I don't think it's right to say they begun with nothing. Mark Zuckerberg was both in the US (which is itself way more fortunate than the bast majority of the world), and he was also born in a rich family. So he had the opportunities to go to Harvard (and make ever richer friends there), and to drop out without being worried. And prior to that, his parents hired him a computer programming tutor, so that their child could pursue his passion.
Let's take a look at CZ now. He was born in China, but his family has an opportunity to move and settle in Canada when he was a teenager, which is certainly not something that most Chinese families can afford. So while he didn't come from a particularly rich family, perhaps, he still had the privilege that most don't.
I am not saying that it doesn't mean that both weren't hard-working and talented people that can take credit for their own achievements. But disregarding privileges is simply unfair.
As for the taxes, I hope that he'll just be able to pay them and everything will be okay. After all, are taxes really a problem when you are that rich? I think it would only be fair if he paid a lot in them, so that others could also benefit.

I'm glad the number's up, but the difference between two quarters of the same year is small and, IMO, not enough to show the long-term dynamics. Isn't it curious, by the way, that they only show Q3 of 2019, Q3 of 2020 and Q4 of 2020? How about other quarters of these years? Or would showing them portray a very different picture? Also, 1 in 9 isn't that much, not to mention that it doesn't even mean that for 1 in 9 crypto was the decisive factor, right? I mean, that person who sold cryptos could have also sold something else, and considered both as significant contributing factors to making the first payment. Also, the whole dataset was 1,500 people, only 215 of whom answered the question about the money for a down payment. I'm not saying that there's no tendency to use cryptos more, I'm just not sure about this particular research and its significance.

I think it's great that there's a way to benefit from lightning without technical knowledge and to use Bitcoin easily for payments. I looked at their website, and they have both an app and Visa cards. What caught my attention is that they claim not to have "added fees", and that if you buy $100 worth of Bitcoin, that's exactly what you get. So how do they make profit, then? Surely it's not just out of advertising? A monthly fee, perhaps?
Also, it is, of course, a custodial solution, and while I think it will be acceptable for most of those trying to escape inflation, some won't like it because 'not your keys, not your coins'.

I'm sorry for your loss. I hope you followed the golden rule: only invest when you can afford to lose. It's simple, but people break it very often. I believe it's a good sign that you realize that you should stop trading of this caused a big loss of money. Perhaps you just need a different focus. For example, doing a risk-free job and investing some money longterm in Bitcoin. It's safer and less time-consuming. But if you're worried you might not be able to stop trading even though you think you should, that sounds like an addiction and should be addressed. I hope it all works out for you. Losing money is hard, but it's not the end of the world.

When looking for an investment opportunity, I would focus on the following things: media coverage, community, finances, famous people or companies behind the project. 5 years ago I would've said that you should look at their whitepaper, but now I think it's a waste of time. It might be an unpopular opinion, but I believe that the concepts don't matter if there's no way the team will actually succeed in implementing them, and projects that are very similar but have lots of funding can become successful even if they're not original.
So skip the whitepaper, and start with their social media. How many followers do they have, compared to numbers of followers of some projects that became very successful? How many likes and other engagements are available? This stuff can be bought, but if they have the money and willingness to invest in marketing, it's a good sign.
Then look at the media coverage. Have any famous news outlets written about them? Again, you can choose a successful project and compare with its coverage at the time when it was a new one.
Another very important thing is the team. Is there anyone famous there, and what are they famous for? Keep in mind that ICOs might lie about their team members, so make sure to fact-check if a certain person indeed has anything to do with some project.
As for the financial part, I wouldn't trust the mere numbers on their official website or media profiles, as those can be fake. What counts, instead, is any big companies or famous investors giving money to this project.

I don't use stable coins because I don't do trading, but I think they're useful for these purposes. Converting to fiat directly isn't always a possibility, and if you do it many times per day as a trader, your bank will probably be annoyed by it and suspect illicit activities. Also, withdrawals from the exchange can take some time to be approved, not to mention that there might be withdrawal fees. So it's way easier to keep the trading between cryptos on the exchange and use Tether or something like that to accumulate profits. And then, of course, you can convert those coins into fiat every once in a while to enjoy your profits and use that money for anything you want.

I don't know about a random new website, and I'm not sure the charts I see there are helpful, but I do think that monitoring social trends is important. If you merely focus on numbers (how many views, posts, engagements, mentions a certain crypto-related thing gets), it's not useful because what matters is the quality of these things (negative or positive, certain or doubtful sentiments). Bitcoin can be on everyone's mind both when it's losing value and gaining value rapidly. So what's important is to keep track of what's going on in the world that could potentially lead people to increase or decrease the demand for Bitcoin, and follow the prices along with it. If a big company announces they'll accept Bitcoin as payment or invest in Bitcoin, it can lead to increasing demand. If a fairly significant (in terms of crypto usage) country is working on restrictive crypto policies, it can have the opposite effect. And, apparently, if mining's disrupted, it has significant negative impact on the price.

New technologies sometimes take a while to be adopted (the Internet is a good example) but eventually can become mainstream. There's a chance that the same will happen to Bitcoin, and that adoption rates will skyrocket. However, given that Bitcoin offers way fewer use cases than something like the Internet or a mobile phone, I don't think it'll ever reach mass adoption (in the sense of at least a third of the population actually using it, for instance). But it doesn't mean it won't grow and become widely popular in some circles. I also don't think that people will be forced to adopt Bitcoin (that it'll become such a necessity that one would need to learn about it, if that's what you meant by 'forced').

It'll take a while to build it (it's by the end of next year only if we count the basic infrastructure, not blockchain integration), and 7 or more years from now Earth can become a very different place. I think it's an interesting concept, but why do they actually need a new coin for this all? I'd have more trust in it if they were planning to use Bitcoin as the main cryptocurrency. Also, while I like Wakanda, it's focused on military technologies and local cultures, but not on finance. I think that if they succeed to build it, it can become a good city, especially since it'll be eco-friendly. But as for cryptos, I don't think it'll shift the power dynamics between them and that Akoin will be a serious competitor of Bitcoin.

Given that this country became one of the major centers of crypto mining, following China's restrictions, it does have significant impact on the market now. I still don't believe that hash rate has a direct impact on the price, but big disruptions to mining which obviously occurred with the Internet being shut down are leading people to panic, and that leads to the price decreasing. Unfortunately, it seems that the Internet is still down, even though I thought the protests were dealt with when foreign military operations started. I think that eventually the Internet will be back, and Bitcoin will recover regardless of when it happens because the mining difficulty will simply adjust and people will calm down.

I thought 5% was considered a good inflation rate per year, but 5% in a month sounds like way too much, even for those who argue that some inflation is good to motivate people to spend money rather than hold it. Then again, Bitcoin can easily lose or gain 5% in a matter of a few days, so fiat is still way  more stable than cryptos. That being said, Bitcoin corrects itself eventually and grows in value, whereas fiat is meant to lose some value, and at times like this it simply loses more than anticipated. I think they'll be able to fix this next year, though, especially since everyone's used to the pandemic now, and fewer restrictions are being introduced even during major outbreaks.

You have to choose a well-known coin with considerable market capitalization for staking to avoid being scammed. You should also make sure you're using a reputable wallet that, while supporting staking, is not going to rob you. I think that not losing your coins is the main concern with staking. But I'd also consider the viability of staking. Given how volatile cryptos are, it seems to me that staking doesn't make much sense. The added value you might get from coins is only a matter of a swing of the market and the prices changing. So I think it's better to follow the prices rather than engage in staking.

I know people who are into LEGO sets, and those are quite expensive, but 11% returns annually don't sound too impressive when compared with Bitcoin. Also, why is the data stopping at 2015? Might it mean that for 6 years the trend hasn't continued? I do support the idea of not throwing away LEGO because it's plastic and throwing it away is wasteful, but what I fear is that people will start buying new ones to simply hodl them. Also, it caught my eye that unopened sets were analyzed, so I don't see how keeping old LEGO sets is supported by this research.

I seriously doubt this is going to happen. If the price goes to even half a million, I can't imagine what it would do to the fees, with people buying more or selling while it lasts. This would bring way more attention to Bitcoin, and thus way more transactions. But I also don't think that being a millionaire is necessary for being rich. In my country, you can buy a flat for $50k, so having, say, around $100k, would make you quite rich. But that would still require the price to go well beyond what I consider reasonable, so I'd say that it's a safe bet that owning 0.01 BTC won't make a person rich. Unless, of course, we consider a very poor economy where people live for $3 per day, so having around $1k is considered being rich.

Let's go through his predictions. It's easy to say that he's right about Bitcoin City and Volcano bonds because they're under his control. So is, I guess, that surprise at the Bitcoin Conference, but he might overestimate its scope and impressiveness. As for the first three things which are out of his control, I think that $100k is a realistic prediction, while 2 countries adopting Bitcoin sounds less likely (unless El Salvador starts showing vast economic improvements fast, and also because I think a move like this usually requires a young dictator to do things fast), and I find Bitcoin being a big matter in the US elections even more unlikely. So far, it wasn't a big issue in the US politics, with few people from both parties caring about changing the existing policies at all.

What caught my eye in the article was debt repayments to China. It's very unfortunate that Sri Lanka fell for Chinese easy-to-get but hard-to-repay credits, and I'm sure that it created additional problems on top of the lack of tourism due to the pandemic. It's sad that 5 years of progress in combatting poverty were countered with a couple of years of the pandemic, and it's terrible that poverty is still a problem in our world of overproduction. I wish there was proper redistribution done, so that food wasn't thrown away in huge quantities in some places while people suffer from malnutrition in others. It's just ridiculous that it's still happening.

In my country, people use our local fiat for everyday life, of course, because it's usually the only currency accepted in shops and other places, but I don't know anyone who actually keeps savings in local fiat. Our inflation rate is at around 8%, and add to that the fact that every 7 years or so something very bad happens and the currency loses value by 2x or so. Cryptos are quite popular in my country because inflation isn't greatly managed, and those who are more traditional simply store savings in EUR or the USD. Given that lira is currently experiencing a 36% inflation rate, I think it's perfectly reasonable that people try to move to other currencies, and Erdogan saying otherwise won't stop them.

Wow, that's a big failure. What's funny, though, is that apparently they didn't fully make up their minds because here's an article from the events that happened later, and Ubisoft is standing by their idea with NFTs, claiming that the company's true goal with this is to show the power of decentralization (and definitely not to get even more money from their customers). As others pointed out, though, the whole thing clearly failed with embarrassingly low sales. I think the main problem is that they're late to the party. If they did it when the NFT craze was starting, it could have worked out differently for them. But now people are tired of hearing about them, as well as of gaming companies finding new ways of milking users.

From what I've read, the Internet connection seems to be the likeliest culprit. Kazakhstan became a huge mining center when China introduced its restrictions, and it's not surprising that something as big as a countrywide Internet shutdown would affect crypto mining operations. However, I think it's not as big of a deal, and I don't understand why the price suffered that much. After all, mining difficulty can correct itself, and it's not a threat to the network. So it's probably just FUD spreading over the news, and perhaps some people fear that mining will become impossible in Kazakhstan if these protests lead to more restrictions and last for a long time.

I looked at his Wikipedia, and I don't think he's the right guy for this. Firstly, there's this section on COVID denial and his great prediction that it will all be over in a few weeks. Unless your friend's also a COVID denier, it can be a major setback (in the line of thinking that if this guy was so wrong about the pandemic, why should he be trusted regarding any other matter). Then there was a SEC settlement, potentially suggesting tax evasion (again, not good for his reputation).
I think a good and reasonable guy for Bitcoin education is Andreas Antonopoulos, just like mk4 suggested. He's genuinely interested in blockchain and Bitcoin, rather than, like Saylor, hunting down whatever brings profits. Also, I don't think he's overly optimistic (at least, I don't think he ever makes predictions about Bitcoin price going up), so it seems that his views are more moderate and are less likely to result in your friend losing money.