I see the op of that thread saying he was just a teenager and accumulated 95 BTC. I wonder what happened to that person, and were they patient enough not to sell till BTC at least got to $1k per coin.
It's impressive that someone knew and strongly believed in Bitcoin so early on, and of course we now know how right that person was. The time of such rapid growth of value is behind us, but with a long-term perspective in mind, I think we can expect a lot of great accomplishments from Bitcoin in the future as well.

Hm... I normally drink my tea daily, but it's not like I buy a pack of tea every day, and I'm not the type of person to buy drinks in a café or elsewhere regularly. A 100g pack of black tea (I choose Ahmad tea, Monomax, sometimes Lovare) costs around 100 UAH (EUR 2.5) in Ukraine, and it's enough for around half a month. The current price of BTC is EUR 26,565. That means I would take 10,626 packs of tea to save up for 1 BTC (at a current price, not adjusted to inflation and without accounting for the potential growth of BTC price). Since I need around 2 packs per month, it means being 5,313 months without black tea or 442 years 

My first question is who's going to sponsor the implementation of the idea. Why should a teacher spend some of their salary on that? If not the teacher, then who? Bitcoin costs money, so a cash prize requires the cash from someone to make it work. If it's a very small amount, I don't think it will encourage students, and if it's big, the financial burden over someone who introduces it can be great. I'm also concerned that there will actually be abuse of the system, one way or another. Some students will just force some AI to analyze the words, and brute force potential seed phrases, without actually studying what they're supposed to be studying.
At first glance, it sounds like a nice idea, but I don't think it's very practical and helpful in real life.

Considering the amount of money this guy has, 14 BTC for his children is truly nothing, and an explanation about children is good to avoid accusations of lying to others. I think it doesn't have much to do with Bitcoin and is just politics: the Republican contestant DeSantis is a vocal supporter of Bitcoin, so it makes sense for a Democrat to try to get support of some of the same audience, showing some engagement with Bitcoin. So if you're an American citizen, it's important to consider that it might be simply an attempt to win some votes, and that's relevant both for DeSantis and for RFK.
But I do agree that a Democrat and a Republican trying to be pro-Bitcoin is advertising Bitcoin, as well as showing that it's truly becoming one of the major societal matters, the kind of stuff that major politicians can build their election campaigns around or at least feel important to voice their opinion on.

MIT is one of the best universities in the world, with obviously high research standards and great researchers.
I'm really happy that they decided to conduct research and assess Bitcoin mining's actual impact instead of just assuming that it's bad. But the tweet is clearly oversimplifying things.
Reading the full report, I want to circle out a few things:
- the report covers 1/4 of the global hash rate, so unfortunately not the majority of mining;
- based on their findings, the majority of mining is unlikely to be fuelled by sustainable energy (although, again, the report only accounts for 25%);
- the report supports the evidence that Bitcoin mining can help with the power grid sustainability and to use up otherwise wasted energy (and use the money to work on solutions to ecological problems);
- "Bitcoin mining may serve as a catalyst for investment in renewable infrastructure";
- proper assessment of potential climate benefits of Bitcoin mining requires more research;
- the authors support the requirement of more transparency from Bitcoin miners to evaluate various claims regarding the impact of Bitcoin on the climate.

I'm all for the development and prosperity of African countries, but it's not an easy road. First, there's corruption and violence, both of which need to significantly be tuned down for progress. Then there's the impact of colonialism which you've mentioned, and it's unfortunately hard to escape it because economic dependency is still strong. Finally, the world is starting to move away from the exploitation of natural resources toward more sustainable activities because of climate change, so I think that it's not a good time to start working on building economies around minerals and stuff.

It's hard for me to understand (or just very surprising, I guess) how it's a long-awaited modernization to send and receive funds in seconds in the US, to be honest. In my low-income developing country, online banking is very popular, and people often send money this way to one another. It literally takes seconds to receive the funds, and it's just a part of everyday life. Exceptions are related to international transfers, but as long as it's something within one currency and all the banks involved belong to one country, it's almost instantaneous payments. Sometimes there's no fee, and sometimes there's, like, a 1% fee or something like that. The op mentions international payments, but it seems that the article does not, so I don't think that's what FedNow is about.

Cashless payments are common in my country, but even in big urban areas, there are places that don't accept cards. For example, there's a type of public transport where you can only pay with cash, and you mostly can only use cash at farmers' markets as well. In smaller cities, even cafes often don't accept card payments or don't have the proper devices to do that, which means you need to transfer money via online banking if you don't have cash on you. I don't use cash most of the time, especially if there are other options available, but I don't really think that cash will go away globally because the tendencies strongly depend on a country. Also, unfortunately, increased adoption of cashless payments doesn't mean increased usage of crypto payments.

I do believe in the social welfare state, so I think that the taxpayers' money should be used to provide or at least make more accessible essential services, but the subsidy isn't a great measure because it can be removed. It can only work as a temporary measure, and I guess that's how it's often introduced, but removal of the subsidy should be planned in advance, and occur gradually to allow people to adapt. I think proper programs of social security are better than measures like subsidies, unless we're talking about the state subsidizing certain industries (like public transportation, for example), which is different because it's not on the level of individuals and can be a long-term commitment.

If there are some wallets that have a lot of BTC in them that hasn't been moved for a while, it doesn't mean that these wallets belong to some rich investors. These can be wallets of exchanges, crypto casinos etc, holding most of the money of their customers. Also, if there's a transaction, it doesn't mean that BTC is being sold (it's just one possibility). Moreover, if 'a whale' wants to sell BTC, I think it will probably be done via an OTC deal, which won't really affect the market much. Dumping a big amount of coins onto an exchange and trying to fill a huge order is just harder, likely to attract attention and cause unnecessary issues.
So to me, this doesn't mean anything, and I don't expect any effect on the market.

I think the answer to op's question depends a lot on the circumstances and personal beliefs.
Do you think that dealing drugs is a crime (not from a legal standpoint, but from a moral standpoint)? What kind of drugs or does it not matter to you? Another question is whether this person wants to abandon the current activity for something Bitcoin-related or not.
To me, it matters what kind of drugs the person's dealing, whether this person is engaged in other, more violent forms of crime, and it's a big plus if this person is seeking to escape the drug-dealing industry.
I wouldn't help a violent person, or someone who deals heroin and something of similar very strong and very negative impact. I also wouldn't help a person who deals drugs to minors. But if it's something lighter that adults get for themselves, and the person is alright (not aggressive), I wouldn't hold it against him.
All that aside, I wouldn't give anyone financial advice, I can merely help to learn more about the currency, wallets, basic security, and stress the risk of investing. Also, I wouldn't normally dedicate my time to someone I'm not friends with, unless it's something like paid private lessons.

I don't believe that making a religious cult-like Bitcoin army is going to solve anything. The world is full of structural injustice, that's true. But trying to work around the issues, trying to make it better and to change the culture, making things more accessible, is the way forward. Uniting against the smartest and most privileged people isn't a great idea, it's better to have those on the side of positive change. Also, of course the smart and rich can also invest in Bitcoin, as it's open to everyone, so there's no practical way to keep people out.
Furthermore, I totally agree with franky1 that if there's no circulation of coins, there's no market, and thus Bitcoin is worthless.

It would be nice to know which countries the op's friend meant because I don't think it's a common thing to have salaries paid in Bitcoin. People have mentioned El Salvador, and I think there were some experiments in some US states as well, but that's pretty much it. I wouldn't mind getting paid for everything I do in Bitcoin, as long as the tax implications don't leave me worse off than with fiat. If there's a high tax-free amount, low taxation or no special taxation at all (like in El Salvador), getting paid in Bitcoin can be okay. Of course, it would be much better if, along with it, it was possible to use Bitcoin directly to buy groceries and stuff, but I wouldn't mind even without it, assuming that selling for fiat is simple.

I agree with the op that AI's influence seems likely to be wider than that of cryptos. With all the recent developments of AI, we can see that it can really change how people work in many areas, including tons of jobs related to working with texts, education in general, but also potentially graphic design and music production. That is already huge, and perhaps we'll see big advancements in other AI areas in the future as well. Cryptos are good but relevant in the financial sector only, whereas AI directly affects a lot of areas, so I'm not surprised that many look at those projects as more promising.

As others have mentioned, the European economy is very large, as there are several big high-income countries that have EUR as their currency. There's also a perceived importance which Europe and EUR get, probably largely thanks to the history of colonialism, and a perceived value in other countries is important to determine the foreign demand, which in turn significantly affects the success of a currency. EUR is doing fine, successfully managing to reduce the inflation that was hit in 2022, and I don't think we're in for a relapse. If anything, I think EUR will actually get stronger because there are countries that may still adopt it at some point.

As others have mentioned, the last default was due to sanctions, and I would even say that it's just a default on a technicality. Russian ruble defaulted not because Russian didn't have enough money to pay the foreign debt obligations; they couldn't pay in the right currencies because of the sanctions.
So yeah, it can happen again, but unfortunately, I don't think there's a big impact from that. And as for the real situation, Russian economic policies managed to keep the currency afloat, although the ruble has been steadily losing its value against the USD this year.

If cryptos are illegal in your country to a point where it's illegal to own them, and the consequences can be a confiscation of funds and/or prison time and/or a significant fine, I don't think it's a good idea to buy a hardware wallet. I mean, it's likely possible to get one, but that's going to be incriminating evidence in such a country because if a person has a wallet, the authorities have a good reason to suspect that this person also has cryptos. So I side with those recommending a good non-custodial online wallet like Electrum if your choice is to keep and use cryptos in that country.

I like this forum and I think its impact on my life has been very positive. Some have mentioned the Signature campaigns, which are of course a significant part of it, but there are other things. People discuss a lot of interesting questions here, and I regularly learn something new when reading the threads or doing my own research to respond to some questions. It really helps to think about economic matters from various perspectives and learn things that I now believe people should know, but I wouldn't have known without the forum.
I also like the general vibe around here. We have people with very different political views, but the posts tend to be written in a respectful manner, providing facts, links, and arguments to support one's position. In my experience, discussions are of a very different kind and quality on many other platforms online.

Waiting for institutions is really a form of procrastination, I think, as there are no specific points in time or criteria to buy Bitcoin here. How many companies should invest, does it matter which ones, does it matter how much they invest? Without answering these question, a person can always decide to just wait longer.
But people also should invest if they don't believe that Bitcoin will grow and/or can't afford to take a risk. Adoption of Bitcoin as a form of payment can be a nice alternative, yes, but a lot of people aren't in a position where they can affect the currency in which they're getting paid.

Despairo is right that huge profit is out of the picture any more, unless someone is willing to wait for many years. Altcoins jump up and down all the time, and while it's very risky, one can invest in an altcoin and perhaps profit from it well above the potential profit from Bitcoin over the same time period.
Bitcoin is way more stable, more reliable. It's volatile, but also within some limits, and pretty stable for long periods of time. It's also #1 by market capitalization. I think people value that kind of reliability that altcoins don't have. Of course, there are stablecoins, but those aren't decentralized like Bitcoin is, and their value won't (isn't meant to) grow.