some of the best bitcoin gatherings i arranged were ones that did not allow 'investment' pitches

they were usually done in a function room of a pub/bar so that it was a casual session where people could drink and order food. that way it didnt feel like a lecture hall session, but a social event.

the locals got together and organised what local merchants they would all freqeunt often and decide which merchant was best to adopt bitcoin, and utilise their knowledge and experiences to help that merchant get bitcoin aware.

some done face to face bitcoin exchanges. some discussed scaling, some got technical, some discussed the social economics. and some just wantd to buy a pint with btc


....
to make it appear more bitcoin friendly place to be without gtting the bar to lift a finger in caring much about the technicals or concerns any business would have... i set up a bar tab myself(prepaid in cash so bar was happy and had no concerns about being paid) and then just asked the staff if they are asked if they accept btc. to total up the drinks order like a normal cash transaction, but put the total into a btc price checker to know the totals btc value. and then show a customer a qr code. when the staff hear a 'ding' on the checker. they just take the cash out the hidden bartab and into the cashier regisiter like normal cash transaction.
thus the people buying drinks feel they bought their drinks with btc.
thus the bar still got their fiat in the cash drawer concern free
thus i converted my fiat into btc (yea the qr code was for me and my cash was for the bar)

i did then after the event, if the bar seemed like alot of locals were bitcoiners who would return. set up a ongoing cash bar tab for them to 'accept btc' and if they seen it popular told them about exchanges like bitpay/coinbase at the time thus removing me out of the equation of being the exchange for them and be more self reliant and on a path to learning about bitcoin independantly

destroying coins?? (facepalm)

not only does that break the rules of the whole 21m coin 'there will be 21m coins in the future .. oh wait we meant 15mill, now 14m'

not only does that break the 'trust math' theology. because now devs decide they want to go against the rules, so people cant trust that they will always have coins if they just locked their only copy of a private key in a time capsule. they have to trust and hope devs dont go barbaric on code rules

not only does destroying coins destroy many aspects of bitcoin.but the social drama impact of such an act would effect the markets more so than just letting a theif sell coins

think about it once brute forced coins are sold or moved out of insecure keys. drama is over.
its far better to let someone waste their life brute forcing a private key for 50btc and sell them, then repeat 20,000 times until 'satoshi stash' is no longer on insecure addresses... than it is to let devs manipulate the rules to declare more than 1m coined defunct and destroyed in on go. whats next if p2pk keys need destroying, do devs wait a month and declare war on p2pkh p2sh. then when they find an issue with segwit declare a war on p2wpkh. would it ever end

people would prefer to know if they leave their coins its their fault for not loking after them, if they care and there is a output format that is genuinely more secure they can move them. if they dont then they are at risk of someone else spending them.. but never ever should devs ever consider destroying coins..

in business terms. imagine thre is a company in the middle of a merger/liquidation buyout/hostile takeover. is it more beneficial to just let it happen as you know its only a 15minute news item that passes as fast as a price dip would.. or would you call in the military and nuke the facility and shout 'ha ha ha no one gets it' and then go on a mission where nuking businesses is standard practice

the price drama of a user selling 50btc a day is small if they brute forcd a satoshi stash address each day. and it would take 20,000 of thos days to do it to 1m coins.
just think about how little effect on the price 50btc is in comparison to average daily volume.
just think about how little drama it would realistically create compared to breaking some of bitcoins fundemental rules.

more people would be more concerned that devs are coming to dstroy their coins next compared to the worry of someone spending 50btc of satoshi stash a day

neither is carrying around a desktop PC or a laptop just to buy a burger. simply because you want to campaign your desire to want mcdonalds to be open to full nodes

but wait whats that i pre-empt you next saying. that bitcoin should then restrict onchain scaling so that people can use a phone as a full node. thus restricting people from getting their payment confirmed without delay by bottlencking the network with loads of unconfirmed transaction that just cant fit into a restricted block size. thus making bitcoin less appealing to use for making payments.
then obviously removes the convenience factor of having said phone to buy a burger.

but wait whats that i pre-empt you next saying. that people should vault up their funds into a co-custodian lock and then use offchain tokens for payment that dont require a blockchain for payment. thus again removes the need of needing to have a full node.

..
and thats before even talking about the fact that if your getting your access froma company. that company controls what you see, thus you may not realise the only visable peer shown on the access is the companies own node(s) which means your node is then only getting what the company chooses to send it, thus you may b syncing to thier fork.

oh windy. [facepalm]
if anything should be learned is now that new opcodes and transaction formats  can be slid in without hardforks as they please. it should actually be very much highlighted that not all nodes on the network are the newest up-to-date full archiving nodes able to understand all the new txformats.

this means
a. not all nodes actually fully validate, take people running nodes that are not segwit compatible,, they do not validate segwit signatures/scripts(now called witnesses) instead they blindly see a tx format they do not understand and presume its safe as they recieved the block containing the tx from a peer so the peer must have validated it(trust not full validation). and the same goes for even more newer differing tx formats. again for importance without checking that the spending addresses scripts/signatures validate.

b. also apart from the criteria of validation, to be a TRUE "full node" you ned to be archival thus able to seed data for your peers to get. this also not unanimous to all peers as some run in pruned mode, etc.
just go check https://bitnodes.earn.com/nodes/?q=1037 and you will see at time of writing this. out of 9200 nodes listed only 6400 nodes are uptodate to the latest rule following standards of what would be "full node" standard.

c. some nodes use checkpoints(min chain work) and when initially syncing the blockchain. they dont validate every transactions and every block from genesis, they just download the blockchain and only validate transactions/blocks after the milestoned point indicated. again presuming if the peers have the same then it must be good.
which from a security point presuming a new funky txformat not yet understood is 'valid' or early blocks are 'valid' purely due to presumption/trust that peers done their jobs for you. is bad bad security
specially if its only one group of devs that decide what chainwork to have as the default

'trust core' [facepalm] (do you start seeing that core have more power than an open community want)

d. even without you knowing the technicals. you seem to be trying to want to make this point for a popular social debate going on about presuming who has the real power in the network. EG trying to hide the fact that devs and the major exchanges have sway
however in social attack scenarios. if you as a node runner are told merchants and miners are being made to accept one version of a block the home users react by upgrading thier node to that version out of fear that they will get thrown off the network or be unable to spend thier funds because the merchants dont recognise them if they end up on the wrong version.
yep thats right merchants and miners have more sway because people fear being left off a network that is not compatible with their favourite merchant.

take the min chainwork stuff by cor and merchants using nodes with cores prefered minchainwork. means nodes not wanting to be core sheep dont get a voice. thus core and merchants have more power than home users to decide what the rules are
(as proven by the controversy of the NYA and august 1st 2017 drama )

anyway back to the technicals and point.
if a node is not 1037 its not doing all the full node requirements but is treated blindly as being a fullnode in respect of being on the network
not all nodes validate everything.

even gmax is very wishy washy about it
for instance some nodes are not 'native' segwit ready thus although they are network nodes they are not validating segwit signatures/scripts.

an append only database in a central store means everyone has control and access of a single file,
imagine 100,000 people all having access to your computer. you dont know who really just hacked it and deleted the file, you dont know who just scrubbed the log files and you dont know who could do it again.
also someone can then replace it with a different copy that they pre-edited/created before popping it into your computer.
so you employ IT guys, you get auditors in, you even employ HR guys to vet people that access it. security guys that approve or revoke access to people.

an append only database distributed across multiple systems
means everyones copy just adds new entries but has no hash or chaining function to check previous entries are not edited easily
meaning it requires more labour and time and money to do stuff

but blockchains without any labour self manages and audits all the systems and keeps the database robust. think about it have you ever needed to manually request your node to verify stuff.. have you had to manually ban mischievous nodes. or has the system been self reliant with no labour overhead/costs

imagine the international domain names registry.. different countries having a node.. it not public meaning users cant change entries they have to buy domains from domain services... and no single country can edit it,

then do some research on bitdns blockchain. its been around for 8 years

---

edit (gmaxwell has gone on a censorship power trip)
to answer points in posts below

ok take the UTXO set and imagine that it is just account balance,
imagine its backed up only once a day. thats 3.5GB a day.
imagine having to keep the backups for 10 years. thats 12 terrabytes
(you should already by now se the benefit. 250gb vs 12terrabyte)

also by only holding a 'current balance' log once a day. its not logging where thee funds came from, and its not logging all the movements during the day, its just showing the balance at a specific time of say midnight each night.

12 terrabytes and no tracking, validity of funds or anything. and only for 1 'block' a day logging
if this was done every 10 minutes still without all the movement logs thats 144 times bigger
thats 1.7petabytes
(you definetly should be seeing the advantage by now)

and yet blockchain can store all the validity of all transactions throughout a day, every day and every year for 10 years, ensuring no one just magic up new funds with no genesys..  all for less than 250gb,
along with storage saving. the data is more complete with chain of transaction movements during the day, its also auditor and IT security staff saving too. and no special HR department looking into staff pc usage.

so thats the data size and data security, human costs and auditing covered.(all explain more about the security/human involvement below)
next is the point you made about mysql data base with permissions set that only a certain group can maintain the database


this then puts a central authority that needs to be there to approve/revoke abilities.
imagine a company was founded and they employed a CEO while the founders became board members
those people would spend hours discussing who has what powers who can edit the single datafile, who can do this do that.
to prevent the CEO from going rogue the board mmbrs would ned to be watching the CEO's every keystroke to prevent rogue things happening. as they obviously wouldnt want the rogue act to occur and then handle the aftermath.

in a blockchain this is not nessesary. no one can edit the blockchain, because all locations reject versions/edits that dont fit the majority.
so if a employee went rogue. its not like the mysql system would prevent it. instead the damage is done. the damage is noticed(too late) the rogue employee then has their privileges revoked and fired.(AFTER the damage is done)
in blockchain a employee wouldnt even be able to be rogue to even cause the damage first off. instead the system will maintain itself and keep good clean records of what should be there,where the rejected edit would get reported. thus employee fired without causing the damage.
this takes IT guys to maintain a watchlist. auditors to audit the file, HR to audit the permissions list, HR audit its staff,

as an example, bitcoin does this with its ban ip function. if it receives bad data that doesnt follow the rules the data is rejected and the malicious node is banned from future relaying. all without any human needing to tap their finger
this is something mysql database systems do not offer

remember blockchain is not just a database (blk file) blockchain is a technology that secures the data without human decision/power


no
BITCOIN was made to be global
BITCOIN was made to be adversarial
BITCOIN had an incentive mechanism to promote competition
but BLOCKCHAINS dont need to be global, nor adversarial

blockchains solution to the byzantine generals rule is to be mutally in agreement(consensus)
the adversarial part is to reward people for putting more computing power into making a ever increasing harder hash.
take away the incentive people wont increase the hash hardness. but the evr increasing hash hardness is not an essential fature for a private blockchain nor is an incentive

bitcoin is not a good example of blockchains full utility/ability anymore because bitcoin bypasses many critical checks and allows things to be slid in without consensus. not only that but bitcoin is only a small niche usecase of all the possibilities

take airport security(passenger lists/passports/freight/customs/border control). they have to inter-communicate across countries, but dont trust each others countries so want to secure data independantly. not to be adversarial, but to mutually coexist so that the word "trust" does not even come into the conversation

EDIT 2
the UTXO set of bitcoin is just one dataset instance of current balance at one given time. and it is 3.5gb right now. if backing up this dataset of balance every 10minutes would produce terrabytes over time. and still not have the auditing of how the funds changed ownership

it has nothing at all.. nothing . zllch to do with core crippling the blocksize.

if blocks were 0.1mb (10%) then over the same period a traditional database backup of account balance just once a day would be 1.2trrabyte and the blockchain would be 25gb
emphasis on the difference between 25->1200.. emphasis on the 48x saving
emphasis on the 250->12000 emphasis on the 48x saving
again for emphasis 48x saving by doing it on blockchain
emphasis of 48x saving no matter if blocks were 0.1mb or 1mb.
again. that 48x saving is with the traditional database backed up just once a day not showing all movements
if done every 10minutes the saving would be 6912x no matter what the blocksize comparison would be

so dont twist it into a story how cores crippling the blocksize causes the 6912x saving because the 6912x saving would be the same thing no matter the blocksize

actually within just HOURS of CW publishing he was satoshi and that he got a few people and media to meet with him to see his proof..
.. that proof was immediately denounced as fraud.
he published a signature that was pretending to be freshly created by CW whilst with the people he met. but instead it actually was something he simply copy/pasted from the blockchain 5 years before his claim.

so yes people did inform the community that he faked the proof.
what actually went wrong after is that a social drama frenzy occured where all those who highly invested in CW could not believe they been duped so they doubled down their stupidity by still trusting and defending him, in fear if they actually admitted to themselves they been duped they have to admit they will never see returns on their investments again. thus they went along with his ruse hoping he could keep things alive long enough to make profit to make returns to investors

you see it happen in other investment scams too. companies back up and hang on and drag their feet trying to keep hop a live rather than just cut their losses compltely

the SEC do not police institutions. the SEC set the rules and ask the institutions to make their own policies based on those rules so that institutions can police their customers.
the SEC sit back and wait for complaints and reports, so if they were to rubber stamp anyone it would be those that do not cause the SEC to do any work.
if they see a business is going to cause them headaches then they prefer to not allow the company anywhere near a market rather than accept it and then be chasing it eachday. again SEC dont monitor/surveille businesses, they only react when they get reports from outsiders.
think of them as lawyers/judges, waiting for cases to come to them. not police walking the streets looking for trouble

take the 2007 events. if SEC were corporate police they would have found iffy stuff happening as early as the 1990's

bakkt is not an ETF, its in a different category. its also available not on the NYSE/LSE instad its on a smaller market(ICE) meaning large multi continent institutions are not putting their employee pension funds into it.

as for ETF that will go on things like NYSE/LSE i feel the SEC is dragging its feet waiting for one of its pals in wall street to apply to be the first. once that occurs it will set a precedence and others will use the first one as a template to get approved real quick, creating a snowball effect.

that said i know people will think and hope that the day a ETF is launched the price wil rise. it wont rise that day. for an ETF to function the ETF would have already bought the coins needed to put into the trust. and those trading on the ETF on launch day are not putting dollars into bitcoin exchangs buy buying shares of the ETF thus no impact on the price.
what could happen though is secondary institutions suddenly become interested in bitcoin ETF and start buying up real btc, to then form one. and at later dates once all ETF shares of the first launcher have been bought, the ETF could grab more real btc to expand on their supply of shares

but one thing is for sure an ETF launch announcement will NOT cause a price increase due to institutions buying real btc that day. the only effect that could occur on launch day is those already trading real btc, emotionally orgasm some fake hype 'coz mdia said btc 5 times today'
which as everyone knows when a price moves purely due to speculative hype, cant last and then when the bubble bursts, a correction occurs.

so dont get too excited an ETF does not add 'value' to btc. it just add emotional trading drama from people that react to media announcements rather than trading logic

oh look another topic of someone trying to subtly advertise they are some expert, give it time soon they will start asking you for credit card info or supply you with a bitcoin address for their exclusive club of investment advice

tip one.
if anyone tells you its time to sell/buy, the action has already occured by the time its told to you. so dont listen to such people because its like being told at10pm that the drinks party started at 6pm. and everyone else you know is already drunk
yep thats right folks by the time wall street/bloomburg/cnbc show indicators that its time to sell, even the cameraman had already sold before the common man knows what the indicator is going to show.

the reason they do it.
once they have dealt their hand they want common man to push that position to the extreme so that the preachers can do the opposite and take advantage.
EG if prices were without preaching: noon$8000 1pm$8000 2pm$8000 3pm$8000 4pm$8000
by selling at noon at $8000 they could trigger the price to move down to say $7990. then preach to common man that common man should sell too. resulting in common man causing the price to go down to say $7800 by 2pm
the preacher then buys back in at $7800 causing $7810 uptick and preaches people should buy back in causing a $8000 by 4pm
thus the preacher turned 1btc at noon into 1.025btc at 2pm which sold at 4pm is an extra $200 in their pocket.where as common man would have sold at $7800 when they got the news to sell and then tried to buy back in at $8000 thus LOSING

tip two
never ever ever ever ever listen to guys telling you that their TA stands for technical analysis if all they have done was draw lines on a price chart based on a random period average of their choosing.
that TA stands for TREND analysis. not technical.
if people are not supplying info like:
how much exchanges known UTXO are hoarding,(supply vs demand indicator)
the average mining cost(value vs speculation bubble price indicator)
then they are doing you a dis-service and you should definetly not be paying them for a service

tip three
if these guys are charging you a fee upfront, then they cannot be very successful or trusting of their own words, or they would be successful themselves to not ned to beg for upfront fees.
some services dont charge memberships but do charge a % of profit common people make from their trades. even this, though appearing to look like its a 'preacher only gets rich if common man gets rich first' should be avoided also
many preachers dont care if common man gets rich or loses as long as they get a regular % from dupes, they dont care.

tip four
never put all your eggs into one basket. never jump at something with both feet. at very worse 50% at best 1-10% always have one foot inside the door and one foot outside that way you can play both sides if prices dont go a certain way
eg
if you have 10btc. dont throw it all on one order. throw atbest 1btc to sell. if the price doesnt go down great you still have 9btc making profit and have fiat in hand which you were happy to sell anyway.
put the fiat at a buy at a value below your sell and leave it. dont try rushing to buy in again at or above the price you sold. just be happy to have some fiat to respond to dips or just to spend on groceries. and let the remaining btc make the profit
if the price after the sell did go down. great again, dont be in a rush to sell the other 9btc. be happy that your initial 1btc sell made you profit more than 1btc on the buy back gaining you more than 10btc total.

tip five
never use trend stats, technical stats like mining costs as a way to tell you how to react. because your not the only one seeing them. thus your already a lil late to the party. instead plan one step ahead and ask 'if majority seen this, they would react by doing X' which would result in Y occuring. . think about the end result after mass reaction and plan to act on what Y would be
EG using the example of tip one. if at 1:58m you seen the price move down below $8k dont react by seeing news its time to sell. instead be getting ready to buy more now its cheaper because common man has already dipped the price

tip six
remember if you have not got information from statistical source itself, but relying on summaries/charts made by people that have spent time getting the info, graphicalising the info, summarising it. and even worse delayed publishing it by having to upload info to a website/youtube. its too late and out-dated info already
remember for someone to have come to a conclusion, they themself have wasted your time by them spending their time coming to their conclusion.

in short never trust a guy saying todays the day to buy/sell. instead learn the tricks to mitigate your risks, find the source info other guys use, so that your atleast at the same level as them and not 50 chins whispers late and plan on how the market will be after thousands of people have reacted to the information you have. dont just react to the information itself

1. cmc is not an exchange. its not manipulating the price. it is just showing an average price indicator of exchanges it prefers. many different indicator averaging sites have different prices.

2. cmc should not be used for anything real hard truth statistical. take capitalisation itself, there are not hundreds of billions of real dollars backing bitcoins market cap. bitcoins market cap is just the math of one trade price multiplied by coins. i can make a altcoin of 5trillion coins, sell 1 for $1. and yep only costing someone $1 of real dollars can make a market cap of $5trill appear instantly.

3. to explain point one easily because some seem to not get the basics
if there were 4 exchanges a.$8000 b.$7900 c.$8100 d.$8150
if one average indicator chose years ago to average a,b,c,d it would indicate an average of $8037
if one average indicator chose years ago to average a,b,c it would indicate an average of $8000
if one average indicator chose years ago to average a,c,d it would indicate an average of $8083
if one average indicator chose years ago to average a,b it would indicate an average of $7950
if one average indicator chose years ago to average c,d it would indicate an average of $8125

none are the same and there is a clear disparity of $175.. and the reason. because they are just indicators. not suppose to be hard finite detailed facts
if your still going to be using cmc for hard factual stats or believe their numbers of price and market cap have significance. them maybe you need further training on how to understand financial data

did calvin also note the brown smudge in the shape of calvins nose containing CW fecal matter
i do have to laugh at CW's attempts

its becoming too clear WHEN CW is LEGALLY proven a fake all that investment in CW's 'companies' will get pulled out. all the lost investors will sue him and h will have to answer to the australian government too.. so its just games trying to delay the inevitable now

your 52 characters converts to upto 156 vocal words ('upper case x, lower case x')

private word seeds are only 12-24 words.
but as for transfering info. copypaste, qr codes or just spending funds to the recipient is much better then the human flaws of trust and eyesight.
again no code needs to be added to bitcoin if you really want to use phonetic alphabets, your tongue is fully yours and in your control to spell things out without the need of code

edit
replying to below as no point bumping topic
a. FeG  in phonetics is 1.upper 2.case. 3. foxtrott 4.lower 5.case. 6.echo 7.upper 8.case 9.gulf
so its 9 vocal words not 3 that need to be pronounced

b. if trying to make it easier to read for hand writing a paper wallet again seeds are easier

c. as for say backing up private keys instead of a seed, do you know core try to use new keypairs per tx, thus thats alot of keys. also its presumed satoshi himself has upto 20,000 keypairs for his mined coins before seeds were a thing. imaging displaying backing up 20,000 * 52-156 words. or backing up just on set of 12-24words

d. many people filling out questionaires/exams that say 'write using a black pen and using CAPITALS ONLY' still forget to use capitals after a while so when writing things on paper 52(156) words long. you wont know its wrong if you make a mistake until days/months/years later when its time to do the labourious work of keyboard typing the paper wallet words back into the software and being presented with 'error'
however seeing just 12 words is easy to human eye error check when backing up, rather then reading 52 words

firstly people can already convert a private key into a word seed/phrase

secondly the military phonetic alphabet is much much slower to speak out all the characters of a private key than a 12word seed

thirdly who would be having voice conversations to transmit a private key using a phonetic alphabet. let alone why would a phontic alphabet be needed for a written copy/paste technology such as computers

..
here is the thing.
the representation of a private key is actually binary, but then made simple to view by putting it into alphabet form.
using vocal phonetics is for the human eye to read, and the human mouth to voice. .. not a concern for software/coding

but things can be made much simpler take the privatekey, backward convert it to binary and then forward convert it to 12 words using the method bitcoin wallet seeds do it

but i still fail to see why anyone would want to vocally share private keys. as thats when if 2 people have access to the funds. one can steal from the other. usually people just send the funds to someones public address as a transaction where the receiver created their public address solely on their own thus no worry of the originator having access after transfer(hint: its called private for a reason)


if you want to voice out the phonetics of your private key, you just ned your tongue not code
by the way ALPHA alpha sound the same vocally, so to separate the two makes vocal communication even longer
'upper case alpha' 'lower case alpha'. which as you can see is voicing 3 words just to pronounce a single character
word seeds seems to solve your issues. not phonetic private key code added to a wallet

1. its blockchainless thus less security of the data held within
2. if the goal is to move away from hashmining, you wont get it, you will still end up in a warehouse of machine scenario competition
3. if everyone is making their own copy of something thats not a blockchain but say a account balance(much lik a UTXO set. thats like gigabytes being sent every certain few minutes to everyone. thus not practical
4. the reason bitcoins consensus works but this topic would fail is bitcoin has a first seen, first valid=win. where the first seen part is not everyone just broadcasting at the same time, but a complex math hashing game to spread the competitors apart so that they are not all broadcasting at the same time.
5. there are many many fundemental things missing in this topics thought process that leads me to believe the topic creator truly has not gone deep into depths of what makes bitcoin/blockchain so profoundly superior to traditional distributed databases

again its only practical in a confined network where all the peers are already in an agreement, but it wont work as a wide public network of adversaries

research sybil attack

imagine 100 nodes making 100 different ledgers. they all have a trust of 1/100. meaning no obvious majority.
imagine 1 guy then runs 100 nodes(giving himself the 'trusted masterkey') that all then follow one ledger.
that 1 guy has 100/200 trust, and everyone else only has 1/200.
that one guy now owns the network

what then occurs is people all start trying to run multiple instances by repeating what that on guy did, to try out competing him and take control away ..and after years of competing, people end up having thousands of systems per user trying to fight competition

in short your not solving the hash competition. instead your creating an old problem block hashing solved

in my view people avoiding blockchains are going backwards/de-innovating. its like bringing back cpu mining all over again but without the immutable ledger, as new trust winners can change anything

your trust model only has promise in private networks where the peers are already in relationships thus no need to compete/harm each other

just as the protests were dying down another one starts for a new reason

this time the novelty gift to sell is not placards, but facemasks

though the number of UTXO's can indicate something. it also has to be taken into context,
other things like the richlist of the largest hoards can prove indicative aswell.. the more coins held in large addresses indicates lots of coins in exchanges which if at a extreme level is usaully a sign people are ready to sell, indicating a bearish trend
which means when less funds are hoarded by exchanges and more is hoarded individually then there is less available in exchanges which would indicate a stronger bull signal
and ofcourse there is the mining costs. if there is not much profit in mining then the speculation buffer is thin which means good value to buy. again adding to a bull signal. where as if the mining costs were low but price was high then people are happy to sell, indicating a bear signal.

tips to promote:
political promoters:
DO NOT promote regulation. regulation does not help people. instead it just gives businesses a shiny sherrifs badge to stalk and spy on people and report them for doing things with thier own funds
DO promote consumer protections. as consumer protections ensure those doing business are insured against loss and also protected by data privacy laws.

social promoters:
DO arrange local discussion meetups by searching out people that know more than enough about bitcoin that live in your area to help discuss and present information about what blockchains are all about.
DONT just arrange 'investment' meetups because usually the talks end up just sounding like get rich quick scams which gives blockchains a bad name as people still dont understand what blockchains are really about.

merchant adoption
DONT just walk into a national distribution merchant and demand they start accepting crypto or else you will walk out. as thy will just smile and watch you walk. local managers dont have those kind of powers to make such payment changes to a nationally released checkout service software.
DO organise local meetups and find out what are the most popular local independant stores that do have some say in how they are run. find the ones local bitcoiners would actually use if they accepted crypto and concentrate your efforts on those stores first.
DO even offer to give the merchant a pre funded 'bar tab' of fiat that way the retailer is not at a loss thinking that they will never see the money while accepting a strange token they never heard of/dont understand enough of. then the local bitcoiner(s) become the guy that get the coin from the merchant and the merchant gets the fiat. then expand on how the merchant can self service it all by using proper exchanges or keep the crypto for own investment

education adoption
again using local meetups/microcons (small conferences) teach people but about the 'investment' but the tech and stability of blockchains in comparison to crappy banking software and regulations. again dont push the investment side too much as even selling ice to an eskimo can sound investible if worded right. but if you concentrate on the tech and the social advantages, then those wanting to invest will do so happily without the feeling that its a iffy sales pitch

a mining 51% attack is no threat.
the reason being is that miners cannot change the rules of the network.
imagine the 'attack' as a 100m race. yea on athlete has more speed and wins more often.. but its the officials that then test his blood and urine, notice he is on drugs and disqualify him for cheating.

however
take the 2017 event. it was the devs that FORCED a network change by saying unless miners follow the dvs new rules on a specific date, the miners will get thrown off the network.

the only fear of a mining 51% threat is that they blacklist certain transactions. as all other fears can be coded out with just 2 lines of code. and even if they start making blocks without transactions. that too can be coded to reject blocks that dont have tx's

 the real fear is the devs

and on the other side the
The social/political attack vector. The 1mb base stagnation apartheid by major Bitcoin companies and devs in 2017. it was Wall Street institutions that are trying to stagnate and segregate the community and co-opt the protocol.

(1mb=controlling the protocol.. aparthied/segregation= throwing the non COREperate opposition off the network)

yes Barry silberts company that owns most major exchanges of influence and put millions into the dev teams pockets to try innovating a corporate orientated network of hubs and group management which doesnt even use blockchains and requires people to lock funds into custodian co-managed scripts. thus not only avoid using the bitcoin networks security for payments but also reduces peoples self control and sol ownership of funds.

thus making bitcoin appear to be by their actions, not useful and not something that will innovate into something the world can use because those BScartel people want people to use their other networks instead. thus strangling bitcoin.

just remember how bank notes turned out once banks started messing with the 'gold backed promissory notes' that replaced actually using gold. yes even tether recently shown the futur of what can happen once people are STUCK using millisats(altnet(LN) token) instead of real btc