no, it has always been the other way around.
meaning whenever there is a price rise like last year for instance, then there is a lot of newcomers finding out about bitcoin and the interest in bitcoin generally peaks, as a result people search about bitcoin a lot more than when price is stable like now which there isn't that many newcomers coming in.

creating a centralized altcoin by the government is not the same as being "good to go with cryptocurrency"! hopefully this can bring more awareness about bitcoin and increase adoption of it but that would be an indirect effect.

but how would that work?! the form of currency changes not the source. in other words if a country is under sanctions and can't make trades with another country it doesn't matter what form of currency it uses it still can't trade. am i wrong?

there were a couple of ETFs i don't really follow them either but this one stuck with me, one of them was postponed which is the SolidX ETF which is probably what you had in mind and this is the most hyped up one.
another one that was rejected last month belonged to Winklevoss twins. it happened on on July 26 which made the price drop from $8k to what we see today.

possible solutions since i don't have a way to check it:
use getblockhash[1] command which will give you the has of the block header you want. you already know there are about 144 ( 24 hr * 60 min * 1 block /10 min) per day so get 144 block headers at first and then if you figured there were more within 24 hour then get 145th, 146th ,...

how you figure it out?
in each block header there is a field called block time[2] which is a unix timestamp which is set by the miner. it is most probably an accurate number but it  doesn't have to. use this timestamp to figure out how many blocks were mined in a certain time frame.

[1] https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-reference#getblockhash
[2] https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-reference#block-headers

doomed? why? because bitcoin price wasn't shooting up 20% per day or 100% per month, you call it doomed!

the funny thing is, a couple of months ago a nice rising momentum was shaping up and price was showing positive upward signs, then ETF hype started and that momentum turned into a sudden rise to $8k and that killed that strong momentum and the final nail in the coffin was the rejection of ETF (i think it was Winklevoss).
so yeah, when ETF is rejected next month and if we put it behind us and they don't come up with new set of ETFs then i'd say we can see the rise finally start as the drama subsides.

one of the usages of a bitcoin mixer that the regular users use is to gain more privacy.
for instance you are already in a signature campaign and are getting paid bitcoin. your account and your IP address are tied to your bitcoin address and the amount of bitcoin you own. you may have even revealed more information about yourself on this forum. now imagine you buy some more bitcoin and want to eventually keep all your funds in one address for ease of use like inside one paper wallet and store it away. most people don't want to link things with the total bitcoin they own publicly so they use a mixer to break that link and gain back their privacy.

this is 50% adoption under constant FUD about SegWit and newbies being told they will lose money if they use it with nonsense such as "everyone can spend". considering this i'd say it is more than good.

this doesn't make any sense!
switch to BCH for what? there are 3 groups who own bitcoin.
1. investors who want big profit
2. people using bitcoin as a currency to pay for stuff with a decentralized currency
3. people who use it as a currency and as an investment.
why would any of these switch to BCH? investors gain more profit in bitcoin, and even if they wanted to , there are a lot of altcoins for investment. they won't SWITCH, they will invest in those for more profit.
the others spending, CAN NOT switch to BCH because places they spend do not accept BCH!

bitcoin is not a bubble, and it has never been and in the future it will never be a bubble and the first picture posted in OP is 100% correct..... but.... bitcoin enters bubble phases. for instance we have already seen at least half a dozen huge bubbles in the past 9 years. that doesn't mean bitcoin is a bubble! it just means we temporarily went higher than what the price should have been and it needed to come down.

two of the bubbles that everyone knows about is the $20k @2017 and $10k @2013, but there is also $250 @2013, $16 @2012,...

and also another type of bubble that people miss and is never mentioned is inverse bubbles for example right now $6000 @2018 is one of the inverse bubbles. another example was $220 @2015
these are when price goes a lot lower than it should have.

SEC has no reason to change their stance against bitcoin and there is a very good chance that they are going to deny any future ETF too, and it is all for the best. in the past couple of months people have been getting too caught up in ETF news and "institutional investors" that they have completely forgotten that bitcoin is strong without any of them and will remain stronger if they don't come.

true but making profit is not always possible.
i have tried arbitrage trading for a long period of time in the past 1.5-2 year while developing my own bot for automation. the results are never good enough to justify the risk. and the loss is possible and it can wipe out everything you have made specially when you are arbitrage trading between exchanges.
and the small cap coins are the worst because their orderbooks are too thin, sometimes the volume is not even as big as minimum withdrawal! not to mention that some exchanges have their wallets disabled, maintenance,... which may lead to losses and it is impossible to check most of their wallet status through API or even their website other than making a deposit and seeing what happens.

we have had many positive news this year. but initially it was during the bear market so it couldn't do anything and then it was the uncertainty that entered the market and prevented any kind of rise. so what we need is for this uncertainty to be lifted and it will be lifted as soon as ETF fate is decided next month and we can get rid of it for now.

i disagree.
first of all let us clarify why we even talk about "cheap and expensive". these attributes are meant to be used when trading/investing in some altcoin. and we do that when we see a rise coming. being cheap or expensive, market cap, circulating supply, being scam or not, even having a blockchain and producing blocks,... none of it has anything to do with the price. for instance XRP is one of the worst coins in existence. it is 100% premined, it has a fake market cap and it is always going to be expensive. but last year it had about 10000% rise and the profit was insane.
as you can see market cap doesn't even come to play. XRP ($12 billion) with 100 billion premined coin and 40 billion circulating or ETH ($28 billion) with 101 million circulating, no cap and 72 million premine are expensive with your definition but they got big pumps and had good returns as short term investments.

now lets look at the other side of this. a coin with low supply, low price and low market cap. ByteBall for instance. it has 662k coins in circulation with $52 million market cap and price of $78. it is one of the good coins with an interesting technology and a decent team. now based on your definition this coin is super cheap. but is it really?

you mentioned TRON as expensive, i call it a shitcoin. but it had 8000% pump last year.
so yeah, you can use your definition and call them cheap/expensive for philosophical reasons but not for investment reasons. that doesn't show you anything.

you want to send X and the receiver wants to receive Y (in this case X is bitcoin, Y is fiat) so you do need some way to convert or exchange X to Y and that will require a third party in the middle. you want to call it a bank, a service or an exchange. it will be there and you will need it.

there currently are multiple banks that i have read in the news that are doing something like that. they use bitcoin to transfer money oversees. for example this German bank:
https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2018/05/14/german-bank-using-bitcoin-international-fiat-loans/

blocking is not stopping.
they have no jurisdiction to stop anything outside of their own country. and the great firewall of China has been blocking millions of other websites too.

what the hell? China had 90 exchanges?!!! when? where? there were only 3 big exchanges and a handful of small ones that nobody ever used.
as for ICOs, they are being banned all over the worlds. it has nothing to do with bitcoin.

the "trading pair" was removed by the closure of exchanges, it didn't drop! people are still trading bitcoin with their Yuan, the difference is that where they trade doesn't have a public page reporting the volume

no it hasn't been.
the main bulk of the decline happened during December last year and continued until February (3 months) and basically ever since June, drop has not been happening. we have been stuck at the bottom which is around $6k.

it is mainly the result of the $20k bubble burst followed by FUD, panic and manipulation.

it will become more valuable in the future because it has limited supply and it is useful so its adoption (aka demand) is increasing, otherwise having limited supply means nothing without an increasing demand. that is why bitcoin is rising while other altcoins with similar design are falling.

why use market cap? why not just talk about price which has actual meaning?
you are talking about a price around $55,000, you see now it has a much better meaning than $1 trillion market cap. and it will happen in 2020 tops and it is possible that it happens mid 2019.

because we are at the bottom. you can't go below the bottom, at least not without a massive manipulative effort and lots of money spent because that would be going against the whole market. this 9 ETF rejections were nothing, people aren't even caring about ETF anymore. at least not as much as before which makes it a much less effective news.

as for the "rise", there is no rise. price is still pretty much the same as before. unless we see a breakout above $7.5k with a strong force it is not a rise. and i'm afraid despite people not caring about ETF as much as before but they still are uncertain for the short term future of price so they are waiting. as soon as the last ETF is rejected, i am sure price will start rising back up again.

when they first spread the China banned bitcoin FUD, the panic was huge. the next time more people knew it is FUD and didn't pay much attention to it. nowadays when someone says "China banned bitcoin" everyone just laughs at them.
ETF rejection is turning into that. people are realizing that ETF was not something that determines future of bitcoin so they don't  care that much about its rejection. we are not completely out of the waters yet but we are getting there.

i still don't find how Bitmain running an IPO can relate to bitcoin price!

[if you want to ask an unrelated question then you should start a new topic]

as for safety, it depends on the bot. i it is an old tested bot that has been around for a while and is being used by a large number of users then it is most probably safe. otherwise if it is an unknown bot which was created recently and is not reviewed then it is most probably not safe!

if you are asking for profitability, then doesn't really depend on the bot itself. it depends on you and whether or not you know how to trade. a bot is just a helping tool that can work best in the hands of a trading expert and be useless in the hands of a beginner trader.

the problem is not with HODL, DUMP, ... these are just empty words without meaning when used by most people because they have no idea what they are talking about. there is an underlying strategy for each of them and if that strategy is not executed properly then you are just fooling yourself by branding your actions with things like HODL.

for example HODL is just a long term investment when you buy an asset that has a long term potential for a good profit. for instance you buy bitcoin at $6000 because you speculate it will be worth $50k in 2 years or less. but when you do that then you shouldn't concern yourself with short term fluctuations.
also when you HODL you must do it with an asset that actually has a potential not anything that you can get your hands on like altcoins and tokens!