Bitcoin Forum

We know Bitcointalk is earning a few ten btc/month.
I wonder for a while, that income going to whom pocket? And why?

It all goes to satoshi to fund his drug habbit and Lamboghini collection.

Well, 15% goes to paying off shills like me.   ;)

The people involved in this forum earn money by running scam ads designed to defraud newcomers to Bitcoin.  Michael Marquardt (Theymos) gets the money and apparently pays some of the moderators.  However, they have several $million due to the appreciation of Bitcoin and the donations made from the early days.  I believe he stated that the funds are being saved in case they have legal expenses due to all the stuff they do which is highly questionable from a legal standpoint.

I don't think few million $ saves them when the govt caught them.

Why should it be up to the forum to determine which ads are for scams and which ones are legit? I can guarantee you that there was not conclusive evidence of most scams that were executed on here prior to the scam being brought to light. There is also likely some evidence of legit businesses of being scams prior to them earning a reputation.

I get the feeling that you want the forum to have a higher standard as to what they will accept as advertisers so the price to advertise will go down so you can advertise your own business

It is a matter of degree of what knowledge the web site has.  If you run a bunch of ads and one turns out to be a scam a web site would not be liable if they did not have knowledge beforehand.  If the web site knew the ads were designed to scam people and they went ahead and worked with the advertiser and ran the ads anyway then they are liable.  Often there is grey area which is why normal businesses set some sort of standard.

I don't generally buy advertising (with a few exceptions) and I would never send these guys any funds.  I also would not want to be associated with the ads running here.  In fact I won't run ads for any of the Bitcoin advertising services I have seen on web sites I operate because all the ones I had tried display highly questionable ads.  I recently tried one and the first ad that showed up was some kind of "Litecoin pharmacy" and I immediately stopped serving the ads.

It should be noted that most of the money is not controlled by theymos, and he pays himself less than most global moderators.

If you dislike bitcointalk, why come here at all?

Because much of the important information is posted here.  I think the developers and the Foundation should find a new place to post information and announcements.  The Foundation tries to distance themselves from this site in their discussion board they refer users here in the Bitcoin Core software.  Of course not all the developers are with the Foundation so you never really know where important stuff will be posted.  Even if I didn't use the site many new users come here and that causes a problem for Bitcoin as a whole.  Thousands of complaints and FTC action and fake banks that get hacked all over the news is not a good thing.  But, yes, many people have told me they stopped using this site because you have to sift through large amounts of useless posts to get to the important stuff. 

Do you have any actual evidence of this? You have implied and outright accused theymos several times of knowingly accepted money from people who were planning to scam however you have shown zero evidence that he knew of their intentions, nor have you shown any proof that conclusive evidence was even available prior to the scam taking place.

EDIT: if your accusations are true then it would be important for the community to know the truth about his dealings so the community can act accordingly. If you are unwilling (unable) to provide proof then you are just spreading FUD and lies around

Your foundation already have a discussion board here => https://bitcoinfoundation.org/forum/

If BitcoinTalk is so bad and U r so bored to read all the craps we post, why dont u find peace there ?

p.s. Some people from centralized society will never be able to cope up to the decentralized chaos. Their life is chained.

The FTC is collecting the proof as part of their enforcement action.  The information and complaints are all on this forum and on reddit.  What do you want to sit here and provide hundreds links because you want to pretend you don't know what happened?  Anyone following this forum over that time period saw what was happening.  It is true at first they would not know at first but after it went on for many months any reasonable business would have taken down the ads.  they put up some kind of stupid disclaimer instead.  Even if they didn't know at first they now know and they should return the money since they now know much if it was stolen. 

This is the same kind of corruption you see with entities like HSBC.  It is funny how the people here will make excuses for this forum while making all kinds of accusations of fraud with the traditional banking system.  You don't see people here trying to defend HSBC and demanding "proof."  This is big problem with Bitcoin.  People blindly support businesses because they are involved with Bitcoin.  I had similar complaints about Mt. Gox last year and the people like you dismissed it and look what happened.

Possible the proof you want will be collected by FinCEN concerning the fake bank (inputs.io/Coinlenders) that Theymos conspired to promote.  Maybe the FTC will expand their action to include all the money s[pent on ads here, maybe the IRS will look into whether taxes were paid on this business, and maybe the SEC will look into the fake companies Theymos prompted with the GLBSE thing. 

If some of the authorities, such as FinCEN for theymos

You have not been following, I am not a member of the Foundation because there are too many people like Theymos involved.  I would not want to be associated with those people. 

Further, this forum is not decentralized and it is not "chaos."  The only thing that is decentralized in Bitcoin is the consensus of the ledger and that is done by mining.  People who go around calling everything "decentralized" surrounding Bitcoin do not understand what it means.  This is also not "chaos," it is stupidity.   You are correct that many people are tied to centralization which is why so many Bitcoiners filed complaints with various centralized authorities such as the FTC and SEC over BFL, pirateat40, Mt. Gox, etc.

Your forgot to cite a source.

Neither this statement nor yourself will carry any kind of credibility until you can give a source.

I call this nothing more then FUD

Bitcointalk.org and Reddit.  Use Google.  There will be hundreds of threads dating back a couple of years.

sorry, it doesn't work that way. YOU have to provide the source

If there are "hundreds" of threads then why are you not able to post one link? Your claims are much too vague to use google to "confirm" what you are claiming.

Some of the people who are new maybe have an excuse to be a fanboy for this form but you have been around a long time so you know full well what has happened.  If you now claim you don't know what is going on then you are a scammer.  Here are few examples of the thousands of threads.  I started asking Bitcointalk to stop running the BFL ads more than 18 months ago.  Even if they didn't know it for sure it was scam back then everybody knows how so the money should be returned.  It seems everybody wants to make excuses so they can keep the stolen money.

This thread was from June 2013 about the BFL ads
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=224257.0

This is the fallout from theymos being involved in a phony investment scheme.  if you read through all this stuff you can see how delusional the people involved are.  I actually ended up buying bitcoin.me from that MPO-E guy (read his home page, what a nut).  It took almost 2 months to complete a deal that usually takes 2 days.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=115669.0

here is stuff about how theymos and TradeFortress promoted a fake bank that was "hacked"
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=326879.0


These are just 3 examples.  While a few people who commented are maybe new and didn't know about this stuff people like grue know all about it.  The scammers running Bitcointalk do the same thing as BFL staff.  They ridicule people who make complaints and then try to act like they don't know what is happening.  These people are scammers like you find in the traditional banking system except they are not as intelligent.

Here is grue promoting BFL.  As a "global moderator" here he probably got some of the stolen money and he probably doesn't want to give it back.  Give the money back grue.  One guy I met who was ripped off by BFL is disabled and he ran a Bitcoin meetup group.  I had asked Theymos and his gang to refund that guy and they won't answer.  People like grue and theymos are perfectly fine with ripping off Bitcoiners in wheelchairs. 

https://bitcointa.lk/threads/when-will-butterfly-labs-bfl-run-out-of-money.108680/page-2

Give the money back grue ...

hate to burst your bubble, but I wasn't staff when I posted that
https://web.archive.org/web/20130509133157/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=5797

Also, you're taking my quote way out of context. I was only claiming that BFL wasn't going to run out of money because of the recent preorders. Nowhere did I make any claim that they were legit, or I endorsed them.

You acted like you never heard of all these issues and now you have a different story.  I don't know who got the BFL ad money but whoever did should give it back.  BFL is in receivership so they can be contacted about distributing the funds to those that got ripped off.  Of course you guys probably won't pay it just like HSBC executives won't give back their bonuses.

so let me get this straight: because I wasn't criticizing BFL you want me to "give the money back", even though I wasn't staff when I made that statement and I didn't receive a satoshi from BFL. ::)

I said I don't know who got what but anyone who got some of the BFL ad money should give it back.  Don't you agree?

That is ridiculous. The forum does not moderate scams, end of discussion. If a company that is scamming is advertising on the forum then it is still up to users to do their due diligence about the company. Even though BFL was doing things that were less then ethical, their customers did eventually get what they paid for and some were able to ROI on their investment on BFL miners.

If the forum was to verify beyond any doubt that any advertiser was not a scam then they would not be able to have any advertisements at all.

A TV station or a newspaper will not verify the statements made in an advertisement that they receive money to publish, so why should the forum be any different?

You are just making up stuff up.  TV and newspapers all have standards and they reject ads on a regular basis.  You are correct in that a company is not liable for running ads that turn out to be fraudulent unless they conspire with that company to rip people off.  Nobody ever said anything about verifying adverters "less than ethical" or "verify beyond any doubt" or policing advertisers beyond what is reasonable.  I am talking about conspiring with companies to run ads for the purposes of ripping people off and to promote fake investment schemes and fake banks. 

Irrespective of the legal liability I am also saying the funds should be returned because that is the correct thing to do under the circumstances.  What is your argument for not returning the money?  Some newcomers tried to get involved in Bitcoin and it is their fault they were tricked by the people who run this site?  Is that how the self-proclaimed "Libertarians" here think?  Is that the replacement for the current "corrupt" financial system?

At the time the ads were placed BFL was delivering miners to their customers. Yes they had massive delays but there was not solid evidence they were mining for longer then they needed to with customer machines. Also the FTC only alleges that BFL was mining for two days with each customer machine which is much less then the total time of delays, so the majority of the delays in shipment was not due to fraud.

The media does reject advertisements occasionally however there is a very high threshold to reject an ad, and BFL came nowhere near this threshold.

Who are you suggesting the money be returned to? BFL? Have you been buying up customer orders at a discount hoping to be able to cash in on potential refunds from BFL?

The only "evidence" that you presented is that someone was asking for the forum to stop running BFL ads, this proves nothing. At the time there was not enough evidence to suggest that BFL was truly a scam, although many people though it was. Your next thread only proved that theymos held money on behalf of GBLSE which also proves nothing. I forget what the third thread was about but also nothing

Right, this has nothing to do with "libertarianism," it is about scammers trying to get away with stuff without getting caught. 

That is an interesting idea.  Someone could buy up BFL, inputs.io and GLBSE accounts and then have standing to sue some of the entities involved.