To be honest, I don't think it's common for people who were rich to become poor. People don't often move significantly up or down between social classes, and if you're rich, it's not so easy to lose your wealth, mainly because it's usually diversified and isn't even all material: you have impressive symbolic capital in forms of powerful connections and relatives. So it can be that a person  has issues like an addiction, losing too much money and also having relatives who are unwilling to continue funding it. Or it can be that a person had a bit of wealth and was always in a fragile situation, and mismanagement or external circumstances caused the loss of what a person had. It can also be a result of running out of luck (if a person won a lottery before or won by gambling).

Thankfully, Bukele seems to be specifically  pro-Bitcoin, so I don't think his country will do something like this. Of course, they could make a fork, but from that point, they'd be simply altcoin adopters, a coin nobody cares about outside their country. They might as well just make their own token for such purposes, because the fact of it being a fork of Bitcoin won't help to keep the value and capitalization of BTC. So the safest and most secure way is just buying regular BTC as they do, and encouraging eco-friendly mining of regular BTC as I think they are planning to do.

I think this question is about accessibility of basic software required to properly use Bitcoin. If a person has a disability related to moving or hearing, I don't think it's a big obstacle to use Bitcoin, given that things can be done online, using a wallet like Electrum, without much need of moving and with no need to hear anything. So the biggest difficulty is disabilities related to vision. I found a Reddit thread claiming that Electrum wallet is 'partially accessible', but I've also seen articles saying that Bitcoin should be more accessible. Generally, I agree, but this applies not only to Bitcoin but to media, websites, cities and our lives generally: presuming that everyone will be able to read, hear, and move with no issues is just wrong.

I think the "you do not trust" format of discussing the benefits of Bitcoin doesn't feel right. I'd prefer "you don't need to trust", as otherwise it sounds as if people who use Bitcoin just have big trust issues.
There is a place for centralized services, and they will find their customers. But keeping in mind the risks of using them is always a good idea. Unfortunately, people tend to recall it only when bad things have already happened, and then forget over time when things seem to be going alright.

There are some conditions that must be met before people can properly use Bitcoin, before using it starts making sense. One such condition is stable electricity and access to Internet, which includes having a device (laptop or smartphone) where one can access coins and perform transactions. Another condition is, I'd agree with you, not being in severe poverty. If you live on a very small sum per day, volatility of Bitcoin and its transaction fees can be very significant to you. So you need to already be at the point of some sustainability before you can risk with BTC volatility. Moreover, the more wealth you have and can afford to direct into Bitcoin, the more you'll profit from it, but if you already have tons of wealth, the marginal value of having much more of it is quite low. So the conditions have to be just right for it to make sense to have and use Bitcoin.

Banks can have different reasons for spreading FUD about Bitcoin. One can be that they want to decrease its popularity, but it can also be just to ensure that people keep trusting the banks and store money there, not wanting to risk with the volatility of Bitcoin. Also, it can be done, so that the price falls down as people engage in panic selling, and banks can buy low to sell high later. While Bitcoin is in principle a competitor of banks because it doesn't require them and thus empowers people, banks don't need to oppose Bitcoin: they can try to position themselves as crypto-friendly, offer to hodl the crypto funds of their customers or offer them to invest in Bitcoin. In any case, there's no reason to believe such predictions as $5k price, regardless of who makes them.

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N100,000 is around $225, and the limit isn't even per transaction or per day, but per week. This is a tiny amount, a very harsh policy for cash-reliant people. Imposing fees for higher amounts will discourage people from using cash, but is Nigeria even cashless enough for people to be able to get by without cash outside big cities? If it is, then it might be alright. But I fear that it isn't, and people will basically be forced to ration withdrawals and pay extra fees just to get by... Unfortunately, I couldn't find research on this matter that would explain which things are attainable without cash in Nigeria and how well-adopted card payments are in rural areas especially.

Bitcoin will not be fiat because fiat is in principle different from it. Bitcoin can become used more as a payment, as a form of money. But it won't be issued by a central authority, there will be no arbitrary printing of money by the authority, no physical Bitcoin banknotes, no regulation of the price. Moreover, currency and an investment asset aren't fully contradictory, as people do save up money in fiat, and sometimes even as an investment (if they own local fiat is less stable than, say, the USD, they might hodl the USD to then exchange it for more local fiat). I don't see adoption of Bitcoin as a threat to its properties or usage, and I also don't believe Bitcoin will replace fiat.

Congrats on a month of accepting Bitcoin, op! It's pretty cool that you have 13 customers paying this way, especially if it's a small business. I also like your approach to finances where you keep the profit in BTC but convert the rest into a stable coin to safeguard against volatility. How do you deal with it tax-wise? Do you pay taxes for fiat transactions but not for Bitcoin transaction, not pay takes at all or pay taxes for Bitcoin transactions as well? Do people stay around till the first Bitcoin confirmation when they pay with BTC, or do you let them go as an act of trust and wait for the transaction to be confirmed yourself?

The Internet adoption took decades, and if Bitcoin turns out to be like that, we might still get to the several billion users point. Smartphones, however, were adopted quite fast, so Bitcoin is already well behind on the adoption rate. I am not sure how adopted Bitcoin will become, and especially how often it will be used. I don't think it's an issue that people will have small parts of Bitcoin if mass adoption hits. After all, you can just switch to thinking of it in Satoshis, and be happy. And, of course, given that the distribution of wealth is very unequal, some will have sizeable amounts of BTC even if the price is $1 million or more per coin.

There used to be a time in 2017 when it seemed that Bitcoin might actually become overpowered by altcoins. Not that it will stop being #1 but that its market share will drop significantly. The during the bear market, the situation changed and Bitcoin regained its strong dominance, only to lose it eventually later. While Bitcoin is far from being half of the market share (sitting at 37%), it's still holding firmly against the rest of the coins. However, it doesn't mean that they are completely dying off or not attracting attention. I don't think altcoins will be destroyed by Bitcoin. I think they'll have much smaller shares of the crypto market individually (excluding Ethereum), but Bitcoin won't be worth even half of the crypto market.

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Match 13 winner Total Strikes: 70

The law is very unexpected, given the real life and the 21st century we live in. Since it is going to affect not only the citizens but also foreigners, I think it will have adverse economic effects because I am not sure foreigners would want to live in a country or even visit a country where they can be imprisoned for living together and having sex without marriage. Harsh legislation can also play a negative role when it comes to foreign investments, as it signifies an unstable political climate (if they can imprison people for sex, what's going to be banned next?). Outside Indonesia, though, I don't think we'll feel the economic impact of this decision.

There are periods of negative news and positive news, depending on how the price is moving, and depending on whether there are bad events to spread FUD over. But there isn't anything happening that discredits Bitcoin itself and its usage. It's always something else, like potential legislation, centralized platforms (exchanges), investments by major companies or pulling investments out, etc. All such things are not essential for Bitcoin itself.
Bitcoin doesn't need to be recognized by countries, but it is recognized by many, and some recognize it as a currency. Bitcoin can be used in different ways, and perhaps the predominant way isn't that of being a currency, but it doesn't mean that Bitcoin is not a currency or that its future as a form of money is doomed.

If the bill hasn't been voted on, this might not become the law. It's also an improvement over restrictive attitude to cryptos that was around before the bill, and it can be a good move if taxes are reasonable (unfortunately, I couldn't see the details in the article). In that case, it can be considered adoption of cryptos by Nigeria. If, however, the taxes are high, to discourage the usage, then I'd answer negatively. As for helping speed up adoption, it seems that Nigerians are doing well in that regard with or without the legislation. It's more about the state catching up with its people at this point.

I don't know if it was fraud or not, to be honest. People who lost money would say it's a fraud because of their loss and feeling emotional about it. FTX will maintain nothing illegal happened, as this is a better position for them. Technically, since banks can use the money of their customers and aren't obliged to always have enough money for everyone with withdraw (which is why bankruptcies are possible), I don't see why the same wouldn't be legal for crypto exchanges. Investing the money of customers into political parties isn't legal, though, so if such allegations about FTX get confirmed, they will probably face prosecution. I am happy that an investigation will be launched and that the bankruptcy version will be questioned this way. I hope that if it's considered fraud, the assets will still be liquidated to give compensation to customers.

Electric vehicles, electric stoves and ovens are the way for the future because at least it is possible to have renewable sources of energy for electricity, whereas using oil or gas is not something that can be in principle done in eco-friendly way. However, using them properly requires having energy security, which isn't normally a problem but is an issue now. Ukraine, for example, used to enjoy a surplus of energy, producing more than the country needed, so we never had blackouts or energy deficit and exported energy to other countries. With the war and Russia targeting energy infrastructure, electricity is scarce, so electric cars and stoves are very unhelpful. So unfortunately, in current times, we can see a certain backlash due to a specific country doing its best to create global issues.

18, yes

I think that a big economic hardship is settling in already and is going to worsen over the next couple of years. It will be worse for some countries and better for others, just like it will hit some people harder than others, but it will be a tough time. As for cryptos, they are not directly dependent on the global economy (sure, people need to have funds to spare on buying cryptos, but the market is small enough that even a very small amount of those capable of doing that will do). The market is currently down, but I don't see why Bitcoin can't reach its new ATH in, say, a year, while the global economy is still going down. We can't rely on that happening, we can't know how it will go. So preparing for an economic crisis if one has a way of doing that is reasonable, but maybe crypto investors will have it better than others, we'll see.