Bitcoin Forum

This week-end, soon after a series of bearish posts on the forum, the USD/BTC exchange rate dropped sudenly from 20 to 11.
Some participants seeing a relation betwen these events called the bears spammers, and asked for urgent action to moderate the forum.
Very quickly, an anti-spammer policy was put in place and enforced hastedly without notice (I won't comment any further as I already expressed my opinion on the subject).
Soon after the policy was set, the exchange rate recovered promptly.

Simultaneity does not mean causality, and indeed this could be a mere coincidence.
But I strongly doubt that a 50% drop and recovery in exchange rate can be attributed to natural volatility.

This suggests that there is a strong correlation between the mood on this forum, and the USD/BTC exchange rate.
A bullish mood tends to make the exchange rate climb, and a bearish mood tend to make it drop.
This may sound like a tautology to many, but think about what it means...

There have been endless discussions on this forum about the threat that too large pools like deepbit are posing to the Bitcoin network.
But what about the treat that too large communities like this one is posing the the Bitcoin economy?

Unlike other currencies, Bitcoin is decentralized, and centralized entities like pools are a threat.
But unlike other economies that are decentralized, the Bitcoin economy is centralized... HERE.

This may not affect Bitcoin as a network, but it is a major threat to the Bitcoin economy.
A forum is way too easy to manipulate either way, and there is too much money at stake to expect that this weakness won't be exploited.
Actually, I think it is already being exploited.

Let's face it: Bitcoin.org has grown too big and too influent.
It needs to fork.

The forums need to be deleted and/or moved elsewhere.

Be careful what you wish for.

Only a fraction of buyers and sellers ever set foot in the forum, and a majority of forum goers aren't stupid enough to base their investments on what someone says over the internet. The recovery was going to happen anyway, and the sell off seems to have been mainly perpetrated by one person with a lot of bitcoins cashing in. It has nothing to do with forum rules. The price definitely started climbing before the newbie forum was put up.

And furthermore, quit being silly.

Do you have some specific ideas beyond "it needs to fork?". I think it's already clear to everyone that the forum is growing out of bounds, but "making the forum distributed" isn't that simple.

A distributed forum-like protocol would be NNTP, but I don't think that will be adopted as it is not very accessible, many people don't know how to use it.

Another option would be to drop all chatter from the main Bitcoin forum and limit it strictly to development talk only.

MTgox is still a very shallow market. It doesn't take much panic to move the markets considerably. I worry about starting a boulder rolling  and not being able to stop it.

Didn't that happen yesterday when BTC was trading at 10$?

23.27$ as I write this.

A small pool of investors is manipulating this market's shallow froth to tremendous gain. The boulder looks like its on strings.

I'm just not sure I buy that conspiracy theory. Maybe I'm wrong, but I just don't think the market is 'dancing to the stings' of some people trying to make a profit.

there's a huge difference between a 'bearish mood' and people making shit posts all over the forums who aren't even a part of the bitcoin community.

There should absolutely be a good number of mods and no thread starting w\ new accounts.  Anandtech forums are moderated very well.  I can guaruntee that if I go over and make a troll thread, it will likely be locked/ closed in under 10 minutes.

Freequent, you need to chill man!  8)

Is it possible that this forum is capable of swaying the market and makin some money by locking threads, deleting posts, removing accounts etc..? OF COURSE!

But think about it, nobody pays to use the forum, these people deserve to make a couple extra coins for everything they do for us, if you don't like it then go use another forum, don't use a forum, or go cry to mother about how people in power are using their power to make a little profit.

But at any rate, have a little faith, don't think so much, and grow up!

You need to learn to read posts objectively.
I haven't suggested that the threat I am talking about has anything to do with the people who are running this forum.
Why do you think I mentionned Deepbit? Because I am making a comparition that you seem to have missed completely.

Deepbit is dangerous, everybody knows it, everybody talks about it.
But Deepbit is not dangerous because of Tycho.
Deepbit is dangerous because it is controlling enough computational power to take over the block chain.
If Deepbit get hacked, or seized by some external player, the consequences could be devastating for the bitcoin network.
Now, telling that deepbit has grown too big and is becoming dangerous does not preclude trusting Tycho, appreciating his service, or recognizing that he deserves his earnings.

Same problem with Bitcoin.org, not at the level of the network, but at the level of the economy.
Bitcoin.org is playing the multiple roles of incubator, steering commity, standardization commitee, foundation, mass media, chamber of trade, information repository, corporation of workers, financial advisor etc.. The whole economy is steming from this forum, and there is very little that happens in the world of bitcoin that is not strongly related to someone here.
Bitcoin.org is a one-stop shop for successfully social engineering the whole bitcoin economy.
Now, telling that bitcoin.org has grown too big and is becoming dangerous does not preclude trusting the board operators, appreciating their service, or recognizing that they deserve their earnings.

Bitcoin.org is dangerous and needs to downsize like deebit is dangerous and needs to downsize.

allright, yeah I get this. I totally understand the risk of deepbit being to large for the reasons you mentioned, even with all trust issues aside, which I think the trust aspect should not be tossed aside so easily.


I, at times play devils advocate to get a deeper explanation, so if I came off as harsh that is why. I FULLY agree that the effect this forum has on the economy is enormous and potentially very dangerous, however I fail to see how the risks you speak of concerning deepbit(hacks mainly), concern the forum. Could a hack of the forum really cause that much disruption? people would scatter to new places and still be in touch and communication would continue, if anything it may be good since we would probably be more diverse(I honestly would not be surprised if the hack came from a pro bitcoiner afraid of the harm this site could do). My problem with the forum is the fact that it is moderated and manipulated by people who themselves have motives. I think it was no oversight that even this post was shoved into a dusty corner as unapealing as 'META' because the rulers here didn't want a thread like this dancing around on the main page, because they very likely are enjoying their captainhood of grand central. This is what I think is dangerous, we totally should totally diversify IMHO. that said, bitcoinforums.net has an amazing setup and great people, you should come over there sometime. The creators of firstbit are over there and one is the admin. my name there is bitcoinewbie, that was my name here but it got banned for speaking out on the noob jail saturday night, that was when I begin to get scared of how much power this place has.