I don't think people genuinely expected an immediate increase to happen right after the halving, except investors simply looking for a quick profit. That is not how the market works, pre-halving was seen as an opportunity to get in at a much lower price (below $10k) and prepare for a bull run within the next months which would range into a year or two depending on market factors. If there's no significant push in about May next year, which would be 12 months after the halving, then most would be bored and start to seek alternative investments.

Covid 19 played a role, as it caused economic crisis, limiting the amounts people had to invest in assets like bitcoin. It however also exposed frailties in fiat pushing people to seek an inflation resistant asset.
I don't see people switching back to fiat, even though the market remains sideways for a much longer time, that would be a bad decision and such investors would likely try to get back into Bitcoin later on, using a more devalued fiat against as asset with a growing value, which could lead them to get caught in a bull trap.

High volatility is an advantage for speculators who invest and trade bitcoins, but I do not see how it can encourage people to use Bitcoin for regular daily payments especially when it is still valued in fiat.
If I had $50 worth of BTC one day and planned to get a new outfit or gadget the next but due to volatility the value drops to $45.6, I would not be able to make my purchase and would have to wait for the price to go back up (Except, the payment mechanism (in this case binance card) converts cryptocurrencies deposited into fiat and holds it in that value). As long as there is speculative value, people are less likely to use it for regular payments.

To an extent, depreciation of fiat favours alternative payment methods like bitcoin. Of course using bitcoins as a payment mechanism is still limited due to its volatility, transaction rate and fees, but it's an evolving system and there are 2nd later systems businesses can use, like Lightening Network which would facilitate transactions.
Besides being used for payments it can also be accepted as a Reserve currency over fiat and other assets.

People who are losing patience with Bitcoin after just 10 years probably never intended using it in stores or for daily payment and are only interested in how much profit they can make in as little time as possible. Bitcoin is still at its infancy sage as you pointed out, and most financial instruments it is competing with, like gold, fiat and stocks are centuries old, so it would take a while for it to take off and go mainstream.
There's is also multiple utilities for Bitcoin depending on how holders view, it can serve as a store of value due to its resistance to inflation, in which case it would not need to be used for daily payments, it can be used as a digital cash for peer to peer transactions, it can equally serve as a speculative asset due to its volatility.

Not everyone who gives up lacks knowledge on the potential Bitcoin has, most could have invested due to the hype with little or no strategy at the time, probably using funds they can not afford to lose. So, now they are at a loss and can not afford the patience of waiting extra years.

Technically, it is not possible to reverse a transaction which has been confirmed and included into the valid chain asides with an attack on the network.

Putting it into perspective; an attack on the network means an entity controls majority of the hashrate or more than anyone else, creating a monopoly on the network. This is very expensive and can not be realistically maintained for a long period of time.
51% is used to indicate one who controls majority of the network, this is the range where it becomes possible to manipulate the network and reverse already confirmed transactions, it is still very difficult to actually implement from here on. One who controls less percentages than that (<51%) can still try to manipulate the network but it is much less probable and still expensive, this is why there is an advisable range for transactions to be considered irreversible;

• 1 confirmation would be okay for low transactions as it would not be worth it for someone to try and reverse.
• For extremely large transactions, like $1 million and above, it is possible and profitable for someone who controls majority of the hashrate for a little while to manipulate the network and invalidate, so it is advisable to wait at least 6 confirmations.
• For intermediate amounts, between both extremes, 3 confirmations and above should suffice.

The deeper a block is in the chain the more secure it is, reason why it is advised to wait for more conformations when dealing with much larger amounts.

This has been a trend over the years especially during the hype of ICOs. Investors were simply randomly selecting newly launched coins, putting their money in and expecting a huge ROI after a few months, this worked for a while, apparently, up until the hype died down. I say 'apparently', cause there were still fake and low performing projects during the hype period, but the noise of the hype likely drowned them out. When the hype died down eventually, lots of fake projects started to fail and new ones barely took of leading to huge losses for investors, shifting some of them out of the cryptocurrency space and others to Bitcoin.

I can access their website pretty fine from my end, although I do not have an account, I do not think they are shut down. They also tweeted few minutes ago about resumption of deposits and withdrawals;

To answer The Pharmacist's question directly, theymos made the update to domain names on April this year, so safe to assume that was when they both cut connection from the other website after years of minimal involvement from both parties.

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I don't think forum stats have been of much importance to theymos, and cherry picking posts to screenshot on an official social media account may not be a good idea from my PoV.
This may however be a good pet project for someone who is genuinely interested in promoting the forum on social platforms as there's a growing interest in Bitcoin on these platforms like Twitter, and no restriction to create an unofficial account, if you find someone to organize it with, you are free to do that.

2018 to about early 2019 felt like a 'long boring despair period' in th market. IIRC, the price hovered around 3k to 6k after the crash from the ATH in 2017, holding this range for a number of months and causing lots of bearish sentiments among investors and traders. March dump was probably not a repeated sequence in a pattern but just an effect of factors that influence the price.

I would not be too surprised if the market does not break through an All time high in the next couple of months, as people expect and as a couple of indicators have been pointing towards, although I expect we would see a new ATH within the next 2 years at most.

The narrative that Bitcoin facilitates scams has been misleading and is getting less popular. It's not possible to make a direct comparison with alternatives like fiat, as it is far less transparent, but 1.1% is very low.

This has been a recurring discussion for some time now; the increasing consequence of seeking privacy while using cryptocurrency. If more users of Bitcoin shifted away from centralized platforms, government agencies would not have a link that they can regulate.
Most users patronize CEXes for the liquidity and the convenience it offers as there is not enough P2P platforms to cater for global transactions. DEXes can offer such liquidity if more traders used it, but it is still somewhat regulated and can be shut down by governments or forced to request user information to operate.
I would also expect a lot more regulations as various governments consider establishing their CBDCs to control the digital market.

A few years back there was no merit system implemented here making it much easier for members to rank up based only on activity score, ICOs were also at its peak, meaning there were lots of project popping up on the forum with opportunities for hunters to earn through campaigns, this attracted lots of spammers to the forum reducing the quality of discussions, I would assume this is what is happening on cryptotalk, although at a higher scale as the forum specifically pays users to post inorder to increase traffic.

Bitcointalk has struck a sort of balance between maintaining quality and allowing users the freedom to profit off their efforts on the forum, unlike other forums that try to reward mindless spamming. The merit system does well to prevent spammers from ranking up or creating huge farms, and ranking up requires effort, meaning the user would have to develop themselves and contribute somewhat quality content.

Bitcointalk, of course, has its fair share of spammers, but the system makes it progressively more difficult for them to benefit from the forum, driving them to select boards or to other forums.

Asking if one would send merit may be the wrong question, as merit does not indicate approval of a post, you could rather ask if the community considers that to be healthy practice.
A copy and pasted post should be evident even before the reader gets to the source link. You can use the quote tags or insert it between "..." I personally change the text to italics sometimes to show it's taken from another source as quote tags can make a thread untidy especially when used multiple times.

This is possible and any user who regularly churns out public articles without adding any personal note or comment is trying to do the bearest minimum to complete their quota.

Some users may genuinely want to share quality contents with the community, some may be promoting their websites, so it is not always a merit grab attempt. However, such pure articles should be posted in the Press board (if it is notbale enough), which doesn't get much attention or merits these days. Posting outside here may be an attempt to make it count to their weekly quota as some managers do not accept posts made there or the user could be trying to get more attention and a chance of getting merited.

I definitely think this; if done right, with effort, external articles can be used to create thought provoking discussions.

Ranks are determined by;
• Merits, these are given to you by other members if they find your contributions to the forum helpful. Putting in effort into your posts and replies would improve the quality of your discussion and increase your chances of getting merited. All your posts before this one has been bounty applications in the altcoin section, those type of posts do not contribute to the community and decreases your chances of ranking up.

• Activity, this is determined by your posts within activity windows. You can only get 14 activity within a 2 week time frame.
Use the search feature as suggested above to get more information about ranking up. You can use this thread to learn how to properly utilize the search option.

This is where most campaigns get it wrong. Quantity over quality means your signature would likely appear under posts of users spamming the forum who may be ignored by other members, or it would be made in spam mega threads and boards only visited by other spammers, so no promotion is actually being done, as the target audience does not get to see the ad.
Spam wound not help any genuine project build engagement, it can only be useful to scammers looking to attract unsuspecting newbies to their HYIP projects like we saw with Cryptotalk/Yobit.

Overall, removing signatures would only dissuade genuine projects from advertising on the forum, actual spammers would always find a way to jump through hoops to cheat the system. Although, there would be far less engagement to attract them without signatures.

I do not much follow crypto content using YouTube so I would answer from a general stand point (including articles, podcasts etc).
One thing I see too much of is 'clickbaits'. Content creators, in trying to build their audience use various tactics to attract traffic, this is not inherently a bad practice, but when done with little or no back up content or using inaccurate information it would have a negative effect on the community.

What is lacking from my PoV is reliable creators who give out undiluted information with the sole motive of educating the audience. Such creators may not 'trend' often, but would eventually stand out from the pile.
A lot of them started of this way, but as they gained more relevance, offers to quickly monetize their audience by promoting below par projects came along and some jumped on that.

I would answer both questions together as they are somewhat related;
What keeps me hooked and what I think creators should focus on are, relevance and entertainment.
A creator should find their preferred niche where they are most educated in and stick to that, this improves their relevance and allows their select audience find them easily. Entertainment value is what gets their audience through their videos, articles or podcast recordings.

It's almost impossible to find a whole community that appeals to everyone. There would be the good, bad and of course, the shills. The trick is to filter the bunch, find what is beneficial to you and stick to that.

Gambling platforms allow this mostly to attract more visitors and to make their website user friendly by encouraging privacy, however should the user get a huge win on the platform while gambling illegally, they would have to provide some means of identification to claim they rewards. This could be a problem if the user is not above the age requirement.

I wish more gambling platforms would pay more attention to ensuring consumers gamble responsibly; If a user would need to verify themselves to withdraw certain amount thresholds, it is only fitting that they would also need to verify themselves to deposit similar amounts on the site. It is difficult to completely eradicate underage gambling, but through this they would be protected to an extent and would not lose too much to the site.

Bitcoin is flexible, meaning people use it differently based on how they view it; it can be a store of value, although it is highly volatile. It can also be considered as an alternative investment which is resistant to inflation due to its controlled supply and fully decentralized.

Yes. Bad fiscal policies would negatively affect the currency and reduce the confidence of the citizens, leading then to seek alternative assets to escape currency devaluation and inflation, resulting in increased adoption of Bitcoin. This is the situation in turkey where Bitcoin crossed its ATH against their local currency.

Investing is a personal decision and would depend on the individual's knowledge, level of risk tolerance, amount they can spare on investments etcetera. It's also not a case of one or the other, with an efficient investment plan a person can hold bitcoins as well as more conservative assets like Gold.

Regulate it, to reduce usage and also generate revenue as it can be taxed. A more extreme approach would be banning it.

I would rather transact using cash than a highly transparent and regulated digital currency. I would also want people to have the freedom to choose which they prefer to accept as a payment. So, cash or both.

Finance is a universal language and has been used for years by governments to maintain control by regulating money flow, inflation rate, availability of loans and so on. A completely digital currency would mean full transparency and as it would be centralized, the issuing body would have full control of holder's funds.
In the recent kucion hack, issuers of centralized tokens that were stolen locked some of the looted funds, so the hackers could not make away with it. This would be similar to the sort of regulations that would be present in a digital fiat currency and could be used on anyone. In summary it would result in;
• Lack of privacy
• Lack of control.

Imo, privacy would be waved off. I would assume there would be higher demand for decentralized currencies like bitcoin or other less regulated assets like Gold and silver to keep transactions off the chain.

More efficient criminal investigations at the cost of financial freedom? I would definitely pick financial freedom, scams and frauds have gone on in the banking sector, and I don't think any agency should have full control over the flow of money, especially as a utopian society does (and would) not exist.

A line from the original article caught my eye regarding how it relates to Bitcoin;

"The Eurosystem task force, bringing together experts from the ECB and 19 national central banks of the euro area, identified possible scenarios that would require the issuance of a digital euro. These scenarios include an increased demand for electronic payments in the euro area that would require a European risk-free digital means of payment, a significant decline in the use of cash as a means of payment in the euro area, the launch of global private means of payment that might raise regulatory concerns and pose risks for financial stability and consumer protection, and a broad take-up of CBDCs issued by foreign central banks."

Bitcoin would roughly fall under such global means of payment which spurred the idea of a digital Euro, meaning it could be considered a threat.
I believe there would be more demand for Bitcoin by users who wish to maintain their privacy. I also think this would come at a cost as government agencies try to maintain control through more stringent regulatory laws.

The only legitimate benefit I can think of is to 'unstuck' a transaction.
If I initiate a transaction using a very low fee without setting the RBF option, my transaction is likely going to get stuck, (how long would depend on how clogged up the network is);
• Once a transaction is signed and broadcasted, it is validated by nodes and appears in the mempool, where it would then be picked up by miners and included in blocks for confirmations. A transaction can stay in the mempool for approximately 2 weeks before it is dropped if no miner takes it up.
• To avoid waiting this long the sender can initiate a double spend or use CPFP ~ Child Pays For Parent, to unstuck the transaction. So they send the exact same UTXO to another address and can then perform the initial transaction with a higher fee.

Double spend is a bit different from a typical rebroadcast. In double spend you're not rebroadcasting as a new transaction is created with a different output and a much higher fee.

A lot of users of Bitcoin are unaware of what double spend is and wallets like electrum adds the unconfirmed transactions to their address as soon as it is sent, making it easier for them to be tricked that they have already received the funds in there wallet.

The 1 confirmation rule is sufficient for smaller transactions; below ~$1,000. If however a transaction involves a significant amount ~ $100,00 to $1,000,000 6 confirmations would be advisable, for it to be considered irreversible, although in reality what it means is that, the transaction would be too expensive to invalidate and the scammer would be spending more than the amount involved to attempt such an attack on the network.

Imo, Bitcoin was relatively unaffected. A 2% increase or decrease in price is not out of the ordinary and does not have to be based on any specific event. The fact that the price held off so well is also an indication of the increased stability in the value of Bitcoin.

A couple of years ago, news like the U.S president getting a virus or a major exchange being involved in shady deals could have had a much more significant effect on the price of Bitcoin, the price has however held off above the $10k mark, as it has been for a couple of months now.

I agree with this. Scams are unmoderated on the forum, so there is no system to confirm that someone indeed committed a violation besides evidence posted and judged by other members. The scam accusation board should be the first section to report scams and based on evidence provided, a negative feedback or trust flag can suffice.
Only extreme cases should be taken to the Investigations child board. Such cases could involve;
• Someone who is impersonating another individual. Proving who the person really is would indemnify the other party,
• Someone who is an immediate threat to the public, etcetera...

This is true about authorities in some situations, but imo, legal action is still a relevant step to take before posting someone's private information on a public forum. The internet never forgets, and even if the person is later proven to not be guilty of a crime, they cannot regain their privacy.