Fluidity and convenience usually comes at a price, reason why lots of crypto users patronize custodial wallets to avoid taking responsibility. As you said, you trade your data for this convenience, but data is a broad space and ranges from browsing history to really sensitive information which you would not want a third party storing.
Using an ad blocker is very good practice, you could also use Searx to anonymously visit other search engines like Google, and it returns the result to you.

Search results are ranked based on activity score as well as bid amount. So basically; organic activity (including visits and mentions on other sites) as well as a substantial bid (amount paid to appear higher on search results) determine what website is returned to a user after a search. Google has a poor filter system, so a phishing website can show up on their result page with a substantial bid and activity, which can be faked.
At this point, you shouldn't use Google search engine at all, more so, if you are looking up delicate queries, like wallet websites or exchanges.

As an enthusiast, you would want to learn more about the assets you are interested in;
Check out this articles for information on basics of Bitcoin as well as best security practices;
- https://www.coindesk.com/learn/
- https://cryptosec.info/wallets/

As an investor you would need;
• A tool with which to monitor the changes in the market. For this you could check out https://tradingview.com/ or regular cryptocurrency market trackers like, coingecko or CMC

• Optimum security practice; this begins with a secure wallet to store your assets in. I recommend a hardware wallet like ledger or trezor, ensure you get it from the official website. You should begin to practice safe browsing and be more alert when using the internet, if you chose to be your own bank, you also have to take responsibility.
Recommendation from a forum member;

• You would also need an investment plan, to avoid panic selling or bag holding. Check out this thread - (SSS) - A Sane and Simple bitcoin Savings plan
.
Note: Your plan should be customized to you, take ideas of other as just suggestions.

• It would help to stay ahead of the market, explore changes and updates and decide what should and should not be in your portfolio, this forum can be a very useful tool for that. Good luck!

The ability of the government to carry out corrupt practices is not an indicator of socialism.
Using my country as a case study; social amenities such as electricity, tourism/hospitality has been privatized, with major sellouts still happening in various sectors indicating a shift from socialism. Corruption however is still widespread as they still have influence over financial structures like; budget allocation, contract awarding etc, so corrupt gov'ts can still effectively embezzle public funds.

The time the hype was at its highest was not when those projects were launched, but rather when it became popular; this popularity leads to FOMO, attracting investors and scammers who would want to rip off the new investors. ICOs were a product of the blockchain hype with devs leveraging on the technology to sell half baked projects which were only feasible on paper

We had hype around blockchain when it first became popular and the internet got lots of interest when it became available publicly. This two inventions had lots of hype, but were very essential in the advancement of technology, undergoing more developments along the way to get to its present stage.

I would assume they lacked enough activity to keep up with the number of boards on bitcointalk, or else they would have entirely duplicated the layout on their forum.

All the threads I skimmed through there were started by one profile, so there are very little users visiting the site. Any plagiarism would likely be copied from here and pasted there, and there's nothing that can be done to stop them, right?

I don't think so, I would expect a resistance level around $9000-9500. But as you said, predicting the price movements of cryptocurrencies is very difficult as so many factors influence the price.

The hype would certainly have influenced the crypto market to an extent, but I wouldn't say it was the sole reason for the mini-pump. Bitcoin halving happened some months ago and there has been lots of interest from institutional investors to cause a  bullish sentiment.

If your country uses a floating currency rate i.e, one which is dictated by changes in the economy, (as opposed to a fixed rate; which is pegged to another currency) then it would be influenced by changes such as inflation and the exchange value would be affected.
Sudan currently uses a regulated floating policy, which means it is still controlled to an extent by the government/banks.

Exchange rates are quite tricky to understand and calculate, bank rates are based on mid market rates, which is the average of buy and sell rates. You should also note that when converting a currency as an individual, you are technically buying money from an agency, so a commission is placed on it, all these factors can influence the exchange value.
Banks also implement fiscal policies to affect the economy, such as OMO ~ open market operations, QE ~ quantitative easing etcetera, so the inter bank rate is regulated.

Black market rates are usually more accurate and reflect changes in the economy more.
This is an excerpt from an article posted in July;

They've been around for quite a while - what is swiftcoin
The developers and administrators, who may be the same person, seem to be trying to affiliate both the forum and the coin to Bitcoin and are probably scrapping posts from this forum. Going through the most recent posts on the forum, there are so many of them with 'bitcoin' in its title or text (SEO marketing), which were likely plagiarized from here.

I could not find a logo of the project, but there is one of Bitcoin on the forum;

They're probably looking for cheap publicity by associating themselves with bitcoin, nothing to really discuss.

I may disagree with some of your opinions on health issues but I have also gotten lots of helpful information; for one, I got connected to Dr. John Campbell's YouTube channel through your threads, and it has been a great resource for useful content related to global health situations.
Congrats on your merit achievement. Your contributions would be valuable whichever board you stick to.

Uncertainty could have several connotations to it, Bitcoin could be seen as an alternative to the uncertainty in supply of cash, credit crisis and other fiscal policies the banking sectors implement which affects the nation's economy. Bitcoin has the qualities of immutability, decentralization and a fixed supply which makes it a good hedge against centralization.

That really is not that crazy. There are people who are investing in Bitcoin which would be accessed by their kids in 10-20 years, 2050 from then is not far off.

So, your friend does not know the exchange on which they bought bitcoins, and they have not visited it since 2010?
You can post the address publicly and the community would look into it and try and decipher the exchange
P.S; if he doesn't remember the exchange, he/she would likely not know the email address that was used to register it nor the password of the account, proving ownership of the account would be a struggle.

Why would you need this information? I'm struggling off the top of my head to justify wanting to identify the exchange an address belongs to, especially as such address is definitely not yours.

Exchanges usually have hot wallets and cold storage; they use hot wallets to maintain liquidity on their platform, cold storage are for safe guarding of funds and such addresses are not connected to the internet, so they do not make frequent transactions.
By tracing the transactions to and from an exchange's hot wallet, the address of an account holder on that platform can be identified. You can however not get any detail besides this.

Bitcoin addresses are psedo anonymous; this means that even if addresses are public and transparent a real life identity cannot be linked to it as no such information is available on the network.
It's not possible to;
• Identify the personal information of a wallet holder through the network

It is possible to;
• View the balance and transaction history of an address
• Establish a link between several addresses based on their transaction history (mixers and change address can be used to improve privacy)
• Identity exchange addresses, but the information of the owner of the account cannot be gotten except the exchange is hacked (or requested by a government agency)

In addition to what has been said already, mining difficulty is adjusted every 2016 blocks (approximately 2 weeks) to keep the average block time at 10 minutes, by balancing it with the amount of computing power competing to solve a hash problem at that point in time. If more miners leave the network, the difficulty is dropped to incentivise new miners to join in, and when more mining pools are added, the difficulty rises.

Bitcoin is a digital currency and you earn it the same way you earn your local currency; by offering a service and accepting payment in Bitcoin. This forum offers some means of selling such a service (promotion) through signature campaignsm. Also, if you have any skill you can monetize, start a thread in the Services board or browse through the board for any offers that fit your criteria and apply.

You should do the learning part first and after you've gained more knowledge about Bitcoin and the different facets to it like mining, you can then decide if it's profitable to get into

I looked up surfshark and they claim to have a strict no-log policy, if it's true then it could pass as a good privacy protector. You could check out customer reviews for any other possible risk
VPNs that keep logs of user's activity poses a huge risk as that data could be leaked, or coerced out of them by a government agency. You could try using TOR over it as an added layer of encryption.

Do not save your assets on online exchanges or any custodial wallet; if it's not your private keys, it's not your coins.
It may sound like an overkill, but if you truly want to maintain your anonymity then do not submit your identity to such websites or go through KYC, if they get hacked your data can be stolen, it can equally be coerced out of them by a government agency.
For storage use a good non-custodial wallet like electrum.

• Do not hold sensitive assets on devices you frequently visit the internet through. For extra privacy you can check out a hardware wallet.
• Do not open unverified links
• Keep your contact details, like email address, private.
• Avoid search engines or ISPs that store user information and stick to privacy centered platforms.

This has been requested quite a while back on the forum, and these were the replies from theymos;

A child board is not necessary in my opinion as the meet up board is not very active at the moment and breaking it into regions would further spread the little activity the board generates. I would however not mind if the board had a little more information, some people might be interested in organizing a Meetup but don't know where to start. A stickie thread that gives info on how to start, the format to use as well as the dos and don'ts could be very helpful.

I've heard of meet and greets being organized for blog owners who are mostly anonymous. It depends on the audience (choosing the people you expose your identity to) and also is a personal decision (whether or or not to go).