Hi op. Investing 20-30 EUR per month sounds like a reasonable plan. It's basically the strategy of DCA, which many believe is a good one in the end. Bitcoin has been around for a long time, though, and you just have to keep in mind that while it is growing, it's doing it slower and slower. For example, it grew from $1k to almost $20k in 2017, which is a very impressible 20x change. But it grew from $5.5k to $24k in 2020, from $30k to $67k in 2021. What I mean is that Bitcoin is no longer likely to go 20x in a matter of a year, for example, even a year of a bull run. 2x, 3x, 5x are perhaps more realistic. If you invest 25 EUR per month, it adds up to 300 EUR within a year, and then perhaps this 300 will turn into 900, but it's still probably not enough for full financial independence. But then again, the longer it goes on, the bigger amount is already there, so the bigger the impact of the bull run becomes.
In any case, I wish you success.

stompix, thank you for this clarification. That's what I thought as well, but I wasn't sure because my friend generally understand Bitcoin more than I do.
Thanks to all of you for sharing your thoughts.
I do agree that it's a temporary issue that will resolve itself, just like it always does. But there's nothing miners can do to improve the fees.
As for us, we can just avoid making transactions for the time being, unless it's urgent, to avoid contributing to the congestion.

My country is in a very bad economic situation, so I'd say it's hard. You can find a low-paying job, but it will be exhausting, unfulfilling, and the salary won't be enough to cover both housing and other expenses, unless you already have a place to live, or you live with someone else who is also earning at least as much. I won't even mention the minimum wage because even a couple of them aren't enough to cover both accommodation and living expenses for one person.
So many people work a lot, doing a bit of this and a bit of that, relying on a mix of income sources. And most of that stuff goes without paying taxes because that would be too much of a load on a person, and even our state seems to understand it, which is why we have a very lax attitude toward taxes. If you are highly skilled and very well-educated, you will probably find some intellectual gigs and enough of them to sustain basic life needs, and if you're also a social and a bit lucky (or well-connected), you can even get a pretty decent job that will allow having some savings, maybe eventually buying accommodation of your own. But for the rest (which is the vast majority of people) it's a huge challenge because the salaries just aren't good enough to cover the basics, unless you team up with a person or two, or you happen to have accommodation you don't have to pay for.

I've checked the US stock market index and S&P 500, and it doesn't seem to me that anything particularly bad is going on there. They're all a bit down, but just a tiny bit. In that case, it really depends on what exactly a person invested in, and whether that stock has a history of going up and down and then recovering again. I mean, maybe the problem is that someone was simply scammed, or invested in something very bad and risky. The promises the op mentions certainly sound like a part of a scam. I'm sorry for the loss, but I don't know what can be done in a particular situation because there aren't any details. But if it's a sure loss and there's no way of getting any of that money back, I think it's best to move on, learn to be more careful, and remember that money isn't everything.

Bitcoin can be used for many purposes, most of which don't require it to be stable. The only reason to want a stable Bitcoin is when using it as money, as something instead of a fiat currency. For that, it would be nice for Bitcoin to be less volatile, I agree, but it's also not required, unless we're talking about maximalism and a replacement of Bitcoin with fiat rather than of Bitcoin being using alongside fiat. In the second case, the price can be determined in fiat with an option of paying in Bitcoin, and the amount in Bitcoin can be automatically adjusted based on its current value. I think that Bitcoin is stable enough to be used most of the time. As for people who are saving money in fiat despite inflation, it's their choice, but I think that Bitcoin is a better solution overall because its value grows over time instead of falling.

Game 1:  34, 13'
Game 2:  34, 17'
Game 3:  34, 23'

12. Jailton Almeida
11. Johnny Walker
10. Ian Garry
9. Alex Morono
8. Court McGee
7. Karl Williams
6. Cody Stamann
5. Carlos Ulberg
4. Natan Levy
3. Ji Yeon Kim
2. Gabe Green
1. Tainara Lisboa

NOT go the Full Distance 4

My friend and I were discussing Bitcoin transaction fees yesterday, and he believes that transaction fees are related to the difficulty rate, and since the difficulty rate is adjusted roughly every two weeks, transaction fees will go down after the adjustment. I wasn't so sure, as I've never thought of it this way and thought that the mining difficulty and transaction fees are two very separate things that don't affect one another. There are too many transactions, and thus the transaction fees have spiked, but I don't see how the hash rate has got to do much with it.
I asked ChatGPT and got the following reply:
While ChatGPT can often be helpful, it can also hallucinate responses that sound like they make sense but they are actually incorrect. What do you think about this matter?

100% return on investment is just a 2x return (so, you invest $100, and you get $100 more (100%), which is a total of $200). If interpreted this way, I think it's a very realistic expectation from Bitcoin. Bitcoin doesn't have to deliver, and it won't happen overnight or very fast, but it's likely to happen within a couple of years from any point in time, I'd say (although sometimes it may take longer). So maybe the issue is with expecting fast profit, not the specific realistic return on investment.
If, on the other hand, 100% is supposed to refer to the probability of profit (a 100% guarantee of getting profit on one's investment), then it's not true, of course, even though with long-term investment it seems very likely that there will be some profit.

I'm happy for Montana, but this is state legislation, not federal legislation. So they may introduce their own laws that are more crypto-friendly, and similar things can be done in other states, but the country of the USA overall may have different policies. Unfortunately, it was determined in the US that federal legislation has supremacy over state legislation, so if a federal law is passed at some point, requiring all miners to invest in eco-friendly solutions or something like that, Montana should technically abide by it as well. Thankfully, it's all just bills and discussions at the federal level, so states can make their own policies in the meantime and perhaps people from those states can later advocate pro-crypto federal legislation as well.

If Bitcoin isn't easy to understand for some people, it isn't a bad influence. Crypto scams aren't that different from other scams, and you don't need to be a blockchain expert to avoid them. You can be very similarly a victim of a fiat-based scam if you send someone money and expect to get back twice the amount because it's a 'giveaway', if you enter your online banking info onto a phishing website and so on.
#2 is more specific to Bitcoin, but that's just a result of decentralization and financial freedom. With freedom comes responsibility. #4 isn't specific to Bitcoin (or cryptos) either. As for #3, criminals use fiat as well, so it shouldn't be counted as an argument against Bitcoin. And #5 is the price volatility, which is higher than with many fiat currencies, but it's also a result of decentralization and financial freedom.

I place small bets on underdogs occasionally, but tend to lose them. The most recent successful underdog bet I remember winning was almost a year ago, when I bet on Ukraine in a football match of Scotland vs Ukraine (FIFA play-off semi-final). Scotland was expected to win, then a draw was the second option, and the odds for Ukraine were 3.45. So it's nothing huge, but still an underdog. I won that bet and was really happy, but that was neither based on insider tips nor on personal analysis. I just wanted to bet on my country as a way of supporting it, so to speak. And it paid off.
But most of the time I just bet on the likeliest winner with the odds around 1.5, so I don't have enough experience with underdog bets and how successful they are or aren't for me.

1.  Canelo
2.  Round 12
3.  1

Since people largely focus on savings money and earning more money, I want to focus on another lesson: money is meant to be spent. Money itself is worthless: it's not food, medicine, shelter, a positive experience or anything of aesthetic value. Its value is that it's a medium of exchange, something that can be used to get the real things that are worth something because they make your life better or are even necessary for your life. So while having a budget, thinking about financial security and making savings are all important, the lesson I find useful is that you should spend money when spending it can make something better in your life or in the lives of others. Our time on this planet is limited, so I think we should try to enjoy it and help others to enjoy it as well.

The term is pretty accurate and the practice is common, but I personally prefer shrinkflation to same portions but more expensive. If you know what's going on (and inflation is no secret), I'd choose shrinkflation over higher prices for former portions because this way, you can spend the same amount of money and just buy a bit less food, whereas if it's about changing the price and keeping the size, you may just not afford to buy certain products anymore. Smaller portions can be a less painful way to live through inflation by eating and wasting a bit less.
So, in theory, I don't mind shrinkflation. In practice, however, of course I mind it when companies merely use it to make more profit rather than out of necessity.

It's a fair point that we use fiat as a point of reference, sort of assuming it's truly stable, as we measure Bitcoin's value against it. But $20k in 2017 and $20k in 2022 are different because of inflation, although not drastically different (15-20%), which is probably why it's still useful to measure value in the USD, as if its value it's decreasing. That being said, Bitcoin reaching $100k in 2023 or in 2030 are very likely to be two significantly different $100k because of inflation that is lately getting out of control. So it is correct that we should adjust our expectations accordingly, and remember that fiat value changes over the years. Nevertheless, it doesn't mean that Bitcoin should not be compared to fiat at all or that we should stop using the USD price as some sort of indicator.

Bitcoin's volatility is a challenge to the idea of Bitcoin as a replacement of fiat, but not to the idea of Bitcoin as another legal tender alongside fiat (like in El Salvador). As long as there's a way to set prices in something relatively stable, Bitcoin can be comfortably used for payments, adjusting the amount based on volatility. Moreover, fiat isn't stable everywhere, and hyperinflation, which is a majro problem in some countries, poses a huge risk to using fiat and to keeping savings in fiat, and yet people do that anyway, even when fiat loses more value proportionately per year than Bitcoin. Not to mention that Bitcoin is likely to eventually recover, while the only hope for such fiat is that it will keep losing value, but at a smaller rate.

The op has a good point, a point that is often forgotten. Indeed, holding Bitcoin can be a political choice, a choice not to trust traditional financial institutions and fiat currencies, regulated by authorities. And that can be done without expectations that Bitcoin will rise and merely because of the importance of supporting something that introduced unprecedented financial freedom, sort of like people give money to support a cause sometimes.
To those asking how it weakens strongholds, I believe that the act of holding Bitcoin is already a statement. A statement that I don't need a bank to store or send my money, and that I don't need an official fiat currency to store it in, either. This undermines the role of traditional institutions because it shows that they aren't as necessary as they want us to think they are.

I'll sell some to enjoy the profit, but I won't sell all unless I have to, and I'd generally keep holding. My approach to Bitcoin is an approach to it largely as savings: they're out there for when they might come in handy, I sell some occasionally when I need to or when the price is better, and I know I'll need some in the near future. The overall approach doesn't change for me in the bull or bear market, so I'm generally calm about that. I just find Bitcoin a better currency for savings than fiat is because fiat can and does suffer a lot from inflation, whereas Bitcoin seems to grow over time.

I don't think you're right about Bitcoin and the war. Bitcoin can suffer from panic, surrounding global economic uncertainty due to certain events. But it doesn't have to happen and doesn't always happen. The full-scale invasion (because Russia's war against Ukraine itself started in 2014) started on February 24, 2022. If anything, BTC went up back then, namely from $37k on February 24 to $44.5k on March 1, and then up to $47k on March 31. The biggest impact on the price happens at the beginning, and Bitcoin was doing alright then. What's been going on with the price later has nothing to do with the war, IMO. Moreover, the war also gave new publicity and usage of Bitcoin, as Ukraine started actively accepting Bitcoin donations.