I think it depends on the amount of money. I agree that rich people have to worry about being a target, about potential safety risks to them and to their loved ones because of their money. But they can normally also afford good security. If you are poor, though, it doesn't mean you're safe, especially if you live in a country where the rich and the poor live in different districts, because in that case there's more crime in poor areas, and you can be in danger even if you are poor. So I'm not sure, actually, that having money means you're more likely to experience a robbery or safety risks.

My attitude is that it's always the right time with Bitcoin. Sure, some periods are better than others, but if a person is willing to hodl for a few years, at least, it will all pay off. For example, investing at $19k in 2017 would have been considered a mistake by many people. And it was worse that investing at some point in 2018-2019, sure. However, the price hit $69k later, so even investors of December 2017 could make nice profits. As for now, the price is less than $17k, which is 75% below the ATH. If you believe that Bitcoin will recover and also that it will, as always before, surpass the previous ATH point, it means investing now can realistically result in 4x+ profit. Regardless of halving, it's a good time.

Mining has been deeply centralized for a very long time, I don't think it's anything new. Maybe the op just didn't know and feels shocked because of that...? I agree that it's not perfect, but it's still much better than with fiat, where there's one authority that not only issues but can also 'burn' banknotes. Moreover, a mining pool has tons of clients, right? So it's not like there are a couple of people in charge of 51% of hash. So it's bad, yes, but not as bad as it might look. Not to mention that mining is just a part of Bitcoin's ecosystem, and there are other ways in which it is decentralized as well.

IMO if a person is oblivious to soaring prices, it can mean two things (at once or one of them). One is that this person is quite financially secure, so the price difference isn't making a big impact on one's purchasing power. Another reason is that a person is living in a country where inflation is allegedly high, but it's not that significant. I didn't notice rising inflation in the UK when it comes to groceries, but I noticed it a lot when I got back to Ukraine and can see how prices are really 1.5-2 times higher than a year ago. That being said, from my experience with inflation, prices don't rise equally. If they changed significantly, and you're on a budget, you will have to spend more than before, but you can reduce the spendings by looking closely at prices of products. Maybe something you used to buy every day is now very expensive, but there's something else (or even basically the same thing but from a different brand/in a different supermarket) you might like that doesn't cost too much. Exploring new foods and looking for substitute dishes to cook can help overcome the challenge and also make it less of a tragedy and a bit more like an adventure.

As the title says, Bitcoin is a tool that gives financial freedom. I don't see how this must correlate with Bitcoin being a great investment opportunity. What I'm saying is that the price can decline (although it's still very high and Bitcoin has always recovered from bear markets so far), but that doesn't change the nature of Bitcoin. It is still a decentralized form of money that anyone can use if they have a device (smartphone, PC) and Internet access. It is still something that can be stored for free in a wallet like Electrum, where you are the sole owner of your coins and nobody can take them away from you (unlike with banks). It's still a currency that doesn't belong to any country, is not issued by any authority, and the price of which is strictly determined by the market.

The cost of living estimates and how much a person needs for life are, in my experience, vastly overestimated. I guess it depends on the spending behaviour and perhaps whether a person is used to spending a lot or comes from a poorer background and/or an economically weak country. My spouse and I have lived in the EU (renting a flat), spending around 1000-1200 EUR per month for both of us (so, 500-600 EUR per person), and it wasn't like we were restricting ourselves a lot. I've lived in the UK, and we spent around 1800 pounds per month for the two of us (including the rent). So if the calculation is 4000 per household (two adults plus a child or two), that might be right. If it's per person, that's overrated.
As for setting a floor to rental prices, I don't think such drastic measures will be introduced.

I've learned many inspiring stories about Nigeria on this forum. It seems that there are many small businesses there, and entrepreneurs quite often try to adopt Bitcoin one way or another, despite shaky governmental attitude to it. This is yet another inspiring story. I personally think it's especially cool that you accept Bitcoin now, even though the vast majority of your customers are women who aren't familiar with Bitcoin. This creates a good ground to empower Nigerian women, educate them on using Bitcoin (in case customers express interest, of course), as well as promote the usage of Bitcoin more generally. I think that as time passes, you will certainly have Bitcoin sales. Good luck in 2023!

I agree with the op about the approaches to children based on stages and that 7-14 can be an age to start teaching kids how to use money. However, I believe that apart from teaching them to save up, it's also important to teach them how to spend, and that the purpose of money is to be the medium of exchange, i.e., to be exchanged for goods and services regularly. What's good about Bitcoin at this stage (maybe closer to its end, though) is that while a child cannot have a banking card, getting an Electrum wallet and a bit of BTC for a child is totally possible. As for 15-18 (because from 18, they're no longer children, at least in my country), this can be the time of thinking of how to invest money, how to hodl, etc. But yes, all of this shouldn't be forced upon children. Basic financial management generally should be taught and children should have a chance of trying to be financially responsible by maintaining some of their own funds (given by parents), but if someone is not into investments and/or into cryptos, it is totally fine.

Congrats on the first purchase! I can see it's a very small one, though, so I hope you'll be able to accumulate more before withdrawing to a non-custodial wallet, as otherwise a big chunk will be eaten by transaction fees (I can see from your yesterday's reply that it is what you're planning to do). It's less than $10 right now if I'm seeing it correctly, so I guess I wouldn't bother with a wallet at this point. It's good that you're starting small, clearly investing what you can afford to lose. I wish you to be able to invest more in the future and enjoy hodling.

Game 1:  23, 26'
Game 2:  23, 17'

I generally follow the rule of not giving investment advice to any people, including loved ones. I can share my thoughts if they seem interested, but I always mention the risks (e.g. that there's no guarantee that Bitcoin will recover from the bear market only because it recovered from previous ones, there's no guarantee that it will recover fairly fast, there's a real risk of the investment going down for some time). After all, why would I give any reason for others to blame me for the money they lost? People should make their own decisions about investments.

I don't use centralized exchanges (haven't used them for a few years, at least not those where you store money on an exchange and have a profile), but to me, this topic doesn't have to be so polarized. I don't blame people who do use centralized exchanges because it is convenient to them, especially if people do trading. I also understand that some people will use centralized platforms to store their funds despite the risk of something like FTX because privacy and being your own financial manager just isn't appealing for everyone, and some feel safer with a trusted company than with their own devices, being afraid more of losing the seed than of an exchange performing a scam or being hacked. I believe we should be welcoming to people who make different decisions, as long as these people realize the risks and try making informed decisions that work for them.

Whether cash is king depends a lot on a level of digitalization of a country, whether it's an urban or rural area, and on the generation of people. There are lots of people who are by now very used to ordering food online and paying in an app, doing the same for taxi, paying utility bills online, buying tickets and paying rent online, etc. I'm among those people, I barely ever have cash on me, unless I specifically know that I'll need it because a place where I'm going doesn't accept card payments. There are many things that are very hard to buy with cash, in some countries even impossible to buy with cash. And cash can be useful for daily transactions in some cases, but it's not a currency itself, just a representation. As for currencies, they tend to lose value over time because inflation is a part of how fiat functions. So stacking up on cash and hoping it will even have the same value in a year, let alone have more value, is in most cases useless and doesn't make sense.

It's not known whether there truly is a small group of people that is able and actively engages in triggering major Bitcoin price shifts. I don't see enough evidence if it, and thus I don't believe it. Distribution is definitely uneven, but that's the way with any kind of wealth in the world, so it's a global challenge. Limiting the amount per person would be dystopian, as it limits the freedom of people to buy however much they want and requires linking all wallets to personal IDs to ensure  one person doesn't simply have several wallets to avoid the limit. I think that a way toward more equal distribution of  wealth, including Bitcoin, shouldn't be as restrictive.

I'm not very good at technical things, so I don't know if it's technically possible to crack it or not (I mean, I don't know how long such calculations will take a contemporary PC), but I hope someone tries, that'll be interesting to learn.
I'm wondering about a couple of things here. Firstly, if the idea is to test how safe the method is against public exposure, why isn't it done in one of those ways that when a person cracks it, they retrieve the money themselves. After all, it's not like an owner would share a matching original with a police officer, someone who sees a spreadsheet leaked online etc.
Another thing is this: how safe is the money from locking oneself out of the wallet with this method? Is the seed safely retrieved by some script based on how it was encrypted in case a person forgets the words from the seed?

The thread is still fresh, so I wonder how the poll will turn out later. I chose price stability and scalability and speed. Anonymity is not a big concern for many people, and Bitcoin is giving a certain degree of anonymity as well. Physical coins might be important in case of countries with low cashless rate, but in others where people are very used to card payments it's alright. As for marketplaces, there are generally enough of those, and we wouldn't need marketplaces too much if people could pay with Bitcoin directly anyway. Going green is something that matters largely for Bitcoin as an investment but not as a currency. If it's used as money, then we should remember that people are fine with inflation of fiat, so money doesn't have to appreciate in value.

Countries can have different policies, and I don't think Brazil will be exactly like El Salvador. I guess the case of El Salvador is special because they don't have their own fiat (their fiat is the USD), which might be why they didn't think seriously of making their own CBDC. Brazil is a bigger country with more things to account for, and they have their own strong fiat currency. Maybe they'll make a CBDC, but it seems the plan is quite distant (for 2024), and who know if they decide to go through with it. But generally, I think a CBDC can coexist with Bitcoin. In my own country (Ukraine), there's a governmental plan to both accept Bitcoin as payment and explore a local fiat-based CBDC in the future, for example.

It is a bit weird to decorate everything with Bitcoin vibes but not accept Bitcoin as payment and not train the staff to at least know what Bitcoin payments are.
Inviting a person for Christmas dinner is nice, I think the traditions of who you invite can differ a lot within different cultures, and I think it was a nice gesture on the part of the op. It didn't strike me as weird, and I'm not surprised by op's answer to it. To be honest, I don't get why many in the thread seem so worked-up about a simple act of hospitality.
I hope the op will return and let us know if there was a continuation of this story (did the owner come to the dinner, did you visit their place again to discuss Bitcoin, etc.).

I'm not 100% sure, but I think it was because of the news of Silk Road 2.0 being shut down by the FBI. It was big enough news to make it to TVs and websites outside the bubble of crypto enthusiasts, so as you can imagine, my initial encounter didn't leave a positive opinion about Bitcoin. However, it gradually started changing as I learned more about banks, fiat, and how Bitcoin is different, and also figured that you can't really blame a neutral tool for being used for bad purposes (and all sorts of money are used by some people for bad purposes).

Russia hasn't been consistently anti-Bitcoin. While some people and institutions called for a ban, others have been playing with the idea of legalizing it for a while. The current position seems very pragmatic and practical: they don't allow their own citizens to engage with Bitcoin because it isn't going in line with the totalitarian regime and because they don't want to risk undermining their local fiat, but they do need to find ways of limiting the impact of international sanctions, and accepting Bitcoin for international trade is one of them. Russian economists seem quite smart, considering how they've been handling a very difficult economic position that Russia's in because of the war. But such a step, should they truly undertake it, can lead to reputation losses of Bitcoin as a tool to avoid sanctions.