It's wonderful that such a big amount of money was returned. I can't imagine what those who made such a costly mistake were feeling, and I remember people voicing concerns in the thread that they don't think it's likely that the funds will be returned. Reading the discussion, I don't buy that this transaction was intentional. I think it was an honest mistake, and we shouldn't blame the person responsible for it, as sometimes terrible mistakes just happen, and it's hard to understand how they happen beyond the fact that making mistakes is a part of human nature.

a. Draw
b. 1-1
c. Newcastle
d. Newcastle
e. Yes 
f. Newcastle
g. Same
h. 28'

This is an amazing question, the question of how much of a science economics really is. There are certain guidelines and principles that help determine what is and what isn't scientific knowledge. You might think it's enough for explanations to be confirmed by observations/experiments, but that's actually wrong. As Karl Popper pointed out, what actually matters is falsification, namely the ability to disprove an explanation/theory. If it's possible to set out criteria to disprove something, and it stands the test, that's scientific knowledge. That's why when testing new drugs, for example, there are control groups taking placebo to see whether the effect is truly measurable.
Now, lots of our natural scientific knowledge is like that, based on facts and falsifiable. There's also sociology which is at least partially like that, as we can see that political polls tend to be very successful in determining election outcomes (and if they didn't, we'd see that it's not scientific).
But now, let's take Economics. A lot of it is theories, theories that help understand financial behaviour, but often not something specific enough to be falsifiable. Major economists can also often disagree completely about some things, which doesn't add science points to it. I don't know Economics well enough to state that it has no strict scientific knowledge, of course, but at least a significant part of it is not science.

I have various things that I do, and together they amount to something like a full-time job. Everything I do was not affected negatively by AI: some was not affected, and some was affected positively. I don't use AI for this forum because I don't think that's what it's for. I also don't use it for my PhD-related work of writing academic texts. As a private tutor, I often use ChatGPT to help me brainstorm topics, summarize the information I find, come up with tasks. I don't use whatever it gives me, it's more like I cherry-pick what I need, and add something myself, but it's still useful. As a translator, I sometimes consult with ChatGPT about specific fragments of text or terms to brainstorm potential interpretations and translations. So overall, I'm feeling a positive impact of AI on my job. It's like a free assistant that can help me do what I need to do faster, more efficiently. I'm not feeling threatened by it.

I don't have a stable strategy, and both my income and expenses somewhat fluctuate. I sell some BTC when I need to, and I don't sell when I don't need to, it's as easy as that. But thinking about it in terms of percentage of monthly income, I'd say I'm trying to set aside 10% of my total income, but I don't sweat it if it doesn't work out sometimes. If I want to spend on something and I feel like it'll help improve my well-being or well-being of someone I care about, I just do it. After all, life is not living, right now, not for waiting for a different time which may not come or which may come after we're no longer here.

It's possible to successfully invest in something without really understanding it, invest just because you can see it's going up over time. But long-term, there will be obstacles along the way, and without having one's own understanding of Bitcoin and belief that it has potential, I think a person is more likely to panic sell. Add to that the risk of losing the money because of being unaware of the risks of keeping it on centralized platforms (point #1 of the op), and knowledge clearly becomes important. That being said, there's no need to dive very deep into how Bitcoin works to start investing in it and/or using it.

Africa's huge, so of course African Union deserves a spot at G20 (G21). But saying that India's dominating global politics seems out of touch with reality to me, to be honest. India's a huge country, but it doesn't look like it has a major worldwide influence. It's too 'neutral', too self-oriented in international politics. And while G20 sounds big, I think it doesn't work efficiently because it tries to encompass countries that have incompatible agendas without condemning anyone. So there's no political will there, and it's hard to achieve things without it.

I've heard the term human capital before when I had an Economics course at the university, but yeah, it was hard for me to understand that initially. Now I think it's actually a huge deal, but also that we should remember that humans are much more than capital and deserve to be treated as much more than that. Interestingly, though, it is acknowledging human capital that can help to improve working conditions and provide opportunities to workers, taking into account that it's a valuable resource that should be cherished and well-cared for.

I continue to be amazed by Nigerian people, by enthusiasm, openness to Bitcoin and such a strong spirit of taking things into their own hands. Of course, it's related to the op personally, this strong and brave decision to submit a proposal to the Governor's Office, and it's wonderful that such people exist and have the will to do things that can benefit a lot of people.
But I feel like this forum has really shown me that Nigeria has many strong pro-crypto people, although this is the first time I see a post where a person's trying to convince the government rather than do things despite what the authorities think.
I hope that educational plan really works out!

I believe some countries can allow themselves to be restrictive or suspicious toward Bitcoin in case they are highly economically developed. That's because if they managed to get very successful without cryptos, it kind of makes sense to me that they don't want to risk changing their economies by adopting cryptos, as they have a lot to lose and don't really need the potential gains. But the countries the op mentions are not among them, these are countries that could use a boost and take a risk of becoming crypto-friendly. So I agree that it's a mistake for them not to adopt Bitcoin, and they'll likely feel left behind.

Unlike other major property like a car or a flat, Bitcoin isn't registered to someone's name (unless a person lives in a country where it's possible to legally declare Bitcoin holdings, and decides to do that), so I understand that it raises concerns in case something happens. You're asking whether you should show your seed phrase to your family, and I think the answer depends on whether you find your family (or someone specific in it) trustworthy, reliable. If you are close enough with someone and confident that this person won't use this knowledge against you, won't use your money unless you actually die, then yeah, I think telling this person is a good idea. If not, you need to think of whether you'd even want your family to have your funds in an event of you no longer being able to use them, and if the answer is yes, think of other options to ensure that the coins don't get lost.

I hope this kind of stuff will get him cancelled. People finally got empowered, calling at least some of the shots about their lives. They're already working and providing profit to the employers, so yeah, I think they should have a say about their working conditions in that case.
Employers have been mistreating their employees, now they finally realize that they gotta listen to the people who work for them, and this guy wants to punish those who usually just want decent lives and decent work environments for having the audacity to want that stuff.

I was pretty young when the 2008 crisis happened, and while it was noticeable in my country, much worse economic changes came several years later for unrelated reasons that kind of overshadowed that period, and since the crisis heavily affected the mortgages and those are not popular in my country at all, I guess the main effects just weren't as harsh.
I've seen the film a couple of times, and I love how it portrays the atmosphere and how it slowly spirals down that dangerous road. And I've had a time when I felt like we were going in that direction, but I just don't think so anymore. What I do think is that 2020s have been very unpredictable and stressful so far, and unfortunately, I think this trend will continue.

I used to believe that we were heading into a major economic crisis, and I thought so since 2019 till the end of 2022, waiting for it to happen. But right now, it really seems like the global economy is recovering from everything. It's recovering from the pandemic, it's recovering from the energy crisis and from limiting economic relations with Russia. Some countries are struggling, some are prospering, but overall I think we've avoided a global economic crisis and even a recession this time.
If it happens (and it's bound to happen eventually), my first actions will be to spend fiat while there's something meaningful to buy with it and to convert more savings into Bitcoin if I have any. Bitcoin may suffer, but it's also likely to recover, and there's also a chance it will actually go up during a crisis because of lots of people putting their wealth into it.

Look, op, if you're looking to buy property as an investment, as a businessman (and you say so yourself), surely you must understand that banks are also businesses, also looking to make profit. So of course they want to get as much money out of their clients as they can without losing the client and thus losing more money, and get away with as much vagueness as they legally can.
I'm glad you're a responsible investor who's looking at potential investments in detail, asking for relevant info to assess your own risks. It's also nice to see that you want to try crypto (hopefully, Bitcoin) DCA, as you'll see it's much easier, doesn't require negotiations, loans, or maintenance fees.

I think it's wonderful if the victims get some of their lost funds back, and we, as a community, should focus on being supportive of such a decision and hopeful that it'll promote similar steps in other exit scam crypto exchange situations. If victims get their money, there's no reason to believe that they'll all decide to sell their long-awaited BTC now, at the same time, on the same exchanges. Some will sell immediately, some will wait for some time, some will hodl. Some will use local exchanges, some will use international ones. I think that in the end there won't be a major dump to affect the global market.

G20 is an interesting idea of global cooperation, but I think we're simply not there yet to make such organizations effective to achieve anything. Our world has countries whose values are way too different for such a union to be meaningful. And international organizations are toothless in actually imposing strong measures against countries that directly threaten global security, no matter how outrageous the actions of these countries might be. That's why they often fail to reach agreement in G20 or, when they do, it's super vague, supporting everything good and opposing everything bad, so to speak.
So the 2023 summit happened, but it was so insignificant that it barely made the news.

I appreciate your responses, thank you for taking the time to write them.
That's a good point from the perspective of businesses battling inflation, I didn't take that into account.
Thank you for pointing out population growth. I guess I didn't think about it because my country's been experiencing a negative population trend for a long time. But looking at this data, there's no population growth or very low population growth (below 1.5%) in the majority of the world, including European countries, China, India, and the US. So it has to be accounted for from the long-term perspective, so some growth is perhaps required, but a year or two of no growth or very low growth shouldn't be significantly bad regarding population growth.
As for redistribution, could you mention some examples of it leading to GDP reduction? Because what I see it research that says that increase in income inequality leads to GDP reduction, but that's a very different thing because wealth redistribution is meant to reduce income and wealth inequality.

That's a valid concern, especially considering that as climate change progresses, there will be more natural disasters. Of course, it also depends on where you live and whether it's an area that's prone to natural disasters, but aside from natural disasters, there are also political instabilities that can have the same effect. For instance, I live in Ukraine, and while we don't have tsunamis or big earthquakes here, we frequently have fires and destruction of property due to missile and drone attacks by Russia, so the concerns about seed phrases are relevant as well, just as in case of natural disasters.
I'll admit that despite knowing that yeah, storing a seed phrase digitally is unsafe, that's what I do because I personally feel that the risk of getting hacked is lower for me than the risk of locking myself out of the wallet because of a physical seed phrase copy getting misplaced, lost, or destroyed.

I love the list, op, as it really shows how much value Bitcoin's been gaining over the years in comparison with something particular that many people know and quite a few people value. I think that Apple products are simply overpriced and not better than those of competitors, so I never choose Apple over other things. It's purely about brand and not about quality. Bitcoin, on the other hand, does not have a brand, as it's not a company. It's all about quality, reliability, and trust that people place in the product. Bitcoin's surely a better investment than buying another iPhone.
Also, add to that regional price differences for iPhone, accounting for local taxes. So, in my country, iPhone 15 (the regular one, not Pro) is actually worth the equivalent of 0.041 BTC.