Decline of Marketplace activity/trading

[Eternad]

The main reason why I hate using the marketplace of forum is because of trust issue on the sellers and buyers, You will need to use escrow are gamble your money to sellers to save for escrow fees. Actually product on marketplace are very good and cheap. The only problem was the escrow fee or the transaction fee sometimes greater than the value of items being bought.

Someone is using external merchant website but I'm not comfortable using it since it's outside forum, Maybe a built in forum escrow such as smart contract will make this solve the problem.

[1713532210]

1713532210

[crwth]

Bitcointalk has been more on the advertising side than a place to trade now, knowing that you can get scammed. I remember my first time trading here, in which I sold a World of Warcraft code, and I didn't know how to use the marketplace yet; in turn, I was scammed. It's risky to use the market if you don't know any of the rules or steps for you not to get scammed.

I can't think of a reason for how it can be fixed. As long as there is movement in the marketplace, it's hard to measure how active it is. Most people turn to Telegram or something.

[UserU]

Bitcointalk has been more on the advertising side than a place to trade now, knowing that you can get scammed. I remember my first time trading here, in which I sold a World of Warcraft code, and I didn't know how to use the marketplace yet; in turn, I was scammed. It's risky to use the market if you don't know any of the rules or steps for you not to get scammed.

I can't think of a reason for how it can be fixed. As long as there is movement in the marketplace, it's hard to measure how active it is. Most people turn to Telegram or something.

Yeah, they just want the sales now. Lately I received some unsolicited PMs on signature campaigns when I didn't even ask for them.

[eddie13]

Advertising is obviously in the tanks these days too by looking at theymoses ad auction revenue..

If all you have is spammers spamming adds they themselves aren’t a good target to advertise to..
Other than them you have the old school BTCT users still sticking around, who probably aren’t much good to advertise to either (not me)..

Lost most of the average users, who are good advertising targets..


At least gambling is still doing well, I think..
They like to post their gambling conversations, real conversations, and they are good targets for gambling advertisement..

I think we need to start thinking about getting merits flowing in the altcoins boards..
They are real users and good users, they throw coin around, make coin flow, and are likely good advertising targets..

[Welsh]

The lending section as pretty much been monopolised, but certain users. They offer low rate loans, and therefore you don't get as many threads as we used to asking, since they just go to the multiple services offering these low rate loans.

Lending a few years ago used to be crazy at times.

I think we need to start thinking about getting merits flowing in the altcoins boards..
They are real users and good users, they throw coin around, make coin flow, and are likely good advertising targets..

Probably. There's an absolute massive stigma of the Altcoin section though. I can't necessarily blame users for that, it is quite crazy at times. Definitely a lot of low quality content, but I think we're making a dent into things slowly. Also, a lot of scam projects which unfortunately put the users that post in that section under question at times, which probably shouldn't be the case.

I'd be interested to hear users opinions on what could be improved, to sort of remove that stigma.

[PrimeNumber7]

The lending section as pretty much been monopolised, but certain users. They offer low rate loans, and therefore you don't get as many threads as we used to asking, since they just go to the multiple services offering these low rate loans.

That is a fair point. This has probably also cut down on the obvious scam loan requests involving sob stories, empty promises, and/or worthless collateral.

I think we need to start thinking about getting merits flowing in the altcoins boards..
They are real users and good users, they throw coin around, make coin flow, and are likely good advertising targets..

Probably. There's an absolute massive stigma of the Altcoin section though. I can't necessarily blame users for that, it is quite crazy at times. Definitely a lot of low quality content, but I think we're making a dent into things slowly. Also, a lot of scam projects which unfortunately put the users that post in that section under question at times, which probably shouldn't be the case.

I'd be interested to hear users opinions on what could be improved, to sort of remove that stigma.

I think this is more of a cultural issue than a moderation issue. There are a lot of people here that can reasonably be described as 'bitcoin maximalists'. There are a lot of people who will describe any altcoin as a 'shitcoin' without knowing anything about the altcoin -- to be fair, this is an accurate description for most altcoins. The only thing I can think of that the administration can do, would be to encourage people to have an open mind regarding altcoins.

Advertising is obviously in the tanks these days too by looking at theymoses ad auction revenue..

Yes, that is one thing I noted in my OP.

[Welsh]

I think this is more of a cultural issue than a moderation issue. There are a lot of people here that can reasonably be described as 'bitcoin maximalists'. There are a lot of people who will describe any altcoin as a 'shitcoin' without knowing anything about the altcoin -- to be fair, this is an accurate description for most altcoins. The only thing I can think of that the administration can do, would be to encourage people to have an open mind regarding altcoins.

Yeah, and to a certain point I can understand it. The majority are either outright scams, money grabs or just meme coins at this point. It doesn't really help that certain meme coins have been somewhat successful at reaching mainstream crypto users.

Personally, I'm not invested in any other cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin. However, there's been a few interesting ideas out there, and while they may have failed, there's definitely potential that altcoins can be useful, even if its not for everyone.

[PrimeNumber7]

I think this is more of a cultural issue than a moderation issue. There are a lot of people here that can reasonably be described as 'bitcoin maximalists'. There are a lot of people who will describe any altcoin as a 'shitcoin' without knowing anything about the altcoin -- to be fair, this is an accurate description for most altcoins. The only thing I can think of that the administration can do, would be to encourage people to have an open mind regarding altcoins.

Yeah, and to a certain point I can understand it. The majority are either outright scams, money grabs or just meme coins at this point. It doesn't really help that certain meme coins have been somewhat successful at reaching mainstream crypto users.

Personally, I'm not invested in any other cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin. However, there's been a few interesting ideas out there, and while they may have failed, there's definitely potential that altcoins can be useful, even if its not for everyone.

The way that I look at altcoins is that they can try out various different ideas/features/technology/etc that can be tested in the "real world", and if an altcoin is successful, there can be a consideration to upgrading bitcoin in a way that somewhat mimics said altcoin if the feature is useful (similarly, if something is not successful, it would create a strong argument against upgrading bitcoin to implement said technology/feature).

Unfortunately, many who are behind altcoins are taking advantage of various hypes as a means to enrich themselves. I think the coins in the later category both far outnumber the former category and will make people hesitant to give merit to those posting in the altcoin subs.

[eddie13]

I'd be interested to hear users opinions on what could be improved, to sort of remove that stigma.

Make altcoin posters that think from the different “culture” sources..

[OgNasty]

The main reason why I hate using the marketplace of forum is because of trust issue on the sellers and buyers, You will need to use escrow are gamble your money to sellers to save for escrow fees. Actually product on marketplace are very good and cheap. The only problem was the escrow fee or the transaction fee sometimes greater than the value of items being bought.

This is understandable as well.  I used to offer cheaper escrows (in dollar terms) but then trolls would constantly setup fake escrows to waste my time or attempt to scam the escrow with crazy stories.  It became quite a drain on my time, so I had to let costs float up with Bitcoin to make it no longer worth the cost to play games.  For a while I was trying to push a "bonding" setup to save buyers money, where sellers could put funds into escrow and buyers would know that it was safe to purchase from those vendors because they had funds being held by an escrow on behalf of their buyers.  That way the seller could pay one escrow fee and his buyers would know their items were safe, saving them from escrow costs.  It was an idea that never took off though.