Quote from: bargainbin on March 20, 2016, 02:03:38 AM

Quote from: BlackSpidy on March 20, 2016, 01:52:18 AM

Isn't theymos in possession of 40,000 bitcoin for "forum maintenance and emergencies"? I highly doubt that the cost of running this forum will ever add up to (what at current price is) 16 million dollars...

Lol no; according to Thermos, the money's gone Undecided

Quote from: theymos on December 06, 2015, 08:48:29 PM

The forum money I held has largely been spent now, mostly in the forum software project. Slickage was paid $100,000 per month in all of 2014 and until May in 2015. Since June 2015, they've been paid $50,000 per month. The exchange rate varied substantially throughout this period, but the end result is that most of the BTC was spent.

The rate ($85,417/month average as of the end of 2015) might seem high to people unfamiliar with professional software development, but it's normal. The project is quite a bit over-due and over-budget (the original estimate was 1 year and $1.2 million), but I've been constantly monitoring Slickage, and they've definitely been making solid, continual progress, so it seemed correct to continue to project. The vast majority of total forum revenue was from ads, not donations, but to the extent that donations were used: this software was in fact the main stated goal of donations.

As I've said before: I have absolutely no personal relationship to Slickage, and I receive no "kickbacks" whatsoever. I've never even met them in person. I first learned of Slickage from Warren Togami, who had previously done a lot of work for the forum and was himself recommended by gmaxwell and others. (I've also never met Warren in person.)

The current status of the software is that it's ~85% done. The core of it is entirely functional and often much better/faster than SMF, though there are still several missing features. There will be a public beta before the end of the month, I think, at which time I'll post more about what's left to be done. Also see http://epochtalk.org/ for more info.

Holy shit, that whole thread reads like a public support section for a scam. "Yeah, we totally paid for [insert scam object here]. We didn't pocket the money, it's not our fault [insert unverifiable excuse here]. I have a [prototype/sample] right here with me. What's that? No, sorry. I can't share any proof of it! The sample you have is shit? Stop trolling!" Disgusting.

Fuck, am I glad that nobody's trusting Theymos with anything more substantial than one or two bitcoin forums, eh?