The address starting with 3 is the old format, while the ones with the prefix M is the new. Due to similarities between litecoin's P2SH and Bitcoin's P2SH (BIP 16) addresses which both began with 3, litecoin developed a new address format prefixed by M.
Both addresses are valid but are expressed in different formats to avoid confusion.

Market dominance is based off the market cap of the currency, and imo, that is not a very meaningful statistic, does not reflect growth, and I will not pay much attention to it. Any altcoin created today could easily pump up their volume and release unlimited number of coins, greatly increasing their market cap. When checking Bitcoin, I usually pay more attention to other metrics.

2017 into 2018 was the hype period for ICOs, the current rave is DeFi, there will be more hype projects in the future as more developers look for ways to tweak the system for benefits. This doesn't much hurt Bitcoin as a network, those that understand its value will get in and those who follow the hype of other projects could profit there or get burned, just like with ICOs back then.

During my time on the forum I have seen merits awarded in a variety of ways, some which were completely rational and others which were quite bizzare to me, this ranges from give aways to newbies, merit for gifs and some other sort of give away for unsavoury comments on CSW. I had my personal opinion on them, but they were not my merits and I couldn't dictate how they could be given. I would only consider an intervention when it was unethical, like merit sales or using it to incentivise posting in an ANN thread, sort of like paid bumps. In these cases the trust system which is equally unregulated by the forum could be used to check it.

Except in cases of extreme abuse, I would rather not scrutinize merit giving as everyone has diverse opinions on what they think is deserving of it.

I commend the effort you must have put in to get it to this stage, but I think some corrections needs to be made.
Firstly, I haven't downloaded the app, I searched directly but couldn't find any information about it on their store.
Looking at the picture, I would have expected an app called 'know bitcoin' to be more specific, rather than 'what is cryptocurrency?', ''what is Bitcoin?' could be used. Bounty hunting also is not related to the Bitcoin network.

Some of the definitions are either inaccurate or not holistic enough; The first answer for example, your explanation simply defined what digital currencies are, crypto is coined from cryptic and is linked with privacy and secrecy, so it's technically different from a basic digital currency. There is lots to be corrected or removed from that screen grab and this is only the first page.
Did the app go through a beta testing phase were it was checked and verified?

This would only be possible in groups which are public, but would not apply to secret groups or private messages. Also messages on telegram can be edited/deleted and it isn't yet fully indexable, so proving the original source is going to be difficult.

If the prove cannot be verified then it should not be accepted, and if effected it would open a can of worms with lots of hugely debated appeal threads.

Tl;dr
• The president of Mali along with members of his parliament were on Tuesday abducted and he was forced to resign and dissolve bus government, this was the cumulation of years of unrest, corruption and insurgency within the country and the region as a whole.
• The military has pledged to return power to the people after they restore stability.
• The coup which is the second in a decade in Mali has been widely condemned by other nations, particularly, other West African countries and France

Updates
• The nation is currently under curfew and all borders are shut. The military announced that the air and land borders would be open from today, Friday
• Neighboring countries have been advised to keep their border with Mali closed by the ECOWAS.

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But corruption can not be completely eradicated, and even it can, it still depends on the trust the residents and organizations have on the developers, this overrides the need for the blockchain affiliation. Decentralization and trustless-ness is the key factor of Bitcoin as you don't need to trust, only verify. In this case; the people who have lost faith in the government would need to put that on another centralized authority, with no guarantees.

Building an escape route really is not significant in the development of a continent, especially when that safe haven can not accommode everyone.

I would rather you didn't quote the whole OP when replying as it clogs up the thread and makes it difficult to follow.
But to the point, Mali has been in crisis for so long and were so desperate for change that they would accept it whichever way it came from. The citizens have really not experienced democracy since voting in president IBK, as he had been using corrupt means to maintain power, which is quite similar to a dictatorship.
You're right though, there are so many downsides of military dictatorship, it would have an adverse affect on foreign diplomatic relations and could slip a nation into anarchy giving rise to more coups

The military has however pledged to return power to the people, so that might return a bit more stability to the country if it happens.

It's a power race and China are aware (and hoping) that some of those loans would be defaulted.
In Nigeria for example, millions of USD has been borrowed for the construction of railways and more are expected to be exchanged, however the fine print of the terms were not publicized, this lead to an alarm being raised when some of the terms, which included waving a portion of the nations sovereignty to China was released.
Majority of the nations which are indebted through direct loans are developing nations in Africa and some parts of Asia, some of which are rich in natural resources. Defaults would allow China expand her territory.

The mayor of the region has responded strongly, condemning the action and also looking to deport the owners of the firm. This was most probably a plot in a bigger political play

The amount of fiat which would be converted to Bitcoin may not be that huge compared to some of the recent buys into bitcoin, like microstrategy, but it's a positive news. The more small and medium enterprises begin to adopt Bitcoin the closer it would be brought to the locals in various regions as these businesses interact more with the people.

The restaurant operates about 7 cooperate and franchise locations as per the tweet and if they were to accept Bitcoin as a means of making payments while it being their reserve savings asset, there would be no need for payment processors. This would improve Bitcoin adoption significantly.

Does not really matter what Warren Buffett does and there is no need speculating on whether or not he would change his mind, except of course you are a shareholder in Berkshire Hathaway.
Bloggers only write about such stuff cause it's expected to attract traffic not cause it's real news, and a whole article is spurn off a tweet and a couple of comments.

Do not invest in any asset based off other people's predictions. There are so many profiles on social media who shill several coins (Bitcoin included) for personal gain. When you invest you bear the risk, and you should have knowledge of the fundamentals of the Bitcoin network inorder to build a projected ROI. In some cases you would also need knowledge on technical analysis to choose how and when to buy in.
If you bought during the last bull run which was 3 years ago you would be at a loss now, however it's a very small window; any other period that year except during the monthish length of the bull spike would leave you with a positive index. I would assume that monthish length was when you bought

The decision to cut your losses is still yours to make, you would likely get diverse advises on this thread, you however bear the risk and decide what to do with your investment. It would naturally be frustrating when it refuses to break above your buy in price, especially after such a long period. My advice;
• Stop following price projections, they are just personal opinions of others. Make efforts to understand what you are holding and build your own personal predictions.
• Research on other potential investments and if you are going to dump Bitcoin for another make an effort to choose the time to buy in to avoid joining the FOMO hype and buying at the top.
• Understand that market changes and there's no guarantee when investing.

If you take into account the 0.5 smerits generated for each 1 merit sent then;
...5 - 2(+0.5) - 1(+0.5) both half smerits would potentially generate another smerit totalling 39
To compare;
Each 1 merit sent generates 0.5 smerits = 10 × 0.5 = 5
As above ...5 - 2(+0.5) - 1(+0.5)
So, 30 + 5 + 2(+0.5) + 1(+0.5) = 39

Regardless of how you distribute merits it should generate same number of smerits, although splitting it more would mean it would need an extra merit to activate it by making it a whole 1

Tl;dr
• The president of Mali along with members of his parliament were on Tuesday abducted and he was forced to resign and dissolve bus government, this was the cumulation of years of unrest, corruption and insurgency within the country and the region as a whole.
• The military has pledged to return power to the people after they restore stability.
• The coup which is the second in a decade in Mali has been widely condemned by other nations, particularly, other West African countries and France

Updates
• The nation is currently under curfew and all borders are shut. The military announced that the air and land borders would be open from today, Friday
• Neighboring countries have been advised to keep their border with Mali closed by the ECOWAS.

---

Back story
The president of Mali, President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita has been overthrown by the military in the nation's second coup in a decade.
On tuesday, 18 August, the president compulsively resigned from his position and dissolved the parliament. This comes after weeks of unrest within the country with opposition calling for his resignation. The opposition have been protesting the mismanagement of the nation, reflected in the current economic and security conditions of the country and neighboring regions following about 8 years of insurgency. There has also been reports of corruptions and electoral misconducts aimed at keeping the reigns of power firmly in the hands of the president.

Brief History:
President Ibrahim Keita was elected president in Mali in 2013, less than a year after a coup which plunged the nation into crisis few months to the 2012 elections overthrowing the then President Amadou Touré. This takeover was countered by foreign interventions, notably coming from France and neighboring West African nations inorder to recover the nation's territory.

The elected president pledged to bring unity to the region, however after years of unrest and insurgency, thousands of lives lost, much more displaced and more foreign troops being sent to the region, a diplomatic intervention was needed in July this year with 5 West African nations; Ghana, Ivory Coast, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal led by the immediate ex-president of Nigeria holding a mediation involving the leaders of all 5 meeting in Mali with the aim of restoring order within the region. This mediation attempt however failed with the key opposition, the Movement of June 5 - Rally of Patriotic Forces, requesting for accountability for the political clash which took place within the 10th and 12th of June, which left 11 dead and 158 injured.
Later in July a virtual meeting between the Economic Community Of West African States was called to mediate within the region after the failed peace trip.

Present situation:
On 18 August 2020, a coup began led by fractions of the Malian Armed Forces. Gunshots were fired in several locations sending the people into panic. This was followed by the arrest of the president along with members of his parliament. He was forced to resign his position on midnight of Tuesday and dissolve his presidential parliament.

The president later on Tuesday spoke during a television broadcast;

The military has expressed their interests in restructuring the nation and claimed they did not desire to hold power;
Source

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The coup has been condemned by many countries within the African region and beyond and a couple of security briefings has been held within various political unions. France are former colonizers of Mali and would be the biggest players within the region with thousands of her troops currently deployed there starting with Operation Serval which was launched during the 2012 coup. This ended in 2014 and was almost immediately followed by Operation Barkhane.

• What do you think the implications would be for Mali and neighboring regions?
• Malians took to the streets to celebrate after reports of the president being detained went public, could this situation have a positive effect on the nation?

For this to happen, Bitcoin would need to multiple by at least 2300%, when you consider newly mined coins which would increase the supply, that percent would be much lower. While this is within the realms of reason especially looking back at the last ten years, it's pretty much a wide guess and I consider such price predictions unnecessary, 1 BTC would m be 1BTC in 2029, and that's the value that really matters.
Twitter is not the ideal platform to learn about bitcoin, educative profiles are few and far between with majority of the crypto tweets there being shills (focused only on the USD and gold value), with little or no content about the technology behind Bitcoin.

Goes without saying. I was giving you the reason why there is no official list. I also stated that it could be deduced by checking their merit history. There has been several attempts at compiling the full list, theymos however declined on making it official, for privacy reasons.

For privacy reasons the official list of merit sources is not publicly available, we wouldn't want users bugging the sources for merits or scrutinizing their merit awarding. Most of them would however already be known due to their merit giving rate or having admitted to be.
For the number of merit sources and the total allocation, check out this link - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats=sources
Full merit statistics - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats

According to more recent reports this project is yet to take off and is currently facing restrictions from the local government in acquiring rights to set up strategic resources in the area. Link - https://www.google.com/amp/s/decrypt.co/20969/nevadas-170-million-blockchain-city-facing-challenges%3famp=1
The project was launched at a time when altcoins were still being hyped and blockchain was marketed as a technology that could be applied to every sector. I would assume this project was supposed to key into that hype.

An isolated utopian society is not sustainable in my opinion, the world has become more interconnected with huge spikes in global trade and financial openness over the last few decades, having a society which would function on its own is impossible, and if the residents in that area still have to hold the nation's legal tender and make trades across, that sort of invalidates the ambition.

If a post is accurate and would be helpful to those who come across it on the forum then it deserves to be merited whether or not the user is inactive or a hoarder. Merit sources are expected to make the effort to spend their smerits, regular users are advised to, but it's their prerogative to choose whether or not to. I'd rather have multiple hoarders posting quality content than regular merit distributors who do not post quality (I understand that there are users who do both).
The same applies to banned users in my opinion. Merit is not reward for good behavior but for quality content, if such content is still visible and still helpful, it is worthy of merits.

Secondary motives of merit creation (circling) shouldn't invalidate the primary objective (encouraging quality content). More merit sources can always be added along with their merit stash increased.