Bitcoin is less anonymous than cash.  There's stuff like the 500 Euro note which is nearly exclusively used by criminals and corrupt politicians or police officers.

You're mainly shocked by the prospect of not having all your activities tracked precisely by a bank or government.  Bitcoin just imitates the function of cash for people to pass it between each other without a third party.  The point is that when we slowly move to digital payments, people don't have to be followed for their entire lives (and also, blockchain payments can potentially be much cheaper in the future due to the cost of trusted intermediaries).

If it wasn't Bitcoin they were using it would be something else.  It doesn't matter.

The good thing is that people can start moving out of Antpool once they realise just how much of their revenues Antpool is robbing from them. 

The bad thing is that people like an extremely steady stream of income and some people can't handle significant variance.

However, as people's margins of profits get tighter, pools will become more competitive with the fees they take and people will start moving to pools with less than 1% fees like Kanopool.  Fortunately, a block every ten minutes is good enough for a pool with 1% of the hashrate to mine 1.44 blocks per day on average, so eventually people will stop conforming to whichever pool is biggest at the time.

The main point of UASF is to begin SegWit before it gains a significant majority of miners.  If, when it occurs, SegWit has a minority of hashrate, there will be a split.

It could get very complicated if BU or neutral miners are particularly determined to stick with their chain.  Therefore, it's absolutely essential that a UASF has extremely strong community and business support, otherwise miners could stay on the majority chain.

It's actually not that hard.  I can't code or anything, and I admit that sometimes I say things that are wrong, but the basics of it and everything you need to know you can pick up easily.

If you're just really confused, you could try Coindesk's explanation, which I found very helpful.  If you want it all in one place and you can pick up new information pretty quickly, you could also try the technical explanation.

All you need to do is get around some basic terms like mining (verifying transactions/proving that they happened - anyone can do it and new Bitcoin is introduced as it's given to them as a reward), hashrate (computing power dedicated to mining) and the blockchain (a public ledger containing all Bitcoin transactions ever made).  You'll get it in a week or so at most.

It's absolutely great.  You can connect it with Electrum and loads of other wallets so you're not missing anything that other people do, and their own interface is pretty smooth/convenient as well.

If you're not very tech-savvy and you need to feel secure from viruses, physical theft and many other issues, it should definitely be your first choice.

Just keep your seed safely locked up/hidden/buried or use a passphrase.  If you want, TREZOR even suggest having a second decoy passphrase which leads to fewer coins and keeps you safe from a five dollar wrench attack.

Yes, but it won't be easy to fully automate it due to how irritating exchanges can be with fees, deposits and withdrawals, etc.  You also want to stay well away from the super shady exchanges like YoBit or you might lose all your coins soon enough.

Ideally you'd have a human touch and it would be more like an arbitrage "software" which tells you exactly what to do.

That's because Bitcoin has more credibility and public image, but that only stems from being an earlier system and being the king of crypto.  The good thing is that people are conservative about their money so it can stay with a high price for years, but the longer it goes without scaling, the closer it gets to falling against Litecoin or another crypto.

Every stock is measured against the US dollar, does that mean that you think Bitcoin can never do well?

Most Bitcoin debit cards will allow a small amount of transfers without verification and then require it if you want to spend a lot.  Cryptopay, for example, has separate limits for unverified accounts and verified accounts (verified ones are unlimited for most things I think). 

It's unlikely you'll find any cards with no verification at all unless their own company details are very shady.

Like cash, Bitcoin is much harder to spend if you take a lot of transactions in order to send a bigger one.  When I walk to a shop and buy something for $20 in cash, that's an easy transaction. 

When I go there and bring 2000 pennies, it's going to be pretty damn hard.

The chances are that you took several small inputs, meaning that the size of your transaction becomes bigger and it's more expensive to spend.  What matters is the satoshi per byte, not the satoshi.  If you post the transaction ID I could confirm that and try to get it accelerated for you.

This time, Bitcoin has matured.

It doesn't matter whether there's going to be a bubble in the near future - there might - but even if there is, it'll be a speculative bubble based on real knowledge.

Actually, the most important thing to note about the current situation is that the Bitcoin search volume is still much lower than in 2013, but the blockchain search volume is much higher than then. 

This shows that people's attitudes are maturing and centering around the real potential of the technology rather than the basics of how to use it for now.  It also shows a growth in institutional investment rather than weak hands who will drop out in a year.

Pfft.  You people are liars, pretending that you're against speculation on the price.  If the price was still $1, nearly none of you would be buying and using Bitcoin.

Let's get real.  The vast majority of people holding Bitcoin at all are doing it to speculate, and those that aren't would still sell if they were worried about the price.  

In the future, when the price stabilises, it'll be different - for now, it's 99% speculation in every country.

Coinmarketcap's estimates are pretty weak.  Unfortunately the Google and Coindesk rates are still hovering from $1990-1999.

So damn close... The Bitstamp price needs to smash $2000 and stay there, along with Coinbase and everyone.  Then we'll be ready for a massive leap IMO.

The OP isn't sending, they're receiving.  And you seldom need a fee of 0.001, never mind 0.1.  Maybe you should check yourself first.

-Zero confirmation transactions are not safe.  They are not safe.

-Altcoins can bring new things.  It all depends on the specific altcoin.  However, Bitcoin should be adaptable and it wouldn't make sense for people to jump ship as soon as there's a problem - if that happened, there'd be a new coin every week. 

People who are annoyed should help contribute towards a side that they support by running the desired node, mining on a pool that supports their side, or contributing towards a UASF if they want that.

ViaBTC's accelerator doesn't accept transactions with no fee.  Furthermore, not all wallets allow Replace-By-Fee transactions.

I think you've been scammed.  No one sends transactions with zero fees under normal circumstances, and it will never confirm.  The sender could double-spend and you would never receive it.

Nothing is impossible, but Bitcoin is open source.  With the size that Bitcoin is now, that means that thousands of the best programmers in the world have failed to find any bugs (well, that the bugs which have been found have been fixed).  Bitcoin is about the closest system to 100% secure in the world - there was a fatal bug very close to the beginning I think, but it was fixed by a hard fork.

So basically, nothing is impossible but I'd say it's pretty damn close.

To some extent, you're right.

However, you were very lucky to get in during 2015 as there was a significant bear market then and the price was very low.

It all depends on whether price growth looks ridiculous or unstable like it did in 2013.  You'd be much better off if you'd sold near the top in 2013, just because you saw a pump and got ready to buy in the bear market that usually comes after pumps.  If the price went up to >$4000 in just a few weeks, I would either sell early or sell as soon as it crashes.  I wouldn't sell all but you'd end up with a lot more Bitcoin if you just wait for the big crash that happens after pumps.

While a 51% attack is extremely unlikely in Bitcoin's current state, it would not fully compromise the network even if it were to occur, and if it did people would eventually switch pools to remove the attackers' power. 

As I understand it, there are only a few things people with 51% of the hash rate can do:

-Stop certain transactions from getting confirmations, thus making them invalid (if this actually happened the reports would be wide enough for people to switch pools);

-Reverse their own transactions.  They still can't fiddle with the already confirmed transactions or with people's wallets, but they can fiddle with the transactions that they send;

-Briefly prevent other miners from getting blocks?  I don't quite get the details of this part.

Anyway, while it would cause some temporary panic, it most likely wouldn't completely destroy Bitcoin's use.

Yeah, an ounce of Bitcoin is worth way more than an ounce of gold.

...Oh yeah, back to reality.  There are many, many times more ounces of gold in existence than the amount of Bitcoin - one estimate being around 171,300 tonnes or about 6 billion ounces.

Furthermore, even a tenth of Bitcoin being sold on exchanges right now would completely destroy the price and market cap if it were to happen in reality.  It's not the same as gold in that regard.

Bitcoin being higher than the gold price per ounce is a completely arbitrary way of measuring the two.

As with other online wallet systems, it's not a real Bitcoin transaction.  It's just a number on a computer in Coinbase or Xapo's respective databases.

It definitely shouldn't be regarded as a permanent solution as it relies on a trusted third party, which is exactly what Bitcoin seeks to avoid.  Also, these transactions rely on both parties having an account with those services even though a majority of everyday Bitcoin users will not.

You'd be best off just paying your fees.