Over 15% of the annual household income in the US - extremely stiff. I considered donating until I saw what they consider a reasonable minimum donation.
The VIP level they have set just proves neglect. If I donate $35,000 a half purple coin under my name isn't going to cut it - they better be curing cancer.
You need to realise that these prices were set back when BTC had a lot, lot less value than it does today. Now an argument could be made to change the requirements, but theymos has consistently opposed it as current VIPs and Donors feel that it isn't fair to them given that they had to contribute that amount of BTC. Hence the exorbitant price of these account ranks.
Hence the reason he says the current VIP level "just proves neglect." If they intend to use it as any sort of incentive to donate, it would only make sense to adjust it. Forget about pegging it specifically to a BTC amount - we're talking about purchasing power here. The purchasing power of 1 bitcoin today is exponentially higher than it was when they set these requirements. It pays a lot more bills today, that's for sure. It's not as if BTC is just staying steady and beating inflation - when purchasing power has increased so dramatically, it just doesn't make sense.
I don't think anybody is advocating for a correlation with USD or EUR but would anybody really claim it's unfair to lower the requirements for each level? Donating 10 BTC in 2011 is certainly less generous than donating 1 BTC today. In 2011 I could mine 50 BTC/week with GPUs. The logic is certainly flawed here. As it stands now, when I see a donor on the board I just assume they donated back when BTC was cheap and easy to mine.
Their board - their rules, I suppose - just seems senseless. You'd have to be pretty damn generous to give up a typical annual salary as a donation to a bitcoin message board just to get VIP status when the same status could have been had a couple years ago for the price of a cab ride.
