2008-2023, those things on the Bitcoin forum

In this article, we will sort out the history of the development of the Bitcoin forum.

Original title: "The Bitcoin Forum"

Written by: BitMEX Research

compile: wesely

Summary

In this article, we'll take a look at the history of the Bitcoin forum, which has continued since its launch in November 2009. We focused on the various hacks the forum faced during 2011-2015, the financial situation of the forum, such as donations of more than 6,000 BTC received and how to deal with them. In the early days of BTC development, Bitcoin forums were a treasure trove of discussion and speculation. The development of the forum is somewhat similar to the development path of the Bitcoin Foundation. During the rapid growth of Bitcoin, the Foundation has gradually faded out of sight because of its inability to rapidly expand, improve governance, security practices, and more efficient execution. On the other hand, the performance of the forum is much better than that of the Bitcoin Foundation.

Bitcoin forums after the October 2013 hack

Origin of Bitcoin Forum

On August 18, 2008, the bitcoin.org domain name was officially registered, which was earlier than the release of the Bitcoin white paper (the white paper was released in October 2008), while the Bitcoin network was officially launched on January 3, 2009. In order to promote Bitcoin and facilitate discussions, a forum is also needed at this time. The first Bitcoin forum was created in November 2008 and hosted on Sourceforge where the Bitcoin project code is located. As a result of the Bitcoin project, this forum is likely to be hosted by Generated automatically by Sourceforge. We're not sure if this forum is being used to discuss Bitcoin, as all but one original "Welcome to the Open Discussion" post is almost completely lost, and at this point, it's been a while since the second Bitcoin forum appeared. more than a year.

Original Bitcoin Forum

On November 22, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto launched a new Bitcoin forum. The new forum site was originally bitcoin.org/smf and has since migrated to forum.bitcoin.org. The bitcoin.org domain appears to have originally been owned by early bitcoin developer Sirius (real name Martti Malmi), and then transferred to the name “Cobra.” Cobra is a pseudonym, and the name is still active in the Bitcoin space to this day. But the transfer of ownership of the site from Martti to Cobra is unclear, and there may have been some other interim owners in between. In 2011, all users and posts on this forum were transferred to a new dedicated domain, Bitcointalk.org. This new domain name was registered by Jeff Garzik on June 24, 2011, but the domain name also belongs to Cobra.

heymos, whose real name is Michael Marquart, is the chief administrator of the bitcoin forum, administrator of the bitcoin subreddit /r/Bitcoin and owner of the bitcoin.it domain of the bitcoin wiki. Theymos also produced Bitcoin's first block explorer website, blockexplorer.com. During the debate on the block size, because some remarks caused great controversy on the forum, Theymos was still very young at this time. It is speculated that he was only 19 years old when he became the main moderator of the forum in 2011. In the early days, Bitcointalk was also a core place to discuss Bitcoin.

Forum Hacking

The Bitcoin forum appears to have experienced several serious hacks:

In September 2011, this is when the first major hack occurred. According to Theymos, a hacker gained administrative access to the platform on Sept. 3, 2011, and on Sept. 9, the hacker inserted some Java into the site, filling it with images of American comedian and media personality Bill Cosby. .

At the time, hackers likely had full access to the database and were able to view private messages and hashes of user passwords. In order to cope with this unexpected event and improve security, Mark Karpeles, CEO of MtGox, the largest bitcoin exchange at the time, took over the related custody business. Somewhat ironically, MtGox also had a major security incident a few months ago. Weeks after the hack, in response to the hack, Theymos posted a post offering to pay some developers to improve the forum software.

In October 2013, the forum suffered yet another major hack. The incident occurred hours after the FBI arrested Ross Ulbricht and shut down the darknet marketplace Silk Road. From October 3rd to October 7th of that year, Bitcointalk was down for about four days. This attack was launched by an organization calling itself "The Hole Seekers". There is a video on YouTube showing the results of the hacking attack. Accompanied by a humorous song about Bitcoin.

Song related lyrics:

Bitcoin hits new high! Before losing US$160 in value one day! Digital currency spikes at US$266, before plunging to US$105, on Wednesday. In a wild ride, possibly linked to the Euro crisis. With Europe wrecked by economic uncertainty following the banking crisis in Cyprus. There have been fears that a bubble is being created with speculators piling into digital currency. There are around 11 million Bitcoins in circulation.

Bitcoin hits new highs! Before losing $160 in one day! On Wednesday, the digital currency surged to $266 before plummeting to $105. Running all the way may be related to the euro crisis. Europe has been hit hard by economic uncertainty following the Cyprus banking crisis. There are fears that the influx of speculators into digital currencies will create a bubble. There are approximately 11 million bitcoins in circulation.

At the time, Theymos explained the vulnerability that led to the Hole Seekers hack:

After the forum was hacked in 2011, the attackers inserted some backdoors. These were removed by Mark Karpelles in his post-hack code audit, but shortly afterward the attacker used password hashes he obtained from the database to take control of the admin account and reinsert the backdoor since it was first introduced in late 2011 implanted, so from then on, the database can be accessed secretly at any time.

Given the uncertainty in the community at the time due to the closure of Silk Road and the intervention of U.S. authorities, some in the Bitcoin community blamed the U.S. government for the hack despite the evidence.

In December 2013, the Bitcointalk website was hacked again. This time, the attackers took control of the website's DNS settings and routed the domain name to a new IP address. On December 2, 2013, Theymos explained the attack as follows:

8-14 hours ago, attackers exploited a vulnerability in the forum's AnonymousSpeech registration process to change the forum's DNS to point to 108.162.197.161 (details unknown). Sirius noticed this 8 hours ago and immediately moved bitcointalk.org to another registrar. However, such changes take approximately 24 hours to propagate. Because the HTTPS protocol is so bad, this would allow an attacker to intercept and modify encrypted forum transmissions, allowing them to see passwords, authentication, PMs, etc. sent on login. Only when you actually enter, your password is blocked it and the forum is affected.

In May 2015, the forum was hacked again. This time the site's security was breached, but the user experience was not disrupted. Theymos described the hack as follows:

At 00:56 UTC on May 22, the attackers gained root access to the forum server. He then proceeded to try to get a dump of the forum database and around 1:08 I noticed this and shut down the server. During this time, he appears to be able to collect some or all of the "Members" table. You should assume the following information about your account has been compromised, including: email address - password hash - last used IP address and registered IP address - secret question and your basic (non-brute force) hashed secret answer - various settings

As a result of the aforementioned hack, it appears that a nefarious entity has taken control of the forum database and wants to sell it on darknet markets for 1 bitcoin:

BitcoinTalk's database sells for 1 BTC ($614.67). The file contained 514,408 accounts, including email addresses, personal text message numbers, dates of birth, usernames, gender, website names, passwords, and locations. There are 469,540 passwords encrypted using the SHA-256 algorithm, plus 44,868 passwords encrypted using the SMF password encryption algorithm.

Hacked database sample data

Financial status of the forum

The bitcoin forum maintains the operation, management, development and improvement of the code and security of the forum through donations from the community. Donors have several benefits, explained on the forum's donation page:

The vast majority of income after spending is either set aside for future spending or reinvested in the forum or community. We started collecting donations a long time ago. People who donate 10 BTC have a special "donor" designation and a green "online" badge. People who donate 50 BTC have special VIP status and the ability to create custom titles for themselves. Donors and VIPs also have access to a dedicated forum section. But even with many donors, the total donation was less than $70,000 in dollar value at the time of donation!

The forum’s donation page lists 38 donors who donated no less than 50 BTC and 115 donors who donated no less than 10 BTC, and it can be calculated that at least 3,050 BTC have been donated.

Forum Funding

Around the end of 2013, Theymos disclosed that the forum had a reserve of around 6,800 bitcoins. Custody is shared among several people, but Theymos himself holds the vast majority of funds.

Bitcoin Forum Fund around late 2013

One of the custodians, paraipan, may have died in 2014, so the forum may have lost 250 BTC of funds. As of May 2023, Bitcoin Forum also has approximately 1,250 BTC in funds at two addresses:

• bc1qj33689f6edzjst72w6nzs02qd0w68spw49qgcv *bc1q9md45gnwykdkf2r79fdzxyrs96rwejq5nkpca6

Based on the current bitcoin price of $27,000, the address above is worth approximately $34 million. As far as we can tell, this 1,250 BTC balance has barely changed since 2017, and this is because donations have stopped, and the value of the forum's income and expenditures may be lower than the value of the reserves.

Of course, those donations were worth far less than that at the time. After the BTC price crash in the summer of 2011, most donations were probably made towards the end of 2011 and before 2012. Theymos estimated that the total value at the time of the funding could be as low as $70,000, which is reasonable given the price of bitcoin during this period was around $10.

At the end of 2017, Theymos commented on the appreciation of the forum reserve:

Increased store of value and huge revenues in 2017 (which was likely only a temporary trend) came too suddenly. I'm not sure how to handle it yet. I've been thinking about whether some funds could be allocated to create a non-profit organization with a similar mission to the forum, but more focused on free speech and the development of truly decentralized forum software. I also need to find a way to delegate more people because I'm completely overwhelmed right now. Maybe I could hire someone with a business degree, or a proper CEO.

Forum Finance

Donations are provided by the Bitcoin community. After all, if Bitcoin is to succeed, there must be a forum for discussing Bitcoin. Theymos takes his responsibilities as a forum moderator very seriously, so he is keen to provide a high level of transparency regarding the forum's finances. In fact, in a way, the forum ultimately belongs to the community, who manages it on behalf of the users.

One of the major challenges facing Theymos and the forum was how to deal with the forum's security issues after the September 2011 hack described above. In November 2011, Theymos published an offer to developers to improve the forum. Dubbed the "Forum Software Project," the expenditure will be the largest expenditure item in endowment funds in the coming years.

From 2011 to 2018, Theymos produced very basic financial summary information for the forum. Detailed information is provided in the table below. It is worth noting that the data in the table does not include all gains and losses, both realized and unrealized, related to Bitcoin price movements. This is very important because these gains and losses are far more important than any other income or expense. Given that Theymos was only 19 when he began the volunteer assignment on a semi-official basis, and that he had only received a few thousand dollars in donations at the time, it may be understandable why financial disclosures are so limited. Theymos is paid to be a forum moderator, but his role as a forum moderator is unpaid. In retrospect, the quality of disclosure related financial reporting and governance may have been insufficient at today's value of 6,800 BTC.

Summary of Forum Financial Information

We've also provided some basic financial graphs showing the large deficits in 2014 and 2015 due to spending on the Forum Software Project. Total spending in this category ended up at $2.7 million over the period, almost all in 2014 and 2015:

Financial status over the years

Bitcoin Forum Software Project Spending (USD)

Bitcoin Forum Total Spending (2011-2018/USD)

Unlucky Donor

Around 2013, the community became increasingly dissatisfied with the state of the forum. There are no improvements to the forums, no changes to the user interface. In fact, to this day, the user interface looks unchanged from 2011, while security hasn't improved and accidents still happen. So much dissatisfaction in the community, especially given the apparent increase in the value of donations and donated funds. By the end of 2013, they had barely spent the donated bitcoins.

In June 2013, a forum user stated:

12 months ago I donated 10 BTC to you to create a new forum. Since then, you have collected over 6000 BTC and continue to collect regularly under the guise of "creating a new forum", but you have not yet created a new forum.

At the time, 6,000 BTC was worth about $600,000. Many people think that the money paid to the developers to improve the forum is a lot of money. Theymos defended themselves by saying:

Unfortunately, there is no magic machine that can spend money to create great software. I'm not quite sure how best to turn money into good software products. I was going to give someone a bunch of money and have them do it, and I've talked to dozens of people who are interested in doing it, but none of them made me feel completely confident. I decided a while back that I'll probably never have confidence in anyone/company handling the whole project because I've been thinking about it for a lot longer than they (2 years) and I have a lot of details on how it's supposed to work, so I may need to get closer to the development process. My current plan is to write some detailed new specs and do some high-level schema work (mostly database tables) and then lead a team to do the rest. I still have a little time now, but the forum software project is a bit low priority and current software fixes will be a higher priority.

In response to some of the aforementioned pressure and frustration from users, Theymos began spending money on developers in 2014 and 2015. This kind of spending happened in 2014, and the monthly spending reached $100,000. Others in the community predictably complained that the expenses were too high. Theymos responded again:

If you think $100,000 per month for 4 highly skilled full-time developers is a completely ridiculous price, then you know nothing about this industry. It's fair to say that this level of spending has a high ratio, you'll probably pass a dozen cheap developers every day, but their skills/experience will vary widely, so it's hard to compare. The goal of this project is to create forum software that directly competes with things like phpBB and SMF. This is a huge project, not just for bitcointalk.org or Bitcoin, but for the entire web community. Fees are reasonable. Before I started this project, people kept complaining that money was just sitting idle. Now people are complaining that I spend too much money! ?

Admittedly, Theymos seem to be dishonest about donated forum funds. Expensive software spending didn't work as well as it should, and Theymos were in college at the time and had no experience hiring expensive software developers, something even seasoned professionals can't do effectively, especially in crypto currency industry. At the same time, building new forum software like this is very ambitious and risky, and there is another problem that forum users have been accustomed to the layout and style of the existing forum for many years, and if they switch to the new forum format, there may be many complaints and complaints Many users are dissatisfied. Looking back, the forum's donation funds were not embezzled or lost, but the execution of the software project was not as good as it should be.

Summarize

The story described in this post is somewhat similar to that of the Bitcoin Foundation. As the core pillar of the community, the Bitcoin Foundation also accepts Bitcoin donations. With the rapid appreciation of the value of Bitcoins, the value and governance issues involved in donated funds have been exposed, but the management of the Bitcoin Forum seems to be better than others in this field. Organization is much better.

The venue for discussing Bitcoin has also changed over the years. From Bitcoin forums in 2010-2013, to subreddits in 2013-2017, and finally to Twitter. Although this article mentions many issues on the Bitcoin forums, it continues to be popular today. The forum is still very rich in terms of Bitcoin reserves, and it is notable that it has survived the way it does despite the turmoil of operating in the space and the challenges of holding and managing funds.