$2.500,000 lost in bitcointalk.org abyss???

[cryptovigi]

I’m sure that everyone of you have read that 3 – 4 millions of bitcoins lost in the blockchain (in case of loosing passwords, loosing harddrives/pendrives, hardware destruction etc.).

Yesterday, thanks to Piggy and his last thread - Open scraped data of all the users - SQL Lite DB - 2.437.064 users I downloaded userdatabase he prepared and did some of my own research. I was checking many parameters but when I was looking at last activity parameter of ranked users I found many of them are not active for years and then I’ve started to think about these abondon accounts like the digital assets lost in bitcointalk.org abyss (just like those bitcoins in its blockchain).

Of course there are some important differences, not all of them are really lost for good, some of them were banned by admins and what is most important there’s always a guy (admin) who has a key to unlock them even if he almost never do it. But let’s leave this small detail and think about them like they are really lost.

Ok they are lost, but can we tread them like a real digital assets? Of course we can. Especially thanks to the signature campaigns high ranked accounts have real worth. All of us know that today’s signature campaigns profitable like year or two ago but there is still possibility to earn some money with high good ranked account (in best case even a few hundreds bucks/month from only one account). There are probably many others way to monetize bitcointalk account but what is their real worth?

Account trading isn’t against this forum rules so many users trades them “legally” both on this forum and other social media. I did some research to know the real value of each account. It was not easy task: although there are plenty of advertisements but the prices offered are very diverse. I’ve checked 40 threads from last 3 week and based on these result estimated average value of each rank (due to great fluctuations, I rejected the highest and lowest offers I found).

Ok, we have average prices of each account so how many of them “lost in the bitcointalk.org abyss”? To make this task easier I accepted the assumption that account which wasn’t active this year at all were abandoned for good. Table below shows number of accounts abonded in years 2011-2017.

What we could expect the level of “abandonment” decreases with the rise of the rank, but what is interesting with accounts ranked from Member to Hero Member is quite similar (30% - 22%), only Legendary accounts seems to be much less often left (less than 10%).

Now the easiest part – lets check how much money circulates in the depths of our forum:

Honestly I am very surprised with this results. I suspected that many accounts have been lost/banned/abandon but never thought that they could make so much value together. It made me aware how valuable can be this forum. For the first time I looked at bitcointalk.org not only as a treasury of knowledge and a place of spending free time (and sometimes making a few bucks) but as a really huge business.




EDIT:
One important thing: I do not support account trading, I think it is unfair, everyone should work out his own brand, and this practice should be banned. Nevertheless, trading accounts is a fact even if we do not like it ...
Do not treat this post as a professional business analysis, it is based on simplified assumptions and is only a theoretical consideration of the fact that our accounts are digital resources with real value.

[suchmoon]

You need to consider that the value of those accounts might be partly affected by so many being abandoned.

In other words, if the abandoned accounts magically came back to life and started trying to monetize themselves by e.g. participating in sig campaigns then likely the revenue per account and subsequently the value of accounts would go down.

[cryptovigi]

You need to consider that the value of those accounts might be partly affected by so many being abandoned.

In other words, if the abandoned accounts magically came back to life and started trying to monetize themselves by e.g. participating in sig campaigns then likely the revenue per account and subsequently the value of accounts would go down.

Of course... but the same would happen to lost bitcoins if someone found the way to get them back ;-)
(that's why I have compared accounts to btc)
And probably it would affect most lower ranked: Members and Full Members, 3 top ranks wouldn't hurt so much...

[DireWolfM14]

You need to consider that the value of those accounts might be partly affected by so many being abandoned.

In other words, if the abandoned accounts magically came back to life and started trying to monetize themselves by e.g. participating in sig campaigns then likely the revenue per account and subsequently the value of accounts would go down.

Of course... but the same would happen to lost bitcoins if someone found the way to get them back ;-)
(that's why I have compared accounts to btc)
And probably it would affect most lower ranked: Members and Full Members, 3 top ranks wouldn't hurt so much...

According to your chart the three top ranks make up more than 50% of the total.  Regardless of the projections of price and value, the folks who would buy these accounts would be attempting to gain an ROI by constantly attempting to monetize their account.  I think those who would buy an account are not interested in contributing to the forum in a constructive way, and would only contribute the spam, and possibly scams.

The value of those abandoned accounts is one thing, and value of the forum is another.

[manfredmann]

BCT accounts was considered as an asset already as what OP stated that the there were many users abandoned the Bitcointalk.org. This probably those are alternative accounts, being hack and for sale, or the user has forgotten the password of the account. This the usual and common problem may arise and the admin are still processing and developing a new way to retrieve hack accounts. Correct me if I am wrong.

[stompix]

Just imagine if theymos will introduce a 1 earned merit requirement to display signature for all accounts no matter the rank 
I bet in a month you will see those numbers triple, especially since most merit sellers have probably depleted their stash.

Anyhow when you talk about "abandoned" are those both inactive and banned account or just inactive.
Would be some nice stats to see plagiarism quantified in $

[Gloverwrt]

Just imagine if theymos will introduce a 1 earned merit requirement to display signature for all accounts no matter the rank 
I bet in a month you will see those numbers triple, especially since most merit sellers have probably depleted their stash.

That would be a very interesting development. And I see no reason why it should not be implemented.
If a user is ranked to be a Sr member or legendary mamber based in airdropped merits, they should be tasked to defend their position.
And one merit should not be a problem.
Also lower ranks would stop feeling like there's a vendetta against them.
Interesting statistics from the OP.
Also note that you're considering the actual worth.
The account buyers plan to earn more than they paid for it. Through the combination of effort put into it.

[cryptovigi]

Just imagine if theymos will introduce a 1 earned merit requirement to display signature for all accounts no matter the rank 
I bet in a month you will see those numbers triple, especially since most merit sellers have probably depleted their stash.

It was also my sugestion few weeks ago:

What to say..  Life isn't always fair..
It was said a thousand times that one merit isn't much so everybody can achieve it...
But in fact we could be more fair... Let's rise every rank requirements for 1 merit

jr. member - 1 merit,
member - 11 merits,
full member - 101 merits,
senior member - 251 merits,
hero member - 501 merits,
legendary - 1001 merits

I think it would be really FUN to see some high ranked users fighting to "EARN" their first merit ever ;-)

Anyhow when you talk about "abandoned" are those both inactive and banned account or just inactive.
Would be some nice stats to see plagiarism quantified in $

Firstly I planed to diverse it, but  unfortunetly this database doesn't contain data about bans (honestly I tried to find such data somwhere else but didn't manage to do it), so as I wrote in my post "abandoned" means inactive for any reason (bans, hacked, lost password, true abandon etc.).

[SoiledDove]

Yes, maybe it's stupid of me to say so, but I find it hard to understand how money can be lost in a blockchain system. Because the whole point of blockchain is that everything is recorded.

[TryNinja]

Yes, maybe it's stupid of me to say so, but I find it hard to understand how money can be lost in a blockchain system. Because the whole point of blockchain is that everything is recorded.

Read the thread... If the coins are inaccessible, we can technically say that the money has been "lost".

I’m sure that everyone of you have read that 3 – 4 millions of bitcoins lost in the blockchain (in case of loosing passwords, loosing harddrives/pendrives, hardware destruction etc.).

But that's not what OP is talking about. He's considering the number of accounts that have been banned/locked/lost and that could have been sold for $x. So, it has nothing to do with Bitcoin or the blockchain itself.

[DdmrDdmr]

<…>

Logically price would vary depending on how many of those accounts were put to sale simultaneously, and just how easy they would be to purchase, but the exercise is still an interesting one.

Jr. Accounts I guess were left out of the calculus since, with the change of criteria, there are barely Jr. Account that have not been active in 2018:  out of the 8.595 Jr. Member accounts, only 130 have not been active during 2018 (115 of which are demoted account due to deleting posts, and the other 15 have received merits for 2017 or prior posts). A drop in the ocean therefore.

[NeuroticFish]

and then I’ve started to think about these abondon accounts like the digital assets lost in bitcointalk.org abyss

I think that you are incorrect. Let me explain.

I'll start with some sort of extreme example:
After a certain age, everybody has an ID. Many people don't care about it, elder people at country side may not use it for extremely long times.
On the black market an ID costs money. So everybody that didn't sell the grandparents' ID on the black market has some value "lost in the abyss"?

What I mean is that the fact one account has a certain value for bounty hunters or scammers, for many people that came here over time only to discuss, it was just a tool to get in and post, no other value.

Also, calculating the value is not really accurate.
- I expect that some account get negative feedback quite early after getting sold (for scam attempts or from vigilant people that'll notice the way of posting has change or from people getting info about the transaction).
- I expect that other accounts (I don't know if too many) would grow right after selling because of increased activity on right hands.
- The value for the seller and the value for the buyer differs. Also if many start to sell, I expect the prices to drop (rules of the free market).
- Then some may earn more money for selling Merit (ruining or not the trust feedback on the account).

All in all, there are a lot of "black market" things that can be done with the account, but many choose to not do that. And it's the best to keep it that way. Because if those accounts you've checked would get sold, the quality of the forum would drop and the current and new accounts will become close to worthless.


So no, there's no 2.5M lost and no potential 2.5M lost. It's only accounts that are deserted. ............At least this is how I'd look at this.

[cryptovigi]

...
After a certain age, everybody has an ID. Many people don't care about it, elder people at country side may not use it for extremely long times.
On the black market an ID costs money. So everybody that didn't sell the grandparents' ID on the black market has some value "lost in the abyss"?
...

The main difference is the account trading is still legal (in accordance with the rules) as opposed to ID trading.

What I mean is that the fact one account has a certain value for bounty hunters or scammers, for many people that came here over time only to discuss, it was just a tool to get in and post, no other value.

I wouldn't buy an account for myself, as I wrote "I think it is unfair, everyone should work out his own brand, and this practice should be banned. Nevertheless, trading accounts is a fact even if we do not like it ...". But until there are buyers and sellers and people are trading them each account has also a rational value expressed in money.

Also, calculating the value is not really accurate.
- I expect that some account get negative feedback quite early after getting sold (for scam attempts or from vigilant people that'll notice the way of posting has change or from people getting info about the transaction).
- I expect that other accounts (I don't know if too many) would grow right after selling because of increased activity on right hands.
- The value for the seller and the value for the buyer differs. Also if many start to sell, I expect the prices to drop (rules of the free market).
- Then some may earn more money for selling Merit (ruining or not the trust feedback on the account).

As you can see at the table I've attached I've done some research. You've absolutly right there were account with red trust really bad feedback as well as accounts with green feedback and great opinions. That's why I've estimated an average value of each rank for example as you can see at the table offer price of Legendary differs from $150 to $3.000 and taking an average value from 16 different offers I assumed that $460 could be good for this consideration. I you would need a really advanced economic model that will take into account all aspects, analyze individual accounts and calculate more accurately the price, which will probably be average anyway

Logically price would vary depending on how many of those accounts were put to sale simultaneously, and just how easy they would be to purchase, but the exercise is still an interesting one.
..

Thanks ;-)


Once again please don't take my consideration too seriuos... it is very simplified and does not take into account a number of aspects (as some of you mentioned: price fluctuations, flooding the market with accounts, possible drop of crypto and ICO market situation - which will also affect the value of the account, etc.).

[bolsha]

I think that some of the abandoned accounts here might become active once again when we see huge increase in price of bitcoins and other alt coins for monetary benefits.

[NeuroticFish]

I wouldn't buy an account for myself, as I wrote "I think it is unfair, everyone should work out his own brand, and this practice should be banned. Nevertheless, trading accounts is a fact even if we do not like it ...". But until there are buyers and sellers and people are trading them each account has also a rational value expressed in money.

You've got the wrong part of the idea. I don't accuse you of anything. I've read the part that you are not involved in account selling.
What I want to say is that if the account is of no value for the owner, he will not sell it, even if he will never use it anymore. (So the selling value for it remains 0)

As you can see at the table I've attached I've done some research.

I have no idea what the market prices are for the accounts. What I wanted to point out was that it's closer to "luck" to estimate them right, even ignoring the direction that 1 BTC = 1 BTC and 1 dead account = 1 dead account.
However, I expressed my ideas on the subject. They are as hypothetical as yours and probably both of us are wrong

Once again please don't take my consideration too seriuos...

I didn't, but my native language is not English and I don't know how to "soften" my "tone". I just wanted to contribute with some ideas...

[Kavelj22]

I think that some of the abandoned accounts here might become active once again when we see huge increase in price of bitcoins and other alt coins for monetary benefits.

Activeness in the bitcointalk forum doesn't depend on the cryptocurrency prices. May be you are here for that reason but i don't expect high ranked accounts are waiting prices to go down so they come back. I would consider all the inactive accounts as "compromised" until ownership verification even by their real owners.

[Jrashid]

What's the value this analysis really adds to the forum? Also, we should not value an account when we personally discourage that.

[mazdafunsun]

Activeness in the bitcointalk forum doesn't depend on the cryptocurrency prices. May be you are here for that reason but i don't expect high ranked accounts are waiting prices to go down so they come back. I would consider all the inactive accounts as "compromised" until ownership verification even by their real owners.

It does. Several threads have already shown the correlation between activty of the forum and Cyptocurrency price or better total market cap. This is just rational.
Also have beend noticing that more higher rank accounts are being abonded recently, abonded as in not active in last 2-3 months which ouls be because signature campaigns are getting less and less profitable,

[AccountTrade]

Most of the accounts from 2010 to 2015 are autolocked. My estimate is at least 90% are autlocked. Any users who don't post bitcoin address have zero recovery rate. Many old accounts has recent login but in reality they can't post because they are autolocked.

[maverick_temp]

I had an account here from 2013.
And was proud about being an early supporter of this forum, and BTC.
Maybe not very active, that is true.
One day I lost my account, it was hacked.
So after some time I followed the procedure that is outlined here in forum, and sent a signed message to cyrus.
Nothing happened, so after 2 months I sent to Theymos the same signed message, as it is instructed here in forum.
After 6 months nothing is coming from the forum admins.
I understand that you can be too busy, that some procedures can take time, that some things have low priority.
But if you post and pin a message with instructions about how to get your account back, then do it.
So I have been without my account for 6 months.
Suppose more ppl are in this situation.
So this is a source of inactive accounts too ......