcointalk. I don't know if it's applicable also in TOR. VPN providers are allowed in The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media or Roskomnadzor's blacklist so definitely, the forbidden websites can't be reached even using a legal VPN.

So I think it's time to say goodbye to our Russian friends here unless they find some other way to access the site legally.

Probably not, if they are smart enough.
However, this doesn't surprise me at all, it's a normal and ecpected thing for Russia. They have funny understanding of freedom and they like to ban all sorts of things but that will not stop Russian people doing what they want and what they like.

Congratulations, now Russians are using the N word towards Bitcointalk :D

Russian government must have a lot of time to waste during the pandemics if with all that's going on they can focus on banning cryptocurrencies and blocking access to bitcointalk.

What would you expect? Government would always be like that on where making actions to those things that against their liking and its not a new thing specially in talks of cryptocurrency.
Pretty sure that they arent only looking for gambling aspect but for further deeper reason.

They can ban all they want but accessing a site specially this forum wont really be hard.As mentioned earlier you can either change DNS or thru VPN so its still useless imho and also
im quite surprised that they do still dug up an old thread.

The ban is not stopping the Russians hehehe.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=10.0

Also, the Chinese have their internet banned from the internet are also active hehehehe.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=30.0

With everyone in lockdown (I'm guessing Russia is in lockdown) more people will be turning to online racing, if bitcoin is not approved in Russia (again, an assumption on my part) then it stands to reason the authorities will block any sites related to bitcoin such as the forum.


The people on those boards might have IP blockers in place. (or aren't in affected areas?)

is this blocking happens only in a day and resumes after?or permanent banning?(things that i know not because Russia is one big place for crypto people)

Yeah Russian and Chinese again,is this their way of telling the world about their friendship?or just a coincidence ?

Not quite sure what you mean, but yea blacklisted means permanent banned, all russian internet providers are forced to prevent accessing from any russian IP-address.

I believe that's just coincidence unless they started using cryptocurrency forums in political games.

So, what I have managed to find out from the law (http://www.consultant.ru/cons/cgi/online.cgi?req=doc&base=LAW&n=341909&fld=134&dst=1000000001,0&rnd=0.2036168839382645#07725794592231342) which regulates gambling and online gambling in Russia is that it doesn't say anything against gambling discussion,
so forum as a place for discussions can't be banned. Nonetheless, it is banned.

They have the VPN to rely on, they can access this forum and any Cryptocurrency related websites, that's useless imposing their will to their people, Crypto supporters that are banned can always find a way they can never leave the industry just like that, they have a profit to make and they want to get involved on this technology because this is the future.   

There is a big chance that they are closely monitoring this forum and they are against how it works so they decided to banned it as I cannot believe that they just banned the entire forum because of gambling advertisement. I love the way how they like to prevent fraud in their country as they didn't like their people's money got stolen easily by those scammers.

But the way they act, I can see that there is more to it as I can see that this forum is going well for how many years but this is the first time that they decided to banned it in their country.

Your assumption is wrong. The Russian authorities advertise Bitcoin in controlled media 24/7. They also use Bitcoin and another crypto in their corruption schemes. For example, to steal natural gas and electrical power.

While it should be illegal to avoid an ISP block you will be the effect on it if you are using not standard DNS servers.

Are you sure this is a block from the government? It seems very strange a block for a forum never eared about it.

I saw, there is allot of Russians active on our forum, and I think it doesn't really affect their activities here from the time you've posted this OP. And with just a gambling advertisement, am I the only one who thinks that the reason is quite shallow for the government to block bitcointalk to their country?

We might not know, maybe their government doesn't see the future of their country with cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and other crypto.

But I have a suspicion that the site doesn't really blocked this site, one way or another, they might just mistakenly did it.

They are just against on the gambling itself because Russia knows that bitcoin should be spent like that. Russia uses crypto in their economy, they know how to use and proper manipulate cryptocurrency so that they are against on gambling platform as it is a home for scammers. Russian Authorities are really strict when it comes to money and resources that's why they appreciate the true value and proper uses of crypto other than gambling. They banned gambling advertisement to stop the use of crypto in many gambling platforms but instead, they want them to use our own fiat and not crypto because crypto is only for necessary and important things like larger transactions and etc.

I'm pretty surprised by this news because I've seen many crypto projects based in Russia and even there are so many Russian people are involved in crypto projects.

I barely know that online gambling and betting are illegal in Russia and they are very strict about it. Even land-based gambling is legal in only 4 regional areas in that country.

I see many people here upset with their government's decision to ban this forum because of gambling ads. But from their government perspective, this is a very easy solution to keep their citizens from knowing about new gambling sites.

They did not wanted cryptocurrency to be discussed by their citizens, it is not just gambling. Everyone know how big BTT is in crypto world.

Russian liking this decision or not is a completely different discussion but, the Russian crypto community is very pissed off after this ban that I am certain.

Through VPN you can easily get access to  any website banned by your country. The government might have forgotten this fact.

Well, using a VPN is an easiest way to bypass the restriction of your country but in my part, I will not do that because once you are getting caught by the government officials, --you are for sure put in jail. Perhaps they need to read this online article that explained the gambling jurisdiction in Russia. https://www.gamblingsites.com/online-gambling-jurisdictions/russia/.

---

We can simply respect the restriction and rules have been implemented. Perhaps, their government was trying to protect their people of what they are thinking of regarding crypto or in Bitcoin.

There is no any punishment or special laws for those who accessing blocked websites through VPN or TOR-browser.  Especially, the government cannot prohibit you to download and run open source software like TOR. They only can filter traffic and that is all. So, they have nothing forgotten, but created some inconveniences for users who usually talk about gambling or bitcoin. This situation is a little annoying and creates precedent for banning crypto related forums in particular countries.

This sounds strange to me too but TOR browser with minimum security settings applied without any VPN is enough to bypass the government restriction.If you don’t want to use TOR then you can opt only for a strong VPN which has privacy of users in mind.I use NordVPN and Hidemyass for these purposes.

Since when Russian use legal things? I believe at least 80% of hacked games, programs, apps are done by comrades! They will figure out a way if it is not already done. And it seems they are still logging here so
Another possibility cryptotalk paid authorities to do that?

There is a difference between hacking some protection and actually using this hack. I did this just for fun, just like many others.

It's ok for them. There were a lot of decisions which took years to be actually enforced, this happens especially when it's related to some "insignificant" matter. I suppose they gave this task to some clerk and he simply forgot about that. When somebody is resigning, he have to deal with such forgotten stuff before his job will be finally done. Just a speculation.

Can they jail you just because you visited a website? That's insane. I could understand it if it was CP or illegal drug trading but btt is nothing like that. Is online gambling really that dangerous in Russia?

While most people will find a way to reach btt without getting caught, the damage here is going to apply to the new people.

There will be a lot less new registrations from Russia because of that ban and the forum is already having hard times in that regard.

VPN is not 100% safe. I don't know much about NordVPN and Hidemyass, but the authoritarian governments have targeted these VPN providers recently. Even TOR doesn't offer 100% protection, but unless you are involving in any illegal stuff, I don't think that you have to worry. But the main problem with TOR is that it is too slow. For live betting, it can be very difficult to use TOR.

This is how they deal with those scammers but unfortunately, Our whole community gets banned too. This is because they don't want to furthermore take any risk in this site. that's why the whole site was banned. we need to report those scammers as soon as possible to prevent this kind of thing to happen in the future. If I'm not mistaken, this site is also banned in China and now in Russia. this is not good news, there are lots of investors in those Countries.

But banning the forum itself is unnecessary,

They can just ban every online gambling sites and not exactly the forum. Anyways, if this is how they solve the issues or how they dealt regarding this issues, we can't do anything about it.

Do you have a source where you read or heard about bitcointalk was banned in China?

Indeed, because this forum just serve as the platform for spreading news. It doesn't necessarily mean that it has sometjing to do with the shady stuffs started by scammers :(. Don't get me wrong, I really love how Russia put attention regarding such matter becuase this means that their government really cares. However I think they're overreacting already.

For this reason, do you guys think the Russian local board will be erased soon?

Nope will not happens, unless Putin ordered Trump to do it, which doesn't worth the effort  :P
And i doubt theymos will erase one of the most active local board, even today i count many posts, so no worries about our Russian friends!

Anyone from Russia?
Here in Italy is a common thing to use Google DNS or other free DNS like OpenDNS.

I think there will be the same and they even notice the "block" since it should be a DNS block from ISP.

Thanks to VPN companies which will be a quick solution for bypassing the website filtering by governments. The Russia is not on the way to the absolute freedom for gamblers and this is understandable for former CCCP country. I am sure average gamblers will find a alternative option for accessing both Bitcointalk and gambling sites.

I think some sites like YouTube would ban advertisements about online gambling too.However, this doesn't surprise me at all, it's a normal and ecpected thing for Russia. this ban happened but I don't think the Russian community here will be affected, they can always find a method to still access the site. Russians would still be able to access these sites since they have a lot of ways to cover ourselves like VPN and proxies.

Betting is a disease, other use cases are fine.

https://2ip.ru/speedbar/t93H7i9Zj0_5lHQr9_eP56d1RexCMdRgoOcOv7WHQYP4-ADSng~~.png

The truth is that Tor is not slow, I'd say that it's comparable to mobile network around the dense crowd. So it's more than enough for most of the activities with exception for media content because I doubt that the donated bandwith will be sufficient for 4K streaming.

Most of the real issues, however, are caused by DDoS protection services like Cloudflare. Cloudflare has a support for Privacy Pass which may be used to bypass annoying CAPTCHA verifications, but their competitors are not so progressive.

Good to know, I thought it will have greater chance to get deleted because of this news. At least they still got a reason for staying here. Good luck for them on how they will access this site. I know VPN could work but they should be very careful or else they'll receive a punishment for sure. We all know how sharp the claws of Putin's governance :). Nonetheless, I hope this is not final — I hope they will revoke their decision.

I cannot find any sane reason why this forum will mimic Russia in this regard. I am convinced that this forum is independent from the whims of countries and their politicians.

For sure, Russians have enough leeway to circumvent this unfortunate decision.

I don't understand why a forum is being blocked for reasons related to gambling. This is not a gambling site, in the first place. Also, if gambling is discussed or even promoted, it does not mean it is being directed to Russia. This is a global forum. And everybody in here should be fully aware of his/her country's domestic laws.

Nope will never Happen unless Theymos will be commanded by Putin and Trump to do this but i doubt he will follow because there are so many ways for russians to access the site by using VPN and other ways.
that same thought here mate because i don't think we can be Run by any government because we are a Independent market and has our own rules.

Well, they have their own reasons and laws for that. Better much respect that tbh. Sides, the internet has a lot of ways to bypass the bans set by their country so I doubt that those legit users from Russia would quit just like that cause of the ban. I also doubt Russia has the ability to ban gambling ads selectively, I doubt they would put that much effort when they can just ban the site entirely. There's also the negative notion of what gambling is, so can't really blame them. Probably more than 7 out of 10 people, if asked, would answer that gambling is a negative influence and most would answer that only bad people would gamble. And technically it isn't wrong, but it's more related to the person itself rather than gambling, but who would care about that now no?

That's correct. Can't reach the forum without using VPN (currently TOR instead tbh). Thanks for sharing the news thought it was an IP ban or smth  ::)

I hope that people in Russia can still visit this forum, and the block from their government will be open because people discuss Bitstarz, and bitcointalk was coincidentally has been used for communicating with other people. But I am sure that people can still visit bitcointalk because they can use a VPN for a bridge to access this forum. Or maybe the blocked is temporary to investigate the real problem by the government. Let's hope everything will be okay.

This could stir up problem for the people that supports Bitcoin. Russia is a big country, and a lot of people that uses the coin is from the country. Bitcointalk is a place for a lot of people to share and also learn about the current trends about the currency. Hoping the banning would soon be lift up for our fellow supporters.

Actually kinda surprised that didn't happened earlier.
Don't think it's a big issue, since any VPN can be used to bypass this block.

VPN is only for advance users, newbies don't know how to use it. sometimes they also blocked certain VPNs to access some sites they blocked on their country. Like what happen to that manager of Iost bounty last year when he suddenly need to visit China and he has to have a hard time accessing this site from there. blocked site in China can be tricky to get accessed, that's why I told you only advance users can surpass it.

Most country's will blocked gambling sites but Bitcointalk.org ? that seems kinda weird, it's not even a gambling site.
In my country, the government also forbids online gambling, because it can be used for tax evasion and they can't really track what you're doing. But i think there are workarounds for this, example you could try using VPN or VPS to continue gambling.

I think for most countries with advance IT, even if you are using VPN or VPS, they can still detect you based on your activity from your ISP. So the only way we could make our transaction anonymous is to use bitcoin mixers. Though, I am not really advising it as the fees for this services is quite high, but if we really want to gamble at huge stake, or with huge bets, I probably suggests using mixers to make sure we could not be tracked when playing.

In terms of bitcointalk getting banned, I am having a highly suspicion regarding this, that they want the cryptocurrency as a whole to not be promoted as we know, bitcointalk is the main platform cryptocurrency users could speak and share knowledge to everyone.

In my mountry Gambling is a crime. Govt can take any necessary steps to stop gambling. If they think that bitcointalk is used to promote gambling then they will be stopped bitcointalk too. But it is not a big issue because by using vpn we can easily use any website we want.