I don't think that replacing traditional currencies is a realistic prediction. For one, fiat doesn't seem to be doing bad enough. Moreover, it's an enormous transaction load that Bitcoin simply won't be able to handle. Not to mention that there's no way strong economies would abandon their national currencies which they can control fairly well in favor of something very volatile and decentralized like Bitcoin. As for providing an alternative, it's a very reasonable formulation. Indeed, it's a different type of money that has its own features, compared to fiat. So it does function as an alternative and can continue to do so even more in the future. As for freedom, it's hypothetically an important point, but I don't think it's going well. After all, most of us still need bank accounts and depend heavily on fiat.

While I agree with the op that hodling Bitcoin could save many investors a lot of trouble, I, like some others here, disagree that fear isn't real. Fear is one of the strongest feelings that has one of the biggest forms of impact on our lives. You can't fight it by simply trying to stay delusional and claiming that it's not real. It's very real, and one has to acknowledge it to monitor its influence on one's life. Acting out of FOMO or FUD are bad choices, but it does not mean that there's nothing to drive people toward buying or selling coins irrationally.

HTD seems to have been dumped hard already, and it's barely traded, which is dangerous for you in case you'd want to sell them for profit at any time. As for PORTO, it's more or less steadily going down over the months, so I wouldn't go for it, but at least it's traded on Binance. LAZIO is basically similar to PORTO in these regards. Among all these, IDEA seems like the most reasonable choice. However, my general question would be the following: why risk with barely known shady coins if there are top coins that have been showing they can grow bigger for years?

Op, is it simply that you are confusing Tron and Tether or is more going on here? Could you explain how Sun resigning as a CEO of Tron has anything to do with USDT? If you truly mean USDT, I think it'll be okay, just as it always is. But, of course, there's always a risk of sudden panic and the stability of this coin coming to an end. As for Tron, it's down 7% over the last 24 hours, but it's not the largest drop on the market, and it's not that bad either. Hopefully, Sun leaves behind a team of people that will keep working on Tron and at least maintain properly what's already there. As for the initial promise of something like a decentralized Internet that Tron gave, I don't believe in that anymore. Like most altcoin promises, it never came to be.

14) Chris Daukus
13) Stephen Thompson
12) Amanda Lemos
11) Ricky Simon
10) Mateusz Gamrot
9) Darren Elkins
8 )Gerald Meerschaert
7) Raoni Barcelos
6) Justin Tafa
5) Sijara Eubanks
4) Charles Jourdain
3) Raquel Pennington
2) Don'Tale Mayes
1) Jordan Leavitt

I agree with mk4 that these points about the USDT being great point to a fiat fan, basically. The USD is surely more secure than USDT, and if you generally believe that the economy is strong enough, the stability is worth it, and the inflation of the dollar is negligible, it's better to simply use the USD because at least it's something under control of the government rather than a shady company that might largely sustain the stability of their coin by trust, rather than real assets behind it. And trust can disappear quite quickly at the first signs of trouble. What makes the USD different is a very strong country with #1 economy in the world that will do its best to return the trust and sustain the value. Also, tons of other countries value the USD highly and use it as a reference point for their own fiat. All that is certainly not the case with the USDT.

The March 2020 situation is highly unlikely to repeat because it was the first time over the last 100 years when something epidemically very serious hit the whole world, and there was a lot of initial panic over that. Now that we're all pretty much used to living in the world of the pandemic, the same level of panic isn't likely to repeat again. Also, while significant, it was essentially a drop by 3 times compared to the February level of price (from $9k+ to $3k+), so at the current price point even if an event of the same level somehow strikes again, it's a drop to $15k at worst. But, again, I truly don't believe a thing like that will happen again in the following decades. And, also, we now firmly know that, no matter what, Bitcoin recovers and sets a new ATH point eventually.

I thought the economy was already in recession, so I'm not surprised. I've seen 2020 predicted as a year of the crash prior to Covid, and it's not like Covid made things better for the economy (see here, and here, for example). So, honestly, I'm surprised the economy didn't explode by now. And I don't think it's possible to completely avoid an economic crisis, I think it's only possible to delay it by a couple of years (which, clearly, has already happened). Okay, maybe not crises, but at least recessions are bound to happen quite regularly. But given the heavy impact of the pandemic, I think a crisis is only natural.

At first, I wasn't sure if the news were legit, but I found articles on Russian news websites about it, so it seems like the talk actually happened. They want an infrastructure that won't be under control of third countries, but there's a big potential difference from Bitcoin: there's nothing there about the financial infrastructure being independent altogether. Bitcoin's not under control of the US, but it's not under control of China or Russia either. I believe this is not desirable for Putin and Xi, as they'd prefer a centralized currency that would be under their mutual control. That being said, it might be very hard to achieve, so they might settle on something like Bitcoin as good enough.

I believe that's pretty much the only conclusive way to prove it, and yet I believe that even in this case some people will be left unconvinced, yelling that it's simply someone who got access to Satoshi's coins (perhaps by stealing it from the real Satoshi personally). But still, given that it's Satoshi rather than a newbie we're talking about, I don't think it's likely that Satoshi lost access to their coins. However, since it's hypothetically possible and something that could happen to anyone, there are other ways that wouldn't prove that it's Satoshi but could provide some evidence. That could be, for instance, providing an early draft of the whitepaper with an early date being proven.

1) Who will receive the ball first?  Chiefs
2) Will the Chiefs cover the -3 point spread?  No
3)  Game total 52?  Under
4)  Highest scoring Quarter?  2nd
5) Chiefs total points?  Odd
6)  Chargers total points?  Even
7)  Patrick Mahomes to throw for 280 yards?  Under
8 )  Justin Herbert to throw for 290 yards?  Under
9)  Darrel Williams to score a TD?  No  
10)  Keenan Allen to score a TD?  No

Final Score prediction  27-24 Chiefs

I think it's reasonable to ignore that not all bitcoins are mined as of today, because indeed the vast majority are, and the rest will be entering the supply quite slowly. That means that yes, essentially, buying coins is becoming way more realistic than mining your own, and theoretically that should mean increased value of Bitcoin. However, it depends on the circumstances, and if you have money for a mining farm, it can still be profitable and the main source of bitcoins for you. So mining is still popular, especially for people in big business. Of course, given how FUD still affects the price a lot, we can still see the bear market once in a while, but the overall upward tendency has no reason to disappear now.

While the op's weird and I get why many here don't take it seriously, I think it points to an important point that might become an obstacle for direct adoption of Bitcoin. Namely, people don't like responsibility and are feeling comfortable in the world of fiat and banks where it's not their job to worry about inflation, volatility, and security of their funds. That's why I still think it's a great unexplored niche to provide crypto insurance services, and why custodial wallets are likely to be preferable for the majority of newbies, as long as they're provided by the government or some huge company that they trust. It gives a fake sense of safety that, while usually being an illusion, still helps avoid potential anxiety over responsibility for one's money.

I think the biggest thing we can say is thank you. Thank you for creating a new form of money, the one that isn't centralized and that allows participation of any people. Without you, there would not have been this community of tons of people who've been discussing Bitcoin and many other cryptos (which probably also would not have existed) every day for many years. Thanks for showing us that something that is not backed by a government or a huge company can actually not only survive but thrive. In return, I hope your privacy and wish to remain unknown will be respected because of course you, of all people, deserve to live your life in peace. I hope you're alive and perhaps even reading these messages somehow.

Are you referring to this story?
Hacking a centralized exchange tends to involve either exploits of weak spots in their security or inside jobs. As others mentioned, it's not really about honesty because addresses are known, and also because an exchange has no motivation to cover up the loss because in this case they'll have to reimburse all of it to their users, whereas it's a fairly rare thing for exchanges to do. Given that exchanges aren't safe, and your money there isn't truly yours because you're not the only one who has access to it, it's usually advised not to keep big amounts of money there. I follow this rule, but many people keep hodling on exchanges in hopes that the worst won't happen to them.

Many have been asking about a source for the info about the IMF, and I don't think anyone provided it yet (sorry if I missed it), so here's something I found. It's from summer of this year, and I guess that since it has authors and is in the blog section, it's more like an opinion article rather than an official position of the IMF. But the only thing I could see here is actually quite far from the claim the op makes:
As for Economic Confidental, I believe here's the article from there. Oh, and through info in this article I think I found the real source, which is an article on IMF blog by the same authors as the one I linked earlier. Here I see the following:
But again, I'm not sure that it's not merely a position of these authors, and I see no evidence here being provided to back up the claim.

The answer to this question depends on the purpose. Bitcoin is better than Ethereum as a medium of exchange. Clearly, Ethereum is currently handling transactions way worse than Bitcoin, and the fees are very high. Bitcoin also gained more interest as a form of money by companies around the world than Ethereum did. As for Ethereum, it's a superior platform upon which many other projects can be built. I'd also agree with some others who pointed out the creator of Bitcoin remaining unknown and not affecting its development as a plus.

The article is based on a pitch, so it doesn't mean that this will actually happen. Also, when I tried googling a crypto-trading floor, all search results are basically about this very pitch, so my question remains: what's a crypto-trading floor? Does it mean that, apart from a casino, there will be basically a physical crypto exchange? Will any fiat be involved on this crypto-trading floor, and will there be crypto or fiat payments in the casino itself? And what will be tax implications be if any event of crypto trading apparently calls for a tax report in the US?

I agree that it's impossible to predict the price movements, but not due to whale manipulations. Who could've thought in February 2020, when the price was sitting comfortably at around $9k, that it will drop to $5k in the middle of next month due to the WHO announcing the pandemic? No machine learning could have taken into account this event from the world of medicine to predict the drop of the price because there are too many factors if we consider things like it. Bitcoin's price depends heavily on what's going on in the world. Not directly, of course, but due to all sorts of articles that appear online when this or that country introduces a restrictive bill, Musk tweets something positive or negative or something like a once-in-a-century pandemic hits the world.

I was also surprised until I read that it was a hacked account message. That being said, giveaway is pretty much always a scam. It's not great that scammers used his account for their purposes because this could play out as an additional negative factor when it comes to making the final decision about India's stance on cryptos. It's a great case for the narrative of cryptos being used by scammers for illegal financial activities.
As mentioned by Lucius, it's not the first case of a big account being hacked, so I think Twitter should really work on their security, ensuring that the inside jobs are difficult to perform, and the 'hacker' can be easily tracked.