The whales pumping the altcoins would love to get the 7 BTC off your hands indeed. That's the risk you have for jumping in hoping for a quick profit.
But indeed, if you would have jumped on eth a month ago, you'd have like 40 BTC now.

Government support will only happen if they find a way to tax it. In The Netherlands Bitcoin is already mentioned when you file your taxes. They can't check it, but you're required to report your savings (and pay 1.2% per year above a certain threshold).

http://www.coinwarz.com/calculators/bitcoin-mining-calculator says you can earn $0.50 per day per PC at this speed. And this only gets less from here on, while your electricity cost is very likely to be higher.

In general you can't gamble for a living, and you shouldn't live for gambling.

But you mainly hear from the winners, not from the losers. It's the big winners that get celebrated, the jackpot-hit in a casino that rings the alarms. Of course on average people lose, casinos are not for charity.

I agree 100% As long as you do it for fun, you're good! When it is no longer fun to play, you should find a different way to spend your time.

You are posing in the Gambling section asking how to stay away from Gambling. It would be a good start to not visit here anymore, as everything reminds you of gambling.
Or, if you can't stay away anyway, set yourself a weekly budget. And whatever happens, do not deposit more than that budget: don't chase losses! On top of that you need an exit strategy: at what profit will you withdraw and take your money for that week? Think of that before you start, if you just keep going you are likely to lose again at some point.

That's the Australian dude from years ago, right? I don't really see why he'd have to sell his clothes too. For dramatic effect? It's not as if the few extra dollars that gives you are going to make a difference. But if you lose, you'll still need clothes. Same as if you win: you have to instantly start shopping for clothes instead of doing nice things^*.

I would not dare to do this, it just sounds irresponsible. Maybe if I would be single.

^* As a guy I don't consider buying clothes a fun thing to do.

Do you physically have it, AKA you can touch it?
5 grams doesn't really sound like a "bar", when you say "gold bar" I'm thinking of a brick-sized piece.

Stocks seem overpriced, but as long as central banks are doing Quantitative easing (QE) (AKA printing money) there is no upper limit for stock value. Or better: there is no lower limit for the value of the money they are printing.

When that happens the financial world has much biggr problems than just Bitcoin being compromised! I wouldn't worry about things that don't exist.

I found a discussion topic about it: Quantum computers and Bitcoin (2012)
Short summary: Your private key is safe as long as your public key is safe. In other words don't re-use addresses ever.

Not much spectacular happened around the previous halving (from 50 to 25 BTC block reward). Why would that be different now?
The "problem" is that halvings are a few years apart, and by then people have forgotten the previous halving. The effect of every halving gets smaller anyway, as less and less bitcoins are left to be mined.

Considering how many people know the site, I would expect them to place some advertising on it. Not too much to scare people away, just enough to make it worth their effort.

Yesterday I noticed preev.com was very inaccurate, showing like 30 dollars higher value than bitcoinaverage.com.
I'm hoping the maintenance will fix that again, it's a lot shorter to type.

If paper money is going to be phased out, I expect it to be replaced by conventional banks as we know it now. Pay with plastic, not with bitcoin.
But as long as there is a need for a private payment, and I think there will always be one, people will come up with other things. It could be paper money from a different country, good-old-gold, or cryptocurrencies. Its a simple fact that I don't want all my transactions to be seen by a bank/government.

I do like that idea, something special with a very small market. Not something useless that makes the creator very rich.

A nice demonstration of its power: https://ethereumpyramid.com/

I've read all sorts of futuristic made-up possible uses, but none of them has been implemented. For something with 1 billion dollar market capitalization that is a bit disappointing to say the least.

In my opinion people have unrealistic expectations about investments the moment it concerns cryptocurrencies. In "normal" investing a steady 7% a year is very good long-term. But when it's cryptocurrencies, people suddenly expect more like 10% a day, or 100% a month. That can never be sustained.

There is a strategy: minimize the house edge, which you can do by going all-in only once. This gives you the best odds (mathematically), but also the least fun. And it feels much more risky than playing small amounts for a long time, as statistics and math are not intuitive.

I'd like to add to your list: Why would a successful mining company need me? If they can offer ROI in a few months, they don't need my, any large investment fund would love to do business with them!

Isn't that obvious? Locking your son in a wall in New York sounds illegal.
This must be troll right? It can't be true!

Five dollar cent is about 0.1 milli Bitcoin. You can transfer that with a lower transaction fee, it just takes longer.
Keep in mind that receiving (many) 0.1mBTC transactions means you need a higher fee to send them again, as the small inputs make the transaction larger (in bytes).

For small transactions altcoins are actually a lot cheaper. Doge for instance gets you 220 Doge coins for 5 cents, and the transaction fee would only be 1 Doge. So 0.5% fee vs. around 100% fee in Bitcoin.

My advice: don't make very small transactions in Bitcoin.

The hype around ethereum makes it seem like "smart contracts" are needed. I do agree it is a nice possibility, but so far I have never needed it, and if people would have needed it, it would have been invented a lot sooner.
It now seems they are offering a solution to a problem that does not exist. Meanwhile the inventors are cashing in, people jump on the train afraid to miss it, without ever having shown a single application that we can use. Or even better: an application that we need.

My first gambling goes back to school, around 10 years old I think. Betting small amounts of money on binary things, from throwing a dice to picking a straw.