It's like wearing a bulletproof vest all the time because you might get shot one day. What's the point of making your life harder just because you're a scared weirdo?
I wear a mask in stores just because it makes people more comfortable around me and I don't want to make a scene. I don't believe it helps in any way because I'm not sick and won't spread the virus and I'm also not afraid of catching it. I know people who had it and the only symptom they've experienced was a headache. So, I wear it for others not for me, but I'm not going to wear it everywhere, that would be a huge burden to ride a bicycle or walk on a hot day with a mask on. They tried to enforce it like 2 months ago but most people were ignoring it. We even had the police chase people around for not wearing masks, trying to fine them.

Figuratively speaking, I'm waiting for new days in Bitcoin rather than new nights. Nights are cold and full of terrors.
I saw an interesting model a few days ago and it was based on the previous 2 cyclles displayed on a log scale. According to it, with every cycle being longer than the previous one, we will stay stable for another year and the most probable peak of the next bull market will be in 2022. The model did not exclude the possibility of a small bull run within the next 2 years, but that bull run would end below the previous ATH. I find it to be very plausible and there's a high probability that we'll have to wait 1,5-2 years for another ATH.

Bloomberg is rarely right, just like CNBC.
The fact that most people think it's going to go up is why we don't see any big upward moves right now. In the peak of the last bull market most people were also saying that it would go up. When the most persistent bears turn bullish is a sign that the market will soon reverse, because these people are always late for the party.
I believe we will stay in a channel of 8-12k for the rest of the year and maybe longer than that. If stocks crash again we might go lower.

Extremely well if we take millions of dollars in Bitcoin mined every single day. Some people must be buying every single day to keep Bitcoin above $9k.While for an average asset a stable price is easy to acievie it's not like that with Bitcoin that is constantly mined by people who paid a lot of money for equipment that was supposed to bring them big money right after the halving. Unfortunately despite reduced rewards we don't see any big pumps in price. I'm actually amazed that we were able to reach 14k a year before halving and can't even stay at 10k now.  

Not really. It would be beneficial also for newcomers who are not yet into cryptocurrencies.
It of course depends on your country's political and economical situation but in general having some part of your money in Bitcoin works as a hedge against local disturbances. Bitcoin is not a hedge against world economy so if we have a world war or a global pandemic it won't help you, but if your country goes bust like Venezuela, Zimbabwe, or happens to become a warzone like Afghanistan, Crimea, you will have some emergency funds.

Most people are already safe. With 1% death cases there's really nothing to be scared of. You should rather worry about possible mutations that will surface in a couple years.
The problem with these respiratory viruses is that they will keep coming and may one day be the cause of our extinction. Not yet though.

On the small scale probably scammers who had piles of facemasks lying around in their warehouses before the outbreak and were able to make millions selling them at high prices.
Such a golden opportunity doesn't come more than once in a lifetime, but a single good decision can set you up for life. Many corrupt politicians took part in the face mask scam and made money by forcing people to buy those good for nothing pieces of cloth.
The other winners were companies who produced covid tests that weren't working, but were bought by many countries anyway.

About 900 BTC is mined every day, which adds to around 8 million USD.
Even if just 50% of miners sell (but I expect it to be more, rather 75% or more) this is 4 mill USD that has to be bought every day for the price to stay at the same level.
If Grayscale was the only one buying it would have to spend 243 million USD every month to keep us from going belo 9k USD per coin. When you think about it this way, you start being bullish, because we've been at this level for months. This means there's a huge flow of fiat money into the Bitcoin ecosystem. Or it's just USDt printer going brrrr

It is necessary if you want to "fix the world".
We have to assume that some people will never tell anyone that they own Bitcoins and the coins will become lost the moment their owners die. This means that the number of coins in circulation will continue to decreas to the point when there's maybe 10% of the innitial 21 million left. I wouldn't worry about it too much though, unless you care so much about future generations and their access to Bitcoin. IMO, they will find a way or create their own, better version of BTC. Nothing lasts forever.

In fact, witholding it will have the opposite effect. It has to be used by the people to gain value. Think of any other technology like computers, phones, cars. What value would they have if they were used only by a few people in remote, isolated parts of the world? You wouldn't want a phone or a car if you never saw anyone use it and understood the benefit of owning it.
OP doesn't understand that scarcity and availability are two different things. You can have a scarce material available in every city. A good example of this are expensive cars like Ferraris. They are expensive and scarce because they are always produced in limited numbers, but every big city has a dealership and you can also order a car online.

Great. Coming back to OP's question, how many of those newcomers will choose altcoins over Bitcoin? Probably not many.
Even if we hit the point of this "general adoption" altcoins will remain on the sidelines waiting for someone to finally find a use for them, like ETH privacy coins that found this niche group of people who use and support them, or Dogecoin that found it's use as a meme social media coin.
IMO 90% of serious transactions will involve Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is the most universal cryptocurrency. If a store accepts any crypto, you can bet it's going to be Bitcoin first, and then if you're lucky some other top coins like ETH or LTC.
That's why your average client who comes into a store with a crypto wallet will have BTC and will remembr what the current exchange rate for BTC is. If you approached me and asked if i'd be willing to buy something with BCH, I wouldn't have my BCH with me and I wouldn't know the current exchange rate of BCH, even though I have a bitcoin wallet on my phone and I consider myself a crypto enthusiast. So chances are you will never find someone who:
-knows cryptocurrencies well
-knows and holds a number of altcoins
-holds an altcoin that you accept in your store
-has that altcoin in a walet, not in an exchange
-is willing to pay using that altcoin

Yes you can and it's very easy. You just have to use a physical bitcoin exchange. This is a normal exchange, like the ones you find at every airport where you are able to get currencies with cash. This is completely anonymous up to a certain amount (depending on the country). There are also ATMs that allow you to buy and sell anonymously.
You can also use exchanges with no KYC, connect via VPN and register using fake names.

I wouldn't care what they think of me because honesty and conscience is much more important. Why would you be afraid that they think you're spying if you're offering them free knowledge and possibly free money that they wouldn't be able to obtain otherwise?
I'd explain the situation and offer help. If they decided not to trust me, my conscience would be clear.

If they really start putting people in jail for using Bitcoin they're going to show they world they're a totalitarian regime. What are they going to do next? Put street vendors in jail?
They already were hitting people with batons for leaving their homes during quarantine, so I bet they're going to at some point send the army to shoot protesters, just like it was done in the good old Soviet Union and China.

I feel the same. People who are complaining are people who invested before the halving in hope of Bitcoin going to the moon right after. Now a month later the price is even lower than it was and the volatility is pretty much a textbook bot trading.
Those who wanted to buy for long term simply hold. Those who bought to sell with profit when Bitcoin pumps after the halving begin to question their decision. Bears still hope it will fall to 6-7k before going back up so they wait. I don't really care because I'm not planning to sell at 10 or 12k. These aren't the levels I'm waiting for so I'm prepared for some more months of "boring".

Those poor people who believe a stable coin like tether is a safe coin to store value when Bitcoin becomes volatile will one day suffer huge losses.
I often read posts where people advice others to keep some money in tether because Bitcoin is too volatilke, or they even say we should "invest in tether". You have no idea what you're getting into when you start treating tether like a safe asset or a long-term investment.

You're not buying a share in a company here, you're buying a worthless IOU from some random guys like this JL van der Velde. I bet most of you tether holders never even heard this name!

They still lie on their webpage about their backing:

It has been proven over and over that they are not 100% backed and often print Tether to satisfy demand or even supply their partner exchange Bitfinex. If they keep lying about a well known fact like that, it's obvious they're running a scheme here.

Like the old joke says: Russia is not a country, it's a state of mind.
At least when they come out of prison they'll be rich. Their stolen coins will most likely be worth more than they were in 2018.
I wonder how the court wouldrule if I stole some coins from a Russian citizen without atacking or threatening him. It looks like they were put in jail for the violent attack and impersonating agents, not for theft. The court has given green light to all crypto thieves in Russia. As long as the victim doesn't catch you in the act you're pretty much safe.

Just make sure a random burglar can't get a hold of it.

On topic, I'd let your friend's parents know, but I wouldn't ask your friend to go and mess with that. You either do it yourself or you don't. Do you want to tell the whole world about your dead friends coins? The moment you tell it to your friend,you create gossip. He'll get drunk and tell it to some of his friends and one day some drug addicts will break into the house looking for your dead friend's coins.
Tell them not to throw away or sell any of his electronics and either find someone trusted to search for their son's coins, or wait for you to come and do it.

I had a software wallet on a dedicated offline machine for many years without any problems and believe that an offline computer is as safe as a hwardware wallet, provided that you don't have random people living in your house. People who can mess with your hardware is always a dangerous situation for everyone in it, finances, trading, you name it. If your belongings are exposed, like in a dorm room, running anything, be it a hardware wallet or an offline PC is risky, but a hardware wallet will offer more protection in such case.