Consider my post demand in and of itself.  The market isn't somebody else, it's us, paying attention to what needs to be done.  The lack of business-safe zones on the official project forums isn't a gap that can be appropriately filled elsewhere, and it's most assuredly having an impact.

It's a bit unfair to pick on anyone since there's no current standard of etiquette that people are requested to adhere to, but I think it would be fair to say that posts like these are NSFW (posters are clearly joking, and I just grabbed it from a search, but this is plenty to get an employee in trouble if they accidentally click on it at work).

I've also heard some unconfirmed reports that the whole forums are being auto-blocked by some filtering software because of NSFW content (anyone have better details on that btw?).

Business in bitcoins is finally starting to take off, but no matter which way you look at it these forums are anything but professional and do not reflect the quality standards of a leading open source community.  For those of us trying to build serious BitCoin projects, they're quite frankly an embarrassment.  I would never send a potential business contact here, and as a mod I can also testify to the increasing complaints regarding language, thread hijacking, etc. for which there are no good guidelines against which to moderate.

I consider this all to be just normal growing pains, and I'm not interested in executively censoring opinions or personalities I disagree with.  But we need to self-organise things a little so that people can still talk about whatever they want without making the forums useless for people unwilling to wade through a lot of noise to find the signal, like just about anybody who considers their time valuable (no offense to anyone who spends as much time here as I do).

I propose that we designate several of the main boards as "business etiquette" zones, and then if necessary create additional boards for bitcoin-related (and thus not off-topic) discussions which are personal/philosophical/political or anything else that's out of place in a professional setting.

Too many people out there think BitCoin is a joke, and it's time to step up the game by acting like the $50 million technology BitCoin is.

This is grossly off-topic.  The word "bitcoin" doesn't even appear except as a shout-out on the very last line.

@Dayfall people who mined or bought coins early helped BitCoin stay alive when nobody knew if it would succeed.  Like most investments that increase in value, their reward comes from some combination of luck and foresight.  If it had been obvious from the beginning that bitcoins would be as successful as they are now, then the price would have shot to 7$ right away (and the difficulty to 400000).  Instead, it took two years to get there, because that outcome wasn't at all obvious until it actually happened.  Looking back it might seem like free money, but at the time they had just as much risk of losing everything they put in.

When I first heard about BitCoin there wasn't much information available, they were trading at only a couple cents a bitcoin, and I didn't think it would amount to anything.  It wasn't until the end of 2010 when someone referred me to BitcoinMe.com that I ended up digging into the details and realising that the technology could really work.  By then the community had grown larger, the value had risen, and people were finally starting to accept bitcoins for business, so I bought some bitcoins, started using them, started accepting them for my business, and also started processing transactions for the network.  But if I had invested the same amount of time and money when I first heard about it, I would have made thousands of dollars.  The reason other people did instead of me is that they understood, believed, and/or risked when I didn't.  So I think that's fair.  Without them, things never would have gotten to the point where I believed BitCoin would work.  And without people like me, things wouldn't have gotten to the point that they're at now.  Money needs to be widely used before it's useful for anything, so early adopters are serving a very critical role.  And don't forget that less than a third of the total bitcoins have entered circulation--there's still plenty of time to be an early adopter!

The OP currently says "People who have made money off of buying and/or selling bitcoins are either lucky or have correctly predicted an increase in demand for them."  I think that talking more about people who have made money would detract from the "BitCoin is not designed as an investment" message that people are supposed to take away.  But as noted I do plan an expansion of the "free money" idea in general under a new thread.  One of the reasons work is going more slowly is that's it's unclear to me if the community considers these threads a priority.  Lately, for example, I've been getting more tips from regular posts than from the New to BitCoin? thread (1 tip) and this one (0); so work on these threads tends to sit a little bit lower in my very large stack than it might if I had a more solid indication that people find these threads important.  If there aren't 20 people who can put .05 btc toward saying "please do more of this" then this is really nothing more than a pet project of mine.  Whereas if the community is really behind me I would be willing to put in more than just spare time here and there.

Everyone okay if I wipe out this thread now?

The reason #2 is labelled "legal" is that the cash analogy is directed only at questions of legality and potential abuse, where it is very nearly perfect.  But the threads I am working on here are definitely intended to explain BitCoin in general much more effectively.  If you'd like to support the work, feel free to help out and/or tip the linked post--number of tips especially (more than than the value of them) lets me know people are taking these efforts seriously and consider them worthwhile; it also helps me to (mildly) justify the amount of time I take away from my business to work on this.

Lol, knew I wouldn't have to wait too long.  Goatpig's right about this being off-topic though.  Let's definitely continue this in meta, because I believe forum image is a big problem for BitCoin right now.

Alright all, this was fun while it lasted but we don't want people to come in here and get confused.  Please edit your posts to be more clear, or alternatively I can insert my own commentary to the OP and lock the thread.

My response that drew attention to the same issue you're concerned with by replying like this,


then warning that


and splitting his comments out of the stickied, high-visibility thread?  Put the gun down, gene:  we're on the same team.

Experience has just taught me that sometimes pointing out the larger issues has a stronger long-term effect than ending up in a flame war, and in this particular case I had recently made my position clear in other threads.  Compare, for example with this one.  I've also started a whole thread on the topic to demonstrate where I stand on these things.

But as a moderator I don't get to just make up the rules--there needs to be a community consensus first, or actions like deleting posts (which is the only further thing I could have done) will be treated as censorship and routed around.  Start a thread in meta with your ideas for new forum guidelines and I'll fully back you (Gavin probably would too), but the community has to be on board before the standard of moderation changes.  As it is there was a tooth and nail fight to ban illegal goods, but now (as you might not know because the mods are pretty fast at it) we regularly remove posts that sell drugs, credit card numbers, etc.  Consensus building is hard work--you can't just start wiping things out left and right (as I'm sure people who think I'm being too hard-line will reply next.  Ever hear that proverb that the job of a bridge is to get walked on from both sides?).

Fascinating stuff, Rob!  I'll have to read more of it when I get a chance.   I agree that with some careful implementation BitCoin could have incredibly powerful economic consequences.  But something tells me there's still a lot of hard work to be done to get there, so I'm diving in!

You're right, I didn't read the whole thread.  I'm sometimes guilty of skimming or just reading first and last pages since there is so much content on the forums these days--thank you for calling me on it.  But I still think the post could have been interacted with in a more useful way.  First, wonder about the psychology that drove both the original author to write the piece and then someone else to come here and post it.  Then, once the original source is identified, try to compose an effective reply or even just take the opportunity as a community to examine why these types of reactions are so common, and how we might be able to proactively address them.  There's nothing wrong with people having a lot of time on their hands, but if they apply themselves productively here BitCoin could really stand to benefit.


I think you're going a little too conspiracy theory here.  I seriously doubt that anyone with money to spend on destroying bitcoin would spend it producing internet forum posts.  It seems a lot more likely that these types of responses simply reflect either people's initial impressions or other people's viewpoints that they were exposed to.  The pretty clear lesson here is that BitCoin has a huge image problem, and it's well worth addressing it.  Even if some posters were "g-men", they're not faceless drones.  What better opportunity could you have to engage someone who is in a position to have a crucial impact on BitCoin's future?  It's time to put down the novels and political rhetoric, and start interacting with other human beings.  Such as me:  you're seriously interpreting anything I've done on these forums as a call for censorship and division?  Be real here.



Ouch, gene.  I hope I'm not meant to take this personally!

Well, you can help get the BitCoin economy rolling and show your support for the comic at the same time by tipping some of them there; you'll be sending a message loud and clear to both an illustrator and a translator (not to mention me!) that people can do real work in exchange for bitcoins.  Personally, I think it's clear that speculation alone isn't enough to run a currency on.  So we will see some kind of a crash or backlash if speculation wildly outpaces actual economic growth.  Just remember to stick around and get back to the real work of economy building when that happens.  Rome wasn't built in a day!

Welcome here!  This is a perfectly good place to ask these kinds of questions.


Bitcoins vary in value according to supply and demand.  But if you mean will 21 million bitcoins be enough for global-level trade, then the answer is almost certainly yes.  As they currently stand bitcoins can be subdivided down to the eighth decimal place so that, as an example, even if the entire present-day U.S. economy ran solely on bitcoins, it would still be practical to buy small items with 0.00000001 btc.  Long before bitcoins would ever run into this problem, however, they could be easily "upgraded" to allow even smaller denominations.  So for all practical purposes bitcoins are infinitely divisible.  But it's unlikely that bitcoins will ever be the only currency or means of exchange on the planet.  Does this answer your question?


Are you saying that you plan not to pay taxes on bitcoin transactions or income?  Bitcoins are very much like cash:  even if your transactions aren't centrally stored somewhere, you are still expected to pay taxes.  Cash is used extensively to try and avoid taxes, so it's likely that bitcoins can be used for that as well.  But in both cases you're going to have to explain to the IRS agent where the money came from to buy your new yacht.  Trying to avoid taxes by using bitcoin is both illegal and ill-advised.

To answer your second question, governments have not clamped down on bitcoins already because they haven't needed to.  If bitcoins start to be used to fund illegal activities, launder money, evade taxes, etc. then they will simply pursue the people who do these things as they would if these things were being done with cash, gold, or expensive art.  It would be fairly impractical to shut down the BitCoin network itself, as it doesn't appear to be illegal in most countries, and has no central point where it could be blocked or turned off.  Consider the example of another peer to peer technology:  file-sharing.  P2P file-sharing has enabled activities that some governments have considered harmful, and so both civil and criminal prosecution has been used against companies or individuals participating in them.  But there's no way to shut down P2P file-sharing itself, and it would be ridiculous to make file-sharing technology illegal when it has so many legitimate uses.  Similarly, unless BitCoin devolves into some sort of black market crime tool, it won't get shut down.  But if people use it to break laws, you can be certain governments will prosecute them--both individuals and organisations.


Yes, if I understand you correctly.


In theory, yes.  In reality, however, people tend to use different tools for different things so that they can take advantage of contrasting features.  So it's highly likely that BitCoin will only ever be one of many tools for measuring and transferring value.  Just like many people use cash, credit cards, and PayPal, there will probably be many different products that offer different features and services.  It's conceivable that all of these could end up being built on BitCoin in a similar way to how many world currencies are based on the U.S. Dollar, but we're a long way off from that happening so that would be pure speculation.


You're very welcome.  I hope my answers were helpful--feel free to ask or explain more if you need to.

This is precisely the motivation behind this particular comic.  Until we can get the BitCoin economy rolling, the use of bitcoins for speculation is making it less useful for other things.

If you're careful not to take the post too personally, I think the main thing to note is that this person took the time to type out some detailed and reasonably well-expressed thoughts, as compared to people who just spew "OMG this is a Ponzi scam!!!".  I realise that in highly technical communities like ours soft skills aren't heavily emphasised to begin with, but I personally think there is a lot of low-lying fruit here consisting of people that could fairly easily converted to formidable allies with just a little TLC.

And if I might make a suggestion; while all votes are useful, gavin's python question in particular would make a good one.

Just out of curiousity, has anyone else paused to consider why this person posted only once and then left?  I'd have to say that as a community we're not exactly welcoming to newcomers.  What exactly is it that is accomplished by yelling loudly enough at someone that they go away, even if we do think they were wrong?  It seems to me that engaging this person more delicately would have resulted in a fairly worthwhile conversation.  Just my .02 btc.

Just pointing out that yet another person has noticed this.  Of course we're not all like this, and the description here is not even a fair characterisation of most bitcoin forum users.  But this is still how the forums tend to come off--worth thinking about.

lol! yes, maybe I should accept negative tips to be fair

Alright, for those of you who have been wondering what the "mysterious potential" is, I am finally ready to unveil both that, and what this drawing was for in the first place!  

Today I'm launching the site bitSyndicated.com, where I hope to offer quality content of various types based around the tipping model, and especially using tips as a more effective form of feedback than merely site stats.  The first post is a comic based on the illustration I sought in this thread.  Check it out!

Once the initial illustrator's fee is paid off, remaining donations received for the comic will be split between the illustrator and the Wikipedia translation bounty for BitCoin articles.  But here's the twist--unlike the initial 10(+1) bitcoins that I awarded to ChaosFox(+joeydangerous), viewers will get to decide whether they prefer the version I chose or the alternate version.  That's the "mysterious potential".  So if you think I made the wrong choice, here's your chance!  And if there's a good response to this one, I will probably be doing something like it again soon.

One thing to note is that I care a lot more about the number of tips than about the total quantity received.  If you like the comic and want to see more cool content, giving even a tiny amount will help to make that happen.  My main goal (besides supporting a good cause) is to find a better way than advertising and stats to fund and provide feedback for content on the web.  Your .02 btc matters! /lame humour