The idea is somewhat same like digital currencies running on fiat. In my country, such e-wallets and cards that store digital fiat are usable in purchases for rides and for stores. Same could be applied on Bitcoin, with the help of QR codes and a wallet app. Though the main discouraging factor is the slow transaction times and the chance of a transaction to not make it through.

I think cryptocurrency, despite existing already for 10 years, is still in its early stage, or this year might be the peak, golden time of cryptocurrency. Adoption takes place, both by institutions, some companies, and governments. This might not be good for Bitcoin alone, but altcoins like XRP and ETH are quite positive to being used.

If such country would do such act, not only it would produce worse inflation rates, but the institutions in which it took loan would lose trust on the government (US in your example), and alerts other lenders not to accept loans from US, since they would pay them worthless paper money. And trust is much more important than paying debt easily, since once US is in need of something that isn't available to them, they would have a hard time finding sources for such.

Some consider it a threat, some does not. Though for me, it might be a concern. Bitcoin has already been restricted in China, implementation is just one hindrance. Though if hard crackdown on such activities related to Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrencies aside from their soon-to-release cryptocurrency is passed into law and enforcement, then it could be a huge FUD that's going to crash the market, and even hash rates too. Also, a paradigm shift might happen, since this government coin would be backed by the government. And given the fact that they're not a democratic country, protests regarding Bitcoin mining would be unlikely to happen, and what the government wants is likely to be achieved.

Doesn't prove anything yet. We can't also say he does support the technology fully. All he did was some hints, that some media overhypes, and one medium to bring FOMO once again. Even the 200k, as per the site, mistakenly believed to be a Bitcoin prediction, though it appeared later on that it was just the number of sales from the Cybertruck.

 If we consider these miners, they aren't affiliated with each other most probably, and thus some attack might be unlikely to happen, but is still possible.

Disregarding that, and only focusing on the possible ban, I do think it's a concern, maybe not as of now, but later this year. Some governments already announce their interest in blockchain-powered technologies, and clearly China is planning to release their own. And such release would make it effectively mandatory to be used by the population, and could bring more restrictions or even total ban on anything related on other cryptocurrencies.

Just curious, why is Gold or property not a good store of value? Property price is appreciating over time, since the population increases and/or the demand for more land space is increasing too. Gold is also a good one, since it has been existing for thousands of years and the world has been on numerous world wars, while this commodity remained to be valuable.

Most wars result in economical crash, especially to those involved countries. The business sector slows down and comes to a halt when necessary. Trading and exchange are crippled. There could be an influx of people going into crypto as a store of value, but it won't matter anyway once the war broke out to a devastating level.

Centralization to me is not within the shareholders, but instead in the nodes that run the network, which is.more of a concern to me rather than these whales. China has established a centralized network of nodes, consisting of more than 50% of the network. And outright ban by the Chinese government would bring adverse impact on the market, regardless of these whales.

That search term must be from other countries and not in Iran. Remember that they have ongoing ban on internet access, and such amount of search traffic is most likely to have been caused by Bitcoin investors since they know that when such crisis breaks out, manipulation starts to take place, or they're just hoping that demand is really increasing in Iran, which is clearly not the case.

First off, war doesn't do any good to economy. The argument of some people that cryptocurrency would be the safe haven of people's money could be true, but the recent US and Iran attacks on each other doesn't correlate to the recent pump. Iranian doesn't have such demand on Bitcoin. Also, even when the news about the missiles break out, the price starts to dump, which signifies their irrelevance.

If you had bought on somewhere near $7,300, and sold at near $8,400, then you have gained somewhere 10%-13%. Despite that, I don't think there are any colleration between the two, and the pump is mere manipulation rather than real demand. Iranian aren't that interested in Bitcoin. And when you notice, even after the news of Iran launching those missiles, the downtrend already started, stating that the initial pump was only manipulation.

Looks like #3 is happening right now. A short-lived pump of up to $8,400, and now we are back again at $7,900, which could be considered as another support level, thanks to investors buying in back and continuous demand to Bitcoin. Though the possibility of another bull run is quite something, we might still see another dump if whales didn't see any rise in market trading volume and unable to break the resistance level.

I think it's a mix of Fundamental Analysis and Technical Analysis. Chart analysis alone couldn't predict the price trend that much unless seen on a long-term chart, where the factors of the trend lies more into the market and core network updates and ideology, unlike in short-term where manipulation and volatility are mostly present, making the chart almost unpredictable. Though Fundamental Analysis of what's happening and what's about to happen might also shed some light to predict the trend, there's really no guarantee of an accurate prediction.

Of course, it's the manipulators' game. Whales are what drives the market really. These news are just catalysts to instill FOMO in small-time investors. There's nothing new, and we, the smaller fishes, just swims on whatever current they deliver. A FUD spreading event? Whales dump the price. A crisis? Makes us also fools by pumping the price, hyping the news and such. It's not new in the market really, a decentralized, though manipulated market.

A conflict could not be always the result of demand. And could not always be told that the demand was the result. It may be such, but the demand and the recant pump looks like just any other manipulation in the market. Iranians aren't buying Bitcoin, their internet is censored, and its just another FOMO scheme pumping the price up, but we have no idea when it's gonna go to a reversal.

I think it was meant to be a FOMO catalyst. With US and Iran's tension, paired with a headline that tells Bitcoin has become much more valued in Iran, investors would fear that they would jump on board too late even without confirming such rumors. Though there is always a split among the community who believes what, the thing is, it's difficult to know as always in a decentralized anonymous market.

I don't think it would get to 50% gains, the market sentiment is different from this day, due to more informed investors, more restriction by the government, tougher competition, and such factors. But it's most likely to gain somewhere around 30% just enough to break $10,000 border. Then a stall might happen, but the long-term uptrend should be evident.

The analogy was quite off. For one, you're comparing antiqueness to Bitcoin, whereas Bitcoin cannot be antique. Oldness of coins are what makes them special, because they have one quality, being rare. Bitcoin, with the same idea, would be rare or hard to get, simply by demand of people to it. Though this crosses the border between an asset and a currency, which the latter is the main objective of Bitcoin, not a collectible.

Looks like it still isn't. And I expect another crash. This would be a short-lived high and we might crash back again to $7,500 or lower. The halving is still far from us. The bull run might start late-March. Though there's still the possibility of a bull run, the price spike is quite narrow and a possible large market player is on the move, but would have it dump once more before we have the bull run.