Is there any legitimate reason to buy an account?
Plenty yes- The most common is to participate in signature deals. I know that you are going to say that this contributes to additional spam, and this is probably correct to an extent, however it also attracts additional people to the forum (and to bitcoin) that would not otherwise be here. This overall will increase the adoption of bitcoin and will overall increase it's chances for success.
- The ability to say something potentially controversial without associating your "main" forum identity/reputation with such message. For example if someone decided one day that they thought they found a reason why Bitcoin is going to fail but they are not 100% sure if they are correct, they may wish to purchase an account in order to force the discussion of this potential flaw without risking the embarrassment that would follow if they were wrong. Granted someone could just create a new account to do this however people tend to not take brand new accounts that make these kinds of statements very seriously - they are often almost automatically written off as trolling. There are other numerous examples of what could be said with purchased accounts. This is a pillar of freedom of speech. To truly have free speech, you not only need to be able to speak what is on your mind but also be able to do so without your identity being revealed
- For avatars. This is somewhat less common, especially as the percentage of overall accounts available with avatars is rapidly decreasing, as well as the fact that the new forum will likely have avatars.
- To get around the 360 second posting rule and other newbie restrictions
- To have the prestige of having a higher ranking account. Some may think this is somewhat dishonest and may be against this however it is a source of demand for accounts.
Additionally I know there is a stereotype that purchased accounts almost always scam, however this is not the case. I have been trading accounts for roughly 8 months, have sold over 100 accounts, and would say that under 10 have scammed (as defined as having negative trust). It has been a while since I have checked, however I am extremely active in both the market place sections and the scam accusations sections so I am confident to say that I would probably know about it if/when an account of mine would get negative trust. I would say that even this number is probably high because I suspect that a few people had purchased accounts from me with the intention of scamming with a former account of mine specifically as there are quite a few people that do not like me because of the scams I have stopped.
