To be honest I had never even heard about him or FTX for that matter before all this drama began. But I agree, all these centralized platforms and centralized shitcoins they keep creating has been harming the whole cryptocurrency world more than it helps it. Binance and their centralized shitcoin called BNB will eventually have the same fate as its predecessors.

The good news is that all these events are making bitcoin battle hardened. A couple of years ago such a scam would have caused at least a 40% dump. Today it only caused about 16% dump and we have been in an accumulation more which many people think is a bear market so the effects should have been a lot bigger.

Total market capitalization is defined based on tens of thousands of shitcoins not based on which exchange get hacked and which one didn't. Their hack also doesn't really have significant effect on the dumping process of those shitcoins.

Are you high?
The scammers and pump and dumpers are not going to give up the shitcion market just because of FTX shenanigans.

This is not specific to altcoin exchanges, but it is happening to all centralized exchanges. Lest we forget that MtGox was a bitcoin exchange that scammed people and caused a crash in 2013.

I agree with your general tone about bitcoin being the only viable option and altcoins being useless, but I'm not sure what you are suggesting here is true about bitcoin being able to fix the issue with centralized exchanges and the risks involved when using them. The only viable solution to the CEX mess is to start using DEX.

Technically speaking a peer to peer network is a network without a need for "central coordination by servers or stable hosts", in simple terms there is no server/website that peer to connect to. They directly connect to each other. So a centralized P2P can not even exist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer

Take a look at this topic that lists different encodings https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4959742.0.

But the problem here is that your string is using a nonstandard uncommon encoding and data structure, it is extremely difficult for us to "guess" what it is! It could be literary anything from arbitrary data that has nothing to do with bitcoin private key to encrypted key including the IV and extra information which again requires knowing the algorithm used to be able to decode and decrypt it.

You should start by first figuring out the encoding that was used to encode the data here (eg. base64).
Then decode the string to get the raw bytes out to know the size (eg. 68 bytes).
Then you have to figure out what part of it is the key which is 32 bytes (eg. first 32 bytes is the key, the second is the IV and the last 4 bytes are salt; or maybe first is salt, second key and finally IV).
Then you have to figure out the encryption method used (eg. AES256 ECB or CBC or ...) and where the salt (assuming it exists) were used (eg. in scrypt or PBKDF2 and with what settings).

So as you can see it is better if you tell us how you came across this string and why do you even think it is a bitcoin key?

That is basically what block explorers do, they create a database from the blockchain data and index it in a way that you could search it. There are open source block explorer projects on github which you can find with a quick search.

That would export the wallet file information not the blockchain data.

Technically none of them give you any assurance to protect your funds and not get hacked or not to run away with your money. They just claim everything is safe and OK. So when people enter these platforms and make the conscious decision to use them even for a second, they are knowingly accepting this risk. Those who leave their funds on exchanges are accepting an even higher risk.

Note that this doesn't change the fact that exchanges are still responsible but it means that you can't really do anything about it since they never gave you any legally binding promise about the security of your funds!!!

What I find funny at times like this is that all those people who were complaining about "missing out" are not buying the dip because they hope for a bigger drop. Then they will complain in a couple of months about price being too high and "missing out" again.

To me the following 4 were the biggest ones you didn't mention although there are a lot more:
Bitfinex got hacked
Bitfines bank accounts were shut down
Binance was hacked
Bittrex scammed its users by shutting accounts of thousands of users.

There is an old list of all scams, hacks, etc. from 2014 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=576337.0

Well your question has nothing to do with bitcoin. If you are worried about a "physical attack" it could happen even if you receive the funds in fiat form. For example they could physically force you to transfer the money to their offshore account!

You protect yourself the same way too. You do the deal in a public place like the real estate agency and don't go alone. The rest depends on where you live and how much crime is going on there, in which case you may want to relocate to a safer place.

That is contradictory. The high inflation is what causes all the economic problems that lead to more crimes and lack of safety. Besides they are already printing money at a very high speed, the US national debt recently surpassed $30 trillion and now it is at $31 trillion[1] and is rising very fast. With the way the FED has been playing with interest rates to keep dollar strong they have also caused recession which is bad on its own and worse when it comes with inflation.

[1] https://www.usdebtclock.org/

That's the unfortunate part. They learn this lesson but unlearn it very quickly too when a couple of weeks go by. In fact we already see people who claim that for example an exchange like Binance is safe because they don't remember seeing a hack there!

You can use fiat currencies on decentralized exchanges too. For example you should check out https://bisq.network/

Considering that there is absolutely no statistics about how many users are holding bitcoin for what reason, you can not make this claim about percentage of any groups.

Also keep in mind that gamblers (the day traders making bets on the price) are always a lot more vocal than any other group which is why we see a lot of topics each time there is a small price movement. That doesn't mean they are the majority just because the rest are mostly silent.

As an Iranian living inside Iran let me tell you that this was the biggest CIA operation with a multi billion dollar budget that were in action over the past 3 years at least. This had nothing to do with "wearing a veil" (Iranian wear scarves not veils). This was a viral news about police beating a woman to death which turned out to be a lie. Imagine the George Floyd and Black Lives Matter movement in US but based on a lie since the footage is released from the moment she is arrested, moved to the station and her walking around healthy and untouched and her falling down because of her preexisting medical condition.

The protests weren't only in Southern Iran, they took place in most of Iran but they basically lasted about 2 or 3 days since that was how long it took the authorities to solve the legal and privacy issues and go through the bureaucracy before they can release the video footage I mentioned above and other privacy invading information about the deceased such as her medical history (eg. the prior brain surgery that had created complications, her fathers statements about her preexisting condition, their troubles in acquiring the medicine she needed because of the sanctions that US has enforced that prevents importing said medicine and has significantly increased their prices which is the example of medical terrorism that none of those English outlets are allowed to mention).

Over the past couple of weeks (after the initial days) all we've seen were some scattered destabilization attempts by either young idiots who are brainwashed enough to still not believe the footage that was released (like those who still think earth is flat) with trained foreign operatives and some terrorist cells trying revive a finished unrest by killing innocent people and blaming it on the government. Majority of such actions are neutralized like the woman who was caught carrying 50kg of explosive material trying to plant it in the Grand Bazaar, but sadly a handful of them fall through the cracks like in Shiraz: [Disturbing content ahead:] https://en.irna.ir/news/84924878/Sensitive-Content-Shiraz-terrorist-attack

There is not yet any final official count but the last one I saw was 43 deaths with 30 of them being security forces.

99% of the names they are reporting in foreign media (such as the London based outlets that are considered terrorist organization) are people who are either alive or had died long ago. In fact there is currently a trend in Iranian social media from people who see their own names in said lists like on BBC and post a video about being alive and demanding these outlets stop spreading lies. Or their families who are now forced to talk about how their daughter had died 6 months ago in a car accident or another family who were forced to reveal their daughter committed suicide 2 weeks ago by jumping off a building (the footage of it exists too!).

There are no "Kurdish fighters" in Iran's Kurdistan. There are only terrorist organizations in northern Iraq (not Iran) in a region between Iraq, Iran and Turkey and all 3 countries have been fighting them. These are the groups that are being introduced as "Iranian" and wanting "freedom" which interestingly enough have ties with both United States and ISIS. They have been trying to smuggle a lot of weapons into Iran over the past couple of weeks to create artificial bloodshed which are mostly seized and neutralized by the authorities.

P.S. The 30-page long report released by the intelligence community is actually a pretty good case study of the biggest operation in the biggest and longest cold war that is we've been fighting. https://isna.ir/xdMFyK
The old Stanford University's 57-page article had also found a tiny part of the same thing (the part about brainwashing campaign) that is reflected in the above report too https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:nj914nx9540/unheard-voice-tt.pdf

All market manipulations take place with the help of the market participants (or the "average investors") otherwise it won't happen. Take a look at altcoins' pump and dumps. They have to have the pumping groups and other sheep that would participate in it otherwise the pump won't happen nor will it give them any profit.

So when we are talking about investors selling or buying together it depends on why they are doing that. If they are making an irrational decision based on lies then it is still considered market manipulation.
For example if they are panic selling just because some stock market got dumped, or if they are panic buying because some celebrity tweeted something about bitcoin then they are both clear examples of market manipulation.

Considering the hyperinflation, it is expected to see a lot of people buy bitcoin as an investment even during a time where it drops. But still the adoption is very small, even in a country like Lebanon with hyperinflation so claiming that the Lebanese have adopted bitcoin is false. Only a small percentage have invested in bitcoin.

As for legality I couldn't really find any solid news. Some sources say it is illegal but nobody enforces the law. Some other sources say there is no such law to begin with since the legislation hasn't passed anything yet.

These exchange rates are dumping because these countries are already too integrated into the US economy and they depend completely on US dollar. This is why Euro and Pound dumped this way. US has been exporting its inflation to these countries and by increasing the interest rate they are artificially keeping their own currency strong. But that comes at a high cost since it causes recession. Basically they hope this trend is short term, so they can endure recession now and come back after it ends. But if it doesn't, the US dollar exchange rate could tank hard while the recession gets worse at the same time.

The trend of abandoning US dollar may take 5 to 10 years though...

By the way all countries are affected but there are countries that have reduced that dependence so they were affected a lot less. Which proves the point of US exporting its inflation abroad and why abandoning US dollar is mandatory.

I don't think it has anything to do with not accepting bitcoin donations. If I'm not mistaken the amount of donations in bitcoin weren't the biggest percentage in the total donations they'd received.

That may be because of the inflation + recession that most of the world has been facing after the pandemic and mostly over the past year, even more so after the invasion of Ukraine. On one hand the costs are rising for Wikipedia owners so they need more money; on the other hand cost of living is rising for people so they have no money to "donate" to a website they rarely visit or buy their product; ergo Wikipedia's income is decreasing and they are forced to beg for more donations.

The demise of Binance is almost guaranteed, like all its predecessors. But about the effects of it, these things always depend on the market situation. If there is a bear market going on or if the order books are thin because of the newbies panicking and stay away, then the effects would be a lot more than if the market is thriving and the panic and market manipulation is at a minimum.
Besides, Binance is still an altcoin exchange not exactly a bitcoin exchange to directly affect bitcoin price.

Actually there are certain policies that don't really change in any country with the change in government, etc. In 2014 Obama was POTUS and he was pursuing pretty much the same proxy war with Russia as Trump did in his short years and what Biden is today. It will also be the same thing after Biden whether it is 2024 or 2028.

Not really!
In PoS you are generally receiving a "reward" for having a balance that is printed out of thin air. In LN you receive a fee for processing the transaction that is paid by the sender not out of thin air. Not to mention that the amount of fees are too small that it is negligible.