I always wonder what happened to them, if they got filthy rich from bitcoin and just went off-grid or simply lost interest or something in between. Anyway, for your own educational edification, do some digging into forum history. It's gnarly!
I've read tweets of an old member of the forum who complained that he left because the forum was no longer filled with technical intellectuals. So many people must have done similar things as most threads then was in the tech and development boards and today that board is not as busy as it used to be in the past. Many of them now spend time on GitHub discussing new Bitcoin updates. Nothing fascinating about the forum to keep those early Bitcoin engineers and programmers to continue adding contents and discussions in the forum. Especially during the bounty hunting era many of them left the forum as people joined to make some bucks and returned unfurnished contents just to earn.
Somewhere in 2018 there was alot of spamming in the forum. I know so many of us that gave the forum break and later returned but some found some other things for their time and did not return.
But it is normal, we cannot continue to be here. At a time we will give way for new fucks to join the bandwagon and as the times goes the standard and urge to participate diminishes.
Do not forget to add that some many some regrettable mistakes with money and bitcoin and visiting this forum would freshen their wound of regret. So it is better they avoided here totally.
Though according to a thread on the meta board about the yearly traffics in the forum, 2018 had the highest traffics if I could vividly remember. Why did a lot of people get interested in the forum at that particular year? Some may attribute it to the increase in price of bitcoin in 2017, but they've been such an increase in 2021 yet the forum wasn't that busy. However, you made a right statement, we can't be here for long, people move ahead to find other things to do with their time, but many of these people still spend time online, why not come take a look and contribute at a go. In similar ways, I do go back to some old forums I've been using years back just to look around, even if I don't add posts there. I believe your last line is the main reason those who don't come to visit at all decided to keep it that way.
Unlike Lauda who made her final posts and disappeared. Some disappeared without leaving some noyes. Apart from the bitcoin mistakes in the last paragraph of my previous post on this thread, there are people who left because theymos did not implement their suggestions or ideas.
Suggestions such as rapidly changing the old software.
Some also left because there is nothing like newbie jail anymore or things related to that.
And the trust system has been decentralized by theymos while some people who initially centralized and manipulate the trust system are no longer comfortable with the current trust system.
. I realized there and then that very many peeps were tagged with a "heaped-book"📚 even before Achow was ..
There is a senior member, who is: 
