From what I read,I come to the conclusion that you are NOT scammed by Binance.You are scammed by a random guy in a Telegram group.Binance has nothing to do with this scam.
Paying 0.2 BTC for information?I'm like WTF?!?Who the hell pays 0.2 BTC for some information,that can be false?
You can call the police if you want,but I really doubt that they can help you.
You could post the scammers BTC address here,so we can put in a blacklist,that contains all BTC wallet addresses used by scammers.

The corporations will give the "average Joe" what he wants.He wants profits.He doesn't care about blockchain technology,crypto mining,etc.If he wants numbers on a screen and the illusion of making more money,the big corporations are going to give him this illusion.
Selling fake coins is as illegal as selling counterfeit money or fake goods.The authorities will have to step up,when such crime happens.
Selling shitcoins/tokens,created by those corporations should be strictly regulated by the SEC.

I sold a portion of my Bitcoins at 31K in January.Damn how stupid I was.
I sold lots of BTC last year,when the price was around 7K-10K USD.I'm a lousy BTC trader and I didn't trust all those bullish signs and predictions during the entire 2020.I always though that the price will crash or stay stagnant.We have to learn from our mistakes and move on.
There's no point of regretting the past.Just do whatever you can to buy or earn as much BTC as you can and then HODL.

I don't quite understand your reference.
"Opening the Pandora box" usually means something bad is going to happen.Just like in the ancient Greek myth about opening the Pandora box,which releases all the diseases and plagues over the human kind. From what I read in your text,you mean that cryptocurrency adoption by the big companies is like "opening the Pandora box",but in a good way.
I though that you are going to FUD over Bitcoin with this "Pandora box" reference...
Anyways,I don't mind if Apple joins the Bitcoin community and accepts Bitcoin payments.

Yes,all of them are more of less legit.All of them have their pros and cons.
Paxful is kinda legit,but lots of scammers are waiting inside the marketplace.
Localbitcoins is legit.I have used them for about 4 years without any issues.Their fees for depositing BTC have increased,which is bad,but we have to deal with it.
I have never used Kraken,but I know that they have a good reputation.
Binance is probably a little bit better than Kraken.
There's no way to avoid ID verification,when buying BTC.Every legit crypto company has to implement KYC policy.This is required by the law.

Ellon Musk tweeted that cryptocurrencies are as bs as fiat money,but he doesn't mind accumulating both crypto and fiat.AFAIK,he also tweeted that money(crypto or fiat) are just an informational system,used for resource re-allocation.
Anyway,this is a pretty bullish move and it will have an impact over the crypto markets.I'm not sure how big the impact will be,compared to the Paypal crypto adoption,since Paypal is a financial company,and Tesla has nothing to do with the financial markets.I'm a little bit skeptical about this news actually pumping the BTC price to 50K or more.Maybe Bitcoin price will pump to 40K USD and will have strong resistance to stay above that level for a long time.

This is a step in the right direction.
1.It will reduce the revenue of the super rich English football teams and they will stop with the insane multi-million dollar transfers.I got annoyed by all the super-expensive overvalued not-so-great players that got into English football.
2.It might reduce the amount of sports betting gambling addicts,at least a little bit.
3.This might redirect all those sponsorship ad money into other industries.The internet is the most obvious choice of the gambling advertisers.More crypto gambling sig campaigns on Bitcointalk,anyone?

I get your point of view.Many altcoins were "riding on the back" of Bitcoin during the previous years and many people entering the crypto world think that altcoins are "just like Bitcoin,but a little bit better" which isn't the case.No altcoin has the trust Bitcoin has.I can't seem to find an altcoin,that is slightly better than BTC.
Bitcoin Core will reach 1 trillion dollar market cap soon,maybe this year,or maybe next year.
No altcoin will ever reach 1trillion USD market cap anytime soon.Not even Ethereum.

I'm not an expert,but here's my hypothesis.I might be wrong.
If a miner or a group of miners decides to block transactions for their own benefit(or to comply with regulations or government will),then the majority of developers and users inside the Bitcoin Core network will just hardfork and split the BTC core blockchain,leaving all those miners with worthless forked pseudo-Bitcoin shitcoins and no market support.
The Bitcoin community is more flexible and adaptive than you think.I don't get your point of asking a question that has been discussed 100 times before on the forum.Just search for some old threads about this topic,instead of creating your thread.

Stop writing BS.The US dollar is a truly global currency.
The Chinese have always accepted US dollars.China export goods worth billions of dollars to the USA every year.China was buying US government bonds worth billions of dollars every year.You are so wrong.
The global wealth disparity will continue to be a problem until the very end of human civilization.
We can't solve this problem with the financial system.It doesn't matter,if the system is based on fiat or cryptocurrencies-the wealth inequality will continue forever.
A decentralized financial system won't redistribute wealth across more people.Such system will just improve the security and efficiency of all financial transactions.

OK,let's skip the bs and be honest... stop spamming the forum with bs posts.
Sometimes I wish there was a dislike button under every forum post,so the forum members could dislike low quality topics.
"Being your own bank" is way better than any relying on the mercy of any bank.
If you wanna be rich now,just invest a few thousand dollars in some random HYIP,ponzi,shitcoin scheme.I'm sure you are going to make 10000000% returns in 24 hours.

The correct number of Bitcoins in circulation will always remain a mystery.
Maybe this is actually good for the Bitcoin price growth.I'm not sure how did this Company estimate the exact number of lost Bitcoin to 4 million.I think that the number is lower.Probably 2-3 millions,but I'm not a mathematician and don't know how to calculate this.
The rumors about the Bitcoin market cap being overinflated will continue forever.

OP,you are using  $1,30,000 three times.One in the title and two times in the forum post.
Don't you know how to write big numbers?Can't you just write 130K USD?
The whole story seems really suspicious to me.What's the point of buying artwork made by some anonymous guy for 97 ETH?This guy definitely isn't Michelangelo or Leonardo,so I really doubt that this artwork is going to cost a million dollars after several years.Maybe this really is money laundering.

Tax regulations cover all cryptocurrencies.It doesn't matter if its BTC,ETH,Stellar or Bitcoin cash.
The rules are the same for all coins.Coins,that were created after a hard/soft fork are no different than mined or bought coins(at least in the eyes of the tax agencies,that might consider forked coins to be a capital gain),so they are taxable as well.
In which country do you live OP?
You say that you were given Stellar for free.Maybe this can be considered as a donation and deducted from your taxes.I'm not an expert.Perhaps you should talk to a professional accountant.

1.Yeah,but Paypal is centralized and will always remain centralized.
Adopting cryptocurrencies doesn't mean that Paypal will become decentralized.They might become "pseudodecentralized" for the sake of marketing and making the company look cool in the eyes of naive crypto enthusiasts.

2.They feel secure using Paypal?Are you kidding me?Having you own crypto in your own cold wallet and storing your own private keys is way more secure than having trust in a company that can block/limit the money in your account for any reason.

This is good news,however getting salaries in BTC won't be mandatory and the employees will have a choice.
I wonder how many of the employees will choose to be paid in BTC?Not that much,if you ask me.Probably lees than 10%.The rest of them probably don't want to deal with Bitcoin price volatility,having a BTC wallet and selling BTC to fiat,storing private keys and etc.
This is a step in the right direction,but I don't expect mass BTC adoption to happen overnight and I don't expect the majority of the people to embrace Bitcoin with arms wide open.

This categorization is for fun purposes,I guess.It isn't accurate enough to be taken seriously.
I'm in the Shrimp category,like most of the forum members.Maybe there are a few crabs or dolphins here.
It's really surprising that the "shrimps" own only 4.9% of all Bitcoins in existence.This is a really small percentage.I'm expecting small BTC owners to own more than 10% of all BTC.
If such small amount of BTC is owned by the ordinary people,this means that BTC is mainly used for investment/crypto trading purposes,and it will never be adopted as a normal currency.
This is pretty much expected and kinda sad at the same time.

When the BTC price hits 100K USD,all the bulls will hype about Bitcoin price reaching 500K or 1M USD.
When the BTC price hits 1M USD,the bulls will be hyping about a possible future price of 5M or 10M USD.
There's no such thing as "the top". There will always be extremely bullish investors,who are preaching and spreading hype and wishful thinking about the future Bitcoin price.
Any financial asset can cost the highest possible price a person or company is willing to pay,in order to have that asset.I believe that there will be enough BTC buyers,even if the price hits 1 million dollars.

Username: davis196
Post count: 5976
Address: 38jPybuqW9XqmKHEFvHyJNEUEaegP9fWe8

Will update signature,if I'm accepted...which will never happen,but whatever.

I really doubt that some scammer/criminal will be patiently waiting for those people to post a picture holding their private keys,in order to rob the satoshis,that are sitting in their wallets.What's the point of robbing a few satoshis?It doesn't make sense.
Anyway,I think that OP has access to free electricity,provided by his school,so there won't be a  problem to mine a few satoshis,by using old mining equipment,even though the mining won't be profitable.
We desperately need more Bitcoin teachers around the world.
Good luck with this project.