Is the Bitcoin community itself centrally controlled?

[runpaint]

Right now I'm sure the busiest crypto websites are the exchanges, which means a lot of people get their info and rumours in trollboxes.  It's a conflict of interest for the exchanges to moderate the majority of all discussion in the crypto community. 

Exchanges already have too much control over the supply of Bitcoin itself, they don't need to control the flow of information as well.

We have bitcointalk, but it's not easy to have certain kinds of conversations here.  Looking at the view counts on the top threads, I'm starting to doubt that there are more than one thousand active accounts at bitcointalk on a given day.  Most topics never get 1000 views, and that includes the topic starter himself clicking it 100 times.  Looking at view counts is what made me realize that the majority of actual day-to-day conversations are happening on exchanges, in chat boxes that barely qualify as human interaction.

My suggestion for a better option is uCrypto.co, which is a new site with a social-media-style layout. 

I'm not affiliated with the site, but I joined last week and was impressed. 

But then I noticed that very few people were joining, despite an announcement at bitcointalk.

Have you ever gotten the impression that bitcointalk is half full of people who talk but never do anything?  Or is it almost impossible to launch a new project because the conversation immediately gets drowned out by lunatics calling it a scam even when there's no money involved?

With uCrypto we have more tools to choose who we include in our closer circles and our community at large.  We can have discussions that are immediately accessible to the kind of crypto enthusiasts we want to hear from, without the altcoin fudders and bagholders and general assortment of trolls who ruin everything.  And we can still use all the other sites we've been using, but with one more option at our disposal.

How many of you have been using Bitcoin for at least a year, but you don't have a single contact who also uses Bitcoin?  Do you actually know anyone "from the Bitcoin community"?  If you wanted to invite people to a Bitcoin-related event, or if you wanted to announce a Bitcoin community project, who would you talk to?  Would you start a topic here, and just give up if it only gets 5 replies?  Send someone a private message here, and wait 2 weeks to see if they'll respond? 

Or maybe you've gone to Twitter and Facebook, and maybe you've had some luck sifting through the hundreds of millions of people who aren't the least bit interested in Bitcoin.  But you've probably shared an important Bitcoin article and noticed that not a single person in your social media network even looked at it. 

How many active connections does your Bitcoin client have?  8?  39?  64?  And do you know any of those people?  If they are your peers, why have you never personally communicated with any of them?  Is that the future - being connected to everyone by machines which keep us isolated from each other?  Like the Matrix? 

There's a better way, and uCrypto.co is worth a try.  You can follow people, unfollow people, start your own Space and make it public or by invitation only.  Bring your real friends, and make new friends who share common interests.  For once in your life, have a conversation with people who already know what Bitcoin is.

Your wallet already connects to peers - now you can too. 

[1714899199]

1714899199

[Mickeyb]

I agree with your assessment on people getting info and being influenced in troll box. It's sad that this is happening since in these tools boxes, people are looking only their as*es and trying to say and manipulate everybody just for their own gain, otherwise they wouldn't even be on these exchanges.

As for your invite to check out this new social crypto thing, I am honestly open to anything and will consider and support whatever majority decides. It's hard to change habits though, so I guess this would go kind of hard, but why not try.

[runpaint]

As for your invite to check out this new social crypto thing, I am honestly open to anything and will consider and support whatever majority decides.

That's part of the obstacle we need to get over - you don't know me, so my invite doesn't mean much.

At the same time, the majority consensus is also decided by a bunch of people you don't know.  Who are they, and how do they decide?  Think about that:

Since most of us are going around blind and alone, it's easy for small coordinated groups to greatly influence whatever they want.  You have 100,000 individual people trading on exchanges, each making his own decisions without having any solid relationships in the community.  We're all just lost in the crowd.  So it's no wonder that a pump group with 50 people can make huge waves in the markets, because they're the only ones talking to each other. 

And look where I am - I want to spread the word about something crypto-related, but where can I go?  Post the link in trollboxes, so it can scroll past some people who don't know me?

Even with the people who have already joined and are using the site, they don't know many people they can invite to sign up.  They know people, but they don't know anyone in the crypto community.  And they are the crypto community.  

I'll repeat that:  the crypto community doesn't have any contacts in the crypto community.  Do you see how this might be part of the reason why Bitcoin hasn't spread faster?  

[unamis76]

Who actually reads trollboxes in a serious way?

I rarely look at trollboxes and when I do it's usually to laugh of odd things people say One or two truths might be said there, but that's pretty much it. it's a trollbox for a reason.

I think bitcointalk has some interesting discussions going on from time to time, and even the Marketplace is interesting, many nice items go through there and there are trustworthy members selling. It's also the oldest place to discuss everything Bitcoin, has many knowledgable users and interesting discussions and ideas every once in a while. More connections aren't made because users simply try to stay anonymous and don't really talk about themselves.

The website you linked looks pretty interesting. Although I don't know how will it incentivate deeper connections than the ones on bitcointalk. We have space to be "less serious" here too

[Mickeyb]

Who actually reads trollboxes in a serious way?

I rarely look at trollboxes and when I do it's usually to laugh of odd things people say One or two truths might be said there, but that's pretty much it. it's a trollbox for a reason.

Well you don't since you know what you're doing and you are an experienced user, but I am sure many newbies hang out in these trollboxes and get their info there. Unfortunately!

[Lauda]

Tl;Dr: This website is not active enough, let me suggest one that is even less active. The point of this thread is the promotion of ucrypto.co, and nothing else.

I'm starting to doubt that there are more than one thousand active accounts at bitcointalk on a given day. 

My suggestion for a better option is uCrypto.co

 
P.S. Wrong section.

[BillyBobZorton]

This website is and will remain the to-go Bitcoin community-forum because all of the "stars" of Bitcoin posts here, starting with Satoshi and finishing with all the current devs, plus it's very active on all of the boards. I like the simple layout, I like the fact you aren't forced to use shitty javascript to properly browse it, I like the simple approach, it feels lightweight. All those modern websites are annoying and bloaty.

[UsernameBitcoin]

Discussions are censored by single persons who have their own agenda, news sites mix their editorial news with paid content, opinions of some key figures are shaped by $$$ and not necessarily in the interest of Bitcoin.
I think the centralization of communication is actually a big problem for Bitcoin because it scares away many serious potential investors.

[runpaint]

Tl;Dr: This website is not active enough, let me suggest one that is even less active. The point of this thread is the promotion of ucrypto.co, and nothing else.

I'm starting to doubt that there are more than one thousand active accounts at bitcointalk on a given day. 

My suggestion for a better option is uCrypto.co

 
P.S. Wrong section.

TLDR:  

"Bitcointalk is all the community needs to avoid centralized control...wrong section, mod please move or delete, please control us oh faceless power.  The point of my post is to shit on this thread and nothing else."



You say uCrypto.co is less active, but I've had more human interaction there than I've had here.  And there are only 18 members there so far, so what does that say about bitcointalk?

Bitcointalk is great for a lot of things, but we need other places too.  

[runpaint]

I still say the community needs more groups working together, more closely than can be done through a message board.

Pump groups and scammers are organized and working in groups - they're pooling their efforts, just like miners.

But the rest of us are still going solo, while the few pools call the shots.  Where is the discussion group for your country?  Your state?  Your town?  If you offered me 100BTC to find 3 Bitcoin users within 100 miles of my house, I wouldn't be able to do it. 

I've never seen a physical store that accepts Bitcoin, and every single online Bitcoin store locator is out-of-date or just plain wrong;  I've called places that "accept Bitcoin" according to Google, and it turns out they've never heard of it.  Where is the site to solve that problem?

I would gladly accept Bitcoin at my place of business, except I don't know how to share that information with anyone in my area who has ever heard of Bitcoin.  I could start a topic at Bitcointalk, in case maybe there are a few people from my town who go to Bitcointalk, and if they do, maybe they will see my topic while it is on page 1.  I can do that, if I want to waste my time. 

But now I can start a group at uCrypto for my town, or my state, or my altcoin, and the same people who want to join any of those groups can also join any other groups they want.  And then they can just check their feed on their phones once a day, and then we would actually have a community instead of a bunch of people who don't know each other and have no idea how to get in touch. 

So what's the deal?  People here will download any wallet and mine any coin, for no reason at all, but signing up for a free social media site is beneath them? 

"Oh you're promoting a site, sneer."  The site has no ads, there's no money involved in any way, and it's not even my site. 

I understand if you're just too cool, and of course uCrypto isn't as cool as you.  You cool people aren't the ones I'm talking to, so don't worry.  I'm talking to the lame-ass losers who aren't afraid to make something happen.  After those people join and build the site into something big, then you can come and join without being scared that someone will make fun of you for joining a small site. 

I know you have your e-rep to think about, and you aren't able to use a different free email address and different fake username than the fake username you use here, so just check back in a few months and see if it's safe.  Meanwhile, feel free to shit on people who are doing things, while you yourself do nothing. 

Or if you have any suggestions about the issues I've raised here, please feel free to share.

For everyone else, please stop by uCrypto.co and check it out. 

[chennan]

I kind of understand where you are coming from, but since we have gotten to a point where everybody who deals with bitcoin goes here automatically to talk about bitcoin; I would propose this idea:

Let's try to get theymos or someone on here to create a section of the forum primarily focused on areas of the world that is heavily influenced by bitcoin.  I know each language has their own section of bitcointalk, but what if in the marketplace section of the forum we had a US section, Euro section, etc.  I don't really know how we would go about getting that done, but I feel like you're on to something here.

Getting everyone to change where they browse to get their crypto news is going to be hard though, I say lets try to make bitcointalk better.

[runpaint]

Getting everyone to change where they browse to get their crypto news is going to be hard though, I say lets try to make bitcointalk better.

I'm all for that, but is there room for child boards for thousands of different towns? 

I don't want to replace bitcointalk, not in the slightest.  Half the stuff we're discussing at uCrypto are links to bitcointalk.org.

But it's a different kind of thing.  A newsfeed, rather than a messageboard. 

Bitcointalk is fine like it is, but it can't do the things a social media site can do.  There's no friends list or follow list here, and you can't choose which boards to display and which to ignore.  And it's not exactly optimized for mobile devices. 

So why not try it out?  It's fun when something is new, hasn't been cluttered up yet, still alive with the excitement of the unknown.  Sometimes people just like to go somewhere else - have you ever wondered why they tear down a shopping center after it's only about 10 years old, and then they build a different shopping center across town with all the exact same stores?  People love that shit.  It's new!  Don't overthink it, that's just the way people are. 

[Vod]

You say uCrypto.co is less active, but I've had more human interaction there than I've had here.  And there are only 18 members there so far, so what does that say about bitcointalk?

2 people seem to have quit already.  It's down to 16 members.   

[runpaint]

You say uCrypto.co is less active, but I've had more human interaction there than I've had here.  And there are only 18 members there so far, so what does that say about bitcointalk?

2 people seem to have quit already.  It's down to 16 members.   

I was counting the 2 resident lurkers. 

[Mickeyb]

You say uCrypto.co is less active, but I've had more human interaction there than I've had here.  And there are only 18 members there so far, so what does that say about bitcointalk?

2 people seem to have quit already.  It's down to 16 members.   

It's hard to evaluate service when it has existed several weeks. I don't think any movement is possible if you don't make people changing. This has been a home of the Bitcoin for a while now and this is how it will stay. I mean it's cool to have an alternative, but this will just stay an alternative.

Not to mention a new bitcointalk forum that is coming and where it's invested a lot of money. I just don't see people throwing all off this away for some crypto social network.

[Deadmau5]

Right now I'm sure the busiest crypto websites are the exchanges, which means a lot of people get their info and rumours in trollboxes.  It's a conflict of interest for the exchanges to moderate the majority of all discussion in the crypto community. 

LOL. Who gets their info from something called a trollbox. If people listen to the rumours that trolls spread then I honestly don't know what to say to them. I guess this is why the bitcoin economy is powered by fud and unsubstantiated rumours.

[runpaint]

Who gets their info from something called a trollbox.

People who trade crypto.

Trollboxes make it easy for people to participate in the conversation, but the conversation usually isn't worth having.

Bitcointalk makes it easy for a lot of people to Google the info they need, but then they don't usually participate in the conversation.

A social media site like uCrypto.co is more of a middle ground;  it lets you hear other people and it also lets you be heard.

[killerjoegreece]

Right now I'm sure the busiest crypto websites are the exchanges, which means a lot of people get their info and rumours in trollboxes.  It's a conflict of interest for the exchanges to moderate the majority of all discussion in the crypto community. 

Exchanges already have too much control over the supply of Bitcoin itself, they don't need to control the flow of information as well.

We have bitcointalk, but it's not easy to have certain kinds of conversations here.  Looking at the view counts on the top threads, I'm starting to doubt that there are more than one thousand active accounts at bitcointalk on a given day.  Most topics never get 1000 views, and that includes the topic starter himself clicking it 100 times.  Looking at view counts is what made me realize that the majority of actual day-to-day conversations are happening on exchanges, in chat boxes that barely qualify as human interaction.

My suggestion for a better option is uCrypto.co, which is a new site with a social-media-style layout. 

I'm not affiliated with the site, but I joined last week and was impressed. 

But then I noticed that very few people were joining, despite an announcement at bitcointalk.

Have you ever gotten the impression that bitcointalk is half full of people who talk but never do anything?  Or is it almost impossible to launch a new project because the conversation immediately gets drowned out by lunatics calling it a scam even when there's no money involved?

With uCrypto we have more tools to choose who we include in our closer circles and our community at large.  We can have discussions that are immediately accessible to the kind of crypto enthusiasts we want to hear from, without the altcoin fudders and bagholders and general assortment of trolls who ruin everything.  And we can still use all the other sites we've been using, but with one more option at our disposal.

How many of you have been using Bitcoin for at least a year, but you don't have a single contact who also uses Bitcoin?  Do you actually know anyone "from the Bitcoin community"?  If you wanted to invite people to a Bitcoin-related event, or if you wanted to announce a Bitcoin community project, who would you talk to?  Would you start a topic here, and just give up if it only gets 5 replies?  Send someone a private message here, and wait 2 weeks to see if they'll respond? 

Or maybe you've gone to Twitter and Facebook, and maybe you've had some luck sifting through the hundreds of millions of people who aren't the least bit interested in Bitcoin.  But you've probably shared an important Bitcoin article and noticed that not a single person in your social media network even looked at it. 

How many active connections does your Bitcoin client have?  8?  39?  64?  And do you know any of those people?  If they are your peers, why have you never personally communicated with any of them?  Is that the future - being connected to everyone by machines which keep us isolated from each other?  Like the Matrix? 

There's a better way, and uCrypto.co is worth a try.  You can follow people, unfollow people, start your own Space and make it public or by invitation only.  Bring your real friends, and make new friends who share common interests.  For once in your life, have a conversation with people who already know what Bitcoin is.

Your wallet already connects to peers - now you can too. 

all i hope is its not centrally controlled u crypto.co is surely worth a try

[MUFC]

Who gets their info from something called a trollbox.

People who trade crypto.

Trollboxes make it easy for people to participate in the conversation, but the conversation usually isn't worth having.

Trollboxes made it easy for people just to scream "buy buy buy" or "sell sell sell" in various different ways. You rarely get any decent information from them just biased opinions much like you get in the Speculation sub here (which is basically bitcointalk's trollbox).

[runpaint]

Who gets their info from something called a trollbox.

People who trade crypto.

Trollboxes make it easy for people to participate in the conversation, but the conversation usually isn't worth having.

Trollboxes made it easy for people just to scream "buy buy buy" or "sell sell sell" in various different ways. You rarely get any decent information from them just biased opinions much like you get in the Speculation sub here (which is basically bitcointalk's trollbox).

There are hundreds of creative ways to scream "buy buy buy" in a trollbox.  It must get some results, or they wouldn't keep doing it.