Bitcoin Forum

Title.

Only hypothetically speaking, because that would literally never happen in a million years.

Right?

How will the forum feel? I probably don't know. Does the forum have feelings? 
 
How will members react to that? I can only answer for myself. 
 
What will be the positive outcome? 
It will result in the forum being more boring than a lot of members have already pictured it to be due to a lack of high-paying campaigns. Some members are no longer as active and productive as they used to be.

probably frustrated, also there could be a drastic decrease in activity in the forum, a lot of people who are currently active and posting on a daily basis are in a signature campaign that is being run by gambling casinos. so if casinos are banned from the forum, obviously, the signature campaigns they are running will close or be banned too and if there is no or very little signature campaign to join, I am certain a lot of people will be more reluctant to stay active in the forum if they cannot join the remaining signature campaign that is left.

Yes, the forum definitely has feelings. Despite how many CHAT-GPT posts there may be, there are still several people here with very real emotions and feelings that will react negatively to casino's being banned. This is so important to discuss, and I feel it may have been overlooked when Mixers were banned? I can't say for certain because I was away for that time and didn't read anything/haven't caught up on anything since it happened.

And I agree with you again, where the answer to that question is heavily self-discovered. Everyone might have a different answer because of how intertwined casino's are into this forums user's daily lives.

I disagree with you about the forum becoming more boring without casinos. It will force users to explore and advertise trusted bitcoin tools. There are countless creative trusted tools out there that don't have signature campaigns going. There's some guy with a HYK (Hide your Keys) Avatar and idk if its a campaign or not, but you get what I mean. No casinos =/= boring.


There are definitely veteran members of this site who just sit back and watch in disgust about how true this is. We should look to make the people that believed first happy they were believers and not crazy. One of our goals should be to give early adopters inner peace that their trust in satoshi wasn't in vein, ya know?

It might happen in the future, once it did, probably, forum's activity will go down drastically knowing that most campaigns are casino related.
Or once theymos decided that, maybe just ban all signature campaigns or disable signatures spaces.   ;D

I know you are joking, but that is scary because signature campaigns and signature campaign spaces make up the livelihood of so many forum users. They are also fun for users and bring users inner peace because they are doing what they love to do, which is get paid to talk about something they are very passionate about on the internet. Many people come here with the intention to make money online instead to learn first and then make the money.

One day it could happen.

Maybe theymos is not young.

If I were in my fifties and was theymos know the forum funds are over 1,000,000 I may consider ending the forum .

I have no idea who theymos is or where he lives but I do know the forum has a decent amount of coin

it is pretty much a decent business because a lot of btc was hodl.

So when and how does theymos exit?

Maybe that should be a discussed topic for the future.

It is not a question of feelings and even less so because "the forum" is not an entity that can have them. I don't think that what one or the other may feel can be united if that were to happen.

Feelings aside I think we can talk about reactions. It would most likely accelerate the trend we see. Less posts, less traffic, and less discussion. There probably would be a sudden sharp drop the moment the ban came into force, which would be almost like banning signature campaigns in practice, since there is hardly anything left that is not casinos, and a campaign that just left us states that:

If you define "interest" is the discussion or conversation without looking at the traffic, then you're correct banning casinos will not make the forum boring. But, it doesn't mean they will explore and advertise Bitcoin tools, some users might creates drama and trolling around since they don't care anymore with their reputation. Why should they need to being serious and protect their reputation when they will not get paid a good amount of money anymore? another thing scammer will increase since they will take a loan without collateral and disappeared.

You can expect the forum will be like this board Serious discussion (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=250.0).

I don't understand why we need to end the forum, it can still grow, especially there are many institutions trying to adopt Bitcoin.

I don't understand why we need to end the forum, it can still grow, especially there are many institutions trying to adopt Bitcoin.


Exactly. The forum does not need to die ever. This place is Evergreen and should never die ever. That would be awful for price of BTC. If I could move this thread to serious discussion, I would.  :)

Yeah, but admit it or not, there are members here who thrive on signature campaign as means to an end. And obviously, all campaign now are gambling related and if Theymos ban it many are going to be affected.

But it could still go and continue to thrive and we might see the old forum even before there was signature campaigns.

If you're asking hypothetically, then this topic would be more appropriate for another board, maybe off-topic?

Even if casinos are banned from the forum for some reason, that would mean that only those who are not here now because they are motivated solely by profit would remain on the forum. Undoubtedly, the number of active members would decrease, but that would by no means mean that the forum would cease to exist.

I'm not much into gambling, so I don't mind. It would actually stop a lot of spam from being posted.

I've always liked EV+ contests, but that's mostly a thing from the past. When it's EV-, doing the math behind it is enough to lose my interest. I'm not going to tell myself: "I can win", while I realize: "I'm more likely to lose". So I don't do it.

I don't expect casinos to be banned though. They've changed their business to be more compliant. When I joined Bitcointalk, casinos were "no KYC, anyone can join". Now, those casinos ban users from many countries to comply with local law.

There will be plenty of reactions
- a lot of members will suddenly go MIA
- a lot of users will suddenly realize that they are no longer fans of those football teams they've been posting news about for their quota for years and stop talking about it completely
- the gambling board will only be made up of people who actually gamble, which would be a real change
- probably it will cut both spam and usage on the same ratio
But more importantly, we will all start betting on the date theymos will implement kyc cause that would be the next obvious step

Alright. The big boys are here. I'm starting a poll.


When and how did satoshi exit?  :'(

See what I mean?

This world we live in is very pattern based.

"I have no idea who theymos is or where he lives"

Exactly. And he deserves all the freedom in world just like satoshi has/had. But like you said, conversation for another day for sure lol.

Also happy pizza day, everyone ^_^.

At the moment, casinos are the only ones that have a long-term ongoing signature campaigns. If forum bans casinos, then there will be only one or two signature campaigns with limited number of participants and the competition will be one of the highest, ever. The payrate will probably be lower too.

I expect people to quickly turn into a drama queen. They'll start drama, start talking about how the freedom of speech is getting worse and more likely competitor forums will use this advantage to try and bring Bitcointalk traffic on their website, just like altcoinstalks did recently. Many people will leave this forum and the forum might die, it won't be as active as it is today.

By the way, there is a symbiotic relationship between this forum and the signature campaign. The forum increases their brand awareness and makes them popular and signature campaigns keep this forum active.

Nothing is totally impossible to happen. If it can be conceived, it can happen. With the recent exit of Bestchange, it can be seen that more than 97% of campaigns here are casinos. So, if casino campaigns are banned, that's actually the end of signature campaign in the forum.

How has this discussion gotten to the point of ending the forum. Who said the forum would be ended?

"How has this discussion gotten to the point of ending the forum. Who said the forum would be ended?"

Casinos = the forum right now

The forum = mass adoption

Casinos cannot make 97% everyone. All people who use bitcoin should also use the official place designated by the community to publicly discuss bitcoin. Ideally, it should still be bitcointalk.org. Forever. Out of respect for satoshi, for real.

Should I move this discussion to the gambling board so more people see it, or is that a bad idea lol?  ;D

Obviously, the post quantity will be lesser that result to less traffic to the forum since online casino are the dominant industry here that contributes with signature campaigns market. Without them maybe some of this company will go to competitor forum since there’s already some forum that being use as an alternative for the banned campaigns.

But this scenario is really possible if ever money laundering becomes rampant on casino industry. This is just less chance to happened since casino has a strict KYC policy implementation to counter this possible laundering as much as possible.

This forum is for Bitcoin discussion initially then its purposes and discussions expand to altcoins, other services include casinos. The forum will lose traffics but will not die if casinos will be banned and no longer appear here in Announcement threads or signature campaigns.

The forum is not only about casinos and signature campaigns.

History of signature campaigns

• Signature campaign: The lowest and highest payment BTC and USD in 2013-2022 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5403191.0)
• History - signature campaigns and bounties on Bitcointalk (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4567657.msg41175462#msg41175462)
• EVOLUTION OF SIGNATURE AD CAMPAIGNS (BEGINNING DAYS TO THE PRESENT) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5246103.msg54369240#msg54369240)

The admin would have banned it long ago if the casinos were illegal and there had been a government restriction on places where they could advertise the platform.

The forum is the community, so with a huge number of participants in the casino campaign, there will be a drastic drop in activity. For me, I will continue to post out of habit. I have been doing this for ten years, and it is something you can get out of your system easily. I can only speak for myself; I don't know about the others.

There will be activity about Bitcoin because this is one of the best places to get news about Bitcoin

 

CTRL + F on the evolution of signature ad campaigns (beginning days to the present)

"Casino"

Jesus  :-\

Nah, I don't think it will happen in a million years, but casinos are not a tool for privacy so governments will not go after it. Therefore I can say they might leave this sector alone unless some bad activities start to happen, like many people are able to launder money from casinos, and from these digital casinos as well. If this bad activity will increase over time then governments or relevant authorities will definitely take proper actions.

And if those actions taken more seriously then the admin might also consider to ban there advertisement as well, so if that happens, what next. I think members here don't have a choice on this decision, as member were not able to convince when obfuscating platform were banned, and they might not be able to do anything when these casinos will be banned as well. I hope new type of narrative will be introduced till then, like AI platforms.

Unless casinos decide to stop their promotion on this forum, I don't think they can get banned because they don't exhibit the characteristics of what the forum rules kick against. There's a saying that nothing is actually impossible, so if by chance casino is banned on the forum, there will definitely be a decline in the number of activities in the gambling section of the forum because there are also many members who are lovers of gambling on the forum and they love gambling discussions a lot.

Theymos is beginning to tire. Do y'all think he's not been thinking of what the next 5 years would look like? Cus what in the world is stopping him from the completion of the new ecosystem? Resources? That can't be!
On the other hand, critics aren't kept grounded for whatever proposal they'd make against Bitcoin as long as the forum stays...why? Bitcointalk alone has made an impact that is believed to enlightened atleast 1/3 of bitcoiners (excluding cyber theft aged or retired persons)

Can we accertain that most high ranking members today would stay? ^{it's not about using some "pronouns"}

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I feel like we would have nothing left to discuss and, if it ever happens, I'll just focus on the WO thread for periodic updates and postings... The rest of the boards would have lesser activities.

I don't intend to pry, but you registered on May 7th, and yet you're discussing something that occurred almost 6 months ago when you weren't even registered and haven't experienced yourself. I'm not implying that this is an alt account, but I wouldn't be surprised because it does look a little suspicious.

Anyway, to answer your question, it's unlikely that a casino ban would ever take place, unless there's a ban on cryptocurrency casinos by the U.S. government (where this forum is registered, if I remember correctly), which would result in Theymos possibly getting in trouble for endorsing such services. However, this scenario currently sounds way too far-fetched.

Well the one and only reasons why mixers were banned was because of their ability to be used as Money laundering website and I don't see that happening with casinos anyway time although in my local casino I play with, there is one rule that regulates all deposit to all casino to be played or gamble with before ever initiating withdrawal and this act covers any form of the casino to be used as a money laundering means, although am not too certain about this rule with crypto casino.
But one thing is certain though which is that when eventually anything causes theymos to actually end the advertising of casino in the forum activities will drastically reduce and that's a fact because it also happened when mixers were banned.

It's way too far-fetched indeed and I know that there's a solid distinction between casinos and mixers if we are to even consider what would be the reason for such a ban in the first place.
Casinos offer gambling services and helps relax freyed nerves or act as a source of entertainment for the customers. Also I think casinos have regulations they abide by of which the government checks and tax regularly.

Mixrs on the other hand has been the sole tool for money laundering schemes as reported by the Feds, mostly as it regards cryptocurrencies and the decentralized space that the government neither has proper regulations over nor controls fully.

Banning casinos here will surely reduce engagement in the gambling section. We will also experience reduced advertising and signature campaigns and of course it will make this community/forum become more focused on all things cryptocurrency and altcoins.

But if you do not think there is any chance for this to happen, and you bring no scenario or reason which could motivate theymos to do this, then there is not much we can discuss about it.

It would look like this:

https://x.com/search?q=duckduckgo&src=typed_query&f=live

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2024/05/23/101kZ.png

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But BestChange was not forced out of the forum, they decided to end their signature campaign for advertising reasons and they still have an ANN thread here. People tend to forget that this kind of thing happens frequently with all sorts of services when they run a signature campaign, whether it is not working out for them or whether it is successful.

To add to what you what you are saying,  if it ever happens that the casinos are banned from the forum, those that are mostly interested in gambling discussion, will leave the forum, even if they don't leave outrightly, they will start losing interest in the forum and won't be very active here again. Just imagine the level of traffic that the gambling section of this forum generates, with casino off it will result in the loss of such traffic. I don't even wish for such day to come. Anything that will make government to go after casinos should not ever happen, because if it does it result to many things in the lager society. Many people will run mad if they are unable gamble a day or weeks.

If I was asked to vote on which I think was most likely to happen between casinos ending the advertisement and promotion in Bitcointalk for personal reasons, and then Theymos banning Casinos, I would go with casinos just ending their promotion here just like bestchange did because with the AML rule guiding casinos, It will be difficult for them to have issues regarding money laundering that will make the government go after them.

Maybe Bestchange ended their campaign here because of financial reason like to cut cost, Casino's can choose to do that as well, also if they don't see the campaign as productive to their marketing.

Look at all the signature campaigns active on the forum. 90% are casinos once the mixers were banned. You take away the casinos from this forum and you kill the forum. There might be 100 users that stay active who deal with technical issues or have been here since the beginning, but overall traffic drops to nearly 0 and this forum becomes mostly irrelevant.

I don't know about ending the forum, but he might want to consider who he'd hand over the reins to should he want to end his involvement with it or if something should happen to him.  My guess is that he's pretty well-off and has been for quite some time--and yet he still seems passionate about (or at least very involved with) bitcointalk--so I don't think he's in this for the money primarily.

Anyway, I can see why mixers were banned even if I don't like it.  Crypto casinos have yet to be called vehicles for terrorists, money launderers, or what have you by the government....but that doesn't mean it's always going to be that way.  Should they get banned like mixers, that would just suck because it'd be another knock against freedom courtesy of whatever government agency put pressure on Theymos (or his successor) to enact that change.  Whether you're a gambler or are against gambling for whatever reason, people ought to be free to make choices for themselves.  You know, just like out in the real world where there are tons of massive casinos that governments make a lot of tax revenue from.

Confirmed:

This forum will lose traffic and active users. Look at other forums, is there any other Bitcoin or altcoins forum as popular as Bitcointalk? No, there isn't. Will Bitcoin enthusiasts come to this forum, create threads, make posts and answer questions? Sure, there are people who will do that but in terms of activity, this forum will become very inactive compared to its current state. There is a reason theymos lets signature campaigns on this forum and also there is a reason why Roger Ver wanted signature campaigns on his forum too.

Yeah, they were running a signature campaign for 226 weeks, they did the advertising plan perfectly, they increased their brand awareness, and they got all the possible traffic from Bitcointalk during those weeks.

So you clearly don't know how can you launder money in gambling, although I am not an expert too, but from what I understand is gambling platforms can also provide you anonymity, for example, if they don't require your identification, you are free to open an account, deposit money, gamble it, you even lose some in the process or make more money. The thing is, with your dirty money, you buy chips or tickets, and they use those tickets to gamble and to make money.

So whatever money you come up with at the end is the one said to be clean one, so if you will withdraw it, your money is not more dirty. Now the thing is how casinos can stop this, I mean if they don't want to stop it, then that's another thing, just like for many obfuscating platforms, the team doesn't want their platforms to be used for money laundering. But if they want to stop it then how would they do it, every casino has its own system.

I mean they make it their base for advertisement, there aree legal and illegal casinos, I am not against the ones being advertised here, but trying to say, Money laundering is possible via casino read this More than 11 million euros seized and man arrested in investigation into gambling platform scam (https://www.fiod.nl/12-million-seized-and-arrested-in-investigation-into-gambling-platform-scam/) I do agree with you that if gambling platforms will be banned then the traffic here will decrease and on ALTT it will increase.

It started as a hypothetical question and it should die as such, because if casinos are banned from this forum, then you should forget the monetisation aspect of this forum which drives more traffic as far as I am concerned. We do not need a seer to know that casinos are now driving that aspect on the forum.

Needless to say, the ban of m!xers can't be without a serious reason, and this forum is one of the kind that is so liberal and gives people a high degree of respect for one's opinion and also looks away when some users questions the admin in some sort of a crude way and still gets away with it. The fact that such a tolerant and accommodating forum banned m!xers should speak volumes to the wise, as the issue was bitting and I understand theymos plight, he never wanted the forum to be dragged with such infamous illegality that is rampant with them.

This is understandable. But why on earth would casinos be banned? That is just unspeakable as they are doing their legal business, and even if a certain casino is alleged or caught with illegality (like Binance), that can't speak for all of them like m!xers as the modality of their business is not like that of m!xer which often makes people conceive this kind of mind/thought.

 Obviously the forum will lose its appeal because truth be told, the major reason this place is getting it's traffic is for the sig campaigns and the bounties and if these casinos get banned, what the heck? You might as well say "only admins can access this place". It's rare for peeps who aren't in campaigns to be as active as one who is and then you ban the casinos? .
Some will say change is constant and we'd get accustomed to life without casinos( that's if it happens), well I doubt people will recover. Of anything, they will think Theymos is no longer interested in monetisation and probably wants to use it for something else.
 Well I know this is just a "maybe" question to get the opinions/ thoughts of other users but I really don't understand why this should even be thought of by the Op...take such musings off of your head.. ;D

Do you believe that Bitcointalk will survive million years? If you think it will survive million years then you might have to get some treatment.

When it comes to casinos then it's possible that one day they may also get banned on this forum if new rules and regulations take place and government and other centralized organizations fully oppose the online casinos and start strict actions against those.

But, if I'm not wrong then at current times we should not worry about that because the casinos haven't done anything that would make those organizations to take any actions against them. That's why we should not even think about something like that.

I don't know how others will feel. But most of the forum economy is now on gambling money at this moment. I don't wear a gambling signature anymore. But, if the forum bans casinos, all the signature campaigns will be banned too. A lot of people will leave the forum silently and a lot of people will be less active. If I speak for myself, I usually wouldn't come today if I did not have to write for my signature quota. I have some important work in real life today, yet I am here because I have to post something else I will get kicked out of the campaign. So, No matter if someone tells you that they do not write for their signature payment, actually do. So gambling bans equal to less members and activity!

This will suck, and there will be less traffic because there is no reward for being active. Maybe forum members will move over to the other forum altcointalk, since it is not all casinos that will want to end their signature campaign just like that. We saw what happened to mixer and that made more members from this forum to become a member in the other forum, since some of the mixers companies moved over there to continue with their marketing. Same will be for casinos.

If I were to answer that question, I'd say that you're going to see a lot of users get out of the forum because you know how it is when it comes to how many gambling websites are hosting signature campaigns here, it will heavily impact the activity of the forum but then again if that ever happens, a lot of shiposters and people that are just in here for the money for their posts are going to go away, we'll probably see a more quality controlled forum in terms of post quality. It's close to impossible that it would happen though because a lot of people are seeing gambling as a way to increase their current crypto stashes and it's probably more gratifying to win in gambling in crypto than that in fiat one.

In the world on the forum, everything is possible. What seems impossible today can happen tomorrow. No one expected that mixers would be banned here, right.

Let's try to simulate the consequences of a casino ban.
Considering the fact that most of the signature campaigns (16 out of 18) are casino advertising, the consequences of the ban will certainly affect the activity of users (the most active) of the forum. This will not necessarily be the collapse of the forum and communication here will not stop completely, but most likely many posters from signature campaigns will reduce their level of activity, and some will stop visiting the forum altogether. Consequently, there will be fewer posts that could interest new readers, fewer visitors, and therefore fewer advertising budgets. This will lead to the fading of the forum.
 
Let's hope it doesn't come to that, and if the casino is banned, then alternative signature campaigns and ways to maintain activity on the forum will appear. In any case, as long as cryptocurrencies exist, the bitcointalk will live (even with a small level of activity). Amen.

I think the government will try to restrain our freedoms more and more until we all live with absolutely no freedom, security and privacy. Always being watched... and judged.

It is a nightmarish world scenario, which is being prevented thanks to decentralized technologies like Bitcoin. But I am still anti-government(s). 

OP, why you're so confident that it won't happen in a million years. I kinda feel that such thing can happen one day and it would have much bigger influence than ban of mixers. I don't know how I would react to such decision. It's not even about signature campaigns. But it would be end of all promotions from gambling websites like prediction pools, BSFL, contests and etc.

Same can be said about mixers - for many years everything was ok with them and one day things has changed. Same thing can happen with mixers one day if governments stance will change.

Change is hard my friend. Sorry to come off so "locked in" as to my opinion on the matter.

It could definitely happen, and I'm back on bct after being afk for a bit to come back and see that the poll I started is very mixed. :o

I am happy that the poll is reflecting what it does, as I knew this is exactly the kind of outcome it would have.  8)

I hope it fuels further discussion from wiser members of the forum than myself.  :)

I'm tired of treating suicidal people who want to kill themselves because they lost money gambling. It's more common than you guys think!  :'(

I'm sure you guys know where my vote stands, but I am heavily biased since I am a mental health professional. We literally ban certain patients from having playing cards because they will start tearing up their toilet paper and make tiny balls out of it. They then use the balls as "chips" in poker games with the other patients.  ;D

I normally don't have an issue with poker playing or card games in general with my patients, but when I know they have a history of gambling and the gambling is a risk factor to their mental health/disease, I won't enable that behavior.  :-\

Also,


Yes. bitcointalk.org 1 million years, Morty. No, I've been treated like 5 times already  ;D.

But if you stick with me, we're gonna accomplish great things, Morty, and you're gonna be part of 'em.

And together we're gonna run around, Morty, we're gonna... do all kinds of wonderful things, Morty. Just you and me, Morty. The outside world is our enemy, Morty... we're the only.... friends we've got, Morty! It's just bitcointalk.org. bitcointalk.org and it's adventures, Morty.. BITCOINTALK.ORG FOREVER AND FOREVER A HUNDRED YEARS bitcointalk.org.. some...things.. Us and bitcointalk.org runnin' around and... bitcointalk.org time... a- all day long forever.. all a - a hundred days bitcointalk.org! forever a hundred times.... OVER and over bitcointalk.org... adventures dot com.. W W W dot at bitcointalk.org dot com w..w..w... bitcointalk.org adventures.. ah- hundred years..... every minute bitcointalk.org dot com.... w w w a hundred times... bitcointalk.org dot com......."

Something that is being overlooked in these discussions is that the forum is privately financed and not-for-profit. It does not rely on # of views or other metrics to produce revenue from ads or sponsors and that makes paid campaigns a moot point. Given that fact, Theymos will probably keep it running until he dies. I know I would.

Personally it would not break my heart if the forum went back to its original mainly technical content and loses all of the twitter-like general thought-of-the-moment crap like say the Politics & Society section... Sure the overall general viewer counts would go down but it is a safe bet that those seeking crypto knowledge would continue to find this forum and their count would not only be stable but in-fact increase.

It's safe to say, lots of forum members actually wouldn't deny this claim. That's not actually that they'll leave the forum for a long time, once a while the members still visits. Getting casinos banned will only make members to post lesser times a week. It's like a contract, you have to meet up to your own side of the agreement. So, the action of members probably works alongside the requirements needed in a campaign. If this happens, the gambling section will be deserted. Lots of members, like myself, I was not as active in the gambling section as I am when wearing a casino signature. It will only make a part of the forum, the gambling section, look abandoned. More signature campaigns will take members and the forum activities will return to normal, except for the gambling section. As no existing catalyst pushes members to visit there, anymore.