we don't need to regulate cryptocurrencies but regulations can be also helpful with the adoption and growth of them or they can be restrictive and even prevent the adoption altogether. in the end it will come down to what they are regulating and how. for example if it is regulation of exchanges and if it leads to a more secure place where people can trade with less risk that would be a very good thing.

from what i understand, the idea is that the demand will increase but get to a point where it stays the same, eg. reaching mass adoption. when demand is not rising and supply is fixed the price should be a lot more stable.
we are currently on the foot of the adoption S curve that is why the volatility is high and the rises are this big.

the block reward is creating new supply not controlling all the supply. so if you decrease or even make it zero or 10 million you still have to consider the existing circulating supply. for example if your coin at some point has 100 million coins circulating whether your new blocks reward the miners nothing or a lot doesn't change much.
additionally if the reward is like bitcoin's, the miners can not sell their coins until they are matured meaning 100 blocks should pass (IIRC). and that takes time so your block reward adjustment may not even be able to affect the market that fast and this maturation time is needed to control the flow too.

i don't think any of this data can be trusted and it doesn't need a spam attack to change it. because all of it depends on how price is moving. if there is either a surge up or a drop down there will be a lot of transactions, a lot of addresses used, and the volume will go up.

in bitcoin and many other altcoins you have Simplified Payment Verification (SPV) wallets where you only keep the block headers instead of the whole blockchain so the size is about 40 MB. but that needs an indexed server (node) that you connect to and that node will require higher resources than a normal bitcoin node.

unfortunately we do not have the same thing for Ethereum. so your only option is to use the full wallets (which are different and i think you can reduce the total size in some way but i don't use any so i can't give a better answer) and store a large file on your computer and also have trouble syncing because of the bloated blockchain, or use third party services like web wallets such as MEW with a much lower security.

good job.
i just want to add that the problem with calculations like this is always the fact that they neglect a lot of things while overestimate a lot of others.
the things that are neglected here are the fact that there are a lot of other exchanges that people use which are nearly as big a Coinbase. localbitcoins alone might as well be so much bigger than it. not to mention bitfinex, bitstamp, kraken, etc.
and the overestimation is that these are exchanges you can never trust the stats they are releasing and also many do a one time "trade" not purchase and that doesn't change anything about number of bitcoin owners/users.

in any case i think 0.5% is the closest estimate that can anyone come up with.

a bit off topic but i have to say since i was one of the "merit-givers" here!
the reason was simply because i tend to give merit to lower ranks over others. and also i think your comment is basically what i said above with addition of the option #1 which i didn't say.

i agree about the drop itself but not the size of it.
despite what i might have though at the time, $20k was obviously not normal and was a bubble and burst of a bubble is a completely normal thing and that is good. but fall down to very low prices such as $6k, $5k or anything else is no longer normal in my opinion. i can see bitcoin be worth between $9k and $11k but i consider anything below that, underpriced due to manipulation.

if by "token" market you mean the whole altcoin market that has been getting dumped nonstop so far, then there is no imbalance, there was one and now it is coming back to normal as the altcoin bubbles are bursting. last year when the altcoins were constantly getting pumped for absolutely no reason, you should have expected this current dump too. it doesn't need any "cause", it is a natural thing to happen and until they reach their bottoms (real values) it will continue because their prices were artificially kept up.

volume is pretty much what it always is. it is high during big swings and low when price is more stable than changing. and generally speaking i never liked analyzing the market based on volume. i believe it is very misleading because it is tightly connected to the price movement itself and it doesn't show the future drop or rise in most  cases!

the term "pump" is mistakenly used for bitcoin because of altcoins and the way they get pumped. when newbies keep seeing each rise of each altcoin is only a pump they start thinking maybe each bitcoin rise is a pump also. so they end up using the same term for both of them.
eventually these newbies will become experienced enough to see the difference between a real pump (which altcoins have) and a rally (that bitcoin has).

this mindset is not necessarily bad.
obviously not everyone is knowledgeable enough to know who is right and what solution is best so they have to follow someone and trust their plans. and who better than the team that has been developing bitcoin for years.
but also it is not good if everyone starts having this mindset and gives up educating themselves and thinking. and it is even worse when they try to shove it down other's throats. the second part is unfortunately what has been happening mainly last year.
i wouldn't go as far as calling it not-decentralized since this is mainly in social media like reddit for instance but this mindset should die if we want to see a better bitcoin. which means for example when you ask others why are you rejecting SegWit2x their answer should either be "i am not knowledgeable enough to answer" or they should give a logical technical answer.
i used this specific example because every time i read an argument about SegWit2x the heart of it all was "because core rejected it".

although a facebook page is not the best source of information, but the adoption of bitcoin is growing despite what it may seem like when you look at the prices. an this adoption is not the investors and what OP is saying is not exactly investors. it is the true way of adopting bitcoin as a currency when you are a merchant. and this has been growing more in the past couple of years, there currently are a lot of merchants (online and offline) who are accepting bitcoin as payment and this has been helping with "spreading the word" and showing how good and useful bitcoin is when you use it as it was meant to be used.

we are talking about a "currency" here not a magical weapon. a currency is not exactly created to solve problems. it is just a tool that people use as a medium of exchange and being centralized or decentralized means they have different attributes and these attributes create a very different tool which is good for different purposes.
but they can create problems. for example being centralized has led to corruptions in the past.

regulations is a slow process but every country is going to have them sooner or later, there is no escaping that since bitcoin is gaining a lot of popularity all over the world and because of that it is attracting a lot of money (fiat) which needs to also bring all its fiat laws and regulations with itself.
it doesn't have to be a good or a bad thing either. some countries have been more friendly towards bitcoin and this was reflected in their regulations and some weren't. it is a start though, these regulations can change and become better over time.

they each satisfy different needs and are designed for different purposes too.
bitcoin is the only thing that has a good long term potential and is worth investing in for long term. so that is what i do. but altcoins are only good for short term or in other words they are good during their pumping phases where they rise up too fast because someone is pumping them. you get the profit  during these times and get out fast. which makes altcoins good short term investments.

Explain Like I am Five (ELI5) is just an expression meaning that I have no knowledge in that field so keep the explanation simple. it is not literary.
also your way is interesting but wrong in my opinion because it is promoting bitcoin as something like a collectible instead of what it really is which is a currency and instead of focusing on the value of it and promising growth, you should always focus on utilities of bitcoin as a currency.

bitcoin:
* solid rise over long term.
* more and more merchant adoption each year
* more and more transactions because of the adoption

Ripple:
* pump and dumps
* zero adoption as a currency and only being used for pump and dumps
* little to no transactions and that little is only traders sending coins from exchanges to exchanges.

so year bitcoin is losing

nobody is speculating about ending of bitcoin. only those idiots wanting to spread FUD say it.
here is a list of all the idiots so far: https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoinobituaries/

unfortunately we have no altcoin that is even remotely interesting to start having the potential even. they are all useless copycats.

well history has already repeated itself!
price has already fallen big time, current price is about 65% lower than the ATH and we have had up to 70% drop so far. and it had little to do with Gox thing. but i agree that if they haven't sold already then it is way too late to start doing it now that price has fallen this much.

as far as i know Armory uses a specific seed which can not be used in any other client (it is not BIP32 or BIP39) so your only option is to go to your Armory and export the private keys of addresses with funds individually and then import them into your Electrum.

in Armory double click your address with funds and select "View Address Keys", you will be asked to enter your password

also for Electrum http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/faq.html#can-i-import-private-keys-from-other-bitcoin-clients

first of all articles that start with something like "i called the drop before" or "i called the rise before" have no value in my eyes since the author is obviously desperate for attention that he has to celebrate his guess accuracy!

secondly he is focusing too much on a very short time in bitcoin (from Oct 2017) and doesn't look at the history at all. all the things he is describing in that link has been happening for years. we have had at least 4 other bubbles just as big which ended up with a very similar bear market right after and it is always the same dumps by whales or cartel or whatever you like to call them. and it is always because the market is too small still.