I always considered VIP to be the highest rank here. We should all strive to reach that someday. I guess my question is, if you got rich in Bitcoin, how rich would you have to be to donate 50 BTC here, or even 10 BTC to become a Donator?
Is it even possible to attain "Donator" or "VIP" status anymore?
According to
https://bitcointalk.org/donate.html, donations are no longer accepted.
While the program was active, it looks like 153 people donated a total of 3,050
BTC (38 x 50
BTC + 115 x 10
BTC) which at the time amounted to less than $70,000 (according to the previous link).
So, the average "Donator" contribution was ~$230 and the average "VIP" contribution was ~$1,150? I'm not sure why, but I imagined it would have been more than that. I wonder how many modern members would contribute (if needed) at those price points?
Anyway, we should all be grateful to past donators for chipping in when the forum needed it. There have been two occasions (that I could find) where these statuses have been handed out for free:
I gave Hal a VIP tag even though he didn't donate because he is nearly as much of a Bitcoin legend as Satoshi IMO. He received the first-ever Bitcoin transaction, and he's been contributing to Bitcoin since before 0.1 was released.
MagicalTux got "free" VIP status for hosting the forum for a long time, too. I think that him plus Hal are the only free donator statuses I gave out. You'd have to do something pretty extraordinary to convince me to give out another free one.