Topic: Decline of Marketplace activity/trading (Read 1054 times)

This is understandable as well.  I used to offer cheaper escrows (in dollar terms) but then trolls would constantly setup fake escrows to waste my time or attempt to scam the escrow with crazy stories.  It became quite a drain on my time, so I had to let costs float up with Bitcoin to make it no longer worth the cost to play games.  For a while I was trying to push a "bonding" setup to save buyers money, where sellers could put funds into escrow and buyers would know that it was safe to purchase from those vendors because they had funds being held by an escrow on behalf of their buyers.  That way the seller could pay one escrow fee and his buyers would know their items were safe, saving them from escrow costs.  It was an idea that never took off though.

Make altcoin posters that think from the different “culture” sources..

The way that I look at altcoins is that they can try out various different ideas/features/technology/etc that can be tested in the "real world", and if an altcoin is successful, there can be a consideration to upgrading bitcoin in a way that somewhat mimics said altcoin if the feature is useful (similarly, if something is not successful, it would create a strong argument against upgrading bitcoin to implement said technology/feature).

Unfortunately, many who are behind altcoins are taking advantage of various hypes as a means to enrich themselves. I think the coins in the later category both far outnumber the former category and will make people hesitant to give merit to those posting in the altcoin subs.

Yeah, and to a certain point I can understand it. The majority are either outright scams, money grabs or just meme coins at this point. It doesn't really help that certain meme coins have been somewhat successful at reaching mainstream crypto users.

Personally, I'm not invested in any other cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin. However, there's been a few interesting ideas out there, and while they may have failed, there's definitely potential that altcoins can be useful, even if its not for everyone.

That is a fair point. This has probably also cut down on the obvious scam loan requests involving sob stories, empty promises, and/or worthless collateral.

I think this is more of a cultural issue than a moderation issue. There are a lot of people here that can reasonably be described as 'bitcoin maximalists'. There are a lot of people who will describe any altcoin as a 'shitcoin' without knowing anything about the altcoin -- to be fair, this is an accurate description for most altcoins. The only thing I can think of that the administration can do, would be to encourage people to have an open mind regarding altcoins.

Yes, that is one thing I noted in my OP.

The lending section as pretty much been monopolised, but certain users. They offer low rate loans, and therefore you don't get as many threads as we used to asking, since they just go to the multiple services offering these low rate loans.

Lending a few years ago used to be crazy at times.

Probably. There's an absolute massive stigma of the Altcoin section though. I can't necessarily blame users for that, it is quite crazy at times. Definitely a lot of low quality content, but I think we're making a dent into things slowly. Also, a lot of scam projects which unfortunately put the users that post in that section under question at times, which probably shouldn't be the case.

I'd be interested to hear users opinions on what could be improved, to sort of remove that stigma.

Advertising is obviously in the tanks these days too by looking at theymoses ad auction revenue..

If all you have is spammers spamming adds they themselves aren’t a good target to advertise to..
Other than them you have the old school BTCT users still sticking around, who probably aren’t much good to advertise to either (not me)..

Lost most of the average users, who are good advertising targets..


At least gambling is still doing well, I think..
They like to post their gambling conversations, real conversations, and they are good targets for gambling advertisement..

I think we need to start thinking about getting merits flowing in the altcoins boards..
They are real users and good users, they throw coin around, make coin flow, and are likely good advertising targets..

Yeah, they just want the sales now. Lately I received some unsolicited PMs on signature campaigns when I didn't even ask for them.

Bitcointalk has been more on the advertising side than a place to trade now, knowing that you can get scammed. I remember my first time trading here, in which I sold a World of Warcraft code, and I didn't know how to use the marketplace yet; in turn, I was scammed. It's risky to use the market if you don't know any of the rules or steps for you not to get scammed.

I can't think of a reason for how it can be fixed. As long as there is movement in the marketplace, it's hard to measure how active it is. Most people turn to Telegram or something.

The main reason why I hate using the marketplace of forum is because of trust issue on the sellers and buyers, You will need to use escrow are gamble your money to sellers to save for escrow fees. Actually product on marketplace are very good and cheap. The only problem was the escrow fee or the transaction fee sometimes greater than the value of items being bought.

Someone is using external merchant website but I'm not comfortable using it since it's outside forum, Maybe a built in forum escrow such as smart contract will make this solve the problem.

It’s not just newbies that are forced out in this way. Even after more than a decade of protecting user funds with having handled more than 20,000 BTC of escrows and paid out over 700 BTC to community members through my mining operations, as well as safeguarding more than 500 BTC for this website, people still attack me and use the trust system to get extortionists in DT as a way to punish me for my efforts. Just look at who still has Vod in their trust networks after it’s been proven as factual that he lied about me and tried to extort me for millions. It’s a joke that these same people claim to be for the good of this site. Until this is addressed, as I said before… Trading activity will only continue to trend in one direction.

I think what you have described before has happened in the past, but I don't think that often happens today. While I don't think that any (new) user should have to use any particular escrow service on the forum, or even an escrow service on the forum in general, however, if someone is attempting to do business and cannot articulate a plan in which his trading partner is unlikely to lose money from the perspective of a neutral person, I think it is reasonable to say that it is not safe to trade with said person.

I would point back to the decline of flame wars on the forum as being similar to the lack of 1000 posts being made when there is a slight scam risk.

I've wondered this too myself but then I remembered how I got on this forum. It was through a search online that led me to CMC and then I clicked on a link that brought me to this forum. I think there's no much visibility for BTT on YouTube, that's why.

True. Sadly true and this I believe hasn't helped advance this forum in a better light. These aggrieved users will then exit the forum with a negative opinion of it.

This is why I've continued to maintain that meriting posts is subjective. Users don't always merit posts because they find them that constructive. Most times, it's from bias towards particular users they're familiar with. Thanks for finding that user and meriting them.

Look at this..

https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/imz-noo-account-2207664

Almost 600 posts and only 7 merit..

I know this guy, kinda..
Got his old IMZ account hacked a long time ago..
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/imz-330540

This is as legit of a bitcointalk user/poster as it gets..

7 merit!!
7!

Even old timers find it hard to trade here. when there are other sites with way higher liquidity and turnaround time, and not being bound to 1000's terms and conditions.

If a somewhat new account here posts anything for sale or any service deal the first thing that will happen is someone who has no interest in the deal whatsoever will demand that they use a paid escrow service..

This person is not going to want to pay a tax (escrow fee), or may not trust just sending some random escrow their money (no matter how much YOU trust this escrow, they may not), and this user is going to resist..

Gonna get slapped with red trust for refusing escrow..
He never comes back..

A newer user/project can't even start a signature campaign without being harped on about using some escrow unknown to them and may well get red tagged just for refusing escrow..

Anything with a slight scam risk their is going to be 1,000 posts about it trying to force a padded room..

Lol, I can’t even remember the last time we had a flame war. I think that is probably a good thing, even if they were sometimes entertaining.

I’d probably agree that the lack of flame wars and the associated drama has at least partially contributed to the decline of activity in the forum overall. I don’t think flamewars contributed to marketplace activity though. Flame wars tended to be limited to a fairly small number of threads. I have also noticed that the number of scam attempts in the lending section has all but disappeared. There is/was a sticky in lending that says that scammers will try to scam as little as a dollar in the lending sub. I don’t think scammers have been trying to do that recently.

That's because all the cross-talk and forcefully close(2)'d pipes have left, so there is naturally much less arguments than in previous years.

I get the feeling that Bitcointalk's high "activity" was largely due to first the ICOs (which we kicked out) and the flame war fanners (most of whom left by themselves) and the scamsters in Digital Goods (exiled but far from gone). It seems mostly quiet here like maybe 2014-2015 levels, and I don't think that it's going to decline further.

It appears that marketplace activity has continued to decline since I opened this thread last February. All of the examples I cited in the OP have continued to decline. I am not sure about how ad revenue has been trending.

I haven't looked at specific metrics, but it does feel like the forum is generally slower than it has been in years past.

I apologize for bumping this thread, but I came across it when I searched for "Voskcoin sucks", thinking that I couldn't be the only one who thinks he's one of the worst shills for whoever pays the bills I've ever seen.  Apparently I'd missed this thread or forgotten all about it, but since I was also thinking about bitcointalk's Youtube channel I thought I'd reply.

That might be true, but since nobody has any idea of what forums/social media sites/real-life conversations you're basing the conclusion of "no one" on, I think you're just pulling stuff out of your ass.  But hey, glib answers are your specialty.

Literally booming.  Yet another problem with the popular crypto Youtubers: they don't seem to understand how to speak or write, their vocabulary is limited to pre-high school levels, and given that most of them are whitey-white Americans there's just no excuse for that.

Nice job plugging your channel, btw.  I avoid it every time I see it, and I'd advise others to do the same.  It's unfortunate that a lot of people get their information on crypto from YT instead of, say, bitcointalk or some other source where the ratio of useful stuff to fluff/self-promotion/product shilling is greater than 1:10. 

Regarding the subject of this particular thread, I'd be curious as to whether things have changed or not--plus the argument between Vod and OgNasty likely derailed the discussion completely.  The forum is far from dead, but since I don't generally keep an eye on the marketplace I don't have a sense of how active members are in trading with one another.  It's even been at least a year (maybe) since I visited the Currency Exchange section, but last time I was there it seemed like things were humming along.

And if things aren't still humming along, maybe getting the official Youtube channel in high gear would help....a little at least?  Granted, it doesn't seem like it turned out to be as popular as a lot of us thought it might be, but things could change with time and enough videos.