IIRC this week alone we've had newbies who have had issues with custodial/web wallets, either their wallets hacked or their funds stuck in a wrong address/wallet and they can't move the coins as they aren't in custody of the keys, they are left with contacting 'support' that's always reluctant to assist without any drama. These cases reemphasizes the importance of not choosing a custodial wallet that's controlled by a third party and not you the owner of the funds.

custodial vs non- custodial wallet is also a good read. That being said, in as much as choosing a good wallet is important, you the owner of the wallet can still expose it to scammers and make it vulnerable by not following simple instructions like: "not sharing your seed phrase with others". If you read getting a hardware wallet doesn't mean you coins are safe you will find out how users make silly errors that can make even the safest wallet (hardware) very easy for scammers to import in a different interoperable wallet and spend the funds in it.

The U.S. election is in November, that's about three months to go, there is no way Trumps government can revive the economy in such a short period of time, he's reelection or not will depend on what he's done in the last four years and not this remaining three months before the polls (even if it's possible he revives the economy). Trump has made quite a lot of bad decisions as well as statements he failed to keep to, it's up to the voters now.

Powell didn't choose the wrong words there imo, there is no definite direction for the U.S economy atm, of course the government will do everything possible to get things back on track and to get the jobless working again, but it will take time for this to happen, they have been forced to print more money already this period, a move that could also affect the economy later on. It is what it is and the economy is bound to recover slowly.

You sent the funds in one transaction and since it was moved out in two different Txs, I'll say it's probably not a clipboard hijacking malware, since you've only copied the address and sent the funds at one go.

I think someone has access to you profile information or your recovery/import/export phrase. How safe did you keep this information, did you store them in your phone or share them with others (friends). Blockchain.com support isn't the friendliest, and you may not get any response from them. And if it's scammers who have compromised your account and not a bug from their end then sorry there's nothing support can do for you.

The only opportunity I can think of this time is investing/hedging your money in non-inflationary assets like Bitcoin, gold, silver; there is actually limited opportunities in the world atm, unemployment rates have spiked to new record heights, even in the U.S. Businesses are struggling with generating income and the economy is in distress, if you're talking about opportunities, I'll only recommend averting your currency devaluation from affecting you by putting some of your assets in either gold or Bitcoin, there have been so much money printing all over the world and it's going to devalue fiat currencies in the long/short term.

A newbie who is a developer for example will like to start in the Bitcoin & technical discussion section, and I don't think anyone can suggest that board for a newbie, because of the technicalities and Bitcoin knowledge users need to join in there, but a dev (though newbie) will have that knowledge, so I'm for the notion that "any board is okay" as long as it synchronizes with the knowledge you have.

This is not true. You can also restrict people who can add you up to groups on Telegram; I'll try and write out the process: "settings>privacy and security>groups>'who can add me to groups' (you select as you desire, best to choose contacts only)>there is also an option there to add exceptions, that's you can include contacts you do not/want to add you notwithstanding"

+1 to all you said. Opening intracountry businesses imo isn't bad, the home government can ensure strict compliance to social distancing and other covid-19 preventive measures. Tourism (travelling to other countries) is the major way this virus touched almost all nations in the world, tourism should be the last thing that should open as the lockdown is eased gradually.

There's also a different between opening the borders for essential matters/businesses and the number of people who travel in will be cut down, but tourism brings in quite a lot of people and these tourists will always wish to stay for a longer period of time, imo, Costa Rica can only hope this doesn't bring a wave of the virus with it.

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The economy was shut earlier this year to accommodate efforts in tracing cases of corona virus and to stop the rapid spread, but from the news I'm about to share, I do not think any sort of wave or spread of the virus can shut down the economy again. Costa Rica as a country is a tourist attraction to people from different parts of the world, but majorly from the U.S., and that's to say the U.S. dollars plays a very important role in the Costa Rican economy.
Despite the United States of America having more than five million confirmed Corona virus cases, Costa Rica is opening it's borders to American tourists and to make things sound good, only Americans from six states:
Mind you this five states combined have had a total of about 694,765 confirmed cases of covid-19, which is about 20 times higher than the number of cases in Costa Rica. So it's obvious this is a move made to stimulate the Costa Rican economy, and can be said to be at the expense of health. This is very risky from the Costa Rican government and it'll cause huge backlash if it leads to a wide spread of covid-19 in their territory, as of course they will put the blame on this decision.

Another thing to note is how important a role they (Costa Rica) are playing in trying to revive their economy, do you think other nations will also follow suit and take risky measures like this one to generate funds needed for the fast recovery of the economy. Some people, in my country for example have been calling for fresh total lockdowns to be imposed as the only option to defeat the virus completely, I don't think any government can take that step again, what do you think?
Read the full news, it's a good read: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/25/costa-rica-is-allowing-american-tourists-from-six-us-states.html

The article also highlights this:
That is to say, it's not only about knowing the technicalities, but how large a chunk of Bitcoin users are ready to use, implement and manage it, I agree with the "privacy loves company" quote, imo, for the importance of privacy to be chiseled in the minds of a lot of Bitcoin users, there has to be quite a large number of users taking the responsibility of not losing their privacy. But atm, the larger number seems to be okay with the "red herring" that it's fine if their identities are linked through KYC and their banks, as they aren't scammers per se.

I would not trust the random walk theory with my money, nor with a risky investment like Bitcoin (you need to know when it's good time to invest). I'd give a good example, the pattern Bitcoin price usual takes after a halving is a prediction with a premise somewhat, a shrewd investor will rather follow that path, accumulating before the halving and waiting for the next 6-12 months to see if the pattern repeats itself, it very well could/could not, but what I know is it's an Investment that's based on a pattern that has been experienced before, chances are higher of it pulling through.

Random theories are just more or less lucky guesses, I'd rather be researching into an asset I want to invest in, be it stocks or cryptocurrency, to get an understanding of the market and even if not for the immediate profits, but so I'll be productive in that field in the long term. That being said, true random guesses could give you profits some time, but if you learn all there is about an investment market, you can always make profits for a lifetime.

Bounties don't prevent users from using the serach function. I agree with you that it may be impossible to create a completely novel topic, but adding novel ideas and including new things you've learned or experienced is welcomed. If for example I'm just going to make a thread on a topic that has been discussed before without putting in anything new, it's better I just bump the best thread on that topic, I'd not be accused of any redundancy or spam doing so, but if there is a new development on that subject that I will want to add, then I can create a new topic.

Thanks for the links on this treatise on Bitcoin and privacy, I've spent the last hour reading the two parts (1&2), and it's really educative to say the least; there's a particular excerpt I love in the part 1, that underscores how important privacy is:
After reading the articles, I couldn't agree with you more, there are quite a lot of forms and "red herrings" introduced to eliminate our privacy when we spend or buy Bitcoin, but users need to know how possible it is to still maintain their privacy notwithstanding and how important it is to do so. This treatise provides such knowledge in a form that is very easy to understand and implement.

I believe since David Damesceno runs a YouTube channel, the scammers allured him using a fake video editor, he prolly wanted to make better videos for his subscribers, why I'm including this is because if you're popular for something on social media, Telegram for example, scammers may attack with a different method, using something they know you'll probably need, for your business, channel or group, just like in this case. Always verify and do not download anything from just anybody or Google playstore, always download through the official website.

New exchanges aren't the best. Binance was founded in 2017, so it's not a new exchange, I wouldn't advice newbies to use new exchanges, except if you want to play around with worthless coins, with no value.

Google searches have a lot of vulnerabilities in filtering scam from original, when downloading or seeking recommendation, I'd not advice you go through Google search, you could get directed to fake websites or download sites with malware stored in them, you can search using DuckDuckGo search engine or you ask users on the forum to recommend exchanges to you, either centralized or dex.
I don't think this is also correct, I think what should be written down and kept safe is your 12-24 word recovery/mnemonic phrase, the private keys are to be stored in the wallet, then you use your recovery seed to recover/import/export the wallet at anytime you desire.

Of course the world isn't, and I'm not arguing that it is, the West have gone far ahead of Africa by every means possible, and I'm not expecting Africa to do that good between their time of independence and now; but obviously closing the gap is something they should have achieved somewhat. Colonialism doesn't end outrightly and the former colonial powers still have some form of authority in their former colonies only because the greedy African leaders let it be so, they most times need their support so their dictatorial powers in their country won't be checkmated and their corruption charges would only be stifled within their territories.

We've seen what happened to leaders like Ghadafi who stood up to the powers in the Western world, if African leaders want their territories to be truly Independent, then they must abstain from excessive corruption, how can their territories be free from the authority of the former colonial masters when they send their looted funds over there to be kept in foreign banks, these Western countries know those funds are looted, but it's accepted and put into their economy, after recycling it for years, they expose and return it back, we've seen this happen countless times, that being said, the culmination of it all is that Africa's current state is cause of the high level of nepotism and corruption within.

If Navalny survives this ordeal, I'm sure it's going to leave him in a very bad physical condition, he could lose proper functioning of vital parts of his body and that will one way or another end his criticism against Putin and his government, and that is exactly why this attack was perpetrated, It's either to kill him or render him handicap. It's sad how modern day politics has resulted into silencing strong oppositions to dictatorial rule. There's no point in asking what the world is going to do, this sort of attack comes from the top and it's done with utmost shrewdness, there can be absolutely no trace.

AFAIK there is no territory in Africa still under colonial rule, many African countries gained independence some 50+ years ago and that's more than enough time for them to have developed their territories. Of course I know development comes with time, but half of a century is more than enough time to be on the path to achieving something good as a nation and in the larger picture, a continent, at the least providing a life worth living for their citizens.

After 'outside' colonialism ended in Africa, a situation of "Africans colonizing Africans" began, and it is the product of failed/greedy leaders, After their hero's of the past struggled to attain freedom for them and they were then free, they should have taken the opportunity to make Africa great since they now ruled themselves. I wouldn't blame colonialism for Africas woes, but rather lack of good leadership and since this leaders still save their looted funds in foreign banks, pumping the economy of the Western world, whilst impoverishing their citizens back home, the light at the end of the tunnel is dimmer than ever for Africa.

And in this mornings news of few minutes ago, the stock market in Europe as a whole is looking good and recovering well, with FTSE, DAX, CAC 40 and the rest all starting the week on a higher note; here's an excerpt:
The pandemic doesn't seem to be stopping the U.S. stock, still an upward movement after last weeks record from S&P 500.

Source of the info: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/24/european-markets-watch-coronavirus-and-geopolitics.html

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