I would argue that if North Korea didn't have nukes, the US would have invaded them a while ago.
You surely can't be saying there's no such thing as a nuclear deterrent?

I think (guess) this is because they feel a degree of affinity, being in the same situation of trying to accrue a few points in order to rank up, almost as if they are team-mates in the same struggle. This might influence behaviour on a subconscious level.

I recently ranked up from Full to Senior, and I have to say I really notice now the accounts who have done the same thing. I feel to an extent 'closer' to those people who have worked their way up and passed through the same transition, it's like a rite of passage and a shared experience. Whereas Heroes I see (whether deservedly or not) as wise old veterans to whom 10 or 20 merits here or there is no big deal. Legendaries I see as being farther above that and beyond the concerns of merit altogether. As for people who are known merit sources - I would suggest that they maybe receive at least some merit purely in the hope of merit-reciprocity, although this is likely quite a small effect as obviously merit sources are people with a proven track record of high-quality, merit-worthy posts.

I know it's a bit stupid, but it's hard not to see rank everywhere, when it's literally beside every post that's ever made.

Agreed.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Both 2022 and 2032 are plausible, both could happen.

I would say though that if we hit $100k by 2022 it won't be sustainable, and prices will dip hugely again.
By 2032 the crypto economy should be far more mature, and in theory volatility should have dropped.

So perhaps the best idea is to ride the peaks and troughs whilst the volatility is still here, buying and selling at opportune moments to increase holdings. In that way a small amount of BTC now could become a large amount by the time we have sustainable high prices.

I don't have anything to say about this, just wanted to quote it.

"All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side."

"“...to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee."

The Bitcoin Whale! He is upon us!

I think there is almost zero chance of another world war.

I'm not a fan in general of globalisation, but what it has done in the years since WW2 is to tie the fortunes of major economies very closely together. Everything is multinational now, every economy depends on every other. This is a major reason why democracies don't tend to attack one another - they have too much to lose.

In general the only wars you see are civil wars within countries, or else 'interventions' such as the US in Iraq, where the inter-relationship of the economies is minimal and any negative effects are vastly outweighed by potential gains e.g. the control of huge oil reserves.

US vs China for example isn't going to happen. It won't be soldiers vs soldiers, bombs and missiles, it will be abstracted into the realm of finance, as we are seeing now with Trump's trade war.

Of course one lunatic with control of nuclear codes could change all that, but on the basis of logic a world war is profoundly unlikely.

This has nothing to do with Nazism, that's nonsense.

Iranian pursuit of nuclear power (and nuclear weapons) is entirely logical. Possession of nuclear weapons is the closest you can get to a guarantee that the US won't invade.

Yes, they do. All banks do this as well. So long as they hold your funds, they are earning interest on them.
Maybe not so much for one customer, but obviously it has a huge cumulative effect over all customers.

Additionally in the case of banks, the longer it takes to get your money out, the more likely you are to get overdrawn, and so incur fees (payable to the bank).

PayPal's user agreement does go into a little more depth:

"Any balance you hold in your business account represents an unsecured claim against PayPal and is not insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). PayPal is not a bank and does not itself take deposits. You will not receive any interest on the funds held with PayPal. PayPal combines your PayPal funds with the PayPal funds of other PayPal users and invests those funds in liquid investments in accordance with state money transmitter laws. PayPal owns the interest or other earnings on these investments. However, the claim against PayPal represented by your PayPal funds is not secured by these investments and you do not have any ownership interest (either legal or beneficial) in these investments. These pooled amounts are held apart from PayPal’s corporate funds, and PayPal will neither use these funds for its operating expenses or any other corporate purposes nor will it voluntarily make these funds available to its creditors in the event of bankruptcy."

You can't really take minor price movements over a couple of days as being indicative of a wider trend.
The rises have been welcome, and with BTC particularly stretching for $8k, it may be that previous resistance levels are setting up to be support levels... but really it is too early to say right now.
We tested downards for a long time, and we always bounced back off the support points. It was only a matter of time before prices started testing upwards. We will see how it goes, it's encouraging, but too early to call what is happening.

If we do see the emergence of a bull market this year, then I think it is likely to be more for the existing and well-established coins. The days of huge successes for ICOs and even IEOs are I think long gone. Maybe they will return, maybe not, but for a long time now the prices of good alts have been much lower than their ATHs, and I think that if money comes to alts it will see gains for established coins much more than money coming into brand new projects.

From the OP's list, Ethereum and Bitcoin will I think do well this year.

ETH in particular looks extremely under-priced against BTC now. I know it was over-priced in 2017 because of all the ETH-based ICO chaos, but still, it is so far under that level now and it really seems as if the fall was way too hard. So I expect ETH to recover strongly this year, partially because of roadmap progression but also partially because it simply looks much too low at current prices.

Initial offerings are not what they were. Even IEOs never really reached the highs of ICOs during 2017. That looks like a bit of a bubble now, when it seemed any new project could raise many millions and hit hard cap without even trying. Whilst on one hand it is disappointing that we don't have that hugely bullish sentiment any more, on the other hand sentiment is more realistic now, and if it means that we don't have mega-cap ICOs , then that is for the benefit of crypto in the long-term.

I am reasonably confident that we'll see a return to more bullish sentiment this year. Yes halving should have an effect, as should the move towards PoS for ETH.

As for ICOs and IEOs, I would imagine that IEOs will remain the preference due to the fact that they tend to be higher quality projects (or at least a lot of the rubbish and scams are pre-filtered out). However I can't see new projects doing well until we have seen evidence that market confidence is returning. I can't see 2017-style ICO-fever happening again this year.

23 December: The first demonstration of chip-to-chip quantum teleportation has been achieved.

A team at Bristol University have been able to use quantum entanglement to transmit information (4 qubits) between two silicon computer chips, and they have achieved fidelity of 91%, which is very encouraging. Even more encouraging, the functionality that was demonstrated included entanglement swapping and four-photon Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger entanglement, which are important requirements for the establishment of future quantum networks.

This is the instant, fundamentally unhackable data transfer that I've mentioned in previous posts (see here for a very simple overview of how entanglement works). There is no reliance on the esoteric cryptographic protocols of PQC that may or may not be broken in future, but rather a simpler dependency on the basic laws of quantum mechanics.

Admittedly the experiment was done with expensive specialised equipment, but it is early days, and there is no reason in theory why in future quantum cryptography using entanglement can't become a secure communications standard used by everyday users on cheap, mass-produced hardware.

'Flat Mars' is an anagram of Starflam, which is a Belgian hip-hop group.
Starflam released a record called Bled Runner.
Bled Runner is simply Blade Runner spoken with a South African accent.
The South African 'Blade Runner' is Oscar Pistorius, the paralympian who is currently serving a murder sentence.
Batman movie The Dark Knight was famously snubbed for a Best Picture Oscar.

Therefore: Flat Mars -> Best Picture -> not Batman.

The best picture we have of Flat Mars in this thread is the one from notbatman. Ignore the 'spherical' nonsense from other posters, notbatman has shown us the truth: Mars is flat.

The fevered ramblings of a deranged mind? I don't think so.
Tenuous associations and misdirections made in bad faith? I don't think so.

It has been true in the past that once BTC price rises stop and level out, alts take over and an 'alt season' occurs, but this doesn't mean it happens every time.

Market sentiment is a key factor. BTC may have risen a bit recently, but this has been a recovery from previous drops. What we need to trigger alt season is a sustained BTC price rise so that market confidence returns. You are not going to get an alt bull whilst confidence is this low. People will either move out of crypto altogether or else remain in the (relatively) safe haven of BTC.

Where bitcoin leads, alts will follow. There is a lot of speculation that halving will lead to price increases, and an argument that halving has already been factored into the current prices. Whilst I agree that it may have already been priced in to an extent, the fact remains that this does mark a fundamental change to the availability of new coins, and should act as an ongoing price driver rather than simply a one-off event to factor in. With this in mind, I do believe that bitcoin price will increase following halving, irrespective of whether or not everyone already thinks it will happen.

Day to day price doesn't really matter unless you're trading. We should concern ourselves more with longer trends. Tomorrow ETH is likely to be similar to current price. Longer term I would think the price will be significantly higher than now, as smart contracts are one of the best uses of crypto, and ETH is and always has been the number one choice for smart contracts. I know there are potential competitors, but they don't have anything like the real-world use history that ETH has had.

Altcoins really can't do it alone, not yet, and likely not for a few years. The markets are too thin and confidence is too low. Perhaps we will see the alt season that many have been anticipating, but this needs much higher market confidence. That can be achieved through a prolonged and sustained price rise across the board. So likely bitcoin dominance would either increase or remain similar to now, until we have significantly higher prices. Once that has happened and BTC growth has started to slow, then we see conditions where an alt season can begin.