I can imagine this forum has had to deal with a lot of spam as of recent due to the popularity of bitcoin. I've been a lurker for a long time and have only seen a little bit of that. Most of what I've seen is some shills trying to sucker people into investing money in fraudulent companies. As a result, it's completely expected for them (the admins and long-time users of this forum) to have some restrictions in place to keep the riff raff out.