I think that an individual who is interested cryptography could have created pretty much all the Bitcoin code by himself. He/she probably had some colleagues but I'm sure they have taken all the necessary measures to remain private. An expert in cryptography should know a lot of about anonymity and ways to "encrypt" online existence. The rest is just a matter of ego. I assure you that there are people in this world who are not looking for money or fame, but to contribute to a better world for the next generations to come.

If you want to keep your money safe I recommend keeping them in the bank(taking into account that your bank deposit is insured by authorities). Of course that fiat money is exposed to inflation, but so are crypto stable coins like DAI which is pegged 1:1 with the USD and you have some risk that sometimes happen with the DAI infrastructure. As you can see in their chart it had some pretty crazy wicks. Inflation won't affect your holdings too much as you're planning to hold them just for 6 months as you said.

As far as I know Etsy is pretty similar to Ebay.. I think it is a great idea and I would love to see a "bidding" feature like on eBay. If you are not familar with it it works like this: Seller lists an item and includes the bidding feature + a Buy Now price of $10. Then Buyer A comes and bids $2.50, then Buyer B overpasses him with a $2.60 bid. The last bid at the end of the bidding period wins the right to buy the product at the bidded price.

I would love to see that feature and be able to pay with BTC or other cryptos. Wish you good luck and I'm looking forward to see it live!

I think the only thing which could "crash" bitcoin to such a low amount is a global ban of it. Even if that happens I don't think it would crash to such a low amount. Maybe in the few hundreds of dollars zone, but not under $100. But why would one sell BTC if it remains a store-of-value asset that appreciates in time?

The demand is created especially because Bitcoin is a deflationary(scarce) asset. Also we all know it is a decentralized currency so no central entity can control it. As the production of BTC is halved miners will sell less and less BTC at these low prices because they need to at least breakeven! Though most of them are looking for profits(big ones) so they will probably end up holding it for a long time.

That is a great write-up @100action! You might wanna put together a little more content and format it & publish it on Medium or so. It is very important to keep things into perspective. All the altcoins got hurt much more than BTC in the bear market so that's another indication why it is the only viable crypto store-of-value. Regarding the smart contract functionality I'm sure it can be implemented on BTC as well. RSK(Rootstock project) offers smart contracts secured by the Bitcoin network & I'm sure multiple functionalities can be built upon Bitcoin through extra layers.

Nevertheless this is an interesting study and I want to thank you for taking the time to make it and format it nicely in an article. While I'm not very familiar with the stock-to-flow model ( I need to make some research on it) I can clearly see the ideas and patterns spotted in the market. If we continue this trend IMO we can see $1M/unit by 2030.

I like the rules of the Stratis Hackathon especially that developers need to provide video of the working application. Looking forward to some decentralized finance applications of the smart contract. Maybe something similar to DAI or an even better solution of a stable coin. I have high expectations from the C# developers, not even saying that Stratis is a great platform to develop on.

I don't believe in any kind of market manipulation. I might even say that I have removed that word from my vocabulary. In markets there is just supply and demand. If there are more people wanting to buy at a level than people who want to sell at the respective level the price will raise and vice-versa. That's simple finance, nothing complicated. All these allegations with Tether, etc. are just FUD or whatever you want to call that..
Presently, the volume from institutional investors is raising as I write this.. Check out the Bakkt volume if you don't believe me. Respectively the infrastructure for better liquidity and the globalization of BTC is being built by big financial giants.

Depends on what you define as work. There is a misconception between people that spending time to earn money is free money. IMO this is a huge fallacy because time is the most valuable resource of the universe. You can always get more money, but time is limited in this world. I think the goal is to spend your time to acquire a skill, then time to acquire money that you put to work for you.

I want to see a pic with the LED lightning too haha How much memory does the QORT router have? For example can we run all the services listed on the Wiki at the same time on it? Like Tor + Bitcoin wallet + QORT full node + host a website, etc. ?

Blackjack and dice are definitely my favorite casino games. I like playing with altcoins because in my mind I don't put much value on them, so I'd much rather play with them but on the other hand it's more satisfying to see a BTC stack growing..

My first factor to play or not at a online crypto casino is the design and how easy/hard is to create an account. I don't know a crypto casino that requires KYC..

My first rule in finance and investments is to never make decisions based on other people's articles, opinions, etc. ESPECIALLY if they are investment banks they are just trying to bring more money into the market. Don't get caught up in this. If you include inflation the stock market barely grows long term ( taking into account that your portfolio is stable and you're not adjusting it).

In my opinion which should not be regarded as financial advice as I am not a financial advisor, the crypto market is going to radically outperform the stock market in the next years. As a matter of fact I expect an explosion in Bitcoin price in the next couple of years.

There is a lack of a professional exchange with derivative products that works flawlessly and is made in a professional manner. You see that all exchanges have some sort of bugs, etc. Bitmex has that server overload "bug", Deribit just had an index problem liquidating traders' orders, etc. If you can gather a team of experienced, motivated developers and a management & legal team you can make big fortunes, BUT you need to hurry because Bakkt and CMEs will probably open their services to retailers next year as well.

I pretty much agree with David's view on Bitcoin, but with a few additional words I want to express here. Currently Bitcoin is a very volatile asset and that is most due to the lack of volume and liqudity in the market, but as the market matures I'm sure the institutional funds will flood into the market like crazy - and I'm not exaggerating here.

In the current market conditions BTC fulfills mostly the function of a store-of-value taking into account the long term appreciation of the asset, but as Marcus noticed it cannot be utilised on international business transactions for example because of the price swings.

BTC took the plunge down, but in my opinion this is just another bear trap. Just zoom out guys.. On the higher timeframes you can clearly see that we're still in a massive consolidation that I see as a re-accumulation period. I've just heard from one of my friends that the price of break-even for most miners is around 9000 USD. Like it or not, I agree with McAfee about the cheap prices that BTC is trading atm. Most people don't see it as they're not used to think with such big numbers but it is just math and the law of supply & demand

I was looking at your point 10. If the project is already 3 months old in the market then you're kinda' missing the early bird opportunity don't you? A really great "blue-chip" project will get its funding very fast if they're legitimate and know what they're doing. Most often than not the majority of the funds for this kind of projects are done through private investments from venture capitals and not from retail bitcointalk investors.

Even if your rules are good for a beginner I think the era of ICO is over for the retail investors.

I don't think that is a hard thing to do. I mean you just need  some developers to build a product-listing platform. The platform can be hosted using a blockchain solution or maybe host it on a conventional server at the beginning. Then you can enable Bitcoin-only payments. Not hard, but you need will.

Bitcoin is simply said a scarce asset with functionalities that would meet the "specifications" of a global mainstream currency. I always like to give this example to people: recent statistics show that there are over 36 million millionaires in the world which means that Bitcoin should be worth more than $1,710,000/unit just through the law of supply and demand( taking into account that each of these millionaires only want to buy 1 BTC). In this calculation aren't included the considered lost BTCs ~4M.