these are not "good things".
Bakkt is partially good but mostly was hyped up.
Binance has absolutely nothing to do with bitcoin because it is an altcoin exchange and whether or not it has high volume doesn't change anything for bitcoin not to mention that their volume is partly fake and rest of it is due to pump and dumps.
bitmex is somewhat relevant but it is mainly the place to go to for leverage trading. it is not "good" news for bitcoin really.

the guys at the two ends of these lists are always funny. the one at the end (highest price) could still work on it and set a record though.

in any case, here is my prediction: $10,750

why? i believe there is still a chance for more drops but there is a higher chance for the reversal. but the difference is that when the reversal happens, like before we will see a FOMO and the price could easily jump back up. 2 months i a reasonable time for this to happen too. but since $13k is the previous resistance and also $10k itself is somewhat of a resistance we may see things slow down. so we either see a $9k price close to $10k or break above it and get closer to $11k. hence my choice of $10,750!

you really shouldn't mess with these things if you don't know what you are doing. just let the wallet do it in the background itself.

(1) easy but not safe or recommended way:
search the address on blockchain.com: https://www.blockchain.com/en/btc/address/3QJmV3qfvL9SuYo34YihAf3sRCW3qSinyC
there is a field called "Hash 160" copy that, add a914 to its beginning and 87 to its end:

(2) "the right way" to "convert" a given address to its equivalent scriptPubkey is to first check if the given address is valid using either one of two encodings used by bitcoin addresses (base58 and bech32) then based on decoded data you set the appropriate the script:
1. check starting characters of the given string -> if 1 or 3 then use base58, if bc1 then use bech32 (different for testnet)
2. it is 3 -> decode with base58, verify and remove the 4 byte checksum
3. check version byte, figure out type of script and remove it
4. check validity of the length of remaining data, that's your hash
5. write the appropriate script:
for P2SH this is

ps. this is for P2SH scripts, the PublicScript for other types is different from this.

do we really need the forum to ban these users?
they are already being kicked out of any campaign with a manager that looks at their post history since most of them are obvious low quality posters. so practically they are banned without the forum intervention.
the only problem would be when there is a low quality campaign itself where the manager is some ICO scammer who doesn't care or one with automated payments in which case the campaign itself should be banned, like what theymos did with yobit a while ago.
in other words the problem should be solved at the source, it would be easier and requires less work.

it comes down to whom you are trying to hide from when mixing your coins!

for many users it is to prevent any random prying eyes from snooping around in their pocket to know how much bitcoin they own and where they spend it at. and since most of them already have accounts on some exchange site for buying bitcoin or trading altcoins then using that same account for mixing some  coins makes a lot of sense.

although it may not sound like it but using mixers is a lot safer than using exchanges! there has never been any cases of a mixer scamming any user ever (there are scam sites calling themselves mixer but that is different) but there has been lots of cases of popular big exchanges scamming their users and robbing them!

all your questions can be answered with a simple fact: Electrum is open source.

the thing about open source software is that they don't have an owner. there is no one developer to stop working on it. if one stops, someone else could pick it up and continue contributing and there are more than one active contributor to Electrum project right now.
this also means that we already know how Electrum does everything. so even if it stopped being updated, servers stopped being available,... you could always write a simple code to convert your Electrum seed to an extended private key (xprv) which is universally accepted in other software. not to mention that you could always export keys individually from an offline wallet.

the problem with phones is that they are connected to the network, not via the internet but you still have to insert a sim card in them and be connected to some sort of network. that could be a security flaw and nowadays with all these back doors that keep being found where they inject stuff in your phone to snoop around, i don't really see phones as a secure medium for storage.
a PC could physically be disconnected from the rest of the world, you can never achieve that with a phone unless you open it up and remove chips!

banks usually temporary close accounts that raise flags, these are accounts that are doing a lot of bitcoin trading and we are talking about large volumes not a small user buying some bitcoin every now and then with small amounts of money. and i think it is partly because these exchanges are not regulated so there are some red flags about them anyways.
if your bank is causing you any trouble then simply close your account with that bank and move to another one.


you won't be "spreading the word" by wearing a shirt and talking about "trading" bitcoin and pump and dump altcoins like ethereum. the only way to "spread the word" is to actually start spending bitcoin.
when was the last time you paid for something with bitcoin if ever? when was the last time you asked a merchant if they accepted bitcoin payment?

in ways it depends on the risks you are willing to take. you already seem to be aware of the risks and you don't mind ending up paying the loan while in loss so i'd say go for it specially now that price has come down so with $20k you will be able to get about 2.46 bitcoin instead of 2.
but generally speaking i personally try to never invest what i can not afford to lose and definitely not with the money i don't own (loans for instance) i believe lower risk lower profit is better than higher risk higher profit for me.

every miner must connect to a bitcoin full node to receive a constructed block to mine, whether they connect to a full node that they run themselves directly or through an intermediary like a pool is the only difference. for mining farms that own a lot of hashrate it is more secure and profitable to connect to a node they control instead of trusting a pool and also having to pay fees to that pool!

not really. in fact those pairs have the lowest volumes as they are not popular at all. these pairs are also mostly found on altcoin exchanges and they still have lower volumes as tether and other stable coins are mostly used for trading altcoins.
not to mention that bitcoin price is determined on bitcoin exchanges which only have fiat markets (usd/btc).

why would you think that? just because it seemed to me you were trolling in your topic in other place?!!

i am just pointing out that despite popular belief, even if ECDSA was broken some day by any means, it won't be the end of bitcoin (or as OP puts it, bitcoin won't get **** up). people are usually unaware that we keep upgrading cryptographic functions every now and then to stronger ones to stay ahead and bitcoin isn't going to an exception.

"if" an attacker could find private key of Alice from her public key then it means the system is flawed and should not even be used. solutions like this are like workarounds that are just putting band aid on a bullet wound! the real solution is to change the asymmetric cryptography scheme to something that could not be broken by the attacker in first place.

you need experience, and most importantly familiarity with the market.
for example to make profit from altcoins you need to be able to be able to notice when the pumps are beginning and also be able to notice when they are coming to an end so that you could get out before others dump.
there are a lot of small things too. for example what is hype and FUD, and which hype and FUD are effective and which ones are just desperate attempts.
all these could help you make better decisions about your entry and exit points so you end up with much better results. and hopefully you learn from the mistakes you make to end up with a better final result in long term.

imagine this scenario:
hypothetically assume i have a way of actually making 50% profit on the money i have every day. do i really need other people's money to work? you see how dumb that sounds! even if i started with a very small amount of money like a hundred bucks i could become a millionaire in a short time! from $100 to $1.12 million in 24 days to be exact.

do you understand why something like what you posted is a very obvious scam? they lure you in with the promise of ridiculously high returns, take your money and run away.

it seems like each time there is a spike in the volume that localbitcoins reports, one of these yellow news sites writes an article about how there is something "big" going on over in that country as if that's a thing. most of the times the volume is not even that high, in this case $1.6 mil is somewhat high but still not something to get excited about not to mention LBC's reports aren't that reliable to begin with.

you've heard one, i've heard many expect this drop. but the thing is, the same people are always expecting drops at all times. it is like those crazy people with signs saying "The End is Nigh", and we know that even a broken clock is correct twice a day. so i wouldn't really read too much in what a lot of them are saying specially those without a prior history that come out suddenly talking about drops, they always have another old burnt account that makes them start fresh with a new one.

we already have a topic in "beginners" board: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1631151.0 explaining different types of wallets and the respective links to each project's website. i think that is more than enough, since keeping track of what new version is out is a very hard task specially with very active projects that keep releasing newer versions regularly. checking the project's website is a better and easier solution.

maybe some newbies who don't know any better take a look at the announcer's rank on this forum but generally it doesn't matter at all. "what" you announce matter, as in the product you are offering or services,... for example when you say "my company's new blockchain technology" if it is yet another useless ICO or another copycat coin then it doesn't matter if your rank is the lowest or the highest, it will be ignored.

but according to your post history you seem to be  wanting to run a useless IEO to make money out of thin air, in which case as i said don't bother... it will fail whether you announce it with a newbie account or a legendary one.

you mean these couple of weeks or this year? because this year we had a couple of big FOMO cases the biggest one was $2000 rise! comparing this to 2017 is also naive because there is nothing similar and what we had in 2017 was neither pumps nor FOMO. it was a solid rise with a nice rally ending up with a lot of hype and a simple but big bubble. if you want to compare things you have to compare it with 2015 instead when price was (similar to this day) coming out of the bottom.