i don't think this has anything to do with bitcoin or how long or strong it is going to run for because it wouldn't make any difference for those who spread this type of FUD in the end.

lets look at the reasons why they spread FUD.
they are either traders who want to swing the market in the direction they wish to, for example when they have some short positions open and wish to see them filled so that they can make profit so they spread FUD as much as they can to make people panic sell. they will never stop.
the others are big centralized corrupted actors who feel threatened by bitcoin's existence and will continue pushing the FUD as long as their corrupt business is afloat. as soon as they go under their FUD stops too.

as it was expected as bitcoin price started rising back up again we saw another altcoin dumping  again which also means the bitcoin dominance is going to go back up again unless bitcoin price decides to become stable again we have to expect the same altcoin dumping to continue in size as the money exists the pumping market and comes back to bitcoin market.

this is a big problem though and not just with gambling sites but a lot of other centralized services, usually exchanges. when there is a clause in the terms of services of a company that reserves the right to restrict the user and invade their anonymity then there is always a risk for all users who want to keep their privacy to join that platform.

i'm talking about the end of the rise when we reach ATH not the current $58k rise (or today's $64k). so it is not smaller, it would be the exact same size. if you invest $1 when price is $10 and it goes to $20 you double your money and end up with $2. if price is $10000 and it goes to $20000 you still double your money and end up with $2 even though it went up $10k.

secondly the rise should be bigger because past rises were a lot smaller. for example 2013 went from 20 to $1200 which is only 60x rise and the one before that was even smaller but i forgot how much. so we may end up with 200x rise instead of 133x

i don't think so. we are not talking about the altcoin market or even the penny stocks that anyone just sells their shit there. we are talking about the stock market and the entry and success in there depends on the company itself.
of course if we have anything as big as coinbase that can prove some potential they can and will enter.

this is a very big news because this is yet another step in putting bitcoin on everyone's radar as a legitimate currency that exist. this excellent because after years of lies about bitcoin that have misled millions of people we need things that makes them think twice before believing the next lie.
eventually this will all help adoption grow with much bigger ease than before.

i'm confused about how much sarcasm is in this post. those who short sold their bitcoins are the reason why it took this much to reach this price and they are not really interesting in the market to be sarcastic to either. those interesting ones that we all "love" are those who panic sell their bitcoins when it is too late to see (that is at the bottom of the dip).

there is no way we can predict how long it would take for a transaction that is paying low fee to confirm. it could be next day or it could be a year from now because it depends on the other transactions situation. for example the price could continue rising every day from now until another month each day going up 5% and it increases the fees and the low paying transaction won't confirm any time soon.

accelerator services usually need a fee too which is higher than what you would have paid if you used RBF and bumped the fee yourself. and the rest of the "free" ones are scam.

edit: i forgot about ViaBTC, ranochigo is right that is an exception.

you should always remember that $20000 was also 133x the price when it started rising at first and yet it was reached very easily in only 3 years. so far with the current price we are only up 18x from the bottom the dip that we had in 2018. there is still a long way to go up.

i think that there is a search function on top of bitcointalk and there is also google. you should use it and search the nonsense you put here and see that every couple of months someone comes here with the same sob story about being a "late comer" and missing out on buying bitcoin cheap.
you think people weren't saying this when bitcoin was just $1000? they did' and they will continue saying it when it reaches $1000000 too. so you better get your head out of the sand sooner.

quite the opposite. that is the definition of inflation and the nature of all fiat currencies specially those that are being printed by a lot and fast.
when the fiat loses its value, everything else of valu from a cup of coffee to a house will go up against the tanking fiat. bitcoin is not an exception to this rule.

it is too soon for the $100k talk but we are definitely seeing the speedy rises start again. today was the day of new price records and for now ATH sits at $63657. there is a lot of money being transferred to exchanges to buy bitcoin and also we are seeing another series of altcoin dumps as bitcoin price started growing up again.
all pointing towards bigger prices soon.

these are already old news though. what interests me is knowing why was the price kept down for this long?

but SegWit was a scaling solution, it increased the maximum capacity by 4 MB weight which currently is capped at 1.6 MB size. it also doesn't stop there, it paved the way for more scaling to come. for example implementation of Schnorr using SegWit is a lot easier and doesn't need a hard fork and is another capacity improvement.
it also made Lightning Network a lot easier by fixing some remaining malleability issues. which is another scaling solution.

there are just too many things wrong with your post that i don't even know where to begin so i'll just address your mistakes as a whole.

there is nothing abnormal about bitcoin market at all. the trend is as it was before, there is a huge volume still in the market every day. it was higher yesterday because it broke $60k and it is lower this day because it stayed pretty much in the same level and it was lower 2 days ago because it hadn't broken $60k yet. other than that the volume over the past couple of weeks is the same on average and it is very high because people are accumulating right now.

as for altcoins the only reason why the dominance is decreasing is because bitcoin price was stable for the past month and over this time (like always) the altcoins are getting pumped. as soon as bitcoin price starts rising back up again all the altcoins that were pumped will be dumped hard and the dominance would be back up again.
not to mention that dominance means nothing apart from showing the pumping time of altcoins and warn about the upcoming altcoin dump.

since people never learn from the past and those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it, i have to say yes the history will repeat itself over and over.

the inflation you are talking about may not be as palpable in some countries but it is there and it was started last year. it is just faster in some countries otherwise it is happening all over the world since there wasn't a single country that didn't go crazy in printing money. in fact some countries such as US printed the most amount of money in history of mankind!

government and the banks will always create fiat and nothing else the form that fiat comes in is changing from physical cash to digital money and credit and in the near future it may temporarily change into a form of cryptocurrency before they go back to the previous digital form since centralized cryptocurrency has no meaning and is the most inefficient form of money.
as for its value, as i said they create fiat so it will have the same value as fiat. for example 1 crypto Rupee is going to be worth 1 Rupee, 1 C-CNY=1CNY, 1CUSD=1USD and so on.

usually people say things they have heavily invested in are the "best". there were even people here who pationotely argued that gold is the "best" and bitcoin will never reach parity.

what you need to do is to study each option yourself. for example try downloading and running an ethereum node (not its simplified light wallets but the full node as you would in any supposedly decentralized cryptocurrency). try sending and receiving some coins.
check the economy of that coin (inflation, supply, premine, bugs, roll backs, scams,...).
you can also use bitcoin as the reference. for example compare bitcoin supply with ethereum supply. bitcoin cap with ETH cap (or lack of cap) and so on. then decide if it is a good long term investment or not...

it doesn't matter how much bitcoin you paid back then, the important thing is how much bitcoin you had then and how much bitcoin is left in your wallet today.
i have spent and even sold bitcoin in the past but i always keep more than i spend so that when price goes up i still have a good balance in my wallet and never regret not having the spent coins ever.
also we should all remember that bitcoin only grows as a currency not something that people only hold.

the real threat to the US dollar that is going to also dethrone the USD’s monetary status is the US government itself. with the way each of them that take the seat of power start wars with the rest of the world, the way they keep printing money like maniacs  and how they waste trillions of dollars on meaningless adventures on the other side of the world.
and China doesn't need bitcoin to dethrone USD, they've already been doing it by having the world economy by the balls.

valid means when you compute the hash of genesis block the result is indeed lower than the target (which is minimum value for block 0).

proof of work is just proof that you have worked!
meaning by publishing the nonce (and the combination that is the header) you prove that you have actually performed some work to find that combination so that the hash of it is lower than the target. it is not possible to guess such a combination.

you won't have any proof if the hash is not lower than the target, it might as well be an arbitrary hash.

that's a different question. Satoshi probably mined genesis block because it is still a valid bitcoin block and he also had enough time to mine it since there was no competition or anything like that.