You can make uninteligent speculation here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=57.0

Promotions and spam for hundreds of coins that the Bitcoin forums has to deal with, despite it being a Bitcoin forum and not a *insert coin* forum.


Only if we are lucky. If Bitcoin can be killed by removing Alt Coin giveaways from an unaffiliated forum, its best that we lose it now.

The lock was a warning. Bans would be had it not been a warning, which wouldn't be done because we can't penalize you for things you did before it was a rule.

Yesterday. You are still allowed to post giveaway threads that ask participants to post in a thread on their own forums, however the giveaway spam accounted for far too much unwanted spam here.

This for example is perfectly ok: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=435332.0

But no, giveaway threads as they were before will not be coming back.

This is a perfect example of what is fine with the new giveaway rules. Thank you very much 

The volume of Giveaway spam is literally thousands of times greater than the Bitcoin giveaways in the games and rounds section. I don't know why people are fighting me on this one, I've been the alt coin mod for over a year, if anyone has a soft spot for alts its me, but I'm just getting insanely frustrated that people are willing to keep up this argument. Rather than, ok if we have to get rid of Giveaways to keep the Alt Coin section alright. People are fighting me on it, saying, no I would like to keep giveaways, while doing so losing the entire Alt Coin section, Giveaways included...

This is a Bitcoin forum. The Alt Coin section is so that you can post a few important things for your coin, and then direct the rest of the traffic to your own forum. I don't see whats so evil about not being happy about having alt coin conversation overwhelming everything else. There is a solution, and its one that we have wanted all along. Compile extensive information about your coins, on their own forums.

People don't seem to understand. Essentially we are saying, we don't want your coin spam here. Take it to your own forums, Bitcointalk doesn't cater to thousands of threads about *insert coin*. We aren't motivated to keep the conversation here, so a vote wont do anything, we are trying to get you to take your conversations elsewhere.

People that are saying, FIX IT OR WE WILL LEAVE! thats kind of our intentions. Obviously we don't want people to leave the bitcoin discussion here, but we do want you to take the majority of your altcoin discussion elsewhere. This is Bitcointalk, it can't handle the alt coin discussion volume for 600 different coins, so we are asking that you take it to your own forums.

KeyserSozeMC, we are trying to get people to do exactly what you are doing. Creating your own forums for giveaways like you are doing, I actually really appreciate it.

The main point here that is irritating that people are ignoring, if we don't cut down the post spam, IE hundreds of thousands of posts of people just pasting their addresses, we will lose the entire section. I for one would like to keep the Alt Currency section, however people seem to be ignoring the fact that creating a giveaway subforum wont help. We want the excess spam off of Bitcointalk, not just jammed in a different corner.

I follow you, but what people don't seem to understand, is that Bitcointalk encourages people to go to their own forums, we outright say that this is not the place for your to post every detail about your coin. In the most blunt possible way of saying it, is we want people to go away to their own forums.

This is primarily a Bitcoin forum, that much we are on agreement with. The Alt Currency section was made to be a place to isolate the maybe 100 alt currency threads that there were at the time of creation of the board. It was not designed to handle this much volume, nor did we plan for it, or want it to happen. Everytime someone posts, it adds that post about some Alt Coin that 99.5% of the forums aren't interested in to the recently posted lists etc, so people that are looking for new information about something Bitcoin related on that list are getting drowned out by *insert day old coin name*

Having a giveaway subforum does not help. We don't want to reorganize giveaway threads, we want them to be hosted on forums dedicated to other coins. Its not our job to handle masses and masses of Alt coin information, if someone wants to know more about their own coin, they should go to their own coin's forum. Theres nothing wrong with an announcement thread and a bit of discussion, however with the 600+ Alt coins (that I know of) there really isn't room here, and there is no desire to accomodate it.

If we want to keep the alt coin section at all, we have to make some changes, and we are hoping that removing the giveaway threads will help. We have measures in place to keep the amount of post spam to a minimum, but there are thousands of posts in Alt coin giveaway threads over very short periods of time. Alt Coin giveaway threads are actually the exception, because we wouldn't allow Bitcoin giveaway threads like these anywhere else on the forum. Even the ones in games and rounds pale in comparison.

Thats the next plan if this doesn't help.


Could be as soon as today if I can't get things straightened up.

You would be surprised by how many reports the Alt Currency section generates per day, far more than the rest of the entire forum combined. I'd say about 200-300 on a non busy day, but I've seen 1,000+ on heavy traffic days. At 30 seconds to finish an action on reports that dont involve reading a page of context to decide a report's validity, you are looking at a minimum of an hour and a half worth of Alt Coin reports to deal with, thats like on a Sunday when there isn't much traffic. 3-4 hours isn't uncommon, and when dogecoin was first released it was far more than that. Its not laziness, its trying to remove spam, not content in general. Having an Alt Coin Giveaway subforum doesn't fix the problem, it just shifts the spam to another subforum. The fact of the matter is that there is just too much content to be held on the Bitcoins forums. The intent was not to host alt coin conversation here; like I keep saying, it was to help direct people to their own forums.

Thats the next step if things continue to get out of hand.

Disagreements about topics that people have a financial stake in creates conflict. If you have a huge amount of money in some new risky stock, and everyone is telling you that the company is a scam and is going to disappear, you are going to get defensive.

Wow, only 10 people did not read the OP completely, I'm actually surprised 

Check the meta section, there is far more request for the Alt Coin section to be eliminated all together because of things like how the Alt Coin section spams up the recent posts lists, and spreads out into the other sections, primarily Bitcoin mining/hardware, the economy sections, and the newbie section. There is a very very simple solution that has been recommended the entire time. Use your own coin's forum primarily, and the Alt coin section here as a secondary source. Giveaway threads are restricted to games and rounds for the rest of the forum so that they don't take away from the rest of the forum. Giveaway threads in the Alt coin section gum up the works.


Its the active ones that are providing the spam. People should post their coin announcements here, to get attention and lead people to their own forums where they can have as many giveaways as they like.

I agree with the decision, please, the point of the Alt Coin section of Bitcointalk was so that you could have basic conversation about whatever coins you wanted here. Things like in depth coin support and discussion, and giveaways are far better off on their own respective coin's forum. Its getting way out of control here, and we thought that just allowing for a little bit organization would help, but the effects of incentivized posting is spamming the forum, and its spilling over to the rest of the boards.


Bitcoin forum, people donated for a Bitcoin forum. Many of those people want Alt Coins gone entirely from Bitcointalk. The Altcoin section was made essentially as an off topic section, to group all non bitcoin crypto currencies in one place that is out of the way from the Bitcoin discussion. The spam is overwhelming the entire forum.

Yes, all three are unredeemed.

The subforums in the Altcoin section were a favor to me by Theymos, they don't mean that this is now Crypto Currency Talk.

Coming from the guy who sticks up for the alt coin section more than anyone else, it irritates the hell out of me when Theymos throws us a bone, and people decide to ask for more.

The Alternate Currencies section is all you get, its intention is so that you can have BASIC conversation about Alt Currencies, and then you can have your more in depth conversation at your own respective forums. You get sub forums so that people requesting hardware help aren't flooded by giveaway and announcement threads. This kind of stupidness is what brings up the question, "Should we remove the Alternate Currencies section altogether?" I hope the answer is no, but people that are trying to convert the Bitcoin users here into Altcoin users, rather than just staying in your own section is what irritates people and ruins it for all of us.

The people are here at Bitcointalk for Bitcoins, if you want to have a conversation about *insert coin name* I doubt anyone would mind if you keep it out of their way, say in a secluded Alternate Currencies section. But then you get in their faces with it anyway, and they get mad and its ruined for everyone that wants to partake in Alt Coin conversations.

Ok, found my camera USB cable, and I uploaded photos of the 2013 Casascius coins. They are both the same size, but they have two different types of Airtites protecting them, so the all silver one looks larger.

Last unit sold to nitehawk via local pickup.

Its a collectors thing. Casascius is the first producer of Physical Bitcoins, he is currently not producing more due to legal issues, so he may not be able to produce more, and most of all, Its a collectors thing 

There are 1 Oz gold coins valued at about $1250 strictly on metal value, but are worth thousands of times the value of their metal, due to the numismatic side of it. Same applies with these coins, some people think they will be worth tons of money in the future as some of the earliest Bitcoin memorabila, there are some people who think they their premium will continue to scale, there are some people who want to diversify their assets, and there are just some people that think they are pretty.

All that matters is that there is a market for them, and people are willing to pay 2.5-3 BTC for them at this moment. You should see some of the other coins, the 2012 10 BTC Silver Casascius coin is actively selling for >25 BTC

East Coast U.S (Maryland)