This is only a very broad estimate and the range is between 2.78 million and 3.79 million.

While Chainalysis seems to be the most well-known and trusted blockchain analysis company in BTC at the moment, its statements should certainly not be treated as fact.  We don't know exactly how much BTC is lost or how much could be lost in the future.

What we do know though is that as the BTC price increases, the chance of people losing coins becomes significantly lower because they're willing to spend more to secure their valuable holdings.

There's also the fact that over time, better and better security systems are being developed and there is more awareness about the most secure ways to hold coins.

Hedge funds sometimes trade pretty aggressively and don't have the same responsibilities that, say, a pension fund has when dealing with their customers' money, so it's perfectly possible that they would decide to short BTC after the introduction of futures contracts.

However, it's also possible that if the euphoria of current speculators continues, they will invest in BTC beyond their means, thus increasing the price extremely dramatically.

Either way, it'll most likely increase volatility.

Steam was one of the very few major merchants left still accepting BTC.

BTC's usage among merchants seems to have been going gradually backwards since the start of the year, with Fiverr dropping it in February and some of the groups that people claim accept Bitcoin not actually doing so or doing so indirectly.

Just goes to show that speculators and an increasing price don't make BTC better. 

Back in 2013 or so, there was a Western Union ad advertising their fees (which were in fact very high).  A picture was circulated to show that BTC, at the time, was a dramatically cheaper and freer payment system.

Now it's a somewhat different battle, since BTC transfer fees are a lot higher since then and they vary dramatically from day to day.

Still, I'd say that BTC and Western Union have very different audiences.  Western Union are unlikely to convince many BTC supporters of anything.

No IMO, due to the rapid and unpredictable price changes that have been happening during this year.  However, if you do decide to do it, remember that it doesn't matter how much BTC you're buying, it matters what the value of that BTC is.
After being seized by the US government, they reopened and reimbursed 55% of their users' funds.  They are still going but it would be a huge risk to try trading on there due to the possibility of them being seized again.
No, not personally.  It's very surprisingly common though.

Extinction is almost impossible in Bitcoin because there's an important difference between BTC and a species (the thing that would normally go extinct) - a species that goes extinct can't come back unless other species evolve other millions of years into one that resembles the previous species.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, can be revived in an instant, just by one person mining or making a transaction.  It takes next to no effort for this to occur.

Sure, the price can fall, but it pretty much can't ever die.

It's a fairly normal price.  My Xapo card cost $20, and some cards are notably cheaper than that.

However, several parts of that site look pretty dodgy, and I've never seen them before.  All that they seem to have is a decent domain name and a mediocre-looking website.

They don't mention the fees for using the card, the verification procedures, or pretty much any other important information.

The last thing I bought with BTC was phone earlier in the year with Purse.  It was around $500 at the time, and would now be worth something like $2500.

Still, I don't see it as a dumb purchase.  There's no guarantee that BTC would continue rising and it was a perfectly good deal at the time.

The pizza dude had the right attitude.  IIRC he said that it was a "good deal at the time".  Not worth judging our actions based on hindsight.

After you test your seed to make sure your backup is safe, you can just send it there.  If you're paranoid, you can definitely test first.
Yep, TREZOR gives you a 24 word seed as well.
I do, yes.  I wrote it down on two separate cards in separate locations.
I keep it hidden in my house, but it's a good idea to try a bank safety deposit box or something else regarded as safe.

Otherwise, you can have additional passphrases written down in different locations or memorised so that access to the seed doesn't equal access to your coins.
You can choose fees, but they have dynamic fee estimation (like Electrum).
You can restore it in any wallet that's compatible with that type of seed.  I'm pretty sure that includes Electrum and Mycelium, among others.

I'm pretty sure that ETH has an adjusting block size, so it'll clear out after a little while.

Regardless, it shows that transaction backlog and significant fees aren't confined to BTC.  It's a problem that needs to be solved by crypto in general, just not by BTC, and the solution to BTC backlog isn't to jump on the next crypto that comes along.

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I doubt that this kind of game will take off after it's past its gimmick phase.  Just a temporary distraction for ETH users.

To pick up the philosophy that a significant amount of people around here claim to have, have a look at this thread.  Basically, given that it's a risky asset, trading frequently is often considered to be worse than simply buying and holding.

Most people around here are not experienced traders, and it's quite important to be self-aware of that by avoiding day trading and other short-term trading.

However, not all of them actually do that, and end up panic selling after investing more than they could afford to lose or being afraid for their money.

Personally, I think I'm willing to hodl as well, seeing as I haven't bought any at these higher prices.  But I can't guarantee how I'll react when it actually happens.

Because:

-The price has risen extremely dramatically since the start of the year, with an increase from approximately $1,000 to over $10,000.

-This price increase is not backed by the merchant adoption that BTC users previously focused on - rather, BTC is being touted as a "store of value".  This is fine in itself, but without functioning well as a currency as well, the "store of value" aspect is primarily kept alive by first mover advantage, which doesn't tend to last forever.

-Traders in many crypto-related spaces have become euphoric and are assuming that the price will continue rising exponentially, which is a dangerous assumption to have in such a risky asset.  This is very common during speculative bubbles.
I disagree.  BTC is still relatively early in its development phase and has a long way to go.  I don't think that it'll fail, but I don't think that more speculators are going to make it any better.

Yep.  It's no different for you to send to a SegWit address as it would be for you to send to a legacy address.
No, but P2SH (Pay to Script Hash) addresses begin with a 3.

If the address begins with a 1, it's definitely a legacy address, and if it starts with a 3, it's either a SegWit address or it's using one of the other uses of P2SH addresses (namely multisig).

People are finding arbitrary comparisons over and over again just to suit them.

If the BTC ever passes that point, you'll find some other arbitrary comparison to try and claim that the BTC price should get higher than it already is - the reality is that in (likely) bubbles, the price is not rational and it doesn't have to stick to or follow specific percentages.

That's the case all the time, but it's even less predictable in a bubble.  If you've bought in late, at least justify it properly.

That was never one of the core aims.  Read through the whitepaper.
This is assuming that everything which rises dramatically in price must continue rising until there is literally no money left that could possibly fuel it.

What you're missing is that a significant amount of people will continue to be skeptical or uninterested, and some people will be scared away, considering it more likely to be a bubble if the price rises higher.  If we went by your logic, pretty much everything would be worth loads.
A Ponzi scheme involves a central authority gaining money by accepting investments into a central platform and then distributing money to earlier investors.  A speculative asset and a Ponzi scheme are entirely different, and it would be ridiculous to conflate the two terms.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-19/ecb-proposes-end-deposit-protection

If you want to read the full paper, it's here.
If it does, I suspect it'll happen over a long and gradual transition period taking several years, and I suspect that they'll try their best to keep it quiet.

People still have the misconception that central banks create the majority of money in a country when it's actually made by retail banks, so they could hold the misconception that their deposits are insured for a long time.
I doubt it'll have that much effect for now.

A huge amount of BTC travels to and from exchanges, hence why the trading volume is around $7,000,000,000.

Since BTC is somewhat scarce and not inflationary, plus the fact that it can be used internationally and has nothing to peg down the price, the number of people that actually use it as a currency seems to be insignificant and the number of merchants that accept it is also insignificant.

Comparing BTC's market cap to a fiat currency's market cap is unreasonable, because fiat currencies aren't hoarded so much.

The PoW system is used by most other major cryptos as well, and equally secure implementations of PoS systems and other systems are nowhere to be found as of yet.
Most major alts (the ones which aren't designed primarily for pump and dumps) can be traded on some of the available exchanges against USD. 
This could be a huge problem for taxation and it would require more complex KYC procedures for those who only want to trade crypto.  Many of these people would prefer to stay anonymous or pseudonymous.

It's a lot more effort trading directly with fiat.

This is the first time I've seen this prediction.  I'm pretty sure that BTC holders don't "generally agree" about this. 

I also don't see why you assume that Wall Street will act in the specific way that you expect them to.  They have quite varied views on BTC and eve the ones that believe BTC is in a bubble wouldn't necessarily short it.
Because they don't think the same thing that you've said.  It's perfectly possible that it could cause the price to rise, depending on who gets involved.

It's also possible that more people would get involved out of curiosity if BTC is introduced to more regulated and mainstream financial markets.

Not really the same, because stocks and bonds can't be sent in the same decentralised and pseudonymous way that BTC can. 

I don't think that the UK government really considers crime conducted with BTC to be as huge a threat as they claim - if anything the threat may be decreasing, because small-scale criminals can often find the fees annoying (as you can tell on darknet markets and related forums).

They should really be focused specifically on taxation, but instead they're pretending that crime is a huge factor in their decision.  Even though it may play some part, I think that the prominence of P2P trading and the use of cash makes this a futile battle.