In my country, the environmental theme is temporarily outside active discussion because the war led to instability of electricity and military equipment can't rely on eco-friendly solutions anyway. But overall, I believe we should strive toward the future of much fewer cars and of way more electric vehicles than other vehicles. As for stoves, electric stoves are also much better for health and safety, and they're easier to clean than gas stoves.
I think there IS a genuine and urgent need to change our relationship with nature and focus on renewable sources. Climate change isn't a problem of the future. It's already happening, and it's leading to a lot of human suffering as well as financial losses. It's true that electricity doesn't always come from eco-friendly sources, but many countries actually mainly rely on clean sources of energy, and at least it's possible to move away from the worst sources, such as coal.

Bitcoin ETFs currently have 192,255 BTC under their control. That's less than 1% of circulating supply, and that's the ETFs combined. Interestingly, the iShares Bitcoin Trust by BlackRock holds a similar amount, which is almost close to 1% of the total supply. Going from 1% to controlling Bitcoin is a very big jump. They can accumulate more, and maybe this 1% will become 2-3%, which is still negligible in comparison with the circulating supply. So I don't think they're trying to control Bitcoin, and I don't think they'll ever accumulate enough to actually be considered as 'controlling BTC'.

Having a place to live is great because you can at least be pretty sure you won't be homeless. Having another place to rent out isn't a bad plan if a person knows how to do that and can afford it, but I agree that, to me, Bitcoin investment sounds potentially more profitable and more useful as a retirement plan. That's especially true in places where the rent is low. I know someone in their 70s who has two flat she's renting out, and she also received a small pension from the government. The total amount she gets is something like a medium wage for one person, but she also lives with another person who doesn't have income, so this income is just enough to cover food, pills, and bills.

To be honest, I haven't met people like that, people who are full of business ideas and really impressed me. But I believe that some people are better at generating ideas than others, and having an idea is a very different thing from implementing it. I think we should have more people whose job is to hunt for talents and match up people with different skills and strengths. This could help fight inequality and give birth to some cool projects, as long as it's done in a reasonable and non-exploitative manner. From time to time I see people that are really good at something but don't have enough resources to make it in professional industries and I think that if I were a talent seeker, I'd hire them.

Something's very wrong with the website the op shared (or at least it's wrong when I open it). The op mentioned that 234,566 is worth around $ 158.50, so when I opened the website and saw 234,541 as the equivalent of $64.47, I was really surprised. That's when I noticed that the website says that Bitcoin price is $ 27,486.17, when it's actually almost $68.5k right now. So the idea is interesting (although more filters and info would be nice), but Bitcoin price is so off that it's misrepresenting reality too much. It needs a dynamic Bitcoin price (like the dynamic population data and share of sats data) to work properly.

10% cashback in BTC sounds quite nice. This way, the company isn't losing anything because the cashback can only be used for further purchases from this company, but they're also popularizing Bitcoin and making people happier by basically giving a discount for the next purchase. I think such efforts can increase awareness of Bitcoin and perhaps promote some usage of Bitcoin as a currency. But when the price is growing, people don't want to spend Bitcoin because they think they'll get more out of it tomorrow, whereas when the price is going down, they often abandon Bitcoin and don't want to deal with it again, being shocked by how much value it can lose and how fast that can happen.

I just don't see any reasons to use them. I hate regular ATMs. They're simple to use, but I don't feel comfortable dealing with money like that in a public space. Bitcoin ATMs can attract even more attention because some think that all people who have cryptos are rich or whatever. Plus, a lot of people are saying that Bitcoin ATM fees are the worst.
Also, while there are a lot of Bitcoin ATMs, it's important to note that they're not widely distributed around the world. More than 90% of Bitcoin ATMs are in North America (just the US and Canada), while many countries in other regions have just a few of those machines.

Countries have different political systems and societies have different relations with the authorities. If we're talking about authoritarian countries, of course they focus on controlling their citizens, so cryptos aren't welcome there because cryptos make citizens more independent and more free. If it's democracies we focus on, they can also be pretty different and have different priorities. Sometimes cryptos are legal but usually recognized as assets rather than currencies. This way, people can invest in them, have some profit, pay their taxes, but cryptos aren't a threat to local monetary policies, fiat and banks. It's also worth remembering that while cryptos can bring growth, they can also bring devastation if people aren't attentive enough with how they store their coins, where they keep their passwords and private keys, or if they simply can't take the volatility and sell at wrong moments.

The money they hold is not something they stole from people. It's the money confiscated from hackers (from people who actually stole it). The historical chart in the article shows that they're not accumulating coins to have some control over the market or whatever. They just confiscate illegally obtained coins from scams and hacks and regularly sell them on auctions. While it's true that they're holding 200k BTC, it's also likely that they will sell a significant amount, so even this 1% is temporary. Not to mention that 1% isn't that much.

Email scams can be very elaborate, and so can social media scams as well. Corporate email can often be faked, especially if a company didn't protect themselves specifically against it, so posing as an exchange asking you for updating some info or whatever is possible. YouTube accounts with fake giveaways might have a tick (verified status) next to the name of the channel, and sometimes real Twitter accounts get hacked and promote crypto scams.
It's important to be careful and aware, and things will be okay.

I don't think that's how it works. Bitcoin grows, the price increases. Then, at some point, selling defeats that growth, and the price starts going down. Of course, a lot of people want to cash out their profits, and then some people just join the selling wave out of panic. The ETF example, however, doesn't have much to do with it. The SEC approved ETFs in the middle of January. The price was around $45k-$46k in the first half of January, and then gradually dropped to $40k closer to the end of January before starting to climb back up. The price didn't skyrocket, and some selling happened, but Bitcoin recovered soon.
The price is currently almost $67k, so we can't reasonably be talking about a massive withdrawal or a massive selling at this point, in my opinion. There's no automatic withdrawal, there are just some corrections along the way.

It's good to have such data and to monitor how influential investment funds are actually getting. There's a clear surge of Bitcoin accumulation in 2024, most likely due to the SEC finally approving ETFs. One million BTC is a very big number, especially considering that a few million BTC that count as 'circulating supply' might actually be lost forever or are at least not in active use. But that still means that they're very far from managing the majority of BTC.
I do agree, though, that this data should be combined with info on exchanges and other forms of centralized storage of BTC to estimate how much is actually held by people in non-custodial wallets. From what Amphenomenon shared, it seems that the majority of BTC is likely to still be decentralized and held by people themselves (or at least outside major centralized platforms). That sounds like good news to me.

The fact that Bitcoin went to ATH before the halving, even though people largely expected it to happen well after it, just shows once again that Bitcoin halving doesn't have much to do with the price. The price can go up or down regardless of when halving happens.
As for USDT, I see news about it getting to a record-high market capitalization, but the news I can find about 1 billion new coins dates back to November 2023, which was a while ago (and it's only a couple of articles that mention it). So a source to back up that statement would be appreciated. Bitcoin is traded a lot in trading pair with USDT, so it might make sense that changes in USDT supply can affect Bitcoin price.

In my country, banks normally don't charge anything when a customer is just keeping money there, and a lot of transfers are free as well. So there's no reason to go on exchanges and buy USDT when you can, if you want, just store the USD in a bank account.
I want to point out that it's impractical to invest in a stable coin because its whole point is to retain value over time (it's not going to grow). Stable coins also have an additional risk compared to fiat because they are allegedly backed up by some physical assets (or real fiat banknotes) to ensure stability, but there's no transparency in these processes. So the USDT might crash when dollar stays fine.

Huh, that's an interesting way to look at it. I agree that it's wonderful to have a limited supply and a regulated pace of creation of new coins that we have with Bitcoin than have a limitless fiat system. What's interesting, though, is that despite a lot of concerns, the US keeps getting away with all that printing. If you look at the USD annual inflation rate, it's one of the most stable fiat currencies and its inflation is usually below 5%. They're playing with fire, but they're playing well. So while Bitcoin is great for investment, the USD is an acceptable fiat currency and an acceptable reserve currency.

The last time, Bitcoin had a double bull market with a brief but significant bear market in between. The price reached $62.8k in April 2021 (versus just shy of $20k of the previous ATH), then fell down to $30k in July, and then went up to $67.7k in November. I think Bitcoin should significantly surpass its previous ATH this time around as well, and then it can also go into a temporary 50% loss or something like that (a great time to buy more) before reaching its peak, perhaps.
So two things (or three, if you count DCA) probably motivate people to invest now. The first is simply FOMO (which was mentioned by others), and the second is a reasonable realization that Bitcoin can easily go well above the current price. I'm not saying now it is a good time to invest (unless someone is sticking to DCA), but some people can see it differently.

I was about to make a thread about this news, and I'm happy that Bitcointalk search feature was helpful for once, and I found this thread before making another one.
But the way I understand it, Do Kwon does NOT want to be extradited neither to the USA nor to South Korea, so this decision was in his favour, actually.
From the article you shared:
So he's against extradition, and the extradition to the US was formally stopped on the grounds of inconsistency of where he should be extradited (to the US or to South Korea).

I don't quite understand what the impact is supposed to be because the op mentioned how the US government transferred 15k BTC, which coincided with Bitcoin growing and reaching the price of $60k. Then there's a story about a price drop in July after a transfer of 9,800 BTC. To me, it kind of shows that there's no strong correlation, there's no significant impact. It went down after one transfer and up after another. So there's no reason to worry. The market is growing fast, and it can continue to grow or suddenly collapse regardless of the US government's actions.

Game 1:  44, 17'
Game 2:  44, 14'

14. Sean O’Malley
13. Dustin Poirier
12. Kevin Holland
11. Jack Della Maddalena
10. Yadong Song
9. Jailton Almeida
8. Maycee Barber
7. Mateusz Gamrot
6. Kyler Phillips
5. Ion Cutelaba
4. Michal Oleksiejczuk
3. Robelis Despaigne
2. Asu Almabaev
1. Maryna Moroz

NOT go the Full Distance 8