These are some of the questions that bothers newbies to trading; cryptocurrency or forex. But if they focus on the basics they shouldn't be too bothered about this from the onset. When new to trading, one should concentrate on learning and growing their skill through practice; demo or by using very small amount of money, that they can afford to lose.
The highlighted question is the only valid one, and the answer is always yes.

These are both significant red flags and sufficient reason for you to quit any deals with them. It's not a question of their nation of origin, you should be wary or any trades you enter online with anyone from any country.

No valid reason, it's most likely a ploy to lure you into parting with your bitcoins. I would advice you go for a more reliable way of selling Bitcoins, and if you compare various exchanges you could find one that will offer higher than the average market value.

The price of bitcoin is on the increase since it crashed to below $4k and it has been steadily gaining momentum. It could go higher in the coming days and weeks, but I don't think we will moon very soon, at least not until the final quarter of this year or early next year.
Of course, considering the fact that we are facing a pandemic anything can happen to the financial markets in the coming weeks.

I have been thinking about the possibility of arbitrage opportunities opening up as countries emerge from this crisis period in different states of course.

Your growth on the forum is surely an inspiration to other forum members and would encourage them to keep contributing as they would eventually get to rank up.
Consistency is the one important factor here on the forum. There are a lot of good posters that do not get to rank up at all or can not go beyond a certain rank as a result of a lack of it. You have been consistent in the forum for a long time now and you should be achieving your goal of being a hero member in no time.

When done with good intentions, this is actually a helpful contribution to the forum. But it is sometimes abused and a means of merit hunting.
I have once gotten a pm from a recently awoken account to translate one of my posts in his/her local section, to which I agreed cause, none native speakers should be allowed to read through important threads on the forum. You can get merited for the effort but one should not offer services to the forum with merit as the primary desire.

If players permit it then salaries could be reduced, buy the club would have to honour the signing contract if the players do not approve of a slash in their salaries.
As for the market price of players, I don't see clubs deep in financial crisis reducing the prices of their start players, when there is no drop in quality. Most likely they would use it as a means of stabilizing their financial situation.
Also clubs bargaining power would be greatly influenced by their host nations ability to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

I usually gamble using BTC as my preferred cryptocurrency option. It's flexibility and privacy increases its utility. But during a crash such as this, I would rather not take out from my stash to gamble, instead, I'll buy Bitcoin in real-time through a trusted exchange to try and maintain the value at the time of purchase and at the time it was used as a wager.
If for example, you bought BTC at $7k, you would not want to gamble with it when the price is at $4.5k in order to protect your capital.

If you consider merits as a form of appreciation for a quality post. Then should one be allowed to recognize or reenforce the approval they gave to something they considered quality, or should they be limited from doing so?
If you put it in this perspective then you see that it actually is a feature rather than a bug. The accidental double merit issue has been fixed already by the slow down time. Now anyone doing so does it deliberately.

I think it's down to the part where they ask the victim to send $100 in Bitcoin. It would spook anyone and the response would very rarely be to send the funds, rather they will seek real life assistance from people around them who are savvy in computers to fix the issue.

This sort of blackmail is ineffective in my opinion.
People should be careful of the sites they visit, especially when it is an unsolicited link which was sent to them through email, telegram or any other source.

Bitcointalk Profile Link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2423488;sa=summary
Current amount of Posts (Including this one): 1189
SegWit BTC address for payouts: bc1qqaqx30lgclc4ehynye8w82q8esgg63uz66q7gh
EARNED merit in the last 120 days: 191

I expect casinos which pull in a huge number of people should shut down during this period to prevent the further spread of the virus.
Only highly imperative jobs which have to be done physically: like Heath care workers, the police, the garbage collectors and so on should still be operating at this time. Any service which can be comfortably rendered from home should be.

As @ETFbitcoin mentioned those who don't use their smerits for whatever reason will not mind much if it's decayed and it will not encourage merit usage, neither will it increase the amount of merits in circulation.

There are a couple of reasons why smerits are not spent quickly, one of them is lack of time to check out quality posts around the various boards,in which case the user may give huge chunks to members at one go when they do funds quality posts or give out merits to more active smerit spenders to increase their stash.

Thanks for the loan.
Loan repayment sent out.
Amount - 0.012BTC
Txid - f6a6588cec5d2dafa1263d0a1c2fe356fdcc2ffeff998ebaf57bed48d6692015

A member can cook up a half baked reply to a random thread on the forum much faster than they would if they went through the route of creating a new thread on an alt and then replying to it. I think the idea behind that action is fishing for merits rather than increasing post count.

I am also against newbie restrictions, there is already quite a handful of them aimed at reducing spam.How will newbies learn in a board dedicated just for them without seasoned members to answer their questions and queries? I can already see scammers opening newbie accounts and filling such board with lots of scam traps for newbies to fall into.

Actually loans can be made available to accounts of any rank, newbies included as long as they have a fitting collateral that is the equivalent or higher in value than the amount being loaned. Beyond this, there is nothing to guarantee that they will honour the terms of the loan.

OP it would be a hassle convincing members here on Bitcointalk to use your service and I would not advice anyone to do it. Too shady for me.
If you have genuine real time orders, keep trading and multiplying your capital, slow and steady.

Not necessarily. Some projects may not have the resource to manage a service thread here on bitcointalk and keeping it active or may want complete monopoly for their project and would not want to be classified as just another alternative coin.
We see a daily dose of scams here on the forum, so being caught may not be much of a deterrent.

Kids of all ages are on different social networks these days, and this exposes them to the harshness of the internet. If they have the ability to handle that, then they can survive here on bitcointalk. But this varies from individual to individual, so it may be a good idea to include parental guidance for those below the ages of 16.

Some adults (18+) also find it difficult to cope with the forum. It's all down to the individual's cognitive ability. If a kid shows the potential to grow, he or she shouldn't be restricted as a result of their age.

Can't quite remember who it was that sent me my very first merit, my guess would be either mprep, Vod or Ddmrddmr.

Edit: I just checked it out and I got my very first merit from Coolcryptovator for this reply, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5044840.msg46563286#msg46563286 about 18 months ago. Ddmrddmr didn't merit me until after like six other people had, I probably remember his cause he accompanied it with a couple of encouraging words for the newbie back then. I don't know why the other names I guessed came into my head.

There is no need creating a new account to safe guard your main one. No one would target you for having conflicting opinions and if they did, it would not hold water as there would be counters to the rating and possible exclusions of those member from a couple of trusted lists.
It should not matter that much either if you're leaving the forum.

There is no need continuing a reputation topic here in meta, you can join the discussion there with your dummy-account instead.
Edit- you moved the post while I was typing a reply.

How does your question correlate with the title of your post? The forum does not police external sites and scams are unmoderated.

You should absolutely not be checking your phone in a dangerous place simply to see who merited you on the forum or who mentioned you in a reply. That's a little too much. Also wearing a smart band might give an indication of wealth which would also attract hoodlums.
It can also give your involvement in bitcointalk away and someone could trace your identity to the forum.

I'd rather wait until I have enough free time to check up the forum and catch up with whatever I had missed.