What Happened to BitcoinTalk Forum?
The Bitcointalk forum has been around for 9 years already! Satoshi Nakamoto founded the forum back in 2009, but has since given control over to Theymos, the current administrator of the forum. Even after 9 years, the forum remains a very active discussion board where people talk about Bitcoin or Altcoins.
History was made here
Satoshi's Last Comments
You can still view the last posts and topics that Satoshi Nakamoto made on the Bitcointalk forum. While he wasn't that active on the forum, he did leave 240 posts. You can read them here.
10.000 Bitcoin Pizza
Back in 2010, a user by the name of laszlo offered to buy a couple of pizzas from someone for 10.000 Bitcoins. This was the first real-world purchase made with Bitcoin. People kept the thread going long after laszlo left the forum, so the fiat value of those pizzas is something that is often referred to when reaching a new all time high. Current value of those pizzas is a whopping 105.500.050,00 dollars!
Hodl
Almost everybody who has been part of the crypto community for a while has probably come across the term 'Hodl'. People started using this word after Bitcointalk user GameKyuubi drunkenly created a thread called 'I AM HODLING'. Immediately after the thread was created, people started spreading the word and a lot of memes were made.
Current State
Signature Campaigns
It is possible to make a lot of money on the Bitcointalk forum through signature campaigns. How this works is that advertisers pay forum members to advertise their shop or service in their signature space. Every time these members reply to a topic, their signature will be displayed, with the advertisement. Some campaigns will pay you up to 200 dollars per week, just to post in the forum. Only members with high forum ranks can expect to make those kinds of earnings. Now with the addition of the merit system, it is more difficult to achieve a higher forum rank.
Merit System
The admin decided to add a merit system to prevent people from spamming the forum for rewards (as mentioned above). Members are able to give each other merit points for posts that are of high quality. Without a certain amount of merit points, you are not able to get a higher forum rank, thus not becoming eligible for higher campaign rewards. It is currently not fully clear if this has the desired effect, as spam is still a big issue.
Spam
Due to the relatively large amounts of money being made on the forum through posting, their has been a significant problem with spam. When you post a thread, you can expect to receive many low-quality responses and might have to scroll down quite a bit in order to find the answer you need. Luckily spam is mostly limited to a couple of popular forum sections, so there are still places where you can expect decent responses. Moderators are very busy dealing with all of this and it must be said that they're not doing too bad of a job.
Making money?
Once you have a higher forum rank, it's fairly easy to earn either Bitcoins or tokens from airdrops or other campaigns on the forum. It is possible to find some great offers from new ICO's in the Altcoin Bounties or Services section of the forum. You may also find offers for freelance gigs or you can start your own shop on the forum. There is still a lot of trading activity on the forum, so if you have something popular to offer, you can definitely expect to get some sales.
It is advised to always use escrow on Bitcointalk
Need Bitcoin Support?
There are a couple of specific forum boards where you can still expect to find decent support for you Bitcoin related problems. Development & Technical Discussion, Mining and Bitcoin Technical Support are still frequented by some really knowledgeable members. You can expect an answer to your questions pretty fast usually. These boards generally aren't visited by newbies, so post quality is much better compared to the rest of the forum.
Conclusion
When it comes to Bitcointalk, I'm a little bit biased. I have been a member there since 2013 and I've had a lot of great experiences. Despite all of the forum's issues with spam etc., I still think it's a great place to meet like-minded people. It's certainly still possible to engage in some meaningful discussion on the forum. You can even make some money while you're doing that, but only if you don't spam.
Bitcointalk is still the most popular crypto-currency related forum, with an Alexa ranking of 891! It is still growing extremely fast, with hundreds of new members still joining each day.
Have you ever been active on Bitcointalk? Let me know in the comments!
Image Sources
The first image was made with Gimp, I used images from Wikimedia - Released under Public Domain by Satoshi
All other images are screenshots from the forum.
As I try to get Stish approved for different exchanges or listing they always demand our bitcoin talk and it is funny. We have one but it cracks me up that it is so far behind the times and bitcoin talk I get it is the original kinda where it all happened like the old Silver Screen Single Movie Theaters. They are Nostalgic but fairly outdated. If the founding forum of the most valuable cryptocurrency of all time wants to stay in the 1990's that's cool I guess just weird with that kind of cash. Take it to the next level already.
Yeah the admin has been working on an upgrade for ages but it never gets finished. Still very active though despite the outdated look...
I used to like bitcointalk, but then they implemented merit system... FUCK!
Yeah it's very hard for new members to level up now. I was already legendary member before they implemented that, so doesn't bother me.
Oh, cool! Give me some merit, since you don't it it :D
What's your Bitcointalk username? I'll see if I can find a post of yours that deserves some merit ;)
My username is the same as here "andhovesyan".
Though I was joking, since the merit system was implemented I'm posting only for bounties :)
Yes i agree bro