The effect the mixer ban has had on the forum.

[KingsDen]

So you want theymos to leave the USA and find a friendly country to run bitcointalk.

If that friendly country turns their policy similarly to the USA. theymos will need to leave that country, find a new one, and the cycle will repeat.

Quite interesting and a nice idea, iff: what theymos lives for is Bitcointalk.
Instead of theymos toeing this lane, he will rather form a group that will transform the forum to a decentralized one.

To me, these ideas are not needed yet because the forum is not doing any illegal deals. The last time I checked, arms and drugs are not sold here. I also feel that theymos has an informant from the government. Anytime US wants to come for this forum, it will not take him unaware. Could be the reason he stopped mixers, who knows with this recent attacks on mixers, BTT would have been implicated and suspended by now.

[philipma1957]

The USA claims mixers are used by terrorist groups to help fund terrorism.

As I wrote a few posts ago, most criminals are amateurs who have zero understanding of how a mixer works. Or they do have an inkling of understanding about Bitcoin's anonymity and are using Monero because of that. But they are definitely not using a bitcoin mixer in most cases, either because they don't understand the concept of privacy or because they know Bitcoin is fundamentally not anonymous.

You only have a small percentage of the most skilled cybercriminals or terrorists using a bitcoin mixer in any case.

So much of what Congress and executive branches are saying is waffle, but they don't care because, you know, eroding freedoms is more important! (how ironic that is considering freedom is supposed to be a cornerstone here.)

The USA hit a major turning point with the 911 attacks.

They decided to use it as the reason for more security and stricter rules.

Basically one could argue those terrorist won as they turned the government on to all its citizens.

We are subject to a lot of endless financial rules. blah blah blah

[Synchronice]

So you want theymos to leave the USA and find a friendly country to run bitcointalk.

If that friendly country turns their policy similarly to the USA. theymos will need to leave that country, find a new one, and the cycle will repeat.

Why should theymos leave a country? I guess, his quality of life in the USA is very good, he is young and probably has a lot of fun with the amount of coins that he holds. I think that there is no reason for him to leave the USA.

To be honest, I think that it's very sad how many people care only about their financial profits. I have only one question, is it okay for you if mixer owners will be able to create ANN threads and have an open discussion in their ANN threads but they'll be prohibited to run a signature campaign or any kind of promotion? Let me guess, your answer is no. Many people only care about mixers because they were paying lots of money to signature campaign participants. That's all, many people want to get that pay rate back and that's why many people complain so much about ban of mixer signature campaigns. If theymos tells them that he will return mixers but will prohibit them from promoting their services, I bet that this will make people upset Long story short, many care about pay rate and not about the right to privacy.

[pakhitheboss]

To be honest I never questioned the admin, the sole reason being that he focuses on the existence of the forum. There are multiple ways he could have hidden himself but unfortunately he came face to face with the FBI. Which led to his conclusion that this forum should not be palce to disrespect the US government and its security services.

That being said why not theymos hand over his admin responsibility to someone who can stand against the cruelty of the US. It is evident that he cannot give such a responsibility to someone who can handle those issue and the next problem is to not make this forum a one control entity. A lot of you will question his part to date and I don't see any reason to disagree with you guys.

To which he has said to create a decentralized forum, as of my understanding it is possible but that will make this forum nullified. To which I think that the forum now need 5 admins and using the power of democracy they can vote to approve or disapprove. Why not work around these line to make the forum fully decentralized.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

The USA hit a major turning point with the 911 attacks.

They decided to use it as the reason for more security and stricter rules.

Yep, and I'd be willing to bet many people (especially younger ones) in the US don't realize how close to 1984 we've gotten because of that day.  I couldn't name every rule created in the Patriot Act or every new restriction, but if you need quick evidence that ordinary citizens continue to be treated as potential terrorists, look no further than your nearest airport and all of the TSA employees and equipment they have at their disposal.  Sadly I think you're correct that those terrorists did score a major, long-lasting victory with the 9/11 attacks.

But the reach of those rules in the Patriot Act is far too extensive IMO.

To be honest, I think that it's very sad how many people care only about their financial profits. I have only one question, is it okay for you if mixer owners will be able to create ANN threads and have an open discussion in their ANN threads but they'll be prohibited to run a signature campaign or any kind of promotion? Let me guess, your answer is no. Many people only care about mixers because they were paying lots of money to signature campaign participants.

I'd answer "no" to that question, but not because of a profit/income motive.  Discussion and promotion of mixers ought to be allowed on an internet forum, especially since mixers aren't illegal per se (right?).  Some mixer owners have broken the law, and no doubt so have some mixer users but it irks me that there's what appears to be a witch hunt going on, i.e, mixers as a whole are being shot down by the government for spurious reasons and Theymos was essentially forced to take the step that he did so as to not put the forum and everyone on it under the government's scanning election microscope.

Oh by the way, people should care about their financial profits, and it's not unreasonable to expect that most people do very much care about their income and finances on a forum that's dealing with money.  Yep, they ought to care deeply about privacy as well, but just look at how many people put their whole lives on social media for christ's sake.  I'd say most people don't value privacy at all, or at least don't realize the peril they put themselves in when they do crap like that.  Anyway, end of rant.

[Fivestar4everMVP]

So you want theymos to leave the USA and find a friendly country to run bitcointalk.

If that friendly country turns their policy similarly to the USA. theymos will need to leave that country, find a new one, and the cycle will repeat.

Quite interesting and a nice idea, iff: what theymos lives for is Bitcointalk.
Instead of theymos toeing this lane, he will rather form a group that will transform the forum to a decentralized one.

To me, these ideas are not needed yet because the forum is not doing any illegal deals. The last time I checked, arms and drugs are not sold here. I also feel that theymos has an informant from the government. Anytime US wants to come for this forum, it will not take him unaware. Could be the reason he stopped mixers, who knows with this recent attacks on mixers, BTT would have been implicated and suspended by now.

The very day before Theymos announced that mixers are then banned on this forum, I remember making a thread where I emphasized on the dangers this forum is in if we continue to allow mixer ads here, seeing how the US government have been on and after every mixer that becomes any bit of popular, and we all know that the more popular a media becomes, the higher the chances that that media is already a government watchlist, seeing again, how the US government have been on and about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies at large, I will 100 percent believe that are already aware of the existence of this forum and are watching things that are being advertised here.

So, to me, Theymos banning mixers ads and discussing on this forum is still the best decision, regardless of how it affect the forum and it's users in terms of signature ad campaigns, I think it's better the forum run short of campaigns and still exist and operate nomally, than there is a surplus of campaigns including mixers, and sooner than later, the forum is seized and taken down forever.

The US government must have tried to find out how and where bitcoin began its journey from, and i am very sure that in the process of their research, theyve discovered this forum and are watching things going on here.

[philipma1957]

So you want theymos to leave the USA and find a friendly country to run bitcointalk.

If that friendly country turns their policy similarly to the USA. theymos will need to leave that country, find a new one, and the cycle will repeat.

Quite interesting and a nice idea, iff: what theymos lives for is Bitcointalk.
Instead of theymos toeing this lane, he will rather form a group that will transform the forum to a decentralized one.

To me, these ideas are not needed yet because the forum is not doing any illegal deals. The last time I checked, arms and drugs are not sold here. I also feel that theymos has an informant from the government. Anytime US wants to come for this forum, it will not take him unaware. Could be the reason he stopped mixers, who knows with this recent attacks on mixers, BTT would have been implicated and suspended by now.

The very day before Theymos announced that mixers are then banned on this forum, I remember making a thread where I emphasized on the dangers this forum is in if we continue to allow mixer ads here, seeing how the US government have been on and after every mixer that becomes any bit of popular, and we all know that the more popular a media becomes, the higher the chances that that media is already a government watchlist, seeing again, how the US government have been on and about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies at large, I will 100 percent believe that are already aware of the existence of this forum and are watching things that are being advertised here.

So, to me, Theymos banning mixers ads and discussing on this forum is still the best decision, regardless of how it affect the forum and it's users in terms of signature ad campaigns, I think it's better the forum run short of campaigns and still exist and operate nomally, than there is a surplus of campaigns including mixers, and sooner than later, the forum is seized and taken down forever.

The US government must have tried to find out how and where bitcoin began its journey from, and i am very sure that in the process of their research, theyve discovered this forum and are watching things going on here.

He likely did what is best for himself and the forum.

People not living in the USA do not understand the reach the government has if they want to get you they will.

Theymos could leave the USA and do the forum elsewhere but he would never be able to return to the states. And there would be a ton of countries that would grab him and hand him over to the USA.

Look what Canada did for usa in the case below

https://www.yahoo.com/news/justice-dept-huawei-exec-poised-161512518.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall


the usa said she was a spy she was in Canada and they grabbed her and held her for 3 years.

theymos could easily face the same shit if he moved the forum to a country like El Salvador  and runs all mixer action


 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-67637245

[Synchronice]

To be honest, I think that it's very sad how many people care only about their financial profits. I have only one question, is it okay for you if mixer owners will be able to create ANN threads and have an open discussion in their ANN threads but they'll be prohibited to run a signature campaign or any kind of promotion? Let me guess, your answer is no. Many people only care about mixers because they were paying lots of money to signature campaign participants.

I'd answer "no" to that question, but not because of a profit/income motive.  Discussion and promotion of mixers ought to be allowed on an internet forum, especially since mixers aren't illegal per se (right?).  Some mixer owners have broken the law, and no doubt so have some mixer users but it irks me that there's what appears to be a witch hunt going on, i.e, mixers as a whole are being shot down by the government for spurious reasons and Theymos was essentially forced to take the step that he did so as to not put the forum and everyone on it under the government's scanning election microscope.

Oh by the way, people should care about their financial profits, and it's not unreasonable to expect that most people do very much care about their income and finances on a forum that's dealing with money.  Yep, they ought to care deeply about privacy as well, but just look at how many people put their whole lives on social media for christ's sake.  I'd say most people don't value privacy at all, or at least don't realize the peril they put themselves in when they do crap like that.  Anyway, end of rant.

We saw that authorities (very high chance) visited this forum, registered here and made a warning post. Theymos also said that this forum will be in danger if he allows mixer promotions on this forum. He is also based in the USA. I think that if we want to keep this forum and theymos safe, we shouldn't ask him to ignore the warning, allow mixer signature campaigns anyway and change his home because some people here want to earn $200 per week.

If theymos ignores warning and allows mixer promotions, this forum will be closed sooner rather than later and he will be in a huge trouble. If he doesn't ignore the warning, this forum and him will be safe. We have two choices but sadly majority of people prefer to earn $200 per week for a limited time and don't give a shit what will happen to this forum and theymos.
I am not against privacy, no, but in this case we have to be realistic and do whatever is the best solution for this forum and for the forum owners. I think that theymos's decision was optimal and done for good, not for bad.

[LoyceV]

That being said why not theymos hand over his admin responsibility to someone who can stand against the cruelty of the US.

How to you find someone who's trusted, anonymous and capable?

[pakhitheboss]

That being said why not theymos hand over his admin responsibility to someone who can stand against the cruelty of the US.

How to you find someone who's trusted, anonymous and capable?

Creating a decentralized forum is not so tough all we need to do is to copy democracy voting. As democracy we can choose a members from active local boards through voting.
Only one member is allowed to represent and the local board members will vote for their leader.

The selected members should be odd in numbers and they will then decide what happens as a policy and other things for the forum.

Forum software, there are plenty of intellectual minds who can make this forum hard for the government to track. If the forum was created for Bitcoin then why not use the network to run a forum software?

This is my suggestion which I am sure will have flaws or might have been discussed earlier.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Creating a decentralized forum is not so tough

If you think it's easy, then a generous donation from theymos is waiting for you:

I would love nothing more than to be able to shut down bitcointalk.org due to some decentralized solution making it obsolete. Find me a 501(c)(3) nonprofit working on this, and I'll donate to it.

all we need to do is make it like democracy

You're kidding, right? Democracy is centralized.

As democracy we can choose a members from active local boards

Who's "we"?  

Only one member is allowed and the local board members will vote for their leader.

What prevents someone from creating alt accounts and voting for themselves? Will you impose KYC to prevent that? If so, then what will prevent buying and selling KYC votes from the Internet? (The answer to the last one is obviously "nothing"). And even if you have a solution to both, to whom will trust the KYC data? We obviously can't publish all that data, because then there would be no privacy, which is devastating for democracy.

Forum software there are plenty of minds who can make this forum hard for the government to disrupt us.

Our best course for censorship-resistant communication is Tor, but that wouldn't be a decentralized forum. It'd just be more difficult to shut down.

If the forum was created for Bitcoin then why not use the network to run the software?

I don't think people think twice before parroting this. Explain me your thought on this. Step by step, how would it work? I want you to realize yourself how dumb idea this is.

[pakhitheboss]

As democracy we can choose a members from active local boards

Who's "we"?  

The community!

all we need to do is make it like democracy

You're kidding, right? Democracy is centralized.

Is the forum decentralized? No, it is not! Is Bitcoin truly decentralized? Do define democracy by the way as this forum is not.

Only one member is allowed and the local board members will

vote for their leader.

What prevents someone from creating alt accounts and voting for themselves? Will you impose KYC to prevent that? If so, then what will prevent buying and selling KYC votes from the Internet? (The answer to the last one is obviously "nothing"). And even if you have a solution to both, to whom will trust the KYC data? We obviously can't publish all that data, because then there would be no privacy, which is devastating for democracy.

Only existing known legendary users and Hero users will be allowed to vote. We will know who will be the one but on some of those local boards it will create a canvassing opportunity for those who stand in the election they can lure their voters with anything but the voters will be from the higher ranks.

Then you will say many high-ranking members are on those big local boards. Of course, but the member standing in the election will nominate only those who are known globally and are reputed.

If the forum was created for Bitcoin then why not use the network to run the software?

I don't think people think twice before parroting this. Explain me your thought on this. Step by step, how would it work? I want you to realize yourself how dumb idea this is.

That is your point of view and if you think I am parroting then how the hell Bisq was created and why there are BRC20 tokens spamming the network. It is better to encourage a suggestion at your timeline rather trolling.

[bitmover]

Is the forum decentralized? No, it is not! Is Bitcoin truly decentralized? Do define democracy by the way as this forum is not.

Where is the technology to do that (decentralized forum)?

Will you make a blockchain forum? Would you pay a transaction fee to post?  

Would you run a node for free?

Who is going to create a fucking front end with capable SEO to compete with bitcointalk, for free?


We have hundreds, thousands of forums in the internet. This is among the best of them. I don't think there is much to change here.

[pakhitheboss]

Is the forum decentralized? No, it is not! Is Bitcoin truly decentralized? Do define democracy by the way as this forum is not.

Where is the technology to do that (decentralized forum)?

Will you make a blockchain forum? Would you pay a transaction fee to post?  

Would you run a node for free?

Who is going to create a fucking front end with capable SEO to compete with bitcointalk, for free?


We have hundreds, thousands of forums in the internet. This is among the best of them. I don't think there is much to change here.

It is a challenge but it can be done if we as a community can work on it. Why are you concerned about SEO? This is where I surrender as the SEO part is so much destroyed as Reddit stands out when typing anything related to understanding Bitcoin or its issues. What you said is another excuse as the community is still progressing with mouth recommendations or due to the reason that the forum does not provide good informative post anymore.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Is the forum decentralized? No, it is not! Is Bitcoin truly decentralized? Do define democracy by the way as this forum is not.

This forum is not decentralized, neither democratic. It is owned by a person, and we are all forced to either use it under their terms, or not use it at all. Bitcoin is truly decentralized, and therefore not democratic. You don't vote for changes in the Bitcoin protocol under the accepted sense of that term.

A truly decentralized system can't be democratic, because democracy requires a government, which by definition makes the system centralized.

Only existing known legendary users and Hero users will be allowed to vote.

So Bitcointalk defines the voting rules. This means it isn't truly decentralized. Theymos can pop a few Legendary accounts and use those to increase his votes.

That is your point of view and if you think I am parroting then how the hell Bisq was created and why there are BRC20 tokens spamming the network. It is better to encourage a suggestion at your timeline rather trolling.

• Bisq doesn't use the Bitcoin network to do everything, only the trades are settled on-chain. If you use the blockchain to create a decentralized forum, you'll be forced to keep at least the forum posts on-chain, which means it cannot scale.
• BRC20 tokens are worthless trash, and the fools who buy them spend millions of dollars. To give you an analogy, think of forum user who would have to pay thousands of dollars to take part in discussions.

[bitmover]

It is a challenge but it can be done if we as a community can work on it. Why are you concerned about SEO? This is where I surrender as the SEO part is so much destroyed as Reddit stands out when typing anything related to understanding Bitcoin or its issues. What you said is another excuse as the community is still progressing with mouth recommendations or due to the reason that the forum does not provide good informative post anymore.

I don't think decentralized forums can work now. There isn't anyone working well.

Seo is important for traffic, which is important for money and sustainability of the forum.

Bitcointalk seo is very good, and there is very good content here. I found  many times posts of this forum appear in my Google searches.

And reddit is a very good forum with many good information. Not the best for crypto , but there are many other subjects there.

[OgNasty]

Is the forum decentralized? No, it is not! Is Bitcoin truly decentralized? Do define democracy by the way as this forum is not.

Where is the technology to do that (decentralized forum)?

Will you make a blockchain forum? Would you pay a transaction fee to post?  

Would you run a node for free?

Who is going to create a fucking front end with capable SEO to compete with bitcointalk, for free?


We have hundreds, thousands of forums in the internet. This is among the best of them. I don't think there is much to change here.

Pay to post!?!?! LoL

Could you imagine the dropoff in traffic if people weren’t paid to post here? Even as it is, most people who created things here left as a result of poor management and that’s when it’s free and advertisers are lining up to pay you to participate here. Not to mention Bitcoin couldn’t facilitate a pay to post operation anyway in its current state.

[mindrust]

Let's say someone come up with a decentralized forum software where no authority can touch. That's pretty much what darkweb is. Every type of filth will leak from a place like that. Let's face it, decentralization is not always the perfect solution. It is because we are trying to solve the wrong problem. The problem isn't the forum software we use. We are the problem. By "we" I mean everybody. It is because we can't stand to live in a perfect world.

Just like how the Architect described it in the movie, the Matrix.

He created a world with imperfections and only then his simulation worked to some degree. Every other perfect world simulation has failed instantly. We can't be happy if everybody's happy. We are feeding on other people's misery. That's also the reason why capitalism prevailed.

In a world where everybody's driving a lambo, what's the point of driving a lambo?

[dkbit98]

Where is the technology to do that (decentralized forum)?

It's not impossible to make something like this, as someone already created decentralized twitter alternative called Nostr.
If Nostr is possible than forum should be even easier to create, but I am not sure how this would be moderated in real life and if people would even transition to new forum.

Would you run a node for free?

Not everyone needs to run a node for this, and with pruned nodes it's even easier.

We have hundreds, thousands of forums in the internet. This is among the best of them. I don't think there is much to change here.

Nothing can survive without any changes and improvements, including bitcointalk forum.

[examplens]

Is the forum decentralized? No, it is not! Is Bitcoin truly decentralized? Do define democracy by the way as this forum is not.

This forum is not decentralized, neither democratic.

I'll just pass on one quote here, I'm not sure who the author is
"Democracy is a great system that allows everyone to feel like their opinion matters. Until you expect something to change"

..

Will you make a blockchain forum? Would you pay a transaction fee to post?  
..

Pay to post!?!?! LoL

Paying with some worthless token is still payment, isn't it?