Bitcointalk Account price estimator

[achow101]

Update #6: Due to the new Cloudflare DDoS protection that has been implemented on the forum. the account statistics checking bot is unable to access the forum to get the relevant information. The site will be down indefinitely and a static webpage has been put in place informing as such.

Update #5: To avoid people from using the post quality quantifier here as proof that they have good post quality (because they usually don't and the quantifier is not accurate), I have removed it from the display and changed the character count to be higher.

Update #4: Website now has https and will force all users to use https. http will automatically be redirected to https.

Update #3: Website has new tokening system and fixed queuing system

There is a new update to the project!!

I have released a new version on Github and also live on the website. This new version has improvements to the queue system so it doesn't fail as it used to.

There is now a tokening system for the queue. When you submit a lookup request you will receive a token. You can then leave the page and browse as you wish. You can return later and enter the token to see your results. The only caveat is that results are kept for only 24 hours after the request was submitted.

Update #2: Website is up at http://www.bctalkaccountpricer.info/

My website is up and usable at http://www.bctalkaccountpricer.info/

The site is very simple, just enter the User ID and it will do everything for you. There is a queuing system in place to prevent the server from being IP banned by Bitcointalk. The site will let you know where you are in the queue and will automatically retrieve all of the information when it is your turn.

There are a few notable differences between the website version and the version on github:

• Ads - The website has ads to help me support the site. I did not include the code for the ads in the github
• IP wait times - The website will require you to wait 5 minutes before it will let you submit another request. This is to prevent DoS attacks on the site. The Github contains the code for this, but it is commented out.
• Account bot password - In order for the website to work, an account is required to view the trust of members. The Github has a placeholder password THAT DOES NOT WORK while the website has the correct password.

If you have issue with any of the above, please let me know and see if we can fix the problem.

If you find any bugs in the website, please contact me here or using the issue tracker on Github.

Update #1: The code is now available to browse, fork, and download at https://github.com/achow101/BitcointalkAccountPricer

Hello All,

Today I am announcing a project that I have been working on recently. This project is a price estimator for Bitcointalk Forum Accounts. The algorithm for determining prices is based on recent prices of accounts here.
The algorithm is as follow:

Code:

0.0002[btc]/activity
0.0001[btc]/epa (extra potential activity)

epa = potential activity - activity

bp (base price) = 0.0002 * activity + 0.0001 * epa

final price = bp * pqm * tm

pqm (post quality multiplier) determined by ratio of good posts (>100 characters excluding quoted text) to bad posts (<100 characters excluding quotes) (whitespace is trimmed)
excellent post quality (90%) = 1.025 (+2.5%)
good (80%) = 1.0125 (+1.25%)
fair (70%) = 1.00 (+0%)
poor (50%) = -1.05 (-5%)
very poor (<50%) = -1.1 (-10%)

tm (trust multiplier)
positive light green trust = 1.10 (+10%)
positive dark green trust = 1.20 (+20%)
neutral trust = 1.00 (+0%)
negative trust = -0.15 (-85%)

The code will be written in Java because I know Java the best. It will be open source and published on Github, but not yet as it is not completely finished. There will also be a website that has the java applet on the webpage for anyone to calculate the price of any Bitcointalk Account.

Please let me know what you guys think of this and if I should change the algorithm in any way.

Disclaimer: This project is not definitive nor an entirely accurate representation of an account's sell price. While I strive to be as accurate and close to current market prices as possible, actual prices may vary.

If this has been helpful to you or you would like to support this project, please donate to 16mT7jrpkjnJBD7a3TM2awyxHub58H6r6Z.

Edit: Algo adjustments

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[JerryCurlzzz]

I want to know how much is my account worth, so yeah, this is good and I will definitely try it!
Eh, and why is the -ve account only -15%? It should be around -98% lol, I highly doubt you will sell -ve Hero Member for at least 0.01 BTC. I didn't read the thing carefully

[hexafraction]

The code will be written in Java because I know Java the best. It will be open source and published on Github, but not yet as it is not completely finished. There will also be a website that has the java applet on the webpage for anyone to calculate the price of any Bitcointalk Account.

I wouldn't use an applet for trust reasons. I wouldn't trust a random unsigned applet, even from a potentially trustworthy user. You should see if you can get PHP, a servlet container, or JSP on your website to run it on the website's side. Alternatively, use Javascript which is a bit easier to trust on a webpage (I can try to help with that)

[achow101]

The code will be written in Java because I know Java the best. It will be open source and published on Github, but not yet as it is not completely finished. There will also be a website that has the java applet on the webpage for anyone to calculate the price of any Bitcointalk Account.

I wouldn't use an applet for trust reasons. I wouldn't trust a random unsigned applet, even from a potentially trustworthy user. You should see if you can get PHP, a servlet container, or JSP on your website to run it on the website's side. Alternatively, use Javascript which is a bit easier to trust on a webpage (I can try to help with that)

I will look into those. Thanks for the info.

[neurotypical]

Seems like a positive idea, even tho people will keep selling accounts at whatever price they want because its relative. Hero accounts usually go for 1 BTC, they are really valuable. I have no idea how much people are asking for Legendary.

[JerryCurlzzz]

Seems like a positive idea, even tho people will keep selling accounts at whatever price they want because its relative. Hero accounts usually go for 1 BTC, they are really valuable. I have no idea how much people are asking for Legendary.

I'm potential Hero Member, where can I sell my account for 1 BTC once I get it, Mr. signature spammer? Hero goes for 0.5 BTC and you have to be very lucky to get that amount.

[BTCBinary]

seems like a great idea and a very good project. The community needs more of this!

[DaddyMonsi]

Seems like a positive idea, even tho people will keep selling accounts at whatever price they want because its relative. Hero accounts usually go for 1 BTC, they are really valuable. I have no idea how much people are asking for Legendary.

I haven't seen an account being sold at 1BTC.
Hero account goes from 0.3BTC - 0.5BTC
Most of them are sold through Auction so owner can maximize the price of the account
I've seen buy it now price at 0.6BTC

[hexafraction]

Seems like a positive idea, even tho people will keep selling accounts at whatever price they want because its relative. Hero accounts usually go for 1 BTC, they are really valuable. I have no idea how much people are asking for Legendary.

I haven't seen an account being sold at 1BTC.
Hero account goes from 0.3BTC - 0.5BTC
Most of them are sold through Auction so owner can maximize the price of the account
I've seen buy it now price at 0.6BTC

I'm aware of at least one example where a full (not hero) member was purchased for 0.3 BTC. It depends on a great deal of factors, not all of which can really be encompassed in a single algorithm.

Anyway, OP: How goes implementation? Do you need any assistance with the javascript or other non-java bits?

[Snail2]

Can someone explain me what the heck is that "potential activity" or "extra potential activity", please? I wasn't aware of such thing until now. (Today I've learned something new again )

[Denker]

I like the idea but I doubt that this will work. In the end everybody can quote a price he is willing to sell his account for. And when someone agrees to pay that price it's ok. That's how a free market works.

[achow101]

Anyway, OP: How goes implementation? Do you need any assistance with the javascript or other non-java bits?

The code is finished, although a little messy. I will post it up on github within a day or 2. Perhaps you can help me with setting up the server so that the applet isn't a part of the webpage.

Can someone explain me what the heck is that "potential activity" or "extra potential activity", please? I wasn't aware of such thing until now. (Today I've learned something new again )

Potential activity is how much activity that an account could possibly have at any given time. you can get 14 activity for every two week period. For example, if someone makes 1 post every two weeks, for 10 weeks, they will have 5 posts, 5 activity, and 70 potential activity. If they made 65 more posts at the end of the tenth week, then their activity can go up to 70. Extra potential activity is something I thought of which is just the amount of potential activity they have beyond their current activity. They can have 0 meaning that their activity matches the potential activity. Or in the example above, that user has 65 extra potential activity.

I like the idea but I doubt that this will work. In the end everybody can quote a price he is willing to sell his account for. And when someone agrees to pay that price it's ok. That's how a free market works.

That is true, but I will try to make my estimator match the market. If my estimator follows the median, then this could let people know whether they are being ripped off or getting a very good deal on an account. It can also help people new to account selling by giving them a price to work off of.

[hexafraction]

If setting up a server is impractical, you can use js which doesn't require server side configuration, but only changes to the page code itself.

[jbrnt]

How will this estimator work? I enter my UID on this webpage of yours and it reads all my posts and give me a value in bitcoin? Looking at the code you posted, every stat is manually entered. It can be done by a shared spreadsheet on google docs. Don't need an app for this.

Edit: Nice app by the sound of it. Agree with other comments, javascript is a more secure option for the users.

[achow101]

How will this estimator work? I enter my UID on this webpage of yours and it reads all my posts and give me a value in bitcoin? Looking at the code you posted, every stat is manually entered. It can be done by a shared spreadsheet on google docs. Don't need an app for this.

You just enter the UID and my code will retrieve all of your stats. It will get your username, activity, post count, trust score, and calculate your potential activity from all of your posts under the "Show last posts" link in your profile. It can take a few minutes depending on the person since Bitcointalk limits me to 1 request per second. If you have hundreds of pages, then it can take a few minutes to request and process all of the data.

The code isn't done. What I posted was the algorithm.

[melisande]

First of all you have really thought outside the box by bringing a scientific approach to account selling deals here rather than it used to be because people only wake up and place a sell/buy bid of their account and it could be higher or lower in value.
Thank you for bringing this in our life time.

[tiggytomb]

This is a needed tool as from just watching some of the threads the pricing can be quite erratic

[ColderThanIce]

Really cool project, only problem I see with it is that account prices seem a little high, but that's an easy fix. A cool final presentation of this project would be to put it on a webpage as you planned, and then have it automated by a bot. You insert your UID, click a button and then it'll estimate your account's value.

Like hexafraction mentioned, your original idea could easily be programmed with Javascript as well. I'm not sure how easy or feasible it would be to implement a bot with Javascript though, you might want to look into another language - it seems like lots of the sig campaign bots here are coded with PHP.

[achow101]

Really cool project, only problem I see with it is that account prices seem a little high, but that's an easy fix. A cool final presentation of this project would be to put it on a webpage as you planned, and then have it automated by a bot. You insert your UID, click a button and then it'll estimate your account's value.

Like hexafraction mentioned, your original idea could easily be programmed with Javascript as well. I'm not sure how easy or feasible it would be to implement a bot with Javascript though, you might want to look into another language - it seems like lots of the sig campaign bots here are coded with PHP.

The problem is that I don't know javascript or PHP very well. What I am actually using is GWT which will convert my java code into javascript. It seems to work decently well.

[ColderThanIce]

Really cool project, only problem I see with it is that account prices seem a little high, but that's an easy fix. A cool final presentation of this project would be to put it on a webpage as you planned, and then have it automated by a bot. You insert your UID, click a button and then it'll estimate your account's value.

Like hexafraction mentioned, your original idea could easily be programmed with Javascript as well. I'm not sure how easy or feasible it would be to implement a bot with Javascript though, you might want to look into another language - it seems like lots of the sig campaign bots here are coded with PHP.

The problem is that I don't know javascript or PHP very well. What I am actually using is GWT which will convert my java code into javascript. It seems to work decently well.

Ah ok. If you decide to go the Javascript route eventually let me know and I can try and help you out if you run into any issues. Or, if you like, I can try and whip up the code in Javascript in the next day or so if you're interested.