I agree with the op that the crucial part is demand. While it might seem in the bubble of this forum that Bitcoin is very well-known, so many people have been using it for years and things like that, let's not forget that only up to 2% of the population use Bitcoin, so it's very far from being highly adopted, and we're still, regardless of how much publicity Bitcoin got over the years, are at early stage of adoption if we assume Bitcoin will become as widespread as smartphones or the Internet.
As for the news, they can affect short-term Bitcoin trends, but I don't think they are a significant case of Bitcoin's overall growth over time. Also, I think the media largely publish what would be relevant for their audience, so if they cover Bitcoin, it's also about the demand for such coverage and is thus covered by the first cause.

Given that the op emphasized that the question is not about the price but about something like Bitcoin stopping to exist, I think it's an unlikely hypothetical situation. If we just woke up tomorrow, and there's no BTC, it would be at the top of the news, people would probably panic sell all their other cryptos (at least, the majority would), fearing that a similar fate awaits the rest of them, and many would be devastated, but for the vast majority of the world (who never used Bitcoin), it won't mean anything. If there's a reasonable explanation why it falls (apocalypse and the Internet is down or a breakthrough of quantum computing making Bitcoin keys a thing you can get with new computing power), then the effects would depend on what exactly happened, whether other cryptos survived, and are the cryptos the biggest concern at a given point in time.

I am trying to understand how independence of nations is related to Russia's war against Ukraine, but I must say I am struggling. You're saying China, US under Trump, and Russia are strong Nations, which fascist globalists want to weaken? Well that just shows lack of knowledge of what fascism is. Bitcoin is against central power, it's against the idea that one thing is strong and the rest are weak. Russia is an imperialist state which has precisely the ideology of being strong and thus entitled to take over smaller nations which have their own national ideas and agendas. This is not a good idea for Bitcoin either. It's the opposite of freedom, the opposite of democracy, the opposite of decentralization. If we have 3 centers, it's still centralization, and it's better if we have a multitude of countries, a diversity of policies and attitudes in the world. Oh, and while Putin is sort of not against Bitcoin, Trump, with his America first shit, was not crypto-friendly because with America first comes the USD first. And China is not crypto-friendly either because Bitcoin is a challenge for a state that seeks total control.
Ukraine, on the other hand, is a crypto-friendly country (more crypto-friendly than Russia) with a roadmap of becoming even more pro-crypto in the future. And what Russia is doing is trying to stop that (and many other things an independent Ukraine can be) from happening.

I looked at her LinkedIn profile, and she seems quite qualified for the job because she's been doing crypto-related work for years, including working on Bitcoin Mempool for the last year. I guess we'll see what sort of suggestions she makes as she gets more accustomed to the role, I think it's too early to judge on preliminary ideas that she outlined. As for the gender thing, yeah, of course it's cool to not care about gender, but it's also good that she's a woman because things like that empower other women to see that they can also do something like that.

I think the bear market should be for building, but it usually isn't in real life. Investors often turn their backs on Bitcoin when it falls, media write articles on how Bitcoin will never recover or how much lower it will go from there, and most adoption news happen, I think, during the bull market. So the bear market is a time when some build up their hodlings, but when new players, IMO, rarely join the game because they're not sure the game isn't over. It feels like there's less FUD during this bear market than there was during the 2018 one, but maybe it's just my personal perception of things.

Game 1:  8' SPFC 1-0

a) 16 b) 2:55
a) 16 b) 2:42

I can't see sources on this particular ban, but overall I hope it's not anything discussed seriously. Encryption is everywhere, banning it would outlaw tons of things on the Internet, including messenger apps, online banking security and probably even https. So I think it's highly unlikely that will ever happen because of how much damage it can do to various areas, even if we ignore the cryptocurrency question. As for cryptos, it would make them illegal, but it doesn't mean they'd stop existing. Some would probably still use them, but the capitalization can experience a huge drop of, like, 99%. At the same time, it won't be topic #1 because outlawing encryption would cause a lot of problems which concern more people that crypto market does.

I think its greed that drives such behavior. Take the current situation, for example. The price is around $20k, which is more than 3x below the ATH. If you believe that Bitcoin will recover, just like it always did before, it's reasonable to assume that if you buy now, you can expect a 3x profit, if not 4x-5x because the new ATH is normally higher than the last one. That's some wonderful long-term profits which are very likely. But no, people get greedy and start thinking how much more it can be if Bitcoin goes down even lower, in the end not getting anything out of it.

Of course, the price matters more for hodlers (at least, long-term trends matter to them or they have a certain target after which they can use/sell) and traders (short-term volatility) more than to those who view Bitcoin as money. But I think it's probably the majority of users, so disregarding them is probably wrong. Also, it does matter if you want to use it as money as well. Imagine that you want to buy a certain flat with your BTC, and a couple of months ago you could afford it, but now you lack half of the payment required because the purchasing power of Bitcoin (which is roughly what we see when the price in USD changes) decreased that much. So it does matter how much it's worth if you are going to use it.

As bitmover pointed out, China itself doesn't care about privacy, so I don't think this data should be "treated with utmost care": it should not be gathered and stored in the first place. And while the government of China can't be blamed for the hack itself, it should not have gathered the info about their citizens. Who knows, maybe the data was leaked precisely to show how much China as a state knows of its citizens. So I think better privacy laws, not more KYC requirements, could be a part of the solution. And using surveillance not to monitor regular citizens and what they say about the Communist party, but to look for real criminals.

That's what I like about market competition: if Binance does it, competitors will need to make similar moves or offer something else that is no less attractive to their users if they don't want to lose customers. Binance is a good exchange company. Of course, many are unhappy with it because of its KYC policy and how tightly it follows international and local legislations (such as abiding by EU anti-Russian sanctions), but it's a reputable and convenient platform. With their level of popularity, they probably don't need trading fees for revenue anymore, so I'd a good move.

I think it's a pretty cool idea, I wish there were more places with such museums. From the photos, though, I could only see things but not explanations (information boards). Do they have those? It would be useful to be able to read what is in front of you, when it was actively used for mining, how efficient it was (how much one could mine with it over a certain period of time), what it was replaced by and stuff like that. I remember a time when Venezuela was frequently mentioned in talks about crypto adoption, but then El Salvador overshadowed it when it made Bitcoin a legal tender.

I'm not sure what to think of this. First, I don't like anything that's branded as VIP, elite etc. It's just this exclusivist posh attitude that's not for me. Then there's bitcoinblack they keep mentioning, and I'm unfamiliar with it. When I googled it, I found some sort of Bitcoin Black crypto and people on quora saying it's a scam. Also, from other news on the matter I see it's about a card for UAE. And there's another thing that bothers me: I see no major outlets writing about it, which to me is an indicator the news might be untrue or misleading.

I think it's great news. Not only it shows interest in Bitcoin mining, but it's also related to renewable energy, which is important to break the stereotype that Bitcoin mining is not environmentally friendly. It shows that Bitcoin mining is actually one of the industries that can promote the usage of renewable energy when a company has a lot of it and is figuring out what to do with it or, in this case, testing out the greed. However, I don't fully understand how Bitcoin mining can help, aside from testing, with instability that comes with renewable sources.

a) 18 b) 2:20
a) 16 b) 2:06

I am not sure how trustworthy such data is because I don't know how they estimate these numbers, what counts as active usage to them, how much might not be accounted for. Also, even looking at the chart, it's clear that it went pretty low before but then jumped back up, so there's no reason to believe that won't happen again. Moreover, if it's about active usage, it might be that many people just tend to hodl their coins during bad times instead of trading them. It doesn't mean they don't care about the market or abandon it, they just don't sell at low price, which is wise.

I don't see it as a problem because to me it's just a reference point. The value of dollar is commonly known because it's basically acting like the world's reserve currency. So, for instance, the value of local fiat in various countries, including mine, is often measured against USD because it's presumed to be stable enough for this purpose. Now, lately, the USD is not as stable as it used to be, which creates an issue. $100 in July of 2022 is not the same as $100 a year ago, not in terms of purchasing power. So when measuring Bitcoin in dollar, we forget to account for that. But given BTC's very high volatility and usage all over the world, we need some sort of estimate that would help understand what you can buy for 1 BTC today, what you could buy 2 years ago, and what you could buy a month ago. It would be very inconvenient, at this level of volatility, to rely solely on BTC and get used to extreme price changes over short periods of time.

11) Rafael dos Anjos
10) Caio Borralho
9) Said Nurmagomedov
8 ) Jared Vanderaa
7) Jamie Mullarkey
6) Cynthia Calvillo
5) Ricky Turcios
4) Cortney Casey
3) Tresean Gore
2) Kennedy Nzechukwu
1) Ronnie Lawrence
Total Strikes 107

a) 16 b) 2:01
a) 18 b) 2:25