Bitcoin adoption, the forum and past two bear markets

[tranthidung]

• If we are Bitcoiners, we should know about Bitcoin Talk forum.
• If we are Bitcoiners, we should do care about Bitcoin adoption because with bigger adoption, demands will become higher while supply is the same or even less (with more bitcoins will be lost over years).

Today, during the weekend I have spare time and make this topic with following objectives

• Snapshots of BTC-paid signature campaigns on the forum in past two bear markets
• Data source: Overview of Bitcointalk Signature-Ad Campaigns and Wayback Machine

2018 - 2019 bear market

• 2018: No snapshot from Wayback Machine
• 2019: 2 snapshots from Wayback Machine on 28 January 2019 and 26 June 2019

28 January 2019
Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20190130063829/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=615953.0

26 June 2019
Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20190628000202/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=615953.0

2022 bear market
Two snapshots on 14 May 2022 and 14 November 2022
Additionally, you can check its lively thread

14 May 2022
Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20220521040338/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=615953.0

14 November 2022
Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20221125003945/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=615953.0

Summary:

• 28 Jan 2019: 15 campaigns
• 16 June 2019: 15 campaigns
• 14 May 2022: 19 campaigns
• 14 November 2022: 22 campaigns

Only looking at total active campaigns, we easily see increasing numbers that can be a signal of more companies accept Bitcoin and some of them bring their companies to the forum to advertise here.

However, it is not enough if we only look at that tip of iceberg. Checking further with total available spots for each campaign and total active campaigns, you can see the more significant increases of 2022 campaigns compare to 2019 campaigns.

I don't show you detailed figures about that but I was in 2019 bear market and can tell you that back in the year, each campaign usually has about 10 or 15 total spots. It is very different than in this year 2022, we have many campaigns with 40, 50 or 60 available spots (exclusively Hero / Legendary members, not yet count about lower ranks).

It somewhat shows that companies in 2022 bear market are ready to spend significant bigger budgets to promote their companies and services on Bitcoin Talk forum. Somewhat it reflects the Bitcoin adoption that helps those companies have more users and obviously more income.

[1714845912]

1714845912

[jackg]

I think a lot of this has been caused by the value of bitcoin and cryptos going up though too as companies can afford higher USD pay rates a lot of the time for their participants.

I was looking at the 2015-2016 year when I started here I made 0.5 btc which at the time was worth around $100 - I didn't have the opportunity to buy crypto due to age so settled on finding other ways to acquire it. It turned out a lot less risky doing it that way too, even as a noob I was never losing unaffordable amounts of money.

The more money that circulates round an economy the general health of it improves afaik as it gives more opportunity to acquire it for those who are interested in it, it also boosted adoption (and likely still does) for those campaigns that don't need you to be too high a rank to enter. (it takes 4 months to become a senior member if you're willing to put some effort into it - if you come here with a genuine interest, you'll get up to full member before you've actually felt like you made an effort, aside from the negatives of starting out here but getting flamed for asking if an obvious scam is an obvious scam is much better than getting scammed).

[mk4]

Can some bored data expert create a chart that plots the correlation between bitcoin price(or crypto total mcap), number of signature campaign participants, and forum activity? This is probably too much to ask but yea lol.

[Edwardard]

you'll get up to full member before you've actually felt like you made an effort

Complete noobs won't be able to make it so easily (without efforts) after the merit system deployment. They may gain activity points but the merit part requires much more determination and most importantly help from legal begging thread I'd say, lol. Got to learn a lot about the forum rules, posting habits, etc. etc.

Summary:

• 28 Jan 2019: 15 campaigns
• 16 June 2019: 15 campaigns
• 14 May 2022: 19 campaigns
• 14 November 2022: 22 campaigns

Good one, btw would love to see more historic data if someone is ready to spend more time on this, like from 2014 to 2018.

[Coin_trader]

I notice that only Fortunejack signature campaign manage to keep up with Chipmixer on consistently advertising to the forum in bad times and good times. Not all casino even big one manage to consistently promoting here on bad market. IIRC Fortunejack halt there campaign for some time during 2020-2021 but not a whole year.

@Tranthidung, I believe adding a summary for the total budget used on each campaign will help us to understand how much company willing to risk on marketing despite a bad market for them. I’m interested to know if they increase or decrease their rate and budget allocation base on the current market condition. I remember Chipmixer adjust there pay rate too when Bitcoin price increases drastically.

This data analysis on campaigns is really helpful to see how forum stand during bear market.

[tranthidung]

I believe adding a summary for the total budget used on each campaign will help us to understand how much company willing to risk on marketing despite a bad market for them. I’m interested to know if they increase or decrease their rate and budget allocation base on the current market condition.

I know that but I won't spend my time to check each campaign in the past and calculate their max budget for each week and make a sum max budget for all active campaigns each week.

I shared ^{in OP} that in the past, there are less total spots for each campaign and as you can see in screenshots, their payrates were lower than nowadays campaigns too. You can make a rough estimation and obviously, nowadays we have increases of both total active campaigns and total max budget from all campaigns each week.

Can some bored data expert create a chart that plots the correlation between bitcoin price(or crypto total mcap), number of signature campaign participants, and forum activity? This is probably too much to ask but yea lol.

I won't go to make it but you can use my past charts from Forum's 2020 year-end report

I think a lot of this has been caused by the value of bitcoin and cryptos going up though too as companies can afford higher USD pay rates a lot of the time for their participants.

I meant there are more companies accepted Bitcoin as their payment methods and they have more users who use cryptocurrency exclusively Bitcoin. Then they decided to run their signature campaigns in the forum and more positively, they open more max spots in their campaigns as well as increase pay rates for their participants.

Good one, btw would love to see more historic data if someone is ready to spend more time on this, like from 2014 to 2018.

If you are interested in more snapshots, you can check it with Wayback Machine (link is given in OP).

The topic objective is to compare between two bear markets so I won't derail from it.

[LoyceV]

2018: No snapshot from Wayback Machine

You don't need internet archives for this, updates are frequently posted in the topic itself.

[tranthidung]

You don't need internet archives for this, updates are frequently posted in the topic itself.

Yeah I knew that @ralle14 usually makes weekly updated tables and @Mitchell uses it to update OP of that thread. In addition, @Mitchell frequently (after a few months or one year ?) will ask moderators to split that thread, move old pages to Archive or Trash can.

Snapshots in OP don't reflect all bad things with campaigns in 2019 when some long-lasting and high-paid campaigns stopped such as Bitsler, Yolodice, FortuneJack, BitDice.

In general, I don't waste my time to check all pages in that topic to retrospectively look at past campaigns. With the objective of this topic, I only need a few snapshots from Wayback Machine, for an overview with another viewpoint about Bitcoin adoption and its impact on forum signature campaigns

[Hispo]

Can some bored data expert create a chart that plots the correlation between bitcoin price(or crypto total mcap), number of signature campaign participants, and forum activity? This is probably too much to ask but yea lol.

I believe the data about the signature participants would be significantly harder to get than the price history of Bitcoin and the activity on the forum, the latter ones are already being registered and stored (thanks to Ninjastic project, etc).

In order to get an approximation on the number of campaign participants it would be necessary to manually gather historic information from the Marketplace or the thread summarizing the campaigns, also assume those campaigns got full very quickly after the publication of the ANN (assume the same day, for example), to simplify things a bit further.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Summary:

• 28 Jan 2019: 15 campaigns
• 16 June 2019: 15 campaigns
• 14 May 2022: 19 campaigns
• 14 November 2022: 22 campaigns

Oh snap!  I was just wondering out loud about this exact data in a thread I just posted in--it was about spam/shitposting decreasing over the last four years, and without knowing the above I assumed that the reason for the decrease might have been because there are fewer campaigns these days.  Guess I was wrong.

On the other hand, there's no data for altcoin/token-paying bounties trending over time, though I suspect there are fewer of those right now since the ICO boom has long since died off.  And I could swear that back in 2015-16 there were a lot more campaigns running than even the highest number above (22).  They used to just come and go, with some lasting a week to maybe a month and others that lasted for years.

Thanks for the numbers, OP.

[Pmalek]

I notice that only Fortunejack signature campaign manage to keep up with Chipmixer on consistently advertising to the forum in bad times and good times. Not all casino even big one manage to consistently promoting here on bad market. IIRC Fortunejack halt there campaign for some time during 2020-2021 but not a whole year.

That's right. FortuneJack's old signature campaign was one of the most long-lasting promo campaigns on the forum. During the times when ChipMixer was paying up to 0.0375 BTC per week, FortuneJack was one brand that came close to that and paid its participants 0.02 BTC/week. This amount was lowered to 0.015 BTC before the campaign ended abruptly.   

[Rikafip]

However, it is not enough if we only look at that tip of iceberg. Checking further with total available spots for each campaign and total active campaigns, you can see the more significant increases of 2022 campaigns compare to 2019 campaigns.

Yep, your overview just confirmed what was obvious for some time, that it was never easier to get into a signature campaign than it is now (well, from 2019 when I joined the first one). I remember back in 2019 when I was applying for signature campaigns that competition was fierce and even a quality members had issues joining any decent paying campaign (back then $50 was considered good). Now situation is diametrically opposite and even a shitposter can get into a decent campaign, which is combination of increased amount of campaigns and decreased amount of active members.

I know its not the topic of this thread (and it was before my time here, that's why I am asking) but what was the situation during last bull market regarding signature campaigns? Was it significantly better than it was during bear?

[joker_josue]

First of all thank you for your analysis, it's always interesting to look at things from a different perspective, which allows you to have a broader idea about this topic.

You don't need internet archives for this, updates are frequently posted in the topic itself.

[...]

In general, I don't waste my time to check all pages in that topic to retrospectively look at past campaigns. With the objective of this topic, I only need a few snapshots from Wayback Machine, for an overview with another viewpoint about Bitcoin adoption and its impact on forum signature campaigns

However, a really deeper analysis of this topic and on this subject would be interesting. I'm short of time, but who knows...

[tranthidung]

FortuneJack's old signature campaign was one of the most long-lasting promo campaigns on the forum. During the times when ChipMixer was paying up to 0.0375 BTC per week, FortuneJack was one brand that came close to that and paid its participants 0.02 BTC/week. This amount was lowered to 0.015 BTC before the campaign ended abruptly.    

FortuneJack campaign has very good pay rate if we consider it in pay per post. Total weekly payment is 0.02 BTC for 25 posts. With ChipMixer campaign, you can receive up to 0.0375 BTC weekly but must make 50 posts to get that max payment.

It means if we compare two campaigns in pay per post rate, FortuneJack campaign has a higher pay rate. It's just you can not earn a max weekly payment as high as ChipMixer. Maybe many people only compared two campaigns in max weekly payments.

About their abrupt shutdown, I believe that it was partially because complained of some participants about withdrawal fee for Bitcoin. Eventually, they decided to waive withdrawal fee for all FortuneJack users, not only campaign participants. I don't know they actually were happy to do that or just did it because of unnecessary noise from participants. If it is a second reason, that should make them feeling very bad and shut the campaign down.

I remember back in 2019 when I was applying for signature campaigns that competition was fierce and even a quality members had issues joining any decent paying campaign (back then $50 was considered good). Now situation is diametrically opposite and even a shitposter can get into a decent campaign, which is combination of increased amount of campaigns and decreased amount of active members.

In this bear market, many campaign participants who joined the forum after 2019 might not know that they have been enjoying a must better campaign period even in a bear market. In the past, it's superb difficult to get in a good campaign. What is a good campaign? Just $50 per week.  

[Pmalek]

About their abrupt shutdown, I believe that it was partially because complained of some participants about withdrawal fee for Bitcoin. Eventually, they decided to waive withdrawal fee for all FortuneJack users, not only campaign participants. I don't know they actually were happy to do that or just did it because of unnecessary noise from participants. If it is a second reason, that should make them feeling very bad and shut the campaign down.

Back when I was in the campaign, we used to receive our weekly payments directly into our FortuneJack accounts, but the casino had no withdrawal fees. We could withdraw the entire amount to our personal wallet and the casino covered the mining fees on their end. That was the case for other players as well.

I always remember that FJ didn't have withdrawal fees, but the minimum amounts required to make a withdrawal were always high compared to many other casinos. Maybe they did charge players for withdrawals, but that could only have been the case before I got accepted into the campaign.