BitcoinTalk.org Forum: Bitcoin, Blockchain & Crypto ICO Discussion Board

BitcoinTalk.org Forum Overview

With over 1.7 million registered users and approximately 403 registering daily, BitcoinTalk is one of the largest online public forums dedicated to bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Satoshi Nakamoto, known for the invention of Bitcoin and implementation of the first blockchain, developed the forum and posted the first message in 2009 using Satoshi as his pseudonym.

The forum brings together most of the participant in the crypto space such as developers, coders, and business owners. Most of the participants on the forum contribute to discussions using pseudonym. The operation of the forum is by moderators and an experienced team whose main role is moderating the discussion and offering users with the necessary technical support on issues that they may have.

Platform categories

The sections are divided into categories like technical discussions, project development, and mining. Each section has a lot of information that is useful for both new and existing users. There are additional sections for the economy, alternative coins, and local boards that use over 20 languages besides English.

Other than providing a platform for discussing bitcoin issue, the platform also has section similar to a marketplace that is accessible form the economy section. In the economy section, users can discuss and share information relating to cryptocurrency trading, they can also sell or buy products and services using bitcoin and conduct campaigns to promote their businesses. The economy section also simplifies the process of hiring freelancers as it provides a platform where users can hire freelancers who can agree to be paid in bitcoin for the services they offer.

ICOs and Cryptocurrency support

Additionally, companies launching their ICOs or launching a new cryptocurrency can use the platform to reach more audiences through the section dedicated for Initial Coin Offerings only. New crypto exchange platforms are some of the other beneficiaries of the BitcoinTalk forum. Through the signature campaigns, they can pay users to advertise their products or services. Despite the fact that advertising using bitcoin is much more expensive than the traditional methods, it is believed to offer more exposure.

Users can therefore earn cryptocurrency by displaying the advertisements in the signature of every post they make during forum discussions.

The forum also has a user-oriented trust system where users can give positive or negative review to one another and create their own trust network at the same time. The system is especially useful in validating if the user you are about to transact with is genuine. The only problem with the system is the fact that there is no way to know if the reviews that a user has are not falsified.

Challenges of the BitcoinTalk Platform

One of the major drawbacks of the forum is the provision of information that is not necessarily useful to the users. The search function does not make the situation any better as the search results are mainly spam and irrelevant information and users have to put a lot of time and effort to find discussions that contain informative data. This problem can be attributed to the fact that the forum lacks an information management system or file.

However, there are reports that the admins and owners of BitcoinTalk have invested a lot of money in the development of BitcoinTalk 2.0, which will be the upgraded version of the current forum. The upgrade is expected to resolve the current issue of information overload on the forum.

How Does the BitcoinTalk Forum Work?

Publishing Posts or Announcements

To publish posts or announcements, users should have a registered account on the forum. There is an option for publishing branded posts that contain images. However, for this option, the user should have at least 30 activity points, which will give them a Junior Member ranking. The activity points are accumulated through participating on the forum. Participation can be in various ways such as publishing forum threads or commenting on the threads published by other users in the various threads.

The forum has a points-allocation scheme based on how a user communicates on the forum. For instance, if you make one comment or publication you earn one activity point. The points will continue to accumulate the more you actively communicate until they reach 14 points after which the scores will not grow for two weeks. However, the forum still records your activity during this period and but does not assign them to your account.

Once the two weeks period is over, the process will repeat itself. Even if you did not make any active participation during the next two weeks, the points that the forum had previously registered on your account will be assigned until they reach 14 points. This, therefore, means that to make a branded announcement or post that requires 30 points, you will have to actively communicate for at least month and two days.

Bans

Your account might be temporarily banned for various reasons such as regularly and inconsistently changing your geo-IP or even publishing irrelevant posts. If your account is banned, there are two options to help you work around the ban.

The first method is to find another user, ranked as Junior Member, and have him or her publish your post or announcement on your behalf. The users you choose should be very willing to make regular updates on your posts during the duration of the campaign.

The second method is to purchase a BitcoinTalk account that already has a Jr. Member rank. The prices may vary depending on the provider of the service and their account history. Although not illegal, buying an account is highly discouraged as the new account can also be banned immediately after the purchase due to reasons such as if complaints are forwarded to the forum that the account might have been stolen or irregular behavior patterns by that account on a particular thread reported by inspecting users. An account may be termed as having irregular patterns when it suddenly starts to comment positively on a particular thread after being inactive for a long period.

How to Prevent Bans

To avoid getting banned, it is recommended that you personally create your account and grow them until the Jr. Member ranking in order to start making the announcement and posts for your campaign. You can do this by actively participating on the forum at least 4 weeks and two days before the day you intend to publish your post.

Purchasing an account

During the process of purchasing an account, you might encounter fraudulent sellers. To avoid this risk, you should include an escrow service in the transaction. On the forum, escrows are members who have high ranks and are highly experienced with issues relating to the forum. The escrows will be the intermediary of the transaction and ensure that all the parties within the transaction fulfill their obligations.

Escrow services

BitcoinTalk provides a list containing members you can contact should you require escrow services. From the list, you will find information regarding the nickname of the escrow, the commission they charge, and the minimum reward that they accept. An example of one escrow on the forum is a user with the nickname OgNasty who charges a commission of 1% for his services and the minimum reward the member accepts is 0.01 BTC.