A) Yes
B)  Over
C) Yes
Tiebreaker: 330 points

EUR 22,950
kryptonomous

I really hope my country will be done with Russia by that point, and if Russia loses against Ukraine, it can be a great deterrent for China because that can show that a smaller and objectively weaker country (in terms of initial personnel, forces, military rankings, economies) can defeat a bigger one, and that there are enough countries in the contemporary world that are strongly against military invasions and are willing to help the one defending oneself. China isn't stupid, and while they might want to get Taiwan back, they also don't want to lose to Taiwan and lose any grip on the world over a small part of land. If the China-Taiwan war occurs, I think it will be a bigger stress factor for the world economy than Russia vs Ukraine because of stronger economies directly involved and the worldwide impact of both China as a leading manufacturer of so many things and Taiwan's importance for technological progress.

Whether something is art or isn't is subject to many debates. Some believe art should express universal values, others value originality, uniqueness. Some think art is purely subjective, but many believe that it can roughly be judged objectively (which is how the value and recognition of some work over other is possible).
Bitcoin isn't subjective to me. In fact, it's all about verifiable things and consensus. There can be different purposes for Bitcoin, but they aren't limitless and largely fall into gambling, trading, hodling, using it as money.
As a person who teaches logic, I also can't help but point out a logical mistake in the last three sentences (if we take them together, as two premises and a conclusion). Even if Bitcoin is freedom and art is also freedom, that doesn't mean that Bitcoin is art. Simple example: apples are fruit, oranges are fruit, but apples aren't oranges.

Game 1:  34, 18'
Game 2:  34, 27'
Game 3:  34, 38'

I don't know the origins of the video, and it does look like these are Western people, but I don't know... It kind of has vibes of something old to me. The clothes remind me of what was considered cool 8-10 years ago. So what if the video is just pretty old, and that's why the choice was between $100 and 1 BTC (because maybe Bitcoin's price was in hundreds), and that's also why they've never heard of it? Of course, as others pointed out, it could also be staged. And generally similar videos have more value when featuring more people in situations that look more real.
There should be more BTC awareness, I agree. But first we need reliable info on how unaware young people really are of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin and other cryptos can be more attractive in some places and less in others. If it's a country with very low Internet penetration, online payments aren't really a priority there. If it's a country with a high level of digitalization but people trust in their economy and banks very rarely let people down, Bitcoin will have a hard time competing against online banking as well. But if there's enough Internet users, smartphones are quite common, while the trust in the banks is relatively low and/or local fiat is suffering from heavy inflation and people would love to have an alternative, such conditions can be good for Bitcoin adoption.

11. Jessica Andrade
10. Zac Pauga
9. Jamal Pogues
8. Marcin Prachnio
7. Alex Hernandez
6. Mayra Bueno Silva
5. Jamall Emmers
4. Philipe Lins
3. Evan Elder
2. A.J. Fletcher
1. Clayton Carpenter

NOT go the Full Distance 4

I don't know about surviving via trading, but there was a time in my life when sig campaign was the main source of income, and everything cost cheap enough for it to cover the rent, utilities, and food for one person for a couple of weeks. It's been a while, lots of things changed, but back then Bitcoin did bring food on the table and helped a lot. I'm sure many went through something similar as well, and some are probably going through similar things now, especially if they have some expenses covered (like having a flat and thus not needing to pay the rent or having cheap food in a student dorm's cafeteria).
But I must say that it's not what Bitcoin is for, and Bitcoin can't solve unemployment or poverty. It can help some, and that's great.

I think it's helpful to understand a few things about people and how we tend to act in discussions or disputes before applying it to Bitcoin, and then it might be obvious why your attempts to convince friends and colleagues weren't successful, op. So we like to think that we are rational and convinced with facts, but that's not true. We accept facts when we are open to it, and if we are convinced we are right, we ignore facts that try to disprove our beliefs. So if a person is sure that Bitcoin is useless, you need to start slow, and even then you're not likely to fully succeed. The key to successful negotiations is finding common ground. If a person thing Bitcoin is a scam, you could say that scams are terrible, and that it's sad people are being robbed like that, and that we all want to have more safety. Then you can slowly start pointing out that banks also go bankrupt, and haven't you noticed that terrible inflation going on, with food costing more? And present Bitcoin as a good alternative that has its benefits, while agreeing about the risks.

If Bitcoin somehow had a stable price and thus made no sense as an investment but was decentralized, it would be an economic miracle, a perfect self-regulated system. I think it would have gained no less attention than Bitcoin the way it really is, and countries would have felt more threatened by it, as it would have been superior to fiat currencies because they can suffer from inflation and belong to specific countries.
I know I'd be happy to use Bitcoin as a stable decentralized cryptocurrency, and who knows, maybe eventually Bitcoin will stabilize enough to almost make it real.

Taking a loan is often a bad idea, but especially if a person isn't 100% confident about being able to pay it back, and when it's taken not out of necessity but out of a whim. I don't think you should lend him the money unless you are ready to lose that money.
But if a person bought BTC, can't he at least sell that and repay a part of the loan?
Op, you're correct, of course, that one should only invest out of the money one is earning, and it should be a sum that a person is ready to lose. It can be different percentage based on how much a person is earning and how much is required to cover monthly expenses, but the investment should not come from money required to cover basic expenses.

I've read it earlier about El Salvador that they have a special attitude toward foreign debt: they try to repay as much as they can and be independent of others. That, in a way, helped them deal with the IMF, which was against El Salvador making Bitcoin legal tender, but since El Salvador tries not to owe money, the IMF didn't have much leverage over them.
So even if they owe something to the IMF now, I don't think El Salvador will change its policies regarding Bitcoin. I'm impressed if Bitcoin actually helped them as much. It hasn't been great over the last year for Bitcoin, so I assumed they lost money rather than gained it.

I've tried active buying and selling of cryptos in the past. I soon realized that to me, it's not worth the effort, I wasn't very good at it, and I had other priorities. But I had saveral very successful passive investments by buying a crypto early on and waiting for it to rise. I believe that in the current situation, it's best to just hodl Bitcoin. Of course, the difference between active and passive here is that active can bring regular profits if a person is good at it, whereas long-term hodling can easily have months when it's unreasonable to withdraw anything because it will be at a loss.
If you mean something outside cryptos, having an extra flat you can rent to someone else is a good passive investment (at least, in my country), and it comes with regular profits too. But that also requires having the kind of money neither me nor the majority of people have.

When I was a kid, I didn't understand why some people say they have no money or have very little money when there are soon obvious signs that it's not true or when others claim it's not true. Eventually, as I grew up and started saving money and looking more closely at other people, I realized a thing I call "money that isn't there". It's the sort of funds a person has but never accounts for, often even in front of themselves. It's money which you have, but you say and sort of mean that you don't because that money is not something you allow yourself to use. I get this concept, I understand why people do that. Occasionally, I tried this sort of stuff myself, but in my case I usually end up using this money after all when a big moment comes. Once this big moment was a decision to buy VR, once it was to cover visa expenses to go study abroad.
I don't regret spending money that's kind of there as untouchable savings when the moment feels right. But I also feel way more comfortable having some extra without spending it at all times, just in case I ever need it. Not a lot, just maybe a month or two worth of expenses. I think that's reasonable, but not using it when there's an emergency or a really good opportunity is IMO wrong, irrational. And needless to say, I've never done what the op mentioned, such as cutting back on essential food while having money. Basic expenses come first, savings come second.

Global wealth is estimated to be at $360 trillion, which means that Bitcoin being worth $200 trillion would require the global economy to grow a lot, otherwise it's just way big of a share covered solely by Bitcoin. I don't see it happening any time soon, not even close. If anything, the economic growth seems to be slowing down, and even if it grows, say, 5% a year, I don't think that would be enough to accomodate such incredible value of Bitcoin and its cut in the grand scheme of things. Gold market cap is $12.3 trillion, and that's a fraction of what Bitcoin needs to achieve. I honestly think it's unrealistic because, while the global economy is growing, it's not happening nearly fast enough, and I don't see Bitcoin taking up, like, half of the global wealth.

Financial freedom and financial independence are different things to me, although it depends on how we define them. Bitcoin grants financial freedom in a sense that you own your own coins, you can send them to anyone who has a Bitcoin address directly, the currency isn't owned, managed or regulated by any central authority. Financial independence means having enough income to cover your own expenses without relying on other people (I'm basing it on Wikipedia now). A person can find a job, get paid in Bitcoin, and become financially independent. But it's also very likely that it won't happen. So Bitcoin is about financial freedom, but not so much about financial independence.

Fiat currencies have existed for many centuries, and gold has been valued for even longer. Everything has some sort of life span, but it can be long enough to neglect that at some point it will end. The world is changing very fast, and it's really hard to predict where it's going. I don't see why Bitcoin wouldn't prosper in the next several decades, but if something major happens like a quantum computing breakthrough or a global crisis which makes widespread usage of the Internet and electricity impossible, then of course Bitcoin will go away along with lots of other things. Digitalization hasn't been going for long enough to see if it's just a phase in humanity's development or a long-term thing. But if the Internet is staying, I think cryptos are staying as well, including Bitcoin.

I agree that scalability isn't a solved issue, especially if we think of adoption of Bitocoin as money (because I wouldn't say it's a big deal for hodlers, traders, or even for occasional big purchases, as hodlers don't need many transactions, traders often use centralized platforms, and big buyers can afford to lose some money on a fee). It's rather just something that's put on hold, not currently obvious as a big problem. Perhaps we'll see very user-friendly off-chain solutions OR get used to being okay with accepting zero-confirmation transactions up to a certain amount of money (then the high fees can be avoided) for the purchase. Or maybe the future of Bitcoin is still more of a future of an asset, not money.
As for a fork, I wouldn't say the risk is past us, but if Bitcoin survived the SegWit situation, I don't think it'll suffer much from future disagreements. A new coin can appear, but it won't undermine Bitcoin, wherever it's going.

I've looked at the news, and it seems that it's about Kraken being forced to close their staking service in the US, but Reuters says it's because "it failed to register the program". So this doesn't mean that staking per se is illegal, but that you need a permit for it to be legal (there's also a mention of disclosure of how the staked assets are protected by the platform).
I don't think it's good news for Bitcoin, but I don't see it as bad either. It's probably an attempt to ensure that crypto exchanges are held more accountable, following the FTX crash.