Bitcoin Forum

As a newbie I've been browsing several interesting topics here, some really old. In several posts, amounts in BTC are mentioned (like "My bitcoin digital casino only allows deposits of max BTC50).

It would be nice to be able to quickly lookup the $/BTC at each post's date, perhaps by hovering over the post date.

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Update

I made a quick demo, try it out:
https://ztt.se/test:bct_pdq/index.php?topic=92.20 (https://ztt.se/test:bct_pdq/index.php?topic=92.20)

Any subpage works, just replace bitcointalk.org with ztt.se/test:bct_pdq in the URL.

The <title> html tag (to show hover text) in the forum date div is already used (to show Last edit date), and anyway it's not always clear how to hover on touch devices, so I resorted to explicitly append the dollar quote to the date, in green.

Check out topic number five, where Satoshi welcomes users to this forum (1, 2, and 4 exist in the staff forum; 3 was permanently deleted at some point because it contained Satoshi's real name and address (https://ztt.se/test:bct_pdq/index.php?topic=5.msg1026145#msg1026145)):
https://ztt.se/test:bct_pdq/index.php?topic=5 (https://ztt.se/test:bct_pdq/index.php?topic=5)

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User profiles

The demo appends historical quotes to any date (if it's alone in its div), so it works on user profiles as well:
https://ztt.se/test:bct_pdq/index.php?action=profile;u=897509 (https://ztt.se/test:bct_pdq/index.php?action=profile;u=897509)

So what you are saying is that when you use BTC in your comment, forum should take a snapshot from the market price and save it? What if I edit my post after 2 years, which price should be shown, the first post or the edited post?
Good luck convincing theymos aka The Boss.

Much simpler: Regardless of post contents, when hovering over the post timestamp, show that timestamp's btc market value (eg $/BTC). No need to scan post content, no need to save anything. Historical market values are readily available, just look up the date we're hovering over.


Good point, didn't think of that. The first I think, since I first missed this functionality when I read old posts; if the edit date is used, a recent edit wouldn't give me the historical context I missed.


Thanks  :D

That's interesting, but won't work in the current forum software unless someone make a browser plugin for it. The idea is to show the BTC price when hovered the post with API when a BTC tag is detected to a post based on the post's timestamp.

On the other hand, you can manually check the price by looking CMC with the post's timestamp.

It's a funky idea, but I'm not sure this would be useful for the vast majority of users, and would just be extra clutter. The minority that would benefit from something like this could probably search this up themselves.

I don't think it would be too much work to implement, but I'm not convinced by the usefulness of it. It's fairly easy to search this information up yourself, and while it might seem lightweight, we've already had to disable certain features of the forum to avoid downtime, so adding features like this which has to query from another source, can both be exploited due to relying on that third party, but also does add some overhead to the resources.

I was thinking this myself. I don't think the forum would be able to handle something like that either - it has to do recounts every few weeks and those change numbers for older members quite a lot - I reckon there'll be a lot of errors with a system like that that just makes it too hard to edit (ie bitcoin is $0 on 1st January 2022 because the api broke).

APIs that do fiat conversions in wallets also get broken quite a bit too so I think that'd happen here - it's also a lot easier to get multiple reliable sources to find the value of bitcoin from a search engine (and they'll have native currencies too).

Not their obligation to keep you updated on the price of bitcoin so better grab coinmarketcap and see the bitcoin price time to time.

Their duty is to maintain the forum and not to spoil lazy brats.

Basically, constantly fetching the values, and presenting that. It could even potentially slow down the responsiveness of the page if it's rather resource heavy. Depends on how it would be implemented. I haven't played around with too many APIs when it comes to fetch the values of Bitcoin. I suspect if there's as many problems as you suggest, it's likely coming from the source as well as how it's been implemented in the wallets. It just seems like a idea which would be useful for a very select few, and likely wouldn't offer too much to the vast majority of the forum. I can see maybe some usefulness to it, but personally I'd probably never use it.

Got you, though my guess is that many users on this forum actually are quite select  ;D
This post from theymos (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=309785.msg3333597#msg3333597) is what first prompted me to check a historical BTC quote. I'm sure many of you legends know the value of 6000+ BTC in 2013, but remember I'm a newbie.

I actually vaguely remember something about the infamous pizzas, from when it happened I mean, but I'll be darned if I can remember exactly which year it was, or how many coins were paid.

(I looked it up; I'm sure most of you already know this, but it was May 2010 when Laszlo Hanets bought two Jacksonville pizzas for 10,000 BTC. Two months earlier, user "SmokeTooMuch" auctioned 10,000 BTC for $50 but no buyer was found.)


You're right of course, it depends on how it'd be implemented.

However, assuming a local cache of the historical quotes (some 4500 day entries since 2010-07-17, a couple of KiB; this could be updated once a day or so), even a naive serverside implementation would be very lightweight; a simple SELECT extension in the post loop and a tiny attribute addition to the date HTML (eg title='$23,133').

In fact, I could even do it externally by proxy with little effort, even though this would incur several magnitudes of more overhead: for starters, my external proxy server would have to fetch the page from a real bitcointalk server, so I'll always be slower, even without modifications. Since I'm a single end-point, I'm most likely also rate-limited on the transport level. And of course I'd have to decrypt and re-encrypt since it's SSL. Also, instead of a puny addition to an existing post loop using a hopefully optimised DB engine, I'd have to parse and modify end-formated http data (150 KiB for this small topic before I post this).

It's absolutely possible (https://ztt.se/test:bct_pdq1/index.php?topic=309785.msg3333597#msg3333597) though, with only a modest time delay IMHO (hover over any post date to see that date's BTC price in dollars).

Bitcoin price ticker (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bitcoin-price-ticker/bgddejjmhilkdllbakkgddjodommlimc?hl=en) extension.

Some past requests

• Automatic BTC price indication on Bitcointalk threads (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5380572.0)
• Adding bitcoin price ticker. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5313300.0)
• Add real-time Bitcoin price in the forum. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5179850.0)
• Bitcoin Price Ticker on Forum Top (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1136223.0)
• A Bitcoin Price Ticker (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=352857.0)
• Bitcoin Price in banner of bitcointalk (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3477623.0)

From available extension, you will have to convert date time from Epoch format to human-readable format so let's check A guide to quoting posts in locked topics (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5204486.0)

Such great ideas can be implemented unofficially using either User-scripts or third party services.

User-Script:
If you are a developer, it will be easy for you to write a user-script code where once you click on the bitcoin price or the price next to the bitcoin symbol or any number, the script will take the date of the topic and then give you the bitcoin price at that time.

Third party apps like https://ninjastic.space:
You can ask @TryNinja to add this feature to ninjastic.space, and he may be do it if he has a free time

The challenges is that the price of Bitcoin in the first three years was not as easy as now, and I do not know if there is historical data for the price before 2011.

Partially you have it with small products from BlackHatCoiner (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2775483), there (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5380572.msg58943931#msg58943931)

Disadvantage:

• It shows the image with value of a bitcoin amount with current price, not with past price.
• So if you need to have it for today price of 10,000 BTC to buy 2 Pizzas, it serves you well.
• If you need something to show value of 10,000 BTC at the time of 2 pizzas deal, you will need something different, a modification of it maybe

Example for today value of 10000 BTC  :D
https://blackhatcoiner.com/?USDof=10000 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5366056.0)

If there is historical data, the code can easily be modified to show the price on a specific date, but it will not be able to fetch the date of the topic, meaning this solution is suitable for current and future topics, not in the past.

The only solution is a userscript to display the price at the time of topic created.
If there is demand for such scripts, I can try to write something. ;D

Off-topic: Are there really people who read old topics? they will be archived, except for specific topics.

Surely not the only, see my updated first post for an external server side demo solution.

A few at least, user xtraelv (https://ztt.se/test:bct_pdq/index.php?action=profile;u=897509) created a great topic The most iconic bitcointalk threads. History on Bitcointalk (https://ztt.se/test:bct_pdq/index.php?topic=4322078.0).

That's interesting idea.I don't think that it should be added to forum by theymos, after all, it's not very beneficial for forum users and question how many would use it. But it would be cool to add such feature to one of current Bitcointalk extensions.

Well, it's not same things that OP offered. In examples given by you people ask to real time Bitcoin price ticker and OP is talking about showing past prices.

This would be fun. Even having the bitcoin price next to the post date in each post would be cool. Imagine if you could see the bitcoin price at the time of every single post? Of course it is impractical due to the amount of resources this functionality would take, but still a fun idea to think about and visualize.

It is rather cool, try it out yourself: https://ztt.se/test:bct_pdq/index.php?topic=5436755

That is awesome. I guess it doesn't take as much resources as I thought. I suppose if you made it a SMF 1.x.x compatible modification and published it on simplemachines.org, Maybe there is a good chance that it could actually be implemented easily by theymos.

It's actually a live proxy.

I've disabled the login and register pages so that nobody accidentally tries to login.

Good idea :) Take a look at this thread (https://ztt.se/test:bct_pdq/index.php?topic=5431167.msg61688725#new)...I am not sure if it is just me though around 4/5 of the posts are not showing the price. I thought it might be after someone gives merit however it seems that there isn't a pattern to reason why it does that. My only thought is maybe after some consecutive posts of the same price it doesn't show? Or is the price added to the posts after some period of time?

Good find!

Posts with date Today don't get a price (because I look for real dates).

Maybe I should fix that. On the other hand, today's price can always be found top-right (because there's a date there).

Also check out some profiles; since I append the price to any date (which is alone in its div), they work to.

For instance, you seem to have registered when the price was a mere $329 :)
https://ztt.se/test:bct_pdq/index.php?action=profile;u=404695


You can take any real forum URL and replace "bitcointalk.org" with "ztt.se/test:bct_pdq".

Fixed, posts with date Today now also get a price (the XBX average from https://www.coindesk.com).