Is this forum getting worse and worse?

[BlackHatCoiner]

The only member that we lost recently is o_e_l_e_o, or who else?

Leo is the saddest of the departures, and most recent. But, more people have either left, went very inactive or even betrayed the community.

Some people still see this forum educative and interesting.

Perhaps it's personal, then. I frequently find myself uninterested in most topics for the last few months.

TIME!!
It's a major determinant for everything under the sun.

That's hopeful. I hope it's true!

And even if mixers stayed on bitcointalkthey wouldn't stop the decline, maybe only slowed it down.

I strongly agree with this one. Mixers were only a temporary solution, at a time when decentralized, self-custodial solutions were non-existent.

My feeling is that genuine development and debate over real projects is lacking these days.

Me too. And the problem is that there's a lot of work that needs to be done. Scalability is not resolved. The notion that Bitcoin does not need further improvements is an attack vector.

It seems that most of the topics from the technical side have already been discussed enough times

Sure, I can agree to an extent, even though speculation topics are discussed at orders of magnitude more frequently than technical, but I wasn't talking about the technical board. I'm pretty sure we can have constructive and interesting discussions elsewhere, more often. See, for example, what's posted in stacker news.

[STT]

2013 maybe before that just going on my own experience is when I remember there being companies being on the forum and in signature or avatar etc.

I used to be on a mixer campaign years back, manually I used one and also reviewed it, signature and so on and also quite a variety of other companies over the other years.
   The mixer company as I remember it was brief because one day it was closed down by the FBI I think so the logic of the forum is that has happened more then once & it was not actually their own decision taken but the lay of the land.

  Purely for the longevity of the forum is to avoid association, just speaking roughly it seems fair they dont want the complications not that any side was being taken in what is fair or not.

Ive been on some big forums since 2000 including the tech one that referred me here.  The one big forum I remember dying off was because it was just the people running it and the owners retired, they finished with their interests in technology via their jobs.  So that core interest of the original people died off (graphite pencil modding to oc cheap chips and heatsink cool, big experts on that field) and I think forum was still there last I checked but they dont have new people now, its shuttered I guess.

I dont see that BTC has reached any point of retirement and disuse, its likely to increase and this forum will be useful still.   Even if it were alot of gambling use with BTC or other blockchains even, people want to review or complain about those companies so its still relevant to have somewhere to discuss.  BTC was always with alot of gambling even in 2014 it was like that, probably the years before also.   Im not anticipating the end of that, so theres a demand in a multitude of directions and I hope BTC keeps improving in its utility to the mainstream so it'll get bigger.

[Filippo Spina]

We're dealing with uninteresting topics. The "hottest" topic of discussion in the last months is Ordinals, followed by ETFs, and then an endless list of speculation-related threads, which were always a "thing" in the past, but gosh, that just seems like our sole concern nowadays.

It seems that most of the topics from the technical side have already been discussed enough times, someone could think that everything has already been said.

Exactly. Satoshi made bitcoin to be simple. That's where most of the communities civil frustration with each other comes into play. Everything that has been said has been said.

Also, having a website in 2024 in full white is bad for first impressions. It his people in the eye like a flashbang if they see bitcointalk.org for the first time in a dark room or at night. Yeah there is a dark mode, but the forum should have moved to a default dark mode a long time ago in my honest opinion. Literally every time I show someone this website and it's dark their eyes wince. Mabey its a problem with my screen brightness LOL, but I digress!

We need to literally think of every option to onboard as many people as we can to this forum. The time to talk about that is now, when all hope seems lost that the forum looks like it's hitting a wall in terms of activity.

Let veteran users press a button to make it light for them. I personally like it white.

[cryptosize]

What's the problem?

Social media + mobile devices

This forum is tedious to use on a smartphone (there's no mobile theme, font size is too small, you have to use landscape mode + zoom). How come nobody has mentioned it? Theymos could fund some devs to improve the forum.

Most cryptocurrency folks prefer to use FB groups for discussion these days... I'm not saying you're going to find quality discussions there. It is what it is.

This forum has been on a decline long before the mixer ban. Same for other fora too.

And even if mixers stayed on bitcointalkthey wouldn't stop the decline, maybe only slowed it down.

I strongly agree with this one. Mixers were only a temporary solution, at a time when decentralized, self-custodial solutions were non-existent.

Monero has been here since 2014.

I remember back in 2020-2021 I had told you about XMR and its benefits compared to BTC...

Mixers were always meant to be temporary, just like exchanges. Nothing centralized lasts forever. That's why Satoshi created Bitcoin and Monero tries to follow the same cypherpunk philosophy.

[MusaMohamed]

Ive been on some big forums since 2000 including the tech one that referred me here.  The one big forum I remember dying off was because it was just the people running it and the owners retired, they finished with their interests in technology via their jobs.

I don't know about that forum because you did not share its name but bitcointalk forum can be very different than that one.

Because we have a departure of Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin and Bitcoin forum. After that, the forum did not die but it was taken over by Gavin Andresen, sirius and theymos. After Gavin and sirius left the forum, retired as forum admins, theymos was the head admin so far and Cyrus was appointed as another admin. There are 3 global moderators who can become forum admins in future too.

It's unimaginable with me to see this forum dies because of one or two admins' decisions to leave, retire.

[nutildah]

However, the people that we need to onboard (which, ideally is the whole world according to satoshi's vision), will not come to this place.

Here's the thing that most people don't realize: the forum doesn't need to do anything, except continue to exist.

Close to 15 years old now, the Bitcoin Forum is an SEO powerhouse that will continue to attract visitors and appear prominently in Google search rankings, forever.

So long as theymos continues paying the bills and keeping the lights on, the forum will remain the foremost repository for Bitcoin-related information; especially from a historical standpoint. Not to mention the plethora of luminaries and legends that have created accounts and posted here over the years.

[Poker Player]

Here's the thing that most people don't realize: the forum doesn't need to do anything, except continue to exist.

Close to 15 years old now, the Bitcoin Forum is an SEO powerhouse that will continue to attract visitors and appear prominently in Google search rankings, forever.

So long as theymos continues paying the bills and keeping the lights on, the forum will remain the foremost repository for Bitcoin-related information; especially from a historical standpoint. Not to mention the plethora of luminaries and legends that have created accounts and posted here over the years.

This is going to seem like Groundhog Day because we have talked about it before. Here the question is whether the forum will continue to be a site with traffic and discussions or it will be a ruin like the remains of a Roman theater. We already know that theymos has enough money to keep it running even if nobody comes.

[NotATether]

How would everyone react if casinos were banned on the forum?

Why would they be?

It's not like they are doing anything wrong.

[Helena Yu]

Yep, it's complicated and caused by many reasons.

1. Some users don't like to promote casinos and altcoins, which make them only want to promote mixers, exchanges or other small projects. Unfortunately if those projects only pay small, some users feel like they wasted their effort and time, which make they think it's better for looking to other opportunity.

2. Many users will reduce their activity if they didn't get paid or get paid less.

3. Unfair competition and didn't get appreciated since many users only want to share their merit to their gangs/locals.

Merit and money are two big reasons why people like to post, if they didn't get two of them, then goodbye...

[lovesmayfamilis]

Most people are concerned with privacy that is why when you looked over the other forum that is allowing mixer promotion you would see most of our reputable members active there, and of a true the mixer ban has brought so much backwards to the forum even though theymos is trying to safeguard the forum.

What is the connection between privacy and the fact that mixers are not allowed on the forum? Let's admit that this is not the case. The fact is that people fled to another forum because they paid for companies that were not here. Can't those people use mixers and continue to participate in the forum? The point is different, especially for those people who are excellent specialists. Christopher Nolan coined an interesting phrase for one of his films: "If you're good at something, never do it for free." I think this is the reason.

[Rikafip]

This forum is tedious to use on a smartphone (there's no mobile theme, font size is too small, you have to use landscape mode + zoom). How come nobody has mentioned it? Theymos could fund some devs to improve the forum.

While having having forum better optimized for mobile phones would definitely be a good thing, I don't think that if would reduce decline at all.

Most cryptocurrency folks prefer to use FB groups for discussion these days... I'm not saying you're going to find quality discussions there. It is what it is.

Maybe 7-8 years ago, but not anymore. At least that is my experience as majorify of those that I've been part of are in the even worse state that this forum. Nowadays, Twitter is the place to be as everything important in crypto gets published there first.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Social media + mobile devices

I don't think that's the problem. Sure, we might had more people discussing if there was an app as much friendly as Twitter, but it wouldn't rise the overall quality. I've caught myself shitposting on my mobile. It's self-encouraging, because you're typing with your thumbs and you can't be typing for a long time.

Most cryptocurrency folks prefer to use FB groups for discussion these days...

Facebook isn't known to having freedom of speech. Plus, lack of anonymity makes it even worse to opening up yourself freely. (e.g., you wouldn't publish your TXID in a FB group in case you had a technical problem)

I remember back in 2020-2021 I had told you about XMR and its benefits compared to BTC...

Time flies, doesn't it? At that time, I wasn't aware of how it works at all.

Nowadays, Twitter is the place to be as everything important in crypto gets published there first.

It's one of the worst platforms, though. You're forced to summarize everything within a few hundred characters, and there are shitcoin-shilling bots everywhere, even in advertisements.

[ABCbits]

What's the problem?

I feel some boards got harder to explore due to spammer who use AI/chatbot to spam generic or garbage post. Those spammer rarely got permanent banned or even temporary ban. I also feel some people no longer report spam on some boards.

This forum is tedious to use on a smartphone (there's no mobile theme, font size is too small, you have to use landscape mode + zoom). How come nobody has mentioned it? Theymos could fund some devs to improve the forum.

I think you forget about epochtalk which is in development since many years ago, https://github.com/epochtalk/. Sometimes i think people should've suggest theymos to use different open-source forum software (such as Discourse) many years ago.

[hugeblack]

The answer to this question will be determined by new advertisers. If there is no interest in the forum, the value of the forum will certainly have declined.

So long as theymos continues paying the bills and keeping the lights on, the forum will remain the foremost repository for Bitcoin-related information; especially from a historical standpoint. Not to mention the plethora of luminaries and legends that have created accounts and posted here over the years.

So what will happen to the forum's reserves if there is no continuous development? +500 Bitcoin is enough to make the forum better.

I may ask him about this soon.

[Justbillywitt]

Bitcointalk is the best and biggest forum in the world in my opinion. And as a result, many new members will appear and this will also cause the emergence of low quality topics. And the old members who really contributed and were qualified, who were previously very active in contributing and sharing knowledge, retired one by one, perhaps for several reasons.
And that might make us feel like we've lost them and also make this forum feel like something is missing, but that's the consequence of a forum where people come and go because not everyone thinks they'll last forever.
And whatever the reason, whether it's a ban on mixers or so on, don't let this forum experience setbacks and I'm sure it will lose great and influential people who have similar abilities and can make this forum continue to progress and develop. Because this is a good place where everyone can learn to increase their knowledge from people who have related qualities in this forum, and maybe the time will come when we too will go because in this world nothing is eternal.

There are no two ways about it, those old members left the forum or stop being active in the forum because, what used to interest them left the forum. There is no need to be romancing words here, it's no coincidence that mixer left the forum and reputable members not just 1 or 2 suddenly went offline or stopped being active as usual. It's a clear indication that their actions were intentional. So it will take something similar to what they are used to, for them to find here interesting again and come back fully. It's a hard decision to make, but what's important for the healthy growth of the forum should be done. And whatever it is, it should consider making a balance between keeping the old and experienced members of the forum and safeguarding the safety of the forum.

[LoyceV]

We're dealing with uninteresting topics.

Isn't that because topics are created to reach post quota, instead of because someone's genuinely interested?

Ranking up/Merit: This started as a technical forum - not a social media circle jerk like Twitter et al. I think at its core it should remain a technical forum.

This makes it all the more annoying to see more and more AI verbal diarrhea on the tech boards. The less than 100% bans for this isn't helping.

[Floxynice]

We're dealing with uninteresting topics. The "hottest" topic of discussion in the last months is Ordinals, followed by ETFs, and then an endless list of speculation-related threads, which were always a "thing" in the past, but gosh, that just seems like our sole concern nowadays.

I'm pretty new here, I don't really know how this place has been in the past years. But I have noticed that there were more quality posts in the past. This is why I visit older threads,  because I tend to learn more reading older threads.

Again,  I discovered that only a few boards like Bitcoin technical board and the Bitcoin technical support boards have real problem solving  topics.  Most of the other boards are generic topics which do not have deeper connections to bitcoin.

[bitmover]

The only member that we lost recently is o_e_l_e_o, or who else?

Leo is the saddest of the departures, and most recent. But, more people have either left, went very inactive or even betrayed the community.

Leo comments are really missed, but nobody is irreplaceable. The forum and the discussions continues , and we always see people giving good answers in the most important discussions.

We're dealing with uninteresting topics.

Isn't that because topics are created to reach post quota, instead of because someone's genuinelygenuinely interested?

Ranking up/Merit: This started as a technical forum - not a social media circle jerk like Twitter et al. I think at its core it should remain a technical forum.

This makes it all the more annoying to see more and more AI verbal diarrhea on the tech boards. The less than 100% bans for this isn't helping.

I think this forum is still the best place to get technical support for 99% of the problems related to bitcoin/wallets/exchanges...

[philipma1957]

We're dealing with uninteresting topics. The "hottest" topic of discussion in the last months is Ordinals, followed by ETFs, and then an endless list of speculation-related threads, which were always a "thing" in the past, but gosh, that just seems like our sole concern nowadays.

I'm pretty new here, I don't really know how this place has been in the past years. But I have noticed that there were more quality posts in the past. This is why I visit older threads,  because I tend to learn more reading older threads.

Again,  I discovered that only a few boards like Bitcoin technical board and the Bitcoin technical support boards have real problem solving  topics.  Most of the other boards are generic topics which do not have deeper connections to bitcoin.

Okay what has happened is crypto btc or alts are old news.

So repetition is constantly happening.

BTC has been around for more than 15 years LTC and Doge for more than 12 years.

I honestly can't do much new news about those three coins on the mining level.

Mining is old news and in general you need commercial rate of 7 cents per kwatt to insure profits.

So from the mining viewpoint of coins there is not much new news.

The one exception is if an alt coin becomes okay to gpu mine at 20 cent power.


As a home owner in most parts of the world mining is too costly.

This hurts crypto no one can mine at home interest is lost.

Basically btc and or any coin the only thing you should do is dca and hodl.

the LN for btc is helpful in third world countries with terrible banking.


I am in the USA. Zelle has created safe instant cash transfers of 0-999 for free that hurts crypto.

[Charles-Tim]

Again,  I discovered that only a few boards like Bitcoin technical board and the Bitcoin technical support boards have real problem solving  topics.  Most of the other boards are generic topics which do not have deeper connections to bitcoin.

I feel mostly useful on this forum on technical boards where people ask questions about bitcoin wallets, but there are other boards that are also useful. If you go to altcoin board for example, ask questions and see some quality replies/answers from people. There was a friend I told to ask a question about an altcoin wallet when he was unable to see his altcoin reflecting on his wallet while showing confirmation on the altcoin blockchain, he got answer to his question on this forum as they told him what to do. That was on altcoins discussion. There are some useful topics on the altcoin boards also.

On trading discussion, you can see good discussion there. People often come with questions that were answered on trading discussion. But most merit sources are not present on that board because they are mostly technically inclined.

How about gambling boards, scam accusation and reputation. If someone using a gambling site that has announcement thread on this forum felt cheated by any of the casinos or gambling sites, you will see the person create a scam acquisition against the gambling site. If provided with proves, there are many cases like this that were resolved. Although the scam accusation board is not only about gambling sites but all other sites that people on this forum know very well and others beyond this forum. You can also see people discussing about gambling addiction, recommended gambling sites and offers on games and rounds. You may see it not useful but if you think about it deep downs, they are useless boards as well. The presence of some gambling sites on this forum help some people to avoid fake and scam gambling sites just as we recommend good bitcoin wallets on the technical boards.

But what you can say is that the spam on the bitcoin technical boards are significantly reduced like to almost zero if compared to other boards that spammimg and low quality posts are frequent.