The link between quality altcoins and Bitcointalk

[LeGaulois]

I wanted to share a research from someone at the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society highlighting the relation between Bitcointalk and a successful new cryptocurrency. He sent it to me at least three weeks ago, and I hadn't taken the time to read it fully.

I told him first that the forum is full of people posting who don't know anything about cryptos they're just interested in the Bounties/Airdrops so the research wouldn't be really accurate and indicative
But the data he has looked at is from 2010 to November 2016, so it does not include most of the recent Bitcointalk members who joined to only post about "Sir" "Great project" and "to the moon".

He specifically looked at structural characteristics of the community under the ANN thread, and there are some interesting signals there

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1feD8PMy1_3vnHpO5Cls-Wl9ZXB1iIjvp/view



(My apologies if you think it shouldn't be in the Meta section, feel free to move it if needed. I was more interested in a discussion about the Bitcointalk role than the altcoins)

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[seoincorporation]

<...>

"Our findings imply that the
true nature of the cryptocurrency community is neither too gloomy (purely hype-based with zero
fundamental value) nor too optimistic (with many opportunities to disrupt the financial system). But
rather the community should take a more pragmatic approach toward the ecosystem and emphasize
on an objective vetting mechanism among the large pool of available altcoins and promote the few
innovative currencies that advance the current technology and raise confidence in the ecosystem
as a whole."

Love this paragraph, and all the paper, to be honest. The analysis is pretty accurate in its conclusions. The selected part of the paragraph I believe to be one of the most important conclusions in the whole paper. Yes, we have some responsibilities in here with the crypto world. Even when this forum can -and probably must- be a free-place to all altcoins, is a fact that too many of them are nothing but a scam.
Do we have the responsibility, as a community, to detect and even pursue these ones, so the crypto world can have a best-trusted image?
I think so, sometimes. After reading the paper, I`ve come to understand how important the forum actually is as a reflection of the crypto-ecosystem; how really matters, and will matter in the future, the behave we have in here.
It is really difficult to determinate which cryptos actually have or not a future, but, once a scam is detected, I don`t think the forum should allow it to persist in here, in any way.

Thanks for sharing that. I`ve expended the most marvellous hour trying to understand the work behind this paper. Probably, I just come to understand few -my English can be poor- but it has been really illustrative.

PD: I do think that thread should be here in Meta, it opens an interesting discussion about the forum.

[r1s2g3]

---snip--

I think you can move it to Serious discussion or Ivory tower as per your wish.

Is copying or saving a local copy of this document is ok? (Too much to read in one go..)

[LeGaulois]

@seoincorporation
I needed to read it 2 times myself, I think the person comes from England because he typically writes like an English citizen. People in Uk speak much better than English US and when it comes to people with a high education it can be difficult to understand them the first time.

In my opinion, the forum shall be neutral and lets the members do their due diligence. if it doesn't you would see people claiming the forum has a double standard, is corrupted, etc...
But it's up to its members to warn others members while discussing, it's something coming naturally. At the same time search engines help for people outside the forum

It's really a doc that worth reading

@ r1s2g3
Sure you can.

[cellard]

I don't think we have a responsibility at all when it comes to calling out scams. Of course we should always call the obvious scams out and advise people to not put a single satoshi on them, but that is out of altruism, people don't sign up here to act as a scam police for these that refuse to do research on their own, which is what they should be doing instead of hoping someone saves them.

The minimum you can do before investing in an alt is googling what is being said about it from numerous sources. Anyone that just sticks to the ANN thread which usually is as self-moderated shilling clusterfuck in which people criticizing it may get removed, is just not thinking straight. You need to look outside of the ANN thread and do due diligence. Outsource the technical aspects if you aren't an expert yourself.

Also let's not forget, this is a bitcoin forum over everything else... the altcoin section was just created as a containment area for people posting endless alt threads off-topic.

[seoincorporation]

@seoincorporation
I needed to read it 2 times myself, I think the person comes from England because he typically writes like an English citizen. People in Uk speak much better than English US and when it comes to people with a high education it can be difficult to understand them the first time.

In my opinion, the forum shall be neutral and lets the members do their due diligence. if it doesn't you would see people claiming the forum has a double standard, is corrupted, etc...
But it's up to its members to warn others members while discussing, it's something coming naturally. At the same time search engines help for people outside the forum

It's really a doc that worth reading

@ r1s2g3
Sure you can.

Yep, I read it once really slowly and it was... difficult but interesting. I agree it is not our duty to determinate what is or not a scam, but, maybe we should point it out more often, meaning, that the principles in here are based on freedom, even when a lot of projects can actually do harm to some people. Maybe by exposing how a scam works more often, even pinned on the Alt section, we just can establish a statement: "this is actually free, but you need to learn how to be careful".

Glad to see that there are already some academic investigations ongoing.

Also let's not forget, this is a bitcoin forum over everything else... the altcoin section was just created as a containment area for people posting endless alt threads off-topic.

Well, sometimes I think we have come far from this, from being a Bitcoin forum, and this place is now a "Cryptoforum". Whatever, I agree with you. This is not about responsibility, but intelligence: if someone is willing to believe anything and put their money in some stuff with no previous investigation, that`s on them.