Bitcoin marketcap was initially zero, because Bitcoin, unlike altcoins, didn't have any pre-sale and pre-mine. As for the first purchase, the first Bitcoin trades were done before any centralized exchanges were created, so little is known about the first instances of trading.

This demonstrates that it's irrelevant of how big your marketcap is at the start, it's important that the project is actually useful to people.

Everyone is looking for a mythical "good project", and yet people don't want to acknowledge the reality that altcoins are fundamentally useless. Why should a coin that no one actually uses be worth anything? Because their marketing team promises that at some point in the future everyone will use it?

It's a wrong perspective to think that there are "scams" and "good coins". An altcoin will fail even if its creators have good intentions, simply because blockchain doesn't solve any real problems.

So instead of looking for some quick gains, just buy Bitcoin and wait a few years at least. Because Bitcoin achieved what it promised the moment the first block got mined - being a peer-to-peer electronic cash.

The price of altcoins is based on hype, artificial pumps, irrational speculation. It's not based on real world utility. That's why altcoins come and go, coins that had billions in marketcap yesterday are forgotten today. Smart contracts are only used in crypto sphere itself - trading crypto for other crypto, gambling, creating tokens, etc. There's no company outside of crypto, big or small, that somehow utilizes smart contracts. Despite this being the original claim behind the "world computer". Vitalik was promising how Ethereum will automate the sale of electricity, for example.

And as for use for payments, Bitcoin is still far better than any altcoin thanks to LN. Because Bitcoin combines the robustness of its network with instant and nearly free transactions of LN, while altcoins have smaller network that can be attacked or exploited.

I don't see any significance here. It's not exactly news that we're in the bear market, and judging by previous patterns, bull market could be expected after the next halvening. First time 8 consecutive weekly candles? There's a first time for everything. Bitcoin price still hasn't crossed any critical price levels that would indicate that the market is in worse state than you could expect from a typical bear market.

Sometimes it scares me how crypto sounds more like a cult than just a financial tool. Why do kids need to know about altcoins, defi, NFT, trading, cryptography, wallets, blockchain and so on? They can't have any income, they should be focused on general development and not highly specialized adult fields with theoretical usefulness. Crypto has very little impact on the world, billions of people live their lives without them and it doesn't affect them in the slightest.

Marketcaps are not a good methods to measure how much money actually got moved. It should be possible to pull the data on all the transactions and their value to know exactly how much money was moved out of Luna, especially if it happened on-chain and not centralized exchanges, because the latter probably don't keep their logs publicly available for many days.

You lose customers because the customer is always right. You should adapt to them, not the vice versa, because they can just go to the other shop. Most of the population is not using Bitcoin, and won't jump through the hoops of creating an exchange account, passing KYC, buying Bitcoin, paying withdrawal fees, all to just become your customer.

Broker and advisor is not the same. One can be an advisor without being a broker. And all the crypto youtubers and bloggers are technically financial advisors who promote shitcoins. Even if someone tells you to buy Bitcoin, you shouldn't instantly trust them. Some scumbags promote trading with high leverage or using shady exchanges that inevitably leads to huge losses.

Does it cost you much to start accepting Bitcoin? If you pay once to set it up and then it just works, then the sooner you start accepting Bitcoin - the better, because it would increase your sales, even if by a small margin. But if there are maintenance costs, then you might indeed consider delaying the launch. The best way to make this decision is to ask businesses that accept Bitcoin in the same sphere about their Bitcoin volumes during bear market.

This is a very polite forum, no one here is calling each other names, outside of meta drama topics. I never seen a newbie or anyone really being offended for making a supposedly bad post or something. What I did see is some newbies thinking that if someone disagrees with their post, they must be personally attacking them. But disagreeing and providing arguments is the whole point of an online discussion platform.

People from El Salvador who got burned on Bitcoin investments will certainly blame Bukele on that. So maybe lack of mass adoption is actually a good think for him - less angry citizens to worry about. This crash yet again highlights that storing money that you actively use in Bitcoin is not exactly good idea, you never know when it will decide to lose 25% of its value in one day. It's one thing to HODL it for years without ever touching it, and another to make your daily spendings using unstable currency.

I think Satoshi had no idea how much could Bitcoin be worth, so instead of trying to guess how big the total supply will be, and how much subunits should Bitcoin have, he just divided Bitcoin into 100,000,000 parts, because with 21,000,000 coins that creates enough units to teoretically cover all the demand for units of account in the world.

I don't think anyone should try to force any standard Bitcoin unit, users should have an option if they want Bitcoin to be displayed in bitcoins, milibitcoins, microbitcoins, sats or any other units they prefer.

Putting all your spare money into Bitcoin and not having a fiat safety net is dangerous and irresponsible. You never know when you're going to have an emergency - an issue with health, a natural disaster, unemployment, a broken car or something that requires fixing in your house - lots of things can happen in life that require immediate spending. And if you only own Bitcoin, it means you'll have to sell it, and if you're currently at a loss because your average price buy is above the current price, you achieved the opposite of store of value.

If you will do this without getting proper permit, you might face serious legal trouble, depending on your country's laws. Also, consult your local lawyers, no one here can fully answer your question, because each country's laws and regulations are different.

I doubt that a Bitcoin trust fund can be realistically established as a small company, usually you need many millions of starting capital for such type of company.

I don't think it's realistic to expect de-blockade of Ukraine's sea ports via military means - Russia has capabilities to blockade the Black Sea not just by ships, but also by submarines, coastal defense systems, airpower. The only thing that can realistically shift the balance is a NATO intervention in the Black Sea, which we know is never going to happen.

What is going to happen is transportation of Ukrainian wheat via railroads. End of story.

Luna has crashed Bitcoin because they owned a lot of bitcoins. It wasn't a distrust towards Luna that got carried into Bitcoin. But still it's problematic that a shitcoin project can acquire enough bitcoins to severely affect the price, even if just temporarily. To me it's a sign that Bitcoin is still very far from maturity, because mature assets don't crash hard and fast when a minor player dumps them.

People have such a strange mindset that you can only own Bitcoin once, and once you sell your precious bitcoin, you will never own it, because it's just impossible, right? Laszlo still owns enough coins to be a millionaire, maybe even multi-millionaire. No one knows if he bought back the coins he spent on pizza. Same goes for people who sell in a bear market - not every single one of them is panicking and quitting Bitcoin for good, some just accumulate more Bitcoin by waiting for lower prices.

Bank fees are way higher than LN fees, it's just that typically merchants pay them, so customers don't notice it, because it gets priced into the goods. Idk what you mean by LN exposing merchant id, sounds like you are misinformed.

The bigger reason why Bitcoin is not adopted for payments is its volatility, it's frustrating to use a currency that changes its value every week.

Is the data for coins that haven't been moved based purely on blockchain data? Because there are flaws in this methodology. For example, a person could move coins between their own wallets, to consolidate their coins, move to a new address format, change their software, etc. Also, what about change? If I have 0.5 BTC, send someone 0.01 BTC - does this methodology count 0.5 BTC as moved, or 0.01?

Anyway, it's no secret that hodling is #1 use case for Bitcoin. However, it's also not practical to use as a currency for most people, so it isn't just about being good or bad money.

DCA is goot if you  are doing it in a bear market, since you will have more coins than buying coins with all your money at the start of bear market, but it's also worse than buying coins with all your money at the bottom of the bear market and then waiting for a new bull market. 

I would say that it's better to buy a large sum and wait for many years - you are only losing money if you are selling coins at a loss, not if the price drops below your entry point. But if DCA helps you sleep better, than go ahead.