Bitcoin Forum

Today by an coincidence, I remembered of something, noticed something and after checking, I found a surprising event from the past.

I know many members in this forum and around the world should know of Bitcoin Pizza Day. That started in this forum

• Pizza for bitcoins ? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137.0). It was in 2010.

Two years later, another member (VIP), El Cabron (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=44233) made another classic trade offer.

• Raw Thai Honey (First 40 BTC of profits go to the forum!) 8 KG for sale! (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68747.0)
• Many members had their trades with the VIP member but there is no confirmed post from El Cabron that all sales are enough to get 40 BTC. Eventually the user had enough BTC for donation and get the VIP badge by one way or another trading

Message:

• Use case and utility of Bitcoin increase with time. That means its value increases a lot.
• Such deals are classic and shocking in the past but now, if you make such one, it is very normal.

A random dig in to the past of forum and Bitcoin.  :D

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I don't know Meta or Bitcoin discussion is a best board for this topic. I see both fits with the content. For now, I leave it in Meta.

It does not fit in the meta at all. Bitcoin discussion is the best fit for it.

The trend for everything is to find who is first. Pizza for bitcoin was the first bitcoin in exchange of physical item. Another fact to be noted that Pizza for bitcoins happened in the May 2010 when bitcoin has no name, a new thing, value was almost $0. But El Cabron had his listing after around two years from that time. By then Bitcoin was fairly known to a bigger circle.

It depends on how you see it but in my opinion, it fits in both boards. Fits in Meta because it relates to donation and fits in Bitcoin discussion because it relates to very first exchange of Bitcoin for physical thing (raw Thai honey).

I know the first is the hardest thing but these trades of El Cabron are still one of earliest classic trades of Bitcoin. Especially it was initiated on Bitcointalk forum that is made by satoshi, the founder of Bitcoin.

By this growth and bigger circle, its value is higher.

Have a look at the old threads from marketplace

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=5.0

And you’ll find some really old cool sales and trade threads there  :)  :)
And even the first bitcoin lottery!!

Bitcoin has been used almost from the beginning of its inception to trade for goods :)

Wow, that was quite surprising. I've not gone to the end of the marketplace board (I didn't expect to find actual bitcoin purchases in a lot of the threads, even with things like flash drives from June 2010): https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=201.0

It’s really interesting and you can find some really cool threads. During the first lockdown I spent A LOT of time going through all the sections of the forum first few hundred threads - some crazy, interesting, bizarre and mostly informative posts. I’d recommend you wait for another lockdown before you go down those rabbit holes - sorry OP going off topic.

Are you sure about that? By my calculation, that trade happened more than a year after the Silk Road marketplace was launched (February 2011). 
I bet there were quite a few exchanges of bitcoins for physical items that took place there at the time, regardless of its legality. :D

OP is working to find the trades that were conducted in the forum. So obviously it was not considering any other marketplace.

This was interesting to me too. It seems there were many trades for hardware components. Bitcoin found them an easy way to make payment. It was free money after all back in the day.

This was an interesting read indeed. Almost everybody's honey arrived in broken, leaky jars, but the general consensus was it was fun to be able to exchange BTC for something, so they didn't mind.

I was expecting to read nobody got their honey as Goat (El Cabron) went on to become notoriously untrustworthy (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=635956.msg7208660#msg7208660), but he was still good at that point!

Was bitcoin ever truly "free" money? Of course, the first bitcoins were worth a lot less than they are now, but even in those early days you had to compete with your computer against other miners in solo mining before you were able to get coins. Since every computer consumes electricity, especially under load, mining has never been free.

These people got themselves etched in history of Bitcoin but I'm sure they must be having those days thinking what if — I held those BTC instead of spending?

Nice find and have also not gone too back on the board but find quite good bitcoin deals in the past and also happy to see how far we have come.

Like this  Selling new album for bitcoin  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=22127.0) and see how 0.5 BTC was also equal to €5 only and now see even 0.5 BTC is worth $10k even after falling so much.

So yes there are many bitcoin trades in the past but the pizza guy went too ahead with 10k bitcoins for two large pizzas making it an event for the whole community.

I understand where you are coming from 1 BTC = 1 BTC always.

Free money means it did not have any demand at all. Like Bitcoin Pizza was 10,000 BTC. It was just fun to send 10,000 BTC to have those two Pizza. People used to buy hardware components in exchange of BTC. For them it was FREE in exchange of some coins. For the seller it was also some FREE coins in exchange of their spare hardware. CPU mining did not cost you much it was the same as the laptop you have turned on right now.

What your memory seems to lack is that it was later admitted that Goat AKA El Cabron was a con artist that was just launching fictitious companies on the GLBSE (exchange) in order to raise funds to funnel into pirate@40's ponzi scheme.  He also ran a mining company that never mined any coins or owned any equipment, and I believe the last thing he was selling was rights to farmland in Thailand.  Goat AKA El Cabron was one of the first scammers on this forum and even though he was admittedly running fake companies and taking investor funds, he still managed to fling insults at honest people here (think the original Vod) until he was eventually banned from the forum by theymos.  This was back when theymos gave a shit.

My memory recalls me for another thing, not about historic scam in the forum.

• Stats on active & merit status of Donators & VIPs after 10 years (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5208979.0).
• Three years ago, I made that topic and recently I updated my topic Bitcointalk's Hall of fame (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5240284.0) that triggers my memory about the first topic. Then occasionally, when I look around, I found that classic trade. Just about trade and its meaning in early days of Bitcoin.

Theymos still gives shit. However now the community is bigger and stronger so he does not need his influence to settle something. When he says something it's a silent suggestion for everyone which he does not want at all. I understand that he wants the community itself find a solution for any case.

Cmon man you didn't even read the thread in reference. Goat delivered the honey, albeit it arrived in broken jars. Don't know why you would harp on somebody who wasn't around back then for not remembering him.


You did the same thing. I don't understand why you brought this up.


Nah, the community has been dwindling since 2018. Compare Global Rank on this (https://web.archive.org/web/20180713144504/https://www.similarweb.com/website/bitcointalk.org/) to this (https://web.archive.org/web/20200711093941/https://www.similarweb.com/website/bitcointalk.org/) to this (https://www.similarweb.com/website/bitcointalk.org/).

But after stepping away from here for 6 months, I realized theymos really only has to do one thing, and that is preserve Satoshi's posts. (And Hal's, and other early contributors).

This place is a museum. Nobody outside of the forum cares about anything that has happened post-Ethereum over here. Theymos is the museum archivist. Everyone else is expendable. Buy my Shitcoin :D