I honestly don't think there is a "renewed interest" in ETFs just because it is being mentioned in the media once again. If anything the interest is diminished compared to a couple of years ago when we saw a lot of discussion and "excitement" (unreasonable excitement!) about them.

At the end of the day ETF is centralized and when you put your money there you don't own any bitcoin in reality.

Actually losing bitcoins is an event with decreasing number of occurrence. In early days price was low and people were less careful so there were more cases of losing keys. As time went up and bitcoin gained more value people also became more careful hence the number of cases where people lose their keys diminished significantly.
So you can't say it gets "lost all the time".

Wrong. Nobody knows how many bitcoins were actually lost. This is just an estimation you posted.

There are two problems with this:
1. Not having any activity is not the same as being lost. For example there are people who have coins from 2009 that they haven't touched but they still own the private key.
2. You can't really talk about what people should do in 100 years from now!

There were some bugs in the Network related code in the early 3.x versions. After fixing those bugs these versions (anything below 3.3.0 [1]) can no longer connect to any server. You should upgrade to the newest version. You should already have a backup of your seed phrase before upgrading.

[1] https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/issues/5195#issuecomment-473157912

Most probably this is not a coincidence or a collision for that matter. Considering the addresses you shared were never spent from they could be categorized as addresses that were created from the hash like some sort of silly puzzle not from a public key. In other words nobody can spend these coins because they don't have the key, they just did what you did (hashed 2 characters and then created that address).
Something like this:

That's true but I wouldn't say "they didn't work" because the fact that all of these efforts have succeeded in keeping the price from rising is a success for those trying to attack bitcoin. Otherwise the long term trend for the past 14 years should have been a big rise where price is currently sitting somewhere around $100k not still struggling at $30k level.

There are three problems with Sapsan/Hrim-2.

• First is the range which is short¹ which makes it very challenging to hit deep inside Russian territory.
  
• Second is the very limited warhead weight which is 500 kg (another limit set by MTCR) which accompanied with the lack of accuracy reduces the effectiveness ergo Ukraine would need to launch very large numbers of them for a single target; see Russian attack on Chuhuiv air base on 24 February 2022 to see what I mean (large number of inaccurate missiles all missing their targets resulting in minimal damage).
• And finally is the speed and most importantly the projectile path. There isn't any specifics about the speed on the internet but based on the design and the single stage rocket engine I'd say this is a very slow. But most importantly because this is using a very simple projectile path (without any maneuverability) this makes it a very easy thing to shoot down by any basic missile defense system.

¹ I mentioned this missile in my previous post but with the range up to 280 km. interestingly enough although Russia obviously loved this limit but it was actually enforced by Western powers specifically G-7 through what's called the Missile Technology Control Regime or MTCR. Admittedly it could have been increased slightly to 500 km in the past year.

In the context of missiles, they need to be fast to reach far and pass air defenses and avoid detection.

But you have a good point in the UAV scene, however the same thing I said above applies here: lack of technology. It's one thing to produce drone parts (like the engine for TB2 drones), it's another thing to manufacture a whole loitering munition with long range.
Something like Shahed-136 sounds simple on paper, but it is very complicated. For example ~3 months ago Turkey released their "copy" of Shahed-136 called Azab which looks more like a Chinese ripoff. Even though I haven't seen any videos of it to see if it can even flying, from the pictures we can clearly see that it lacks many of the Shahed-136 characteristics specially in guidance system and the launch system and possibly the landing gear.
This is while Turkey has a more advanced drone industry compared to Ukraine and is not at war.

We are talking about an aircraft that has to (1) fly on its own for a long time and in a long distance to reach its target thousands of kilometers far (2) avoid detection by radars, electro-optical and optical detection apart from on the ground observers (3) not be shot down easily by enemy defenses (4) and not be jammed by electronic/cyber warfare defenses in the enemy territory (5) reach its destination then choose the target on its own (hint mandatory A.I.) then dive in to (6) hit the bullseye because these loitering munitions don't carry big warheads they must be extremely accurate otherwise it's gonna miss making the whole thing useless.
These are some of the serious challenges off the top of my head. It requires a leap in technology of what I know Ukraine already has.

For example there are loads of quad-copters in Ukraine army. That tech is not extrapolatable!
There is AeroDrone that used to manufacture crop-dusting drones that can travel far and carry heavy loads and they have been cooperating with the army but their products were not built as a munition so they lack features number 2, 3, specially 4 and 5 and 6.
All the other drones I could find that were indigenously manufactured in Ukraine (Leleka, Punisher , Spectator-M1, ...) are all very short range drones (50 to 200 km) and are mostly for reconnaissance.

Considering that all the drones West has sold Ukraine also fall under the same short range category (Warmate-200 km, Switchblade-10 km, Phoenix Ghost-40 km, ...) I don't think West is going to sell the technology to Ukraine either.

600 km is categorized as medium range and it is not "deep". Long range which is "deep" starts basically at a thousand kilometers and above (usually around 10 km though).
But could you tell us the name of this "long-range" UAV so we can research it?

You know what the worst part of this types of wallets is? They demand your trust in their product but they do not accept any kind of liability. A kind of a blind trust if you ask me.

We all know that in the end, some people will not care about their security and still continue using closed source wallets. So maybe at least these users should demand that the developers be liable for any damage. I'd say that's the least they can ask for their trust in a software they can't trust any other way.

This is always a good indication that there is a considerable about of "money" waiting on the sidelines to jump in. They are just waiting for a positive signal to begin "panic buying" and shoot the price up like this in a very short time. In fact what we saw here with the jump to over $30k has always been a very common trend in bitcoin.

I still wouldn't jump into calling this a rising trend though. Because in a way we could categorize this as the continuation of the sideways market (between $25k and $30k). However, if the momentum stays strong and we see more rises to break $31k and $35k resistances and start eyeing $40k this could be a different story. But we'll have to wait and see...

Best course of action is using an Offline Live Linux, it fulfills all your needs for creating a cold storage in a secure way (air gap, clean and can run latest version without needing to upgrade your Windows or buy a new PC).

There are many general purpose guides about creating a Live Linux disk like this one for Ubuntu using a USB disk: https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/create-a-usb-stick-on-ubuntu#1-overview

All you have to do next is to download the tarball from the electrum.org website with the signature file and the developer public keys then transfer all of that to your Live Linux Disk which you would run without internet connection (disconnect LAN, turn off your router, etc.). Verify the binaries there using pgp then install and create your seed phrase.
Here is a guide for verification: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5240594.0

But it makes very little sense for an individual seeking extra security through multisig to choose such a big n (in m-of-n multisig) as 7 and usually when you choose multisig as an individual you choose an m that is close to n like 5-of-7 or 6-of-7 instead of 2-of-7 which means the process of creating and storing is hard enough that increases the chance of losing the keys and access to the wallet.

I've gathered some information so feel free to correct any part that is wrong:
Ukraine used to be a major arms producer back in the Soviet era, so much so that about a quarter of Soviet weapons were made in Ukraine. After the separation from union in the 90's, Ukraine was practically disarmed and the industry was dismantled. Worst part is that they celebrated being disarmed and giving up their nuclear ICBMs!

In the following years in early 90's Ukrainian arms industry turned into mostly maintenance and sale of the Soviet era weapons and didn't have that much advancement in any serious area that matters (or maybe we should say neither US nor Russia allowed them to make any advance).

However, there has been small advances in some areas such as production of short range rockets and artillery, some improvements in some of the soviet tanks and armored vehicles, "shoulder launched" anti tank guided missiles, manufacturing parts such as UAV engines/ship parts/etc, and of course wide-wing transport aircrafts.
In other areas such as missiles (specifically medium and long range), air defense, radars, fighter jets, navy, modern tanks, etc. Ukraine depends fully on imports.

FWIW There are always market makers and market manipulators that affect the price but that should not be confused with "controlling the price".

There have been altcoins that were also decentralized, Monero could be considered as a decentralized altcoin. However, many of these altcoins were too insignificant and without innovation to last long or become popular. Usually it is the centralized altcoins that despite having no innovation get pumped and become popular.

To be fair it is not just US that prints money without any cap. Any fiat currency in existence is like that. The only difference is that dollar used to be the dominant global reserve currency for the past couple of decades.

Not always. It's just hat people don't like the constant money printing without limitations that leads to eventual and inescapable inflation.

Not necessarily. When bitcoin price goes up, as a currency your purchasing power increases so you can for example buy more groceries with your bitcoins. In other words you don't have to measure bitcoin price in fiat or convert it to fiat ever.

For exactly what I just explained bitcoin is a currency. But a currency can be an asset too.

The challenge I always have is to convince people not to invest in bitcoin. After all bitcoin is not an investment and it is not meant to give you profit. It is a currency and if you want to introduce it to someone you should introduce it as a currency too. That way they won't have a heart attack each time price has a sudden drop or a sudden rise while using bitcoin the way it was meant to.

That's very interesting, I didn't know that. As someone who is interested in military technologies I would love to read up on more details about this if you can share them. For example what type of weapons are we talking about here?

I'm theorycrafting but because Ukraine doesn't have the air superiority to conduct air raids, so it has to be from afar but certain technologies like the technology to manufacture MRCM/LRCM, MRBM/LRBM is not something you'd just come up with that easily without prior infrastructure and decades of development, also nobody is selling such technologies this easily to anyone least of all to a country at war where it could leak it to the enemy or third parties.

Edit:
I did some research and the only missiles I could find that Ukraine manufactures are very short range ones such as Kite-2 a subsonic cruise missile with less than 300 km range, ОТРК a short range ballistic missile with a range between 50 to 280 km, R-360 Neptun a subsonic anti-ship cruise missle with very short range of 280 km.
Please tell me if I missed anything but it seems like Ukraine's reach has always been kept very limited. To be honest I don't see how there can be a leap from subsonic 300 km range to supersonic 3000 km range. Developing the engine alone is a massive and impossible leap.

That's not entirely accurate. There are in fact two additional costs to using multisig.
The direct cost is the increased fee. A mutisig transaction requires multiple signatures and public keys to be included in each transaction so the transaction size will be bigger than a single-sig transaction. So you pay more fees.
The indirect (or non monetary) cost is the extra effort it takes to set the wallet up correctly and safely and also to keep it safe specially when using the wallet each time you want to create a transaction. Depending on the number of signatures (eg. 7 sig!) it could be a tremendous amount of effort. Not to mention the time it consumes.

OK. Keep your shirt on!

As they say facts are the enemy of truth. It's easy to make up truths and "document" them, it is not easy to to bring up facts.

Where are you storing your bitcoins? In a hot wallet?
What would you do if you found out that a bunch of thieves were planning to rob your house? Will you leave your door open?

I can't explain it any simpler. When there has been multiple terrorist attacks on Iran's facilities using drones and micro-drones like the one on Bushehr power plant a couple of years ago that put it out of service; when Iran is being threatened every day with an attack on its infrastructure, etc. only a fool would ignore the threats and not think about defense.
Moving under ground is called passive defense.

Iran is among the top 3 to 5 countries with most amount of oil, natural gas, lithium and a lot of other natural resources.

It is not a possibility, as a matter of fact there have been at least 20 serious invasion plans on the past 8 POTUS's desks.

• The most recent one in that list were Trump's (as reveled by chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff gen. Milley in at least 5 occasions the last of which [among other reasons] led to gen. Milley effectively removing his authority as commander in chief to prevent him from what he referred to as "pulling a Reichstag Moment").
• The other serious one I'd say was Bush's (as revealed by many including by general Clarke who says he received direct order from the president to destroy 7 countries [includes Iran] in 5 years).
• Last but not least the oldest was Carter's which was supposed to start with Operation Eagle Claw (aka the dumbest military operation in human history if you read to declassified documents released by Pentagon) to rescue CIA operatives from post revolution Iran to be able to follow that up with a full scale invasion and re-install the pro-US dictator.

Sanctions are the indirect method of regime change, their success rate is not going to change their main purpose.
Basically they are meant to ruin regular people's lives so that they revolt against their own governments just because US ruined their lives! After all that is a page from color revolutions.

They also work well in some cases, like in the case of Iraq. You see contrary to "documented assertions" the project called "invasion of Iraq" started at least in early 1990s in Clinton administration not in 2003 with Bush. The start was with sanctions. Why? To target the economy, create famine, starve people (I mean that literary, look up oil for food in '95), create unrest so that people revolt and from inside pressure the Iraqi regime to accept US demands making it easy to invade in about 10 years.

Now guess what those demands were? In short disarmament. Basically Iraq to give up its military capabilities, not WMDs no no, they knew very well Saddam didn't have any for example chemical bombs left from the days Germany+US+France were selling it to him to drop on his neighbor, Iran; but instead they demanded Iraq to give up things like ballistic missiles that could reach US bases in surrounding countries from which they initiated the invasion, the anti-ship missiles and fighters that could reach and sink US navy ships that were bombing their cities in 2003, etc.
Guess what were the main target in operations like Southern Watch in mid 1990's? Air defense mostly but also civilians. For example nearly 700 civilians were killed or wounded in one operation in 1998 to both soften Iraq air defense for 2003 invasion and also to create more unrest in Iraq.
Guess how did US bomb Iraq with 800 Tomahawks when the invasion officially began in 2003? With the USN and carrier groups that Iraq could no longer hit since the regime accepted the disarmament!

Now with a little bit of history, JCPOA can be seen in another light. Specially when you put that together with different US demands of Iran that had nothing to do with nukes but targeted Iran's economy, civilian sector and of course military capabilities just like Iraq's in 1990's.

From what I've seen so far the "consensus" seems to be on a sideways market which I also agree with. There is a chance that in the coming months (Summer mostly) the market could see some excitement with some big rises breaking out into the $30k+ region but I still think this whole year is also going to be like 2022 because of the recession in the world that is not going to go away any time soon.

You sure have a weird way of putting some of these points.
Not entirely correct. There are loads of altcoins with capped supply like bitcoin, some even have less max supply than bitcoin but they do not have any value.
In other words scarcity itself does not "lead to value", the utility is the only reason why something has value. Scarcity decides the level of that value.

Why are you excluding China?!

Bitcoin has intrinsic value because it offers a valuable and unique utility as the only working decentralized money in existence. Not because someone else or some country says it does.

What does Coinbase, a centralized exchange and a custodial wallet have to do anything with bitcoin's anonymity?!! I hope you know that people shouldn't even be using custodial wallets to store their coins...

There is not such thing as BRC-20 tokens, they are NOT tokens to begin with, simply because it is not part of the Bitcoin protocol. What they falsely refer to as "tokens" are arbitrary data injected into the regular bitcoin transactions by exploiting a vulnerability in the Bitcoin protocol.

That means there is nothing to store but regular bitcoin transactions, ergo you can use any regular bitcoin wallet to store these regular bitcoin transactions!
The only thing you can't do is to create them because to do that you need to download a possibly malicious software that performs this exploit to create these types of transactions.