For us to understand the effect it may have, I think we would need to get information on how many people are actually taking the offer, their average age and if they actually need the aid at the time; a 29 year old liquidating their retirement savings can make up that back with more years of work ahead of them and would not be as dependent on the government after retirement as a 45+ year old in the same situation.
Also, one who is currently at a crisis financially would benefit from the scheme to keep a business afloat or provide basic needs.

There is a slim chance that those withdrawing without actually needing the cash at the time are doing so to put that cash in some other investment which they think would be more profitable at the time they are fit for retirement. That would be a huge gamble.

@bullrun2020bro, you make the rest of us look bad  
Congratulations on your achievement on the forum and the near record breaking time it took you to get there. I can't read most of your posts, but the ones which I can were quite impressive and educative.
A self made (potential) legendary member in less than a year is quite commendable and a testament of how the merit system works and how, with enough effort anyone can climb up the rank rungs to the top.

I couldn't read the full article, as I got a message to subscribe to their services a couple of lines in, but from the headline they seem to want to avoid using the term Bitcoin as little as possible; replacing it with words like, "crypto" and "coin" (which makes no sense),.even though microstrategy has expressed interest in just Bitcoin:


In a recent tweet Michael Saylor also replied to articles claiming he said they would sell bitcoins at any time;
To view Michael Saylor's position one would be better of listening to his podcast interviews than the comments of mainstream media.

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Edit: I scrolled really fast and was able to get the quote from the article;

“We can liquidate it any day of the week, any hour of the day,”Saylor said. “If I needed to liquidate $200 million of Bitcoin, I believe I could do it on a Saturday. If I took a haircut, I believe it would be 2%"

The word 'can' dos not suggest any desire to take an action, but means there is a possibility of it. Imo, it could be seen as a way of saying, 'Bitcoin is a liquid currency', and not that they are willing to take advantage of that liquidity anytime soon.

I agree to both points, fiat is far more accepted than Bitcoin and far less traceable. A user transacting in bitcoins is limited in what they can purchase and would overtime leave traces on the chain as well as identity links. With fiat, it is almost impossible to trace how many hands have handled and transacted with a particular $50 bill. There are privacy channels which can be utilized, but these are not foolproof and it reduces what a scammer can actually do, forcing them to convert to fiat.

We have already seen a couple of targeted attacks on privacy centered currencies like Monero;
... And whether or not cryptocurrencies become popular for illegal activities there would an increasing cost for privacy as governments attempt to regulate it more.

There have been Bitcoin improvement proposals over the years aimed at improving the cost of transaction, such as segwit. Some are in the process of being implemented currently - Schnorr and Taproot.

There are personal measures you can take to reduce the fee you spend on transaction;
• Consolidate your small inputs to reduce the size of future transactions
• Use segwit addresses
• Time your transactions so you spend low fees during times when the mempool is clear.

Bitcoin transactions are also way more secure and the network more protected from malicious attacks

Robots have been with us for a while now and have been implemented in sectors like military, medical and manufacturing;
• Drones are being used for reconnaissance and to attack enemy territory without needing to man the craft.
• Medical field has relied on technological advancement to improve the quality of health care.
• The manufacturing industry has also benefited, with production in the U.S increasing by more than 40% in the last two decades;

Source
This increased production has of course had an effect on employment which is 29 percent lower than it was 20 years ago, before the pandemic situation of course.

Job loss is an inevitable factor of development, computers which evolved into mobile phones made a lot of jobs irrelevant, same with engine-powered vehicles which has been utilized in transport, agriculture etc. Through this developments people have evolved and I believe we would do so in a robot driven world. We wouldn't stick to using hoes for cultivating lands, because it created more jobs than tractors.

It also creates low skilled jobs. Mobile phones like apple employs thousands of low skilled laborers (they could be paid better than they currently are, but that's a discussion for another thread). A lot goes into the making of a robot, raw materials development as well as manufacturing, and on a global scale it would create lots of jobs in various sectors.

Cryptocurrency: Bitcoin
Dollar amount: $65
Bank Name: Guarantee Trust Bank
Account Name: **sent**
Account Number: **sent**

Edit: txid - c05ca0109b1da5efbc19027a2453d5afbfc2e4482c9d6fcf1cfd8ac17b2cfe3e

Edit: Funds received. It is always a pleasure.

Effort is one of the important factors that helps improve a user's post quality and with an increase in quality of discussions a user can impact more users positively and increase their chances of earning merits. Other factors, like where one posts and language barrier can influence positively or negatively, but users who deliberately try to help other members emphasize the purpose of merit creation and would benefit from the system.

I should point out that admins would interfere if one who was appointed (sources) to fairly distribute merits abuse the system. There has been cases where users have been removed from their merit source position and some were the merit transactions were revoked.
Theymos also interferes if it's a calculated abuse to cheat the system. Since the trust system was modified, "votes" from users who have earned certain amounts of merits counts to members eligibility and is an incentive for abuse.
Some users have been blacklisted from the trust selection process due to merit abuse.

I personally do not like the idea of users being given negative feedbacks for suspected merit abuse. It is not a wide spread practice from my observation, so most DT members agree with this.

This is a means to herd users into breaking the privacy cloak Bitcoin offers. If it is tagged as a suspicious commodity, then bogus regulatory laws placed on it through centralized platforms can be justified and users are forced to de-anonymize themselves.
Monero for example, which is one of the most privacy centered cryptocurrencies has come under lots of attacks and criticisms from government agencies who are constantly trying to track it - Private Coin Monero Can Now Be Tracked By US Homeland Security or to reduce its adoption by exchanges making it more difficult for it to be used.

With the increasing suspicion being linked to cryptocurrency transactions, Banks and governments increase the cost of users trying to maintain their privacy when transacting, which is a big threat to government control.

This is the regular opinion I get from people. The narrative of Bitcoin as a means of facilitating illegal activities has always been a means of controlling it or dissuading people from using it.

You are right. Transactions are prioritized by fees, the discussion was about transactions which included the same output;

If address A signs a transaction of 0.1BTC to B, and while it was yet unconfirmed; spent the same exact output in another transaction to C, with a much higher fee than the first transaction.
Miners may prioritize the first transaction regardless of the lower fee paid, while others would drop that and include the second (high fee) transaction, hence invalidating the first one.

In cases of different transactions involving different outputs, they are prioritized by the feerate (sats/byte).

This is because the price of converting a currency i.e, buying and selling is never equal. When one looks up the conversion rate for a currency to another, they usually get the official mid-market rate, in reality; this is just the mid way point between buying and selling.
So, if you're buying BTC from a exchange and paying them in your local currency, there is a high chance they would sell that to buy and hold a hard currency like the U.S dollar in their reserves, hence the increase of +4% to cover expenses.
Exchanges are businesses and put in measures to ensure they make profits.

This! Conversion rates of currencies, especially weaker ones to hard currencies are usually very ambiguous and one would get different wide values depending on what meter they are looking at. The black market rate can vary by up to +10-30% from the inter bank rate (as it does in my country).

No site is impervious to hacks and malwares. Security is a two way process;
• The user has to maintain safety when accessing an account, by not downloading unverified applications, avoiding random links, not repeating passwords etc. If one clicks on a malware or downloads a malicious script, their funds can be stolen from any platform.
• The platform also has to protect the assets of its users, by using secure servers, regularly checking for vulnerabilities etc.

Do you mean they told you to use the app if you have a bad screen or error, and for stolen money, they cannot do anything about it (like refund)?

• An initial exchange offering and partnership with a trading platform is part of the roadmap. Gambling seems to be the major part of the platform, but you're promoting the entire platform.
• Yes, there is no specific rule limiting gambling projects to Bitcoin. But one which is exclusively run on an altcoin chain may be more fitting in the altcoins section.

All gambling projects can be promoted on the gambling section. Your ANN thread was likely reported and the mods agreed that it wasn't exclusively a gambling platform.

Your ANN thread was promoting more than a gambling platform, and includes the road map of the token as well as information on staking and trading.

It also does not use Bitcoin and is run on an altcoin chain;
These could be the reason it was moved, but you can wait for a more accurate response from a mod/staff

This is probable, as the lockdown has lasted a long time, meaning some temporary job losses would have become permanent, due to business shutting down totally and going bankrupt. I would however still expect a much quicker recovery, particularly for larger economies; A reopening would mean lots of new opportunities for start-ups in various fields (I would assume loans would be made easily accessible), new businesses would be set up to replace the ones lost, creating employment.

During the brief reopening at the mid way point of the year, there was a huge rise in employment within the span of a month, with the United States adding about 4.8 million jobs in June, although the numbers started to drop in July (1.76 million) as the health effects of the immature easing of lockdown began to manifest.

Is there a slight possibility that countries would begin to look inwards for resources they need?
A nation which is self-sufficient would be less hit by the effect of a global lockdown should there be another similar pandemic in the future, in preparations for this, governments could make strides to become as self-sufficient as possible using the resources they have. Although If possible, this would only work to an extent, as exports and imports are both integral to an economy.

It depends on what you qualify as a crisis. In March Bitcoin crashed unexpectedly in price, losing about 50-60% of it's initial value, but this happened during a period were most assets and commodities were experiencing downward movements in value due to effects of lockdown and economic decline. It was unexpected but doesn't count as a crisis in my opinion, considering that it recovered very well over the following weeks and months.

From the time Bitcoin actually got a market value, there has been extremely wide fluctuations in value; After the bull run of 2017, we entered a long bear market period, with Bitcoin lossing more than the % value lost in March. It however recovered and is still attractive to investors and being adopted in various sectors.

A trade doesn't signify a capitulation of the currency - Weak hands and strong hands trade coins regularly. If anything it reflects two opposing opinions; one party sees a falling currency and moves to cut their losses, another identifies potential for growth.

You should not be persuaded to invest or believe in a currency, you bear the risk and should do your research. Bitcoin doesn't appeal to everyone, and if you search hard enough, there would be an argument and a counter argument against it.

I came across a report on how wired magazine mined about 13 bitcoins back in 2013(Bitcoin fluctuated within the range of $50 to $1000), but for some reason tore up the private keys, freezing up the coins permanently. At that time the price had shown potential to grow, making their decision a lot stranger, although they claimed it was a measure taken so as to remain neutral in their coverage of Bitcoin's network down the years;
"We talked about donating it to a journalism institution, or setting it aside as a scholarship. But we decided that if we gained any benefit from it at all, it would color our future coverage of bitcoin," says Calore. "So we just destroyed the key, knowing full well that it could eventually be worth six or seven figures."

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@OP, I didn't download their research PDF, but I think the figures thrown are quite vague and cannot be deciphered with any bit of accuracy using any tool. For 1,500BTC to be lost daily, then large holders or numerously small ones would lose access to their private keys or send bitcoins to a wrong (and dormant) address daily. This figure may have been possible in the early days of Bitcoin when it had less speculative value.

I agree. For such a synchronized V-shaped recovery to take place, nations would need to reopen their economy simultaneously (or within close time frames), inorder to reconnect the supply chain. The United States and China are trade partners and are the highest importers of products from each other. So, if China opens up (as is happening) while the U.S remains closed, there would be slow growth rate as they are working without a major market for their product and would also lack imports.

This could be a representation of the K-shaped recovery curve; where one sector rebounds due to stimulus or government grants, while another is neglected and continues to slide down or remains stagnant.

Keeping to health guidelines would reduce the impact of a second or third wave. Fear index of the pandemic has reduced over the months and people now defy lockdown laws (at least in my area), this increases the possibility of another wave.

So would countries who were more proactive in handling the situation experience a quicker rebound (like a V or U shaped curve) or would they be slowed down by lockdown in other areas as economics are more synchronized today?
New Zealand were one of the nation who handled the pandemic well and its finance minister expects strong economic rebound from technical recession

Agree. I edited the OP a bit, I believe it originally contained too much information which were not relevant to the topic being discussed.

TryNinja's bot allows one to track replies which were deleted along with the thread - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5248878.msg54441882#msg54441882

I think the 4th box is to automatically turn on notifications for a thread when you reply on it. You can also manually turn it on for any thread by clicking the notify option at the bottom right of a thread page.

Afaik, there's no setting which allows one to be notified when a thread they posted in is deleted. I think mods would have to manually delete a particular reply for a notification to be sent to the user.