Some countries are just bad at digitalizing, and you often need cash there to get by. Italy has been heavily cash-based for a while. I've found the data from 2019 that around 86% of payments were made in cash there, so it's not a drastic policy change, but it still feels weird to reinforce what is clearly a problem that should be solved. Using cash is less hygienic, riskier (getting a person's cash is easier than using a stolen plastic card), more prone to financial crimes (cash can be counterfeit and real cash can be easily used for illegal purposes because no ID is required), less convenient (you have to count and carry it, cashiers have to count what to give you in return). I am not a fan of cash, I think going digital is the way.

I think the quoted tips for long-term investment make sense, aside from the fact that people still judge the future by the past because there's no other reasonable thing to build one's predictions on. As for the additional thoughts, I wouldn't call long-term investment 'not risky', as there's a big risk if it's an altcoin that can just crash and never come back, but considerable risk with Bitcoin as well because nothing ensure that there won't be one bear market from which it never recovers. And then on compound return, staking cryptos on a centralized platform involves a big risk which was demonstrated well by FTX. Maybe those small interest rates aren't worth it.
And overall, I'd just stick to Bitcoin to minimise the risk.

First reactions can vary, and unless a person has a recording or a diary entry of it, we can remember it wrong and say something that isn't how it actually happened. I don't have a diary or a recording, so I can't be sure, but I think my reaction was being inquisitive but somewhat sceptical. My first BTC was through a signature campaign, and I didn't understand how the numbers on the screen can really be worth something if you can't have a physical version of them and if tons of people would not accept this as payment. I was wondering why some people do value it and are willing to spend actual money or exchange actual goods for it. I don't think I was excited, but I was perplexed and perhaps amused.

I am happy that people are withdrawing their BTC from centralized exchanges. This means that something changed in the public opinion, and while surely people have heard 'not your keys, not your coins', way more people are taking it seriously now. I understand why prior to FTX some ignored it: if a company's reputable and convenient, surely the chance of you losing your money there because of it being a centralized exchange, right? Apparently, the chance is much higher than many anticipated, and if one of the biggest exchanges can go down, others don't seem safe anymore either.

16

Banning is too strict, given that over time, Bitcoin does seem to grow in value, and there is no better long-term asset in terms of profits so far, which is very good for a retirement account. However, normally retirement plans should be about low-risk investments as far as I know, and Bitcoin isn't one of those. I think a better solution would be to oblige those retirement funds that invest in cryptos to do that only if a retiree agrees to it, and require performing an act of orally informing a retiree (and making it written in bold and with a big font in some sort of form one would have to sign) of the risk and high volatility of the asset.

I hope the FTX story will have a long-term impact, as people are currently withdrawing their funds from centralized platforms and will get used to storing them in non-custodial wallets, so in the future there won't be any need to move back to centralized platforms. Hopefully, people becoming more mindful of the storage and less trusting when it comes to exchanges will also force exchanges to review their policies and suggest better conditions to their users (for example, a guarantee that the exchange does not use the money of customers for any purposes and earns profits in other ways).

The article says 73% of coins (it seems to me from the article that they have several major altcoins plus Bitcoin) of this family are in cold storage, which is good and also probably means the article's title isn't very accurate, especially since they weren't using FTX or other centralized exchanges prior to the crush. I haven't used DEXes, but one is in control of private keys there as well. So their approach to financial security seems reasonable. It was, however, learned through a hard lesson of losing money on an exchange. I can only hope that more people will follow such examples and take the matter of storing their coins more seriously than they did before the FTX.

13

I think I remember discussions of this paper, and while it is available online, I believe it was not published in an academic journal and thus wasn't peer-reviewed. So there can be big mistakes here that won't be spotted by people without very good higher education in economics.  In any case, the arguments seem to be that gold is less risky (because it's less volatile) but has less liquidity and is more inconvenient (because it's physical, has to be transported and stored, etc.), whereas Bitcoin is easier to obtain and store, but is risker because it's more volatile. That seems right to me, but I would expect banks to go for gold way more than for cryptos because volatility is too big of a gamble when you need to stabilize your economy.

I haven't used cryptos with private blockchains and I don't think that banning them will lead to eventually banning all cryptos. Also, the EU is just a part of the world, and others might not follow. However, I believe strong research must be conducted before making such decisions. It should be investigated whether the amount of illicit activities has increased over time, whether this increase can be attributed to cryptocurrencies and what part of it is done using private blockchains (and which ones). Then assessments must be made to determine if the ban is going to significantly decrease illicit actions or if criminals would simply switch to something else. Bans of currencies are limiting the freedom of people, so such limitations better be very well-justified.

My first guess when I started reading the op was that it's Russia, so it's good that this option is being discussed.  Russia has foreign debt payment issues due to sanctions, it has enough finances to afford tons of gold, and they did something very similar to returning to the gold standard to stabilize their fiat back in spring. So these is an obvious need for gold, and also obvious reasons to buy it secretly, to avoid sanctions.
I must say I'm not pleased with how little the sanctions seem to have impacted Russia, allowing it to comfortably continue spending hundreds of millions of dollars per day of the war for a very long time, and they can probably do it for another year if not more. If they're buying lots of gold, this can help them stabilize even further.

AFAIK, Japan has a major problem with the nation getting older and older. It's partly due to a culture of lots of respect for the elderly, partly due to a high stage of development which allows people to live till older age. Given that cryptos are fairly new, and the main user base seems to be fairly young, it wouldn't be surprising if Japan is falling back in this regard. That being said, I thought Japan was generally crypto-friendly and is currently working on becoming even friendlier. After all, cryptos are officially legal there, the tax is progressive, and now Binance is entering it.

The KYC obligation regardless of the sums a person is dealing with is something I find unfair because people can often exchange fiat currencies to a certain point without KYC, and I feel like the legislation should not make it tougher for Bitcoin than for fiat cash. As for taxes, they depend on a country and its legislation heavily, and it is something people should try advocating for relaxing in their countries if the taxes there are unfair.
I think Bitcoin's future is largely as an investment option but also somewhat as a payment method, and it is the future of regulations, but we can try ensuring that the regulations are fair and mild.

The idea of pre-planned series of big crypto scams sounds like conspiracy theory stuff to me, to be honest. As for whales, I believe the concept is overestimated. We have a relatively small number of Bitcoin addresses that contain the vast majority of BTC, but we don't know how many of these addresses belong to single individuals, and in companies, things are often decided collectively, and some things are more likely to happen than others. Moreover, is there any evidence that it is the very rich addresses moving their funds that play a crucial part in the price dynamics of Bitcoin? I don't think so. And since 'whales' as big powerful players that manipulate the market don't sound too real to me, I don't think people should be or think like them. What people should do is be mindful of where they store their money and which projects they choose to support.

When I read the post, I thought about those tables with months and how the price changed in different years, so it's great that DdmrDdmr posted it, and December seems to be a 50-50 kind of month historically, so even if we rely on the past behaviour to predict future behaviour, it's wrong to assume that it will be a good month. I hope it will be, but there's no reason it has to be. So far, we're just one day in, and maybe the market isn't ready to change the tide yet. We should be morally prepared for whichever outcome comes next.

Brazil's population is more than 200 million people, so it's a huge step in Bitcoin adoption. The president might not sign the law, of course, if he wants to create an inconvenience during his last weeks in office, but hopefully given the support of the parliament and a change of president soon, it won't be a big issue for this country. If it's recognized as a payment method, am I correct to assume it means that it's not getting taxed, just like fiat currencies aren't taxed? Of course, income taxes are a separate thing, but at least it isn't a property, so no VAT is applicable?

It could be a set of natural causes, some could be more than that, but it doesn't seem like there's anything related to being crypto billionaires there specifically. Moreover, while crashing on a private helicopter is something that would not have happened without the wealth, dying in one's sleep or drowning are quite possible without it. I would not attach too much meaning to these events, and I generally agree with others that there is probably nothing to these situations other than people dying of natural causes. Of course, having immense wealth and being public about it makes a person a target, but it does not mean that these particular people were killed or that crypto wealth carries more risk than any other wealth in terms of becoming a target.

22'

After the ICO market plummeted and it turned out that even some of the most promising and well-funded projects can't deliver according to expectations, I barely followed the next big things. Some of them were just hype, others managed to cut out a niche for themselves (like NFTs). I don't know what the next craze will be (maybe CBDCs at some point), but I don't think it will revolutionize the industry. Best case scenario, it has its brief popularity and then remains something occasionally remembered and used by others. If ICOs couldn't make Bitcoin less significant, I don't think anything can, until we have a major breakthrough which doesn't seem to be around the corner.