It could take 2 weeks. It could take 3 days.  It could also take much longer since anyone can rebroadcast a transaction at any time.  You shouldn't count on the two weeks which is probably why you hadn't heard that before.  ;-)

The fact that he hasn't come back should say something.  Almost assuredly FUD.

Since Bitcoin Core can't access the wallet (and you reinstalled it) it does know what keys are in there so it can't compute the balance so it shows zero. (If you know any of the addresses you can check the balance using a different web site.). If you can access the wallet it can then rescan and recalculate the balance. 

If you can figure out the pass phrase for the wallet, you will be able to recover the coins.  So you should try to remember everything you can about it.

I've seen people asking that (not necessarily that amount) since 2010 and the answer is that no one knows, but if you believe in the transformative ability of bitcoin, that should give you a good idea.

Danny gave a great answer.

I would also add that if you are storing a lot of value (whatever that may mean to you) and are really concerned, you could use it on a computer that you never put online after your initial setup.   Then it would be much more difficult for it to take control of your coins - even assuming that such an unlikely event came to pass.

Do you have a transaction id? 

It sounds like you installed both Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin ABC in the same user space.  Is that accurate?

I think many people have realized that bitcoin is here to stay, one way or another.  Getting the blessing of Goldman for example helps.  Previously there were some who felt that way, but many who panicked first and sold quickly because they thought the end was here.  Now there are still plenty who panic, but there are many more than previously who say "buying opportunity" - like today with the dip to the 3900s.

The larger the population that sees the potential, the more we'll have shorter panics. In theory.

Have you read about HD keys?

e.g.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Deterministic_wallet
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Deterministic_wallet_tools

Seems somewhat complicated and insecure to do since it would require a web site somewhere and an interface to an API that could get prices and the private keys stored somewhere so that they could automatically unlock.

Perhaps the easiest thing to do might be to find a big law firm and hire them as trustee and set up a trust with your terms.  Give them a sealed envelope with your private keys. Ask them to store it in their vault.  Then tell them not to return the envelope until the average bitcoin price on the largest X (5? 10?) exchanges at any time is above $Y.   Perhaps use the "closing" price since some exchanges offer that.

It might cost something unless you have a pre-existing relationship with the firm, but you could probably set up an alert that would automatically email the attorney/assistant/law firm general email address when the price was above $Y so they could check it and see if it met the criteria.  

Or you could just put them in a safe deposit box and go there and retrieve the appropriate one yourself.  

Of course with segwit, smart contracts and some type of distributed oracle it might be doable, but it would not be trivial.

Would that be desegregated witness?

Seriously, can you explain what you are asking in more detail?  Segwit vs Segwit2x?  Something else?

And "they" have said "bubble," "Ponzi," and "tulips" at least since it was well under $1/bitcoin.  When it hit $0.25 and $1 it was a bubble and unsustainable.  Ditto at $3, $10, $35, $100, $300, $900, $1200, etc. 

Great. 

Now make sure that you move the coins from whatever address(es) in that wallet.dat file into a newly created wallet (to ensure that you don't use an older pre-generated address in the old one) so that if there is a copy of that wallet.dat anywhere else, your coins are safe.

Something like Electrum or Bitcoin Core's HD wallet functionality are useful.

You are right.  

I just can't help but think back that ever since China banned bitcoin a few dozen times, it has been a big part of bitcoin.  It used to be a big part because people used it as FUD, but now, as you say, there is much more diversity in the number of countries in Asia that are aware of bitcoin.  :-)  

One hopes that the usability of bitcoin and wider adoption will continue.  In my view, the script versioning that segwit enables (along with a few other improvements) will be another game changer since it allows developers to replace some of the op-codes disabled in 2010 which will then increase the functionality of the scripting language without the need for a hard fork.

You also probably want to move this to the alt-coin section since it isn't bitcoin related and so shouldn't be here. Just FYI.

Ah yes, now that I look at the graph on a larger screen, I can see it better.  ;-). Perhaps they are time-warping it to reset it with two 1 difficulty blocks in a row and then it it stepping back up every difficulty change?  I can't tell for sure from that graph.  

It is probably this, as you alluded to above:
"Minimum difficulty of 1.0 on testnet is equal to difficulty of 0.5 on mainnet. This means that the mainnet-equivalent of any testnet difficulty is half the testnet difficulty. In addition, if no block has been found in 20 minutes, the difficulty automatically resets back to the minimum for a single block, after which it returns to its previous value."

So it drops, then returns.

Yeah.  If anything Metcalfe's law would be more appropriate here.

Order does indeed matter as they are, at root, just representations of numbers.  So 12345 and 54321 while having the same component integers are different numbers and so correspond to different points on a curve. (Simplified explanation, of course.). And 12345 and 54321 would be points on the curve, but not random enough to be safe.

Also since they are just numbers, you could create two private keys that swap the last two "digits" (and then re-encode the new one - there are checksums in there to decrease the chance that a typo would result in a valid address) to verify this for yourself.

I think you hit the nail on the head here.  The public statements on the dev mail list etc are more about the rushed timeframe for a hard fork that is not an emergency.  Taking the statements at face value, of course.  If Core were to come out with a statement staying something like, in 0.16.x or 0.17.x Core will support a block size increase to 2MB (or whatever) I think that would take the wind out of 2X's sails and resolve the NYA issue prior to a contentious hard fork.

As far as the 100kb block, that is what one Core developer (luke-jr) had stated.  I didn't see others echoing it.

With Segwit alone the increase in block size should mitigate blocks being full quite quickly unless the spamming doubles or triples which is not inexpensive.  

I guess we'll see how things progress going forward, and it will be interesting regardless.