Bitcoin Forum

When I browse the Marketplace section, I noticed the huge amount of people selling and buying there.

Now, why doesn't the forum have its own shopping website paying with Bitcoin?

The site would connect the accounts (amount of merit and trust) with Bitcointalk.org, and the idea would be more than successful. After all this is a site being created by the legendary Satoshi himself and this forum will be serve as the social space of sellers.

Don't get me wrong; the Marketplace section is good, but it's old. It was necessary in the past when Bitcoin didn't have much reputation. Now it has a reputation, and the idea of a website like eBay, but with transactions made in Bitcoin (maybe altcoins as well), will be huge. A lot of people will sell their goods there, even outside this forum.

Is the forum interested in such an idea? It will bring some extra money to the forum.

An actual marketplace would also bring extra scams and surveillance to the forum. 

Well, for one it would be incredibly tasking to create a shopping website connected to the forum. There are technical aspects that would need so much work. Personally I think the forum needs more improvement so why can’t we focus on the forum first before we try and dive into other areas where technical development is even more complex?
Exactly. If you want to operate a shopping website, you are gonna need to comply with regulatory laws. It is to ensure the safety of both buyers and sellers. I don’t think a lot of people would be too excited with the thought of having to work with kyc regulations.

The admin is not interested to generate money from the forum at all. We don't even have an advertising space anymore which used to earn around 0.5 BTC to 1 BTC per month [I thing once I was adding the bids LOL]. Adding any features like shopping and things only aims you to generate revenue but since you can see we do not need it at all, there are no point to discussing it.

By the way, it really do not need that much work.

What you saw were various people selling their services and that has nothing to do with the forum. For the forum to officially stand behind a seller and his product, he would have to test it first or hold a certain value in escrow, which greatly complicates online trading. Plus the regulation that was already mentioned earlier.

Here's a good idea, start your own business, a crypto platform like eBay, if it's functional, I believe that all forum members will support you.

The forum already has enough money that there is no need for any implementation of additional services.

surveillance I agree, but scams? everyone on it's own.


the thing that will bring a trust to the shop is the fact that is connected to this site, the site that Satoshi himself created.
and it's not that hard for people who mastered java, the only hard part is the connection between the shop and the site.


If the site took 5% fees for selling and buying it will be profitable even with hired employees.
I mean eBay takes up to 15%



I am an half ass developer, never finished anything as I don't really like programing and writing codes, I do it when it's for fun as I've created games in the past not sites, the only site I created was an miniature market meme game and I stopped it because I didn't know how to create a wallet system in the site or a database, the site work offline only and on local network, here check it (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5502952.msg64324591#msg64324591)
So I wouldn't waste another month of my life creating another half ass work, this is just a suggestion for the forum not for my personal gain.

This would mean that any scammer can hide behind the trust that this forum has and Satoshi's name.

This means that all services would have to increase in price by at least 5% or more. Also add costs for additional people who will manage things around the shop.
I think that the forum would have more profit by selling ad space, with much less responsibilities for the admin and moderators

Online shopping in a forum needs a lot of work and monitoring, and scammers will make it a playground to scam people; you are late on the update that Theymos is not monetizing this forum; I'm sure he will not be interested in this suggestion.

Other forums have this online section to gain more users on their forum, but Bitcointalk has already gone a long way toward needing more users.

You don't get it, the admin does not seem to need it. If he needed to generate money then he could easily continue with the forum ad space.

The primary purpose of this forum is to be a discussion forum about the development of Bitcoin the marketplace was added for members try a peer to peer transaction, there is no need to develop further as the marketplace and the scam section have teach us to do diligent research on how to transact here
If you set up a poll majority will not agree, because the focus is on discussion and not on marketplace and Theymos do not need funding.

Also if there is a marketplace for this forum, who will be controlling this marketplace ? The current marketplace is decentralized (same like P2P) where anyone can buy sell services but that is not controlled by the forum. The same goes for the Marketing (Signature) campaigns where the forum just provides a platform and does not directly involve in the projects marketing and campaigns.

So one reason why this forum cannot have an online shop is that it is a decentralized forum and an online shop for the forum would most probably be a centralized one.

Take note that the forum is not decentralized, this is a common misconception that people have, because BTC is decentralized, does not mean bitcointalk is as well. Bitcointalk is a centralized forum run by the admins, and they have the power to do anything they want in the forum, and that is not how decentralization works.

That's true. Many scammers are lurking to find a platform to scam people, and newbies aren't aware of how these scammers work; I don't know how it is more profitable than the forum selling space for advertisers.
In the end, people will blame the forum if they cannot moderate scammers.
It could be a good idea if the forum needs funding, but it's not.

The forum does not even moderate scam in the first place, and one of the reasons theymos stopped ad sales in the forum was because it became difficult for him to know which services were legitimate and which of them could probably be a scam, so i believe it was just too much work and best to stop it for the sake of the forum.
True, funding isn't a problem for the forum, as theymos has said so many times, according to him the forum has a large amount in reserves, so there is no need for more funding, for now.

I don't think it will give a big change.

People who want to sell their service/product or buyer who want to looking for specific service/product are not only post in this forum, they also spread it to other social medias, forums and freelance sites.

Yeah there's nothing bad at all to improve the site or create a new project for marketplace, it just... the administrators don't want to.

I think the forum doesnt want the responsability of manage a wallet, if a user get scammed or his account gets hacked then they will blame the forum and will try to recover their coins directly with support.

Not having a store with payments system is a good way to avoid a lot of problems for the staff and for the forum.

Because it's not as easy to make it, as you think.
First there can be many issues with worldwide regulations, and there should be someone dedicated to work on for this and he has to be constantly available.
Another problem is potential scam, as we don't have them enough, and there is also danger of personal information getting leaked in attacks.  
I would not like to have one website that collects all information for bitcointalk members.

That's a double-edged sword. You are only considering the positives, neglecting the negatives. I am not going to comment on the satoshi created this forum part because it's not important for this discussion. But for the sake of argument, let's go with that notion that this is satoshi's forum. If you get scammed on Bitcointalk it wouldn't look good. You would have satoshi's forum and Bitcointalk be called a scam.

Why would I want to pay 15% or 5% to eBay and BItcointalk if I can purchase what I want with 0% fees or get a forum escrow involved and pay 1% commission if I don't trust the seller?

I know what you were trying to say, but still, this isn't a decentralized forum. Theymos governs it together with his staff. We didn't appoint him and we can't fire him. He can ban us. Him and his staff decide the rules of Bitcointalk. We don't have a say in it and have to respect them. theymos banned mixer advertisements some time ago. If you try to advertise a mixer now, you will be punished for it. The forum can be taken down and we all know it. None of this is decentralization.

Someone should create this.

Yes i understand and know that this forum is centralized and controlled by the forum admins but if they start thier online shpp, that will also have to be managed by the forum admins and this will add to their responsibility.

Currently, the Signature campaigns that are on the forum, they are not run by the forum admins but by different managers or project owners themselves. So I was talking about decentralisation in this way. We still have the Goods sections where people can sell things but again, that is not offered by the forum themselves just like Signature campaigns.

The forum doesn’t need all of that, if it was necessary earlier it would have been done by now. When everything is in one place it’s better so as not to attract the vigilance of some outside body. And the last time I heard, the forum has enough money to cater for itself and won’t need all those service to bring money to the forum again.

Besides, the forum is currently handled by well experienced and professional administrators like Theymos. He is vast in this and I'm sure he knows the advantages and disadvantages tied to creating online shopping apps for the forum And I'm sure the dangers will be more hence the reason why the forum marketplace remains where it is today. While some people talked about the possibility of that kind of platform being exposed to more scams, I don't even think that's an issue because Theymos is as capable. But that will also give room to phishers among other things. In the end, the decision lies in the hands of the administrators.

@AlphaBoy maybe time to lock this thread?  It's just become signature spam.

I know, I can't delete it.

You should lock the topic, not try to delete it, locking it would mean no one can post in the topic anymore, unless you decide to unlock it sometime later. To lock your topic, simply scroll down and look towards the lower left, you'll sell 'lock topic', click on it to lock it.

The idea is great but before we create an online shop, we at least need a mobile app and brand new web design. None of this is going to happen, theymos leaves forum the way it was and the way it is now. He will only make minor updates to keep the forum secure and add some very basic features if necessary. Theymos clearly stated that he isn't interested in making money from this forum because he already has more than enough, this is his vision.

Also, it won't be easy for theymos to create a crypto online shop because he is in the USA and he has to meet the demand of regulations, it's not as easy as it sounds, especially when the marketplace is worldwide and operates from the USA. Btw anyone can create a crypto marketplace and promote via various channels, including signature campaigns on this forum.