Bitcoin has opened new economic possibilities. Not only is Bitcoin a great store of value, and good investment in general, but the community surrounding Bitcoin enables people from around the world to collaborate on projects that have a massive potential for progressing the global economy into an innovative direction.

That's a very good point. Web wallets usually aren't considered to provide the same level of security and privacy as hardware wallets, or well-established software solutions.

Scams do affect the reputation of Bitcoin negatively but that's due to the early stage of adoption. In the early 20th century car accidents were negatively affecting the reputation of car industry to the point people were wondering if not to ban "mechanic carriages" altogether, but nowadays car accidents don't affect the reputation of cars, and even terrible plane crashes don't affect the reputation of planes. In the financial sector it's the same - there are gold scams and forex scams, but people still invest in gold and trade currencies.

Why are people still acting like Bitcoin and Ethereum are mutually exclusive, or even competitors at all? Ethereum obviously wants to evolve into being "the world's computer", even Vitalik Buterin obviously admits it - a platform using blockchain technology for things like DApps and DeFi. This is not something bitcoin was designed to do, the two cryptocurrencies have very different use cases.

This seem to be something that's impossible to argue against. Billions of people use cars without knowing anything about combustion physics. How many people who travel by planes know anything about aerodynamics? How many people could explain how electricity works? How many people who use computers and smartphones every day know how to code? And even from those who know how to code, how many know assembly languages and machine code?

People don't need to know how a technology works to effectively use a technology and enjoy its benefits. Successful bitcoin adoption shouldn't require everyone who wants to use bitcoin to become a computer expert.

It all really depends on the use case - different cryptocurrencies answer different demands and are designed with different purposes in mind. Bitcoin is similar to a digital gold in the fact that it works really good as store of value; ethereum is a platform that's more suited to something else entirely, and that is utilizing smart contracts in creative ways such as providing DeFi solutions. Blockchain technology has different applications and it's hard to generalize all crypto projects under one term.

There's definitely a lot of hype about DeFi out there, and many people are looking to invest in DeFi projects without even trying to learn what DeFi is, just to stay in the loop. That doesn't necessarily mean that DeFi is overhyped, as there are many Decentralized Finance projects built on strong fundamentals and answering to real-life needs.

I think this is a great point - bitcoin is still a very attractive asset, fiat currencies still have all the flaws they always had (inflation, centralization etc.), and there isn't really any fundamental basis besides general unsubstantiated pessimism for thinking bitcoin's price won't continue to grow. Bitcoin is a deflationary currency designed with scarcity in mind - it's hard to envision a situation in which its price never reaches and surpasses the current ATH.

Bitcoin mining spends energy, but that doesn't mean blockchain technology is harmful for the environment. There are blockchain projects that aim to use the technology to help the environment by using blockchain to track waste in a more efficient way, or to make sure it is properly recycled and turned into green energy. You can read about it here: https://medium.com/@NVZN/introducing-invizion-and-the-nvzn-token-renewable-energy-on-the-blockchain-ba4dd94ff859

Basically the idea that blockchains are bad for the environment isn't true and is just another part of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt spread by the opponents of bitcoin and blockchain technology in general.

Africa is a land of great potential, and many great projects are working to modernize it. For serious investors looking at Africa, all they see are incredible possibilities, and not a "cursed land".

People want to become millionaires over night, without doing anything. They dream about free money, and pretend that bitcoin or cryptocurrencies in general were made to give people free money. I don't think these people really get "scammed" as what they're doing isn't real investing, it's more like gambling, and when gamblers lose should they blame anyone? People who don't want free money but want to invest in serious project built on great fundamentals and real life use cases don't get scammed.

Among many improbable predictions concerning the price of Bitcoin, saying that it will never reach it's current ATH again seem to be the most improbable. It's a deflationary currency with real life use case as a store of value and still very early on its technology adoption curve. Since at this point other cryptocurrencies don't really try to replace bitcoin any more, but rather to explore other possibilities offered by blockchain technology, it seem safe to assume bitcoin would reach a new ATH sooner or later.

Bitcoin and Ethereum doesn't seem to be mutually exclusive and I don't even think that at this point they are necessarily a competition to each other. Bitcoin is the leading store of value solution and Ethereum is doing an entirely different thing with building a platform for DApps, DeFi etc. I don't think Ethereum will replace Bitcoin but I also don't see any crypto replacing Ethereum at what they're doing in the near future.

I don't believe that it's hard for old people to understand bitcoin. Compare bitcoin to gold, explain how it's immune to inflation, point out that it's much easier than gold to hide, store and secure bitcoin.

"Passive income" is a codeword for free money. What's more interesting than projects that promise free money materializing out of thin air are projects that apply blockchain technology to real life use cases. Investing in projects based on solid fundamentals that have real use cases is the true "passive income".

Why would I ever "trust" any project at all? Don't trust, verify.

Agreed with it 100%. Unfortunately most of the time people who get scammed have only themselves to blame as they don't even take the time to read the project's website and properly do their own research, which usually can tell you very quickly if the project is legit or is it just another glass bead. Another problem is not doing any research at all, and counting on people on twitter etc. shilling altcoins. People don't realize they are not listening to experts or enthusiasts but paid marketers.

It all depends on what you mean by "mass adoption". Did gold achieve mass adoption? Even in the most developed countries like the US only up to 12% of people own gold, and most of them just own some jewelry and not actual investment gold. Does that mean gold did not achieve mass adoption?

Even if just 5% of world's population owned bitcoin that would be an incredible rate of adoption for a technology this young. If 10% of world's population owned bitcoin that would be IMMENSE adoption. Bitcoin is a technology which use is the store of value. Mass adoption doesn't mean everyone owns bitcoin - only that people who actually have any value to store use bitcoin to store that value.

A better question would be: "is it possible (by any politician or government) to prohibit bitcoin?" How would that work? Bitcoin is an Open Source software solution, basically it's just code that can be extremely easily copied, stored and transfered. Trying to regulate or prohibit its use would be a nightmare. Of course as history proves, all sorts of ridiculous legislations are possible to be made by the governments, but bitcoin is not a material item that can be easily controled, searched for and taken away from people. Bitcoin is information. And banning information is extremely hard, as proven by the longevity and popularity of bittorrent. If the governments couldn't do nothing about a group of hobbyists sharing movies and video games, do you think they have a chance against something like bitcoin?

That's a really long time  It proves that the technology itself is extremely secure and virtually unpenetrable in the forseeable future. Most of the security vulnerabilities related to crypto are based on human error and simple stuff such as people still keeping all their funds on exchanges or not having a proper control over their private keys