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.

What should be is very rarely the case in any country. Politicians should be uncorruptible, judges should be fair, and so on. You're lucky if the majority is like that but there are always exceptions. Even in the US you had Clinton and then his wife, both impressive liars and confabulators. You had Bush who started a war with Saddam over nuclear weapons that never existed. Governments are corrupt everywhere, deal with it.
They print money because for them it doesn't really matter what will happen in 50 years. They'll be long dead by then. It's here and now that matters.

AFAIK it's not about the race but more about their culture. I bet that if you put a group of young children in a black "OG" foster home, they'll all turn into lazy hoodlums by the time they're 15 and got to prison at least once before the age of 20.
I follow some brilliant black youtubers. One of them rebuilt a couple of damaged Teslas all by himself and learned how to do it on the go.
Saying that blacks are lazy is a generalization that comes from the fact that most of them are uneducated and come from poor neighbourhoods where their parents and friends teach them that if they want to own something they have to take it by force.

We don't really know how many people died from Covid and how many from other things, while being sick with covid at the same time. If you have a person with AIDS get pneumonia and die, what would you say was the cause of death? The direct cause would be pneumonia, but AIDS caused the failure of patient's immune system that allowed pneumonia to be fatal.


No, we cannot rely on Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency for that matter, but it's not like you can rely on your government to save you from the pandemic.

Usually the collapse of a currency is only a disaster for the people, but just a walk in the park for the politicians. Just look around you and you'll see it's harder to find a country with a long history of the same currency than the other way round. Practically every single country went through a currency reset. Some more than once.

You're right about that and the wages geven by the OP aren't really high when compared to general salaries of developers. Mobile game devs get paid very well, especially if you can work both on ios and android.
Of course database is a career field starting from a low technician like a data entry guy up to more experienced db coders who build everything from scratch. None of those big exchanges would work without a stable db. Front end is flashy but it won't work alone, unless you're not running a real service just a blog or a news site.

Not exactly. Try P2P exchanges or physical currency exchanges. I have used those with quite a success in the past. They are regulated, but are nmot required to gather any personal information if the transaction doesn't exceed a certain amount (I believe in the EU it's 15 or 20k EUR). Think it's not a lot? You can think again, because it's a single transaction requirement. You can come with a friend and say half of the money is his and the limit doubles.
Of course they will not allow you to keep on excchanging 100k every day for a month, but if those aren't unreasonably high amounts you can easily get away with 100k EUR a month, which for most people is more than enough.

You will never have a stable $100 income a day due to volatility. What I mean by that is even if you get a job paid in BTC, like bitcointalk moderators, you cannot be sure that it will pay $100 a day because Bitcoin was worth 10k USD a few weeks ago and is now only worth about 9k and a few months back it was 5k. You cannot have fiat liabilities that require an income of $100 every day and pay it back working for Bitcoins. I mean technically you can, but you shouldn't.

Even if it becomes the biggest economy in the world, which is likely to happen, will it dominate the world? I'm saying this because I don't feel dominated by the US.
It's a matter of perspective which country is going to become more aggressive in a few years. The US engaged in more military conflicts than China, so there's that.

I'm a believer and I don't want it to go down at all. I have enough and I'm not buying more precisely because I'm a believer and I've acquired all that I wanted to hold years ago.
For me it's black or white, there's no gray area. You either are a believer and buy it as it is, or you are not and want it to go down. If you think Bitcoin isn't worth 9k USD then you are not a believer.

Barely holding if you ask me, although if it corrects I don't see it going lower than 7k. Anything below that is going to be a huge opportunity, just like 5k in March and people know it. 


Love your TA. Pretty sure it's going to go exactly like that. You should set up a paid group and throw them a a bone once a week. Easy money

Most of us would.
I don't llike taxes and I oppose them as much as I can, but if I had a reported surplus of a few million dollars, I'd pay. There's no other way. It's like they already got a speeding ticket, signed it and a year later decided they don't want to pay it. Pretty dumb if you ask me.

You're trying to explain his statement to him. It's like he was saying "food is of lower quality now than it used to be 50 years ago" and you're answering with "yes but it's normal because of mass production". I agree with OP that it's much harder now to obtain Bitcoin than it was a few years back and the reasons are just as he's pointed out:
Mining difficulty and KYC. I'd also add the price to the mix, but that's a relative matter as we all have different definitions of the word expensive.
KYC is really a limiting factor for new investors. Furthermore, higher market cap makes it harder for fiat money (even big) to impact the exchange price. Probably this explains why we're sitting below 10k for months despite the halving.

Weren't some of his advisors Bitcoin supporters?
It's funny how people's attitude can change over the years. I remember when Trump was being elected and people were enthusiastic because "he's a businessman, he'll understand economy and be open to new technologies and he surrounds himself with investors and traders".
Imagine the headlines if he did it: "The land of the free trying to block the flow of money from physical to digital. Is Trump afraid of Bitcoin weakening the Dollar?"

But they put a US born Asian in the main role, so they're following the typical misconception that a pseudonym must be revealing and the founder wouldn't use it if he wasn't of Asian descent. Anyway, I won't complain anymore since it's supposed to be a comedy, not a documentary.

I'm always up for a conversation, if you think it's meaningless we can stop. No harm done if you ask me.

Usually people don't describe it by comparing the old technology with the modern one. You cannot compare the power of the dollar in the 80s with today by trying to compare the cost of a computer hard drive because the manufacturing has changed so drastically. For the same reason you cannot compare the cost of automobiles in 1920 and 1960, it's pointless.
These statistics usually come from the basic items of need like a loaf of bread or a pack of sugar. A good example is the good old big mac index, although it's rather used to compare individual countries.

You can google it, the same charts can be found all over the Internet.
https://wolfstreet.com/2018/06/12/dollars-purchasing-power-drops-2-9-in-may-from-year-ago/
https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1970?amount=1

I don't buy anymore, but when I did it was all about the percentage drop.
Bitcoin follows the same path every time. All drops of 20% and less can be manipulated and come under the short-term volatility. You shouldn't be concerned about it unless you're a trader. Drops of 20-40% are good, but also may be an indication of an incoming bear market (like when there's a dead cat bounce following a 40% drop and then it goes back down).
A 50% drop is always a good investment and that's where you should start if you believe in the asset and are ready to stack up.

In 2014 that great zone was when the price fell from 1k back to $400. It later went as low as $200, but in 2015 it was already back above $400. It never stays at -60% for long.
In 2017 you had that early fall from 19k to 8k that a month later recovered back to 11k, went down to 6k and back to 10k, indicating that 60-65% from ATH as a great short term buy zone.
In 2018 we had a 50% drop from 6.4k to 3.2k - another great buying opportunity.
In 2020 another one from 10k to 5k.

When you see a 50% drop, get your fiat money ready (not a financial advice).

They will always try to manipulate the market which is why so many people find their sudden change of heart suspicious.
Most of us remember how Dimon used to say he'd fire employees who trade Bitcoin and now it's like they're saying "buy, buy, suckers, we're ready to sell what we've acquired in the last 2 years of bear market".