Bitcointalk forum holding 125 BTC

[RickDeckard]

@Pharmacist

It's actually >10x as much.

Is this the answer to the question of Pharmacist regarding how much would it take to develop a new forum?

I do understand that the amount could provide some upgrades to the forum (speaking in layman terms, I don't really know how much work would have to be involved due to the forum activity/reach) but those changes can be an array of options that perhaps would suit more some users than others. I guess the work that would be put into it might not be appreciated by some or even start saying that they would much prefer the forum as it was before ...

I would, however, appreciate any kind of 2FA method to be implemented, just to increase the safety of our accounts. I do know that is hard to implement due to the current forum structure, but one can hope right?

As for the sum itself, I'm sure that we can be sure that this forum longevity will surpass our grand-grand-grand children

[Quickseller]

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong on either of those points. 

You are not wrong. According to mexxer-2 post from 2016, a portion of the 25% of the bitcoin the forum generated through ads was intended for mod payments according to a formula. If the formula is correct, the most active moderators earned 0.3% or more per month, each. This was confirmed by Quickseller further down in the thread.   

As far as I can tell, the percentage is now higher than 25%. The ad auctions are not bringing in much bitcoin right now and the forum has grown enough to need a lot of mods. My guess is that the mods get nearly all of the forum ad revenue and hosting is paid for out of the forum’s reserves.

[vintages]

The site is fine. What could you possibly add to this forum anyway? (I mean feature-wise)

I personally hope to one day see a 'follow' feature for users. So it will be easy to follow a user and read on their posts and comments. It's kinda tiring to keep bookmarking users for this feature.

125BTC

It's actually >10x as much.

I had a premonition the other day that some of these funds may be used to take 1st amendment battles to the Supreme Court some day..

Has the forum had any issue in the past that led to court case? Just asking.

[malevolent]

@Pharmacist

It's actually >10x as much.

Is this the answer to the question of Pharmacist regarding how much would it take to develop a new forum?

Are you serious? No, I was correcting his and the OP's faulty estimation of the amount of forum funds which are over 10x higher.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155000.0 (this link was also posted in the third post of this thread)

[Pmalek]

I personally hope to one day see a 'follow' feature for users. So it will be easy to follow a user and read on their posts and comments. It's kinda tiring to keep bookmarking users for this feature.

Unless something has changed, such a follow users feature already exists. It was created by LoyceV. Read Follow users on Bitcointalk.org (posts and/or topics) to understand what I am talking about. All you have to do is post the user ID of the user you want to follow in a code tag. You can select to follow their posts and/or the threads they create. It's a pretty neat solution even though it's not an official forum release.

[GeorgeJohn]

I think the only Changes in the forum is the development ,innovation of user via research because new creative things always come in contact in the community everyday, op I know vividly that your emphasising on the site of the community for upgradings and other thing's which involves in the platform but get confused every time concerning the forum.

If I may ask, how does forum generate their finance used to maintain or keep this community active everyday and everytime, because I always confused via the means the controller of forum pay moderators and other people attacked to keep the community  moving forward.

[pugman]

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong on either of those points. 

You are not wrong. According to mexxer-2 post from 2016, a portion of the 25% of the bitcoin the forum generated through ads was intended for mod payments according to a formula. If the formula is correct, the most active moderators earned 0.3% or more per month, each. This was confirmed by Quickseller further down in the thread.   

As far as I can tell, the percentage is now higher than 25%. The ad auctions are not bringing in much bitcoin right now and the forum has grown enough to need a lot of mods. My guess is that the mods get nearly all of the forum ad revenue and hosting is paid for out of the forum’s reserves.

Do you really think so? From what I can recall mods get paid around 1000-2000$ a month on a normal basis if they handle a certain portion of reports. I am not sure if this is still the case though. Mods get paid in terms of how many reports they relatively handle. Ref: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5294865.msg55717644#msg55717644

OTOH, I came across this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=234009.msg2480445#msg2480445 which basically proves the forum had more than 6000 BTC in funds.

More links regards to mod payments: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5265166.msg54889130#msg54889130

[Halab]

From what I can recall mods get paid around 1000-2000$ a month on a normal basis if they handle a certain portion of reports. I am not sure if this is still the case though. Mods get paid in terms of how many reports they relatively handle.

Wowow don't say things like that, people will believe it . The reality for most mods is much less.
Mods get paid in BTC, everything is on the blockchain and accessible to everyone with a minimum of research.

I know what I do for what I'm paid (and I'm not complaining), but I really can't even imagine what those who get the most must do (in terms of handled reports and all the other inconveniences).

[libert19]

We are probably going to hodl this 125 bitcoins forever or until each member of bitcointalk becomes millionaire in dollar terms.

Not really, if you check the address there are outgoing transactions every few weeks.

[actmyname]

Not really, if you check the address there are outgoing transactions every few weeks.

Outgoing transactions do not signify any transfer of value except across addresses: you cannot determine the identity of the recipient merely from the fact that address A sent to address B.

Splitting coins is common: if I use a $1000 bill (arbitrary) on a $5 transaction, there is still a large txinput being used but the actual output is unknown except to the sender and recipient (if unique).

[shahzadafzal]

Few things:

Forum holds more than 125 BTC. Multiple people have access to the forum funds via Multi-sig. For more info in detail,read : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155000.0

Forum spends most of the money of Epochtalk, and to pay out mods. Epochtalk is the new forum software which has been in development for ~8 years. The board for epochtalk is here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=167.0

What if I tell you guys forum used to hold 5500 BTC…. but that was 10 years ago.. of course there is cost involved. Running this community of 3.2m users is not free and specially cost to epochtalk , so it would be insane if someone thinks forum still holding this much BTC

The forum has about 650 760 920 1120 1720 2267 3000 5500 BTC on hand at this moment, but you can bid more than that.

[malevolent]

Do you really think so? From what I can recall mods get paid around 1000-2000$ a month on a normal basis if they handle a certain portion of reports. I am not sure if this is still the case though. Mods get paid in terms of how many reports they relatively handle. Ref: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5294865.msg55717644#msg55717644

OTOH, I came across this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=234009.msg2480445#msg2480445 which basically proves the forum had more than 6000 BTC in funds.

More links regards to mod payments: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5265166.msg54889130#msg54889130

The vast majority get paid less than that, depends on their activity and whether they're Global mods or not (the latter are paid more per action, IIRC). Current forum funds also amount to >1250 BTC: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155000.0 (I'm writing this number here in case someone still failed to follow the link.)

Which means the forum will never have any problems to self-sustain financially.

[cryptoperkele]

What kind of changes would you like to see? Sparkling buttons and stylish layouts? This is a serious forum bringing serious discussions about a serious world-changing project that is taken... seriously! There's no need to change anything that would spoil the spirit of this website.  
---

I would like to see notifications when i get mentioned or tagged by someone, so that it would be easier to keep up with the conversation. That's the only thing i really would like to see. Otherwise everything is fine and there's no need to chance something that's working.

[shahzadafzal]

I would like to see notifications when i get mentioned or tagged by someone, so that it would be easier to keep up with the conversation. That's the only thing i really would like to see. Otherwise everything is fine and there's no need to chance something that's working.

New forum has Notifications it’s being taken care....

Meanwhile for notifications use this TryNinja Telegram bot for notifications

[Quickseller]

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong on either of those points. 

You are not wrong. According to mexxer-2 post from 2016, a portion of the 25% of the bitcoin the forum generated through ads was intended for mod payments according to a formula. If the formula is correct, the most active moderators earned 0.3% or more per month, each. This was confirmed by Quickseller further down in the thread.   

As far as I can tell, the percentage is now higher than 25%. The ad auctions are not bringing in much bitcoin right now and the forum has grown enough to need a lot of mods. My guess is that the mods get nearly all of the forum ad revenue and hosting is paid for out of the forum’s reserves.

Do you really think so?

The last mod payment resulted in the mods getting a total of 0.1844BTC, and was sent in the middle of March. I looked at the previous ad auctions going back a month (based on the end date) prior to the mod payment being sent, and the forum received a total of 0.325BTC from selling ads. So it looks like last month, the forum spent about 56% of their revenue on mods. At current prices, that leaves about $8100 to pay for hosting, and any other expenses the forum may incur.

I am not sure how much hosting costs the forum per month, but it is probably a decent amount based on the amount of traffic it gets.

[nullius]

This is one of the problems with the transparent blockchain:  Anybody in the world can peek at your finances, then offer you unsolicited advice about how to run your business.  (Or worse.)

Transparency is for fools...

...so, why have those coins not been run through JoinMarket or something similar?

I can see "disinformation" related laws being passed by the current congress that would very much affect how the forum operates.

When you Americans allowed your Democrats to steal your 2020 Presidential election with massive fraud, you may thus have doomed freedom of speech for the whole Internet.

I am still saying that here while I can; and I would not use a site where I couldn’t.  I get the feeling that I will probably someday be gone from here.  Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook could not ban me, because I never used those sites.

[malevolent]

This is one of the problems with the transparent blockchain:  Anybody in the world can peek at your finances, then offer you unsolicited advice about how to run your business.  (Or worse.)

Transparency is for fools...

...so, why have those coins not been run through JoinMarket or something similar?

The forum never was nor aimed to be a traditional business in the first place, and for the first couple years transparency wasn't a bad thing when the funds raised from selling Donator, VIP titles and donations were being used to pay for the development of the new forum. Forum mods themselves are always free to mix their coins as they please.

[OgNasty]

This is one of the problems with the transparent blockchain:  Anybody in the world can peek at your finances, then offer you unsolicited advice about how to run your business.  (Or worse.)

Indeed.  My favorite are the people who say things like, "Why haven't you spent your savings on x or y?  If I had that much saved I would have spent it on..."  Well, that's why you have no savings and are mad at innocent Bitcoin vendors for accepting your BTC...  LOL

There's no shortage of armchair quarterbacks in the crypto community.  I still think transparency is a positive with Bitcoin though.  Transparency is awesome, the community and possibly society as a whole just need to learn they aren't in control of other people's money and to use it as a verification tool, not an unsolicited business consultation request for those who aren't well versed in finance.

[Quickseller]

This is one of the problems with the transparent blockchain:  Anybody in the world can peek at your finances, then offer you unsolicited advice about how to run your business.  (Or worse.)

Transparency is for fools...

There needs to be a certain level of transparency when running a institution that accepts donations.

I can see "disinformation" related laws being passed by the current congress that would very much affect how the forum operates.

When you Americans allowed your Democrats to steal your 2020 Presidential election with massive fraud, you may thus have doomed freedom of speech for the whole Internet.

I don’t think Trump could have governed if he was able to get the election overturned. I think this is why he made the bogus claims instead of the legitimate grievances he couldshould have made. The ability of Democrats to produce propaganda is strong enough to ensure that Trump would have seen four years of Democrats controlling congress and Trump would have been unable to enact his agenda.

Hopefully, republicans will be able to delay enough so that the radical changes to America 🇺🇸 are not included in bills until after the 2022 election, where Republicans will likely take over the house, and prevent things such as the freedom of speech to be removed.

[LoyceV]

The last mod payment resulted in the mods getting a total of 0.1844BTC, and was sent in the middle of March. I looked at the previous ad auctions going back a month (based on the end date) prior to the mod payment being sent, and the forum received a total of 0.325BTC from selling ads. So it looks like last month, the forum spent about 56% of their revenue on mods. At current prices, that leaves about $8100 to pay for hosting, and any other expenses the forum may incur.

There's also a considerable cost for forum treasurers: (at least) 4*0.75BTC per year, or 0.25BTC per month. That's 77% of the ads revenue you mentioned.