Actually I can't help but wonder how crypto awareness would have spread if there was no forum like this, though I have not really gain anything financially from this forum yet but the level of crypto knowledge that has been impacting on me on a daily basis is actually helpful
This forum wasn't made to give someone any earning opportunity when it started. It was in the forum.bitcoin.org domain, and the purpose was to discuss Bitcoin. Later Bitcoin.org admin Sirius requested theymos to move this forum to another host even though theymos did not want to move. Later theymos moved the forum to the current domain, and it's still running here.
You can read more here;
At the request of Sirius, who owns bitcoin.org and the server this forum is hosted on, I have moved forum.bitcoin.org to bitcointalk.org. This is the final result of a long email discussion among many developers, exchange operators, etc. I have always been opposed to the move, but Sirius wanted to act according to consensus.