Bitcoin has some features that make it similar to securities and I'm sure many people use it like security. For example, it is often seen as an investment, it can be traded on third-party platforms (exchanges), people expect Bitcoin to rise in power, and there are Bitcoin funds that can manage one's holdings (although using them is completely optional). But, as _act_ pointed out, there are also notable distinctions that make Bitcoin different from securities. Overall, I think it's reasonable SEC doesn't treat Bitcoin as a security, and it's probably for the best because otherwise Bitcoin would have more oversight, be more regulated (at least, in the US).

I think that nowadays, we should employ the technologies available to us if they can help us. The op asks of the easiest way of explaining Bitcoin, so that a person understands the key things about it. Based on what I consider important (non-custodial wallets, the general definition, and that it's both money and investment), I made a prompt for ChatGPT to explain Bitcoin, and I think it did a pretty good job, apart from the fact that decentralization, peer-to-peer-transactions and blockchain might require additional descriptions:

Game 1:  28, 15'
Game 2:  28, 18'
Game 3:  28, 22'

My country used to have very cheap food, but no, these days there's nothing nearly as cheap and filling as what the op described. While as an occasional meal it can be both healthy and financially good, though, I don't think anyone should stick to eating any one dish all the time. My main concern would be for health, as eating a wide variety of foods is important to get all sorts of vitamins and other essentials that one's body needs. Secondly, it's probably going to be sickening to eat one thing cooked the same way all the time.

If it's a professional survey which, as the op says, accounted for various factors and built up a representative set of the US society, these are great results. I guess it would still mean that half of Americans don't care or are against Bitcoin, but the numbers of those interested are high enough. I'm also surprised how many people are unhappy with the current global financial system and believe it needs major changes, by the way. One could easily see how such attitudes can push people toward Bitcoin.
I believe that contemporary sociology is pretty strong, based on how well it can usually predict political election results. So while I don't know if this particular poll is trustworthy, I think it might be.

When the full-scale war started, I've seen people in the Ukrainian human rights movement that wanted to suggest boycotting Bitcoin because it can be used by Russia to avoid sanctions. I successfully argued against it, saying that Bitcoin itself is a neutral technology that can't be blamed for how it's misused, can't be effectively banned and is also endorsed by both Ukrainian society and Ukrainian government. Even in the crypto area, there were cases of crypto exchanges following the international sanctions and thus restricting relevant Russian accounts from using the funds. And without big exchanges, it's hard to move a lot of funds around, especially if you have fiat and need to exchange it for Bitcon and then vice versa. I don't think Bitcoin should be a part of the conversation about undermining the Western impact on the enemies of freedom, and in the end I don't think Bitcoin played a major role helping Russia stay afloat and finance the war in practice.
As for arguments in support of Bitcoin, I'd emphasize the impracticability of trying to restrict its usage because it's decentralized and Russia can find ways anyway, and that Bitcoin also became a medium that brought lots of support to Ukraine in the form of donations (major funds, including "Come Back Alive" and the presidential "United24" accept cryptos, and there've been major news articles on how much money was gathered by Ukraine via crypto donations).

I've never heard of this social app before, but of course many people don't like the idea of cryptos. Cryptos are new, and while some humans try to push the boundaries of what's possible for humanity by inventing something new or going somewhere new, there's also this totally natural reaction to new as dangerous, threatening. It challenges the status quo, and many feel like if status quo is fine for them, they shouldn't endorse those things that try challenging it. As for what Bitcoin needs, I think it's secured enough as it is, it will need more scalability one way or another for an increase of its adoption as a form of payment, and user-friendly interfaces similar to online banking wouldn't hurt either. Another this it lack is, despite everything, more awareness of what Bitcoin is and isn't, how it works and how it's different from stocks and from fiat alike.

I see the appeal of time vaults and such, but I'm not a fan of such solutions. The reason is that it's very hard to predict the future and its needs. Who knows, maybe by the time someone is able to access the funds, Bitcoin is made worthless by quantum computing. Or maybe something major happens that disrupts the connections of people all over the world to each other. Or, simpler, there's a family emergency and money could really help to solve it, if only it wasn't locked at that point and unavailable to everyone who might want to use it.
So IMO, it's better to trust people that they won't use the money unless they have to or not give them access at all if you can't trust them with that.

In Ukraine (my country), cryptos are endorsed and popular, and exchanges can openly advertise their services, but the taxation is a bit of a grey area: it wasn't fully figured out yet, even though cryptos per se are legal. It's all a bit new, with people arguing for various interpretations. The loophole is, of course, used by various people not to pay taxes, but it's also risky because some may argue that it should be taxed under more general laws either as property or as income. We have many online exchanges where you transfer money onto a Bitcoin address and get local fiat to your bank account. If a sum is big, though, I think it's better to use a more-or-less official service or split it into smaller pieces for bank accounts of different banks.

14. Jon Jones
13. Valentina Shevchenko
12. Shavkat Rakhmonov
11. Mateusz Gamrot
10. Bo Nickal
9. Cody Garbrandt
8. Dricus Du Plessis
7. Viviane Araujo
6. Julian Marquez
5. Ian Machado Garry
4. Cameron Saaiman
3. Tabatha Ricci
2. Farid Basharat
1. Loik Radzhabov

NOT go the Full Distance 6

Gold is more stable in price that Bitcoin, I'll give the op that. And I don't really get the whole buying jewelry thing either because I don't appreciate jewelry and feel like it's something that catches unwanted attention if it's expensive or judgemental looks if it isn't. That being said, there are a few things you should note. I'm glad you asked your wife about the jewelry, but if she didn't like the idea before, maybe she still doesn't like it but agreed to make you happier or something. So maybe at least don't sell all of it. More importantly, I don't think you can realistically get 10x returns on Bitcoin in a year or two. It might happen, sure, but there's no guarantee and no reason it would go that high. The multiplier seems to be decreasing over time: Bitcoin went from $1k to $20k between 2013 and 2017, but only from $20k to $67.7k between 2017 and 2021. So maybe it won't be 10x or will get to 10x over a really long period of time. Just keep that in mind. The bigger the marketcap gets, the harder it is for the price to increase very significantly because that increase now means hundreds of billions of dollars in value.

One should be very careful with phishing links nowadays, and I'm sorry your friend lost money due to some telegram scammers. Like others, I don't quite understand how that happened, but in any case, it seems hypothetically possible to me. Greed is something to fight, I agree, as it doesn't make people better. But it's also important to remember that your friend is a victim, and victim blaming is a wrong social practice. Yes, he should be more careful, but no, it's not his fault that he lost the money. It's the fault of the scammers.

It's not a stupid question, op. In fact, I thought of the same idea a few years ago as a potential business idea. Unfortunately, I'm not interested in business and also don't possess any resources for such a project, but I still believe that an insurance model for crypto holdings is an unfilled niche of the market, and that such a service would find its customers. I can see that there's at least some info about it now, but largely about insuring money that's on exchanges, not in personal wallets. I think that, in principle, it's possible to get your funds insured without giving up decentralization. I mean, people insure cars and homes without weird contracts that make such property technically belong to some authorities, so I don't see why a person can't hodl Bitcoin in a non-custodial wallet and have it insured.

serjent05 has a good point about the primary knowledge of Bitcoin and what that means to the op, but as for helping improve the lives of others, I assume it's about using Bitcoin as a currency to buy access to essential goods and services the op mentioned to those in need either through using Bitcoin directly or using the donated money to buy fiat and then get to the improvements?
In any case, it's a great thing to do, as helping those in need is never a bad idea, and using Bitcoin for it also means contributing to the usage of Bitcoin and its positive reputation.

Wow, I'm surprised to hear a story of a person getting to know about Bitcoin because it's widely accepted by small-scale businesses in the area. My first guess was that it's probably in Nigeria, and then I looked at the op's posts, and it seems I was right (I now see a few others came to the same conclusion for various reasons). This country keeps amazing me, from what I'm seeing here on Bitcointalk. Congrats to the op on the first Bitcoin purchase and on being able to use it as money if the op decides to do that at some point.

It's a great point you've made about free time, op. I keep reminding myself of that as well. That's why I don't overwork myself and try to ensure I spend time with the people I truly care about, doing things together, instead of working even more. And Bitcoin also contributes in a way to that. Thankfully, I currently have the privilege of choosing jobs and activities, focusing on those I enjoy and am most comfortable with. And I completely agree that it's important to have a fulfilling life, otherwise it's useless suffering.

I don't know if the estimates are accurate, but I have my doubts and questions. Okay, let's say it's 10 million in Nigeria, 1.4 million in Ethiopia. Then you say 4.5 million residents of South Africa (you mean, like, residents but not citizens or a total of 4.5 million?), then saying 88% of adults own cryptos there. It seems that roughly 35 million adults like in South Africa, and 4.5 million is certainly not 88% of them. But okay, let's say it's 35 million. Add to that 9% of Kenyan population (around 5 million), 3.1 million traders in Ghana. That, excluding Egypt (because calculating a population of young adults is tricky), gives us almost 55 million crypto users in this handful of countries alone. Isn't is a bit too many? I'm especially interested in the 88% of adults in South Africa. Could that really be true?
As for policies, it seems that African countries opt for restrictive approaches, while the people try being crypto-friendly. It's sad that such things happen, when countries don't follow the will of the people.

A totalitarian state is about total control, and that includes economic control, but it's first and foremost about political control. Bitcoin gives freedom, yes, but it is economic (financial) freedom, not political. A state that aims to control citizens more is unlikely to be pro-Bitcoin, but might allow it if there is a good reason because a bit financial freedom is not what this state wants to control the most about its citizens. Also, Bitcoin's power can unfortunately be greatly limited by the state and circumstances. For example, Bitcoin is a decentralized form of money, but how empowering is it when the merchants don't accept it as a form of payment? Bitcoin is pseudonymous, but how helpful is it if the state requires all legal exchanges to impose KYC? So it's not all that simple, unfortunately, even though Bitcoin does give some power of freedom.

I hope o_e_l_e_o is right, and that's a great thing about community projects: there are different people to notice mistakes, attacks, potential risks, and together they can achieve more than one person ever could. While AI is advancing fast, I don't think we've seen examples of it deciding to do anything specific (it merely responds to humans and what they prompt it to do). But it's a risk worth considering, of course. As for the 51% attack, I guess it's more real than AI hacking into Bitcoin Core, but it's 'impossible' due to potentially enormous funds and other resources it would require.

Merchants need to accept payments for which there is a good demand, so that they don't lose customers and potentially gain more. I think that's pretty much the key reason for accepting Bitcoin as a merchant, but of course a merchant can just be a pro-Bitcoin person who wants to accept Bitcoin to spread awareness. I also heard of cases where small businesses put their capital into Bitcoin, so perhaps one could say that another reason to accept Bitcoin as payment is to then accumulate it and hope to gain more profits from sales once Bitcoin grows in value. I'm not a merchant, but I'm okay accepting Bitcoin and spending Bitcoin just as a cool form of currency out there. I appreciate that it's not controlled by any authority or affiliated with any state.