Bitcointalk will likely always be the most successful Bitcoin related forum, however its still quite impressive due to the fact that Bitcoin, and cryptocurrency is general is still very much a niche. Only certain individuals are attracted by the currency, and almost everyone in the world, or at least a large portion are attracted to the other things some of these forums host. Especially, considering their topics are one of the biggest in the world. Although, its worth noting that these forums above probably aren't the biggest within their industry by quite a margin, and Bitcointalk is.

SMF, although in my opinion is one of the better forum softwares is lacking that modern approach that competitors are taking. I'm seeing increasing amounts of online discussion sites use "Discourse", which I'll be honest I quite like the design of, ease of modification, and an active development community behind it too. Although, even that forum software has some nuisances, and just unnecessary features that ends up cluttering the interface. 

Obviously, I'll agree that the listed things such as signature campaigns increase the engagement with lesser so serious threads, and trolls. The other reason, would be that people are generally attracted, and entertained by drama, its why soaps exist, and why they're like one of the most watched shows. Personally, I hate soaps, and therefore tend to avoid getting into discussions with trolls, however its not all bad. Reiterating hilarioudandco's response; Sometimes it can be fun, and entertaining. I think it depends on the severity of the troll thread, and what effect its having on the forum as a whole. A one off thread, can easily be ignored by those that aren't entertained by it, and anything that's a little more annoying, can be reported to the moderators, and they can take a look at whether it justifies an action.

I'm also sure, that a lot of users were not so quick to throw out the idea of that one example of the OP being Satoshi, and honestly I would agree that you shouldn't toss out anything that's unlikely. Of course, there was no evidence given, and it was quite obvious a troll attempt, but it did have some people genuinely researching, and considering whether they were in fact Satoshi.

Also worth noting, the majority of the time security breaches are because of the person behind the screen, and not the software. Since, usually its easier for a attacker to target someone who has weaknesses, and only one mind, than to attack software which has been out for years, tested by thousands, and being actively developed. I'm not saying that software isn't targeted because it most certainly is. This is especially true, when it comes to privacy. There's a lot of software which is specifically designed to keep your privacy in tact, but its usually the end user which compromises it by misusing the software, or simply by making a mistake.

So, although its always best to take security seriously, and follow the advice of the experts, you should be taking precautions against your mistakes that can creep in through complacency, which is something privacy, anti virus software, and security measures can induce by giving an illusion of safety.  

Finding the balance between security, and user experience is difficult. Depending on your user base, some might require strict security practices, where others may find convenient ways of retrieving their accounts beneficial if they so happen to lose the account. Without being too stereotypical, this is quite common in the older generations, where they become forgetful of their credentials, or simply don't want to go through all the security protocols to retrieve their data. As far as I'm concerned a security question is a flawed design, because of the way its presented. A lot of websites do it far worse, and make you choose between a predefined question, which means its usually asking a personalized question such as "what was your first pets name", now you could do a random answer length should be treated just as important as a password though), but usually people find this convenient to remember, and put in their actual data, which is usually easily found out with social engineering. Especially, of the age of social media where pretty much everyone documents their life, sometimes without even realizing the data they're presenting to the world.

Definitely can't speak on behalf of everyone here, but since Covid struck I've been up to my eye balls in work related stuff. I'm assuming many others have also experienced this, since the workforce of each company has likely reduced their live employees, and placed them on support such as furlough, resulting in the few that are lucky enough to be deemed essential are carrying the entire workload of the entire company. This would likely have an effect on the merit distribution, and overall the activity levels. Something else, I think that has likely dipped temporarily, although the boom in Bitcoin price may have disguised that a little bit.

Anyway, my merit distribution along with activity has certainly been impacted by recent events, however it does seem to be slowly getting better. It might be interesting for the statistics guys to evaluate this, as restrictions, and economies get back online which I believe most countries are making progress towards.

If you have the private key or the seed then you're perfectly fine. However, I'm not quite sure what you mean by overwriting a wallet? If you've replaced the file with a new wallet.dat, then the only way of recovering it would be either taking a look at the filesystem, and maybe having a chance of salvaging the contents. Although, this gets more unlikely the more you use the device, since it will continue to write to the storage device.

On the other hand, if you have replaced your wallet.dat, with the same wallet.dat that contains your addresses, and sensitive data then that should be fine, and it might be as simple as re scanning if the wallet software is spitting out an error.

If the former is true, then depending on your operating system depends on the course of action. Windows based systems are a little bit harder, and its usually recommended to download third party software for this, for it to be effective. There's many out there, but you'll have to verify whether they are safe. I'm not fan of this approach. If you're using a Linux based system, then you can do it from the terminal most of the time. Debian based system, Ubuntu has a page on this: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery where they give programs that might be able to do it, most of these operate from the terminal though.

If you don't have your private key, or the data simply doesn't exist using the methods above, then unfortunately there is no other way to retrieve the private key. Its recommended by a few people, to keep a physical copy of your private key. Many people use different techniques for this, but the best way would likely to have it written down by hand, boot up a livecd of Ubuntu without internet, and then check that you can import the private key successfully, and that it corresponds with your Bitcoin addresses.

I'll highly recommend against using Brave, and personally I would probably only recommend Firefox. For one they aren't owned by Google, which I consider a privacy breach in its own right, but in my experience have been the stand out guys from a security point. There's a reason why Tor Browser is built inside of Firefox.

I'd also always recommend using a offline, local password manager rather than those built inside extensions, or the browser itself. In fact, I'd avoid installing extensions almost all together. The exceptions would probably be; No script security suite, https everywhere, and an ad blocker like Ublock Origin.

I'd say those asking similar questions to this, should probably hold off investing into Bitcoin, until they've learned more about it, and how much the Bitcoin market has swung back, and forth over the years. Its probably never a good idea to invest in something that you aren't at least a little knowledgeable about, and wont have your opinion swayed easily, especially when listening to those that are on a Bitcoin forum, because their outlook is likely to be more positive than a broad investor.

Bitcoins history has suggested that it is very volatile, and reacts to news with bigger swings than more traditional currencies. For example, the recent Paypal news, and various other things have caused the price to rise, however its not guaranteed that the price will return to lower values, even when you look at the history. That's the beauty, and risk of investing. Words of advice is always; only invest what you can afford, Bitcoin although can make you a lot of money, you can also lose just as much. You have to be willing to lose what you invest, and still be able to support your life outside the investment. No one, and I mean no one can give you 100% assurance that you will make money. You can read all the information, and speculation out there, but it doesn't mean its anywhere near being accurate, and what tomorrow brings.

Although the forum is probably considered a heavily modified simple machines implementation, there's only a few complex features (trust system, flag system, merit system) outside the scope of the official documentation by simple machines. I've found the simple machines documentation to be far superior to more modern software, due to the incredible amount of depth it goes into, and how much information is available due to other people likely experiencing your issue, and have already solved it. Something, you don't really get with newer technologies.

Just note that this forum software is running on a older version than the current release of Simple Machines (SMF 1.1.19).

This forum is primarily used as a discussion forum for Bitcoin, which has largely been expanded to everything involving cryptocurrencies, it wasn't designed, and founded as a place where others can advertise in anyway possible. I think, like some here have touched upon, linking a profile avatar to that persons personal profile page would be a nice feature, but overall pretty unnecessary. I don't think we should be pushing new implementations to the forum, to better allow people to advertise, and earn on the site. Although, the attitude has probably changed from many years ago, this is primarily used as a discussion place, rather than some place where people come to earn money.

Also, I personally like that users have their own identifiable profile avatars, as it makes it much easier to remember a user.

I believe the trust system is good enough to heed as a warning. I know there's a warning for new users, but is there a warning for DefaultTrust negative rated users within the PM? If that's not implemented, that might be a good idea. I haven't got any PMS that I could check I don't believe, at least without digging. At the end of the day, even DefaultTrust has conflicting opinions on certain users, and I think having a warming within the PM area itself, is better than outright censoring a user who is viewed as untrustworthy by DefaultTrust.

Common tactic; Brand multiple industries under one name; in this instance the Blockchain, and make it sound like the Blockchain is inherently insecure trying to influence the market. I understand clickbait gets traffic, but its one of the reasons I tend to avoid the news as much as possible these days.  
Not really, unless you classify anything that uses a "Blockchain" which would be a huge market. This would involve games, gambling sites, exchanges, basically everything including alternate coins.

Its not a loss for the currency, and therefore the majority are unaffected, except for temporary changes in the price due to the news impact. Although, I do get your point with the car industry example, I would argue that we should care if there are large amounts of thefts happening within the cryptocurrency market. Although, I would like to add that Bitcoin; has much less thefts than traditional currencies, even if you compare it on a ratio basis. This might be due to the "infancy" of Bitcoin, but its quite apparent that the alternate coins industry is far more vulnerable to shady practices, even from the developers themselves.

Do you mean which exchange has the most volume? Without, looking up data ( as I'm not sure if that's what you are asking), big exchanges like Coinbase, and the like will have the biggest volume during high, and low speculation periods. As for what economics applies to Bitcoin? Every single principle that applies to traditional currencies, applies to Bitcoin. The only difference is Bitcoin is a tad more volatile, and can bring big changes to its price in a small amount of time. 

I don't have any fancy quote for you, but you will indeed humble yourself as an adult, especially with a "new" complex technology like Bitcoin. I've personally made mistakes with "real" traditional currencies, but I've made some silly ones with Bitcoin too. The difference between stupidity, and humility is whether you learn from it or not. If you do not learn from it, or at least put in systems to avoid the same fate, then you are indeed stupid. There needs to be progress whenever you make a mistake, and that is the very foundations of life, and not just related to Bitcoin.

I do believe including the initial whitepaper dates of Bitcoin, would probably be relevant to the "Bitcoin Origins", and of course the actual launch date, first node online, and first block mined would probably all fit within that category.


Seems the thread is based on the origins of Bitcoin, and extends to related cryptocurrency movements, rather than the entire history. I would say this is a fairly good basis on the early "origins" of Bitcoin, and what lead up to Satoshi's Bitcoin. Including anything post creation of Bitcoin probably wouldn't suit the narrative.

The main Bitcoin sections are primarily Bitcoin related, and therefore its best to buy, sell, and trade with Bitcoin within these sections. If you would like to receive alternate coins for a service, or buy something with altcoins, you can make a post within the altcoin section too. This is pretty much accurate in every instance, including discussion based posts, and isn't just limited to trading.

That's interesting, I've not noticed any effects on my end, but I have deleted quite a few over the years, and certainly don't have anywhere near 170 pages as I rarely communicate back, and forth through PMs. I always thought that the speed would be roughly the same due to the messages being nested on their own pages, apart from the links to the number of pages e.g [1] [2] [3] etc.

I believe the appropriate action would be taken, i.e reporting it to the police. However, I'm not familiar what jurisdiction this would take place. Its almost certain, that Binance wouldn't be able to divulge any information to any of its users to another user of the platform, even if there's a legitimate claim for fraud or theft. It would need to be handled by the the appropriate authorities. I believe, this would be passed onto the police department that has jurisdiction where the company is residing, and may potentially be handed over the the infringing users jurisdiction.  Although, I might be wrong there. It becomes tricky with exchanges which don't have any physical residence, maybe possibly where the owner of the company resides then.

Probably worth noting that this, could be applied to all present, and future altcoins. Allowing for some early gains if you are particularly supportive of a altcoin. Although, this will likely yield small amounts, I do think its a good way to get into the mining world, since it might even teach you a few lessons about cryptocurrency markets in general, with relatively low stakes. Far too often, I see users asking about high end mining devices looking to earn a fair amount right off the bat, but its far better to learn, experience, and understand the process with as low stakes as possible before investing any more time or money into it.

Its unfortunate that a lot of the natively included statistics had to be stopped due to the resource hog, but I would think that users on the forum that have collected statistics are probably more accurate than those generated by a generic site like Alexa, due to them specifically targeting Bitcointalk. I've found Alexa to vary on sound statistics when comparing it with sites that I've own. 
Expanding on the point made by DdmrDdmr, you could ask those that collect data for their databases so you can set your own parameters, as your definition of "active" might not align with those over at BPIP for example.