Why bitcointalk.org is so popular?

[FlyingDrozd]

Hey guys. I'm a talkative person and participate in a lot of chats and forums. And I noticed that this forum is the most popular one. Can you explain to me how it happened and why? What's their success story?

[hilariousandco]

Aliens.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2905330.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4322078.0

[FlyingDrozd]

Aliens.

Pyramids lol

[Vod]

Fundamentally, I believe it's because the admin (Theymos) is very liberal with the rights he gives to the members.  

Basically, most anything goes.   He allows members to police themselves and that gives pride and purpose.

Or... Aliens.  

[FlyingDrozd]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2905330.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4322078.0

Wow these links are super useful thank you

[FlyingDrozd]

Fundamentally, I believe it's because the admin (Theymos) is very liberal with the rights he gives to the members.  

Basically, most anything goes.   He allows members to police themselves and that gives pride and purpose.

Makes sense, but recently it has changed. I saw that now even giveaways are banned here. Doesn't sound very liberal...

[Vod]

Makes sense, but recently it has changed. I saw that now even giveaways are banned here. Doesn't sound very liberal...

Spam is not allowed on most useful forums.   Giveaways are nothing but a lame mass advertising attempt.

[PrimeNumber7]

It was the first forum to discuss bitcoin that still exists today, and it was used by satoshi.

[LoyceV]

It was the first forum to discuss bitcoin that still exists today, and it was used by satoshi.

Even better: it was created by Satoshi!

Cøbra explains it much better than I ever could:

A lot of prominent members in the Bitcoin community started out on bitcointalk.org, then migrated to Reddit, and subsequently migrated from Reddit to Twitter. Many of these became "thought leaders" on Twitter, and no longer are active on Reddit or bitcointalk.org. I don't think it's because of the format or feel of the forum, I think it's more of an ego thing. The thing with Twitter is that if you have a minimum of a few thousand followers, you can write a good tweet and watch the likes and retweets pour in. It does give some level of satisfaction, something that can't quite be replicated on a forum. Eventually over time you find that people start trying very hard to be liked, so rather than stopping to form an opinion, they end up trying to fit into the group think. You see it in Bitcoin Twitter especially when everyone has the Lightning emoji in their name, the whole "UASF" in the bio/hats thing, absolutely toxic hatred of altcoins, and other examples of people trying desperately to fit into what everyone else in the community is doing. Everyone is always organizing to rally against something, and that's where the problem with these platforms shows itself, it enforces conformity. Conformists are easy to control and manipulate.

See the thing with these platforms though is that they intentionally trick you to seem bigger than they actually are. How many people on /r/Bitcoin post and contribute each day? It genuinely isn't that many, and on quiet days you can see a handful of very active discussions, and even those don't have very many unique new people. But the way the content is structured masks that. This forum has an insane amount of discussion taking place each day, across many different aspects of Bitcoin and periphery topics (economics, politics, services, etc). If you want price memes and surface level discussion, Reddit and Twitter are great, but this place has more variety and people are generally open minded, if you know which topics to post in. Twitter is also quite a small sample of Bitcoin users, for example Andreas' account, one of the most vocal and well respected Bitcoiners on social media only grew by ~60k followers in the past year, nothing compared to the type of numbers this forum achieves with new users.

There will be many forums and many places to discuss Bitcoin, many social media sites and many Facebook groups. But how many of those will have been something Satoshi created? A hundred years from now, nobody will give a shit about Twitter, Facebook or Reddit. But there's a good chance they will give a shit about Bitcoin (and one can hope they will be using it). You can be sure this forum will be in the history books. Little kids will look over archives of our threads as they dream of one day owning 1 BTC. Threads like "we are the new wealthy elite" will be discussed in classrooms. Homework assignments will ask kids to go and research how the HODL meme originated. If Bitcoin does take over the world, you can tell your grandkids you were in the place where it all began. We have something that can't be replicated elsewhere: history.

[FlyingDrozd]

Makes sense, but recently it has changed. I saw that now even giveaways are banned here. Doesn't sound very liberal...

Spam is not allowed on most useful forums.   Giveaways are nothing but a lame mass advertising attempt.

As a user, I don't mind free money even if it is 10$ or if I have to do something small to get them

[FlyingDrozd]

It was the first forum to discuss bitcoin that still exists today, and it was used by satoshi.

Even better: it was created by Satoshi!

No way  that's sick

[eternalgloom]

The fact that it was the first ever Bitcoin forum around and the fact it's so libertarian (pretty much anything goes, except for highly illegal stuff).

Oh yeah and obviously aliens, shapeshifting reptilians to be precise. David Icke & Alew Jones wish they could get to the bottom of it, but Theymos has always been one step ahead of them.

[khaled0111]

...
Cøbra explains it much better than I ever could:
...

The main problem with forums is that great posts like the one you quoted can go unnoticed and get buried under hundreds of shitposts. OP (Cøbra in this case), simply, can't do anything about it.

I am also confident that after many years from now, whenever you talk about Bitcoin, you will have to talk about bitcointalk 

[Oyarebu]

Basically in my opinion, I would say the popularity of Bitcointalk.org was as a result of the first hand information an individual can gather from the forum. There are heroic knowledgeable individuals on the forum and staying on the forum for around a year or more will make such individual are bunch of cryptocurrency teams and not only that, been a good adviser to investors of cryptocurrency.

[LoyceV]

The main problem with forums is that great posts like the one you quoted can go unnoticed and get buried under hundreds of shitposts. OP (Cøbra in this case), simply, can't do anything about it.

That's why I quoted it
There's also Top-merited recent replies and Top-merited replies, all-time, but those lists are still heavily polluted with posts that don't deserve the ~50 Merit they received (AKA Merit abuse).

[Welsh]

Various different reasons, besides the ones already mentioned its surely partly down to the community, and a few individuals within it. Look at TMAN's replies for example I'm sure that gives a few users a good laugh. I personally don't like the system that reddit uses with upvotes, and I hate the Twitter interface, so its always made sense to use the forum rather than any of the alternatives.

[blink]

It is because of the guidance of our Dear Leader Theymos  

[AdolfinWolf]

Probably because it was the first of it's kind, and due to all the "OG's" using it.

I also think that, despite all the hate signature campaigns get, they played a major role in attracting both companies and other users to bitcointalk.
Whether that kind of popularity is a good or a bad thing -- you tell me, but it sure did increase BTalk's traffic stats & posts.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=bitcointalk You can see that a lot of traffic comes from people wondering about bounties.

[Lucius]

In addition to the above mentioned that this forum is created by Satoshi Nakamoto, I can only say that there is no better place to be if you are interested in cryptocurrency. During the years I was active member on maybe 4-5 forums related to crypto, but today some of them are closed, others have very few active users.

Bitcointalk.org is also popular because of signature campaigns, many new users come here and their first question is how to earn from this forum. Although this is a wrong approach, we can conclude that new users come partly because of possible earnings.

This forum is also popular place for advertisers, they can buy ad-slots or create signature, Twitter, FB campaign, and given the large number of users they have great visibility for their projects.

[TheBeardedBaby]

I'm sorry to say it but probably 85-90% of the traffic is because of greed.
All those signature campaigns, giveaways, airdrops some sort of "free money", attract more and more people who have come here to "work hard" and make as more as possible.
Then comes the bots, alts and scammers, together with the FOMO-ed newbies trying to invest now and be rich in a year, because someone told them so but got fooled very easy and then shouting around that bitcoin is only for criminals, it's scam, ponzi, bubble etc...

At the end we are all here only for the technology :