Well, he said update, meaning go from Windows 7 to Windows 10, so concerns like privacy and OSS aren't likely to be the reason here. My guess is that people just got used to their OS and don't see any good reason to update if what they have works well for them, especially if they have to pay for the upgrade or their system can't handle the requirements of the latest Windows.


Not all software runs well on Linux, or maybe some people don't have time to learn Linux - there can be many reasons.

The fact that people even ask this type of question just shows how many owners of Bitcoin lack the basic understanding of trading, which is kinda worrying, since it means they can easily be manipulated by media. Just learn how markets work in general , the same things that work for gold, currencies and other assets also apply to Bitcoin.

The further you go in time, the harder it is to make a correct prediction, and the more useless this prediction would become - some people who hold Bitcoin would be dead by that time, many will be retiring or just past their active years where they won't need as much money like when they were younger. 5-10 years should be the limit for long term predictions.

I'm using my own name mention notifier, so it's better to reach me out via a pm or making a forum quote of any of my posts.

Now, I checked the site, there's something wrong with Bitstamp's API, it randomly fails to provide the necessary headers in their responses, which makes browsers block them, thus throwing an error in my script that creates the table. I can add the fallback API, for example coingecko, but then the price will be slightly different and the table will sometimes be not 100% accurate. Does it sound good?

Obviously a huge global pandemic with millions of victims would have negative consequences on the global economy, and if the timing is right, it could drive the economy into a recession, as we already have some gloom and doom predictions in the recent years. However, we are very far from it, the last decades had many outbreaks like Ebola or SARS, but they all were largely contained and no observable effects on the economy were witnessed, so it's likely to be the same this time.

It's great that you raised awareness for this type of scam, but unfortunately some people will keep falling for scams like this no matter how many times they read about scams - there can be countless variations, and the only thing that can prevent them is distrusting every unsolicited message as the default policy. The general rule is, if someone wants you to send them money and promises you more money in return, it's 100% a scam.

There are already Bitcoin banks - Xapo, Coinbase, big exchanges, payment middlemen - they all offer to store your Bitcoins and provide additional services like fast conversion between fiat and Bitcoin, Bitcoin payment cards and so on. And they do have KYC and can freeze your accounts if the state tells them to. The reason why they exist is because a lot of people are into Bitcoin only for investment, so they don't care about its values and gladly trade their control for some perceived convenience of having a third party manage your coins. It's an open question how Bitcoin ecosystem will look in the future - whether people will start opening their eyes and using their own wallets, or more newbies will be joining and using such "banks".

Why do people keep looking for validation from all these business celebrities - Musk, Gates, Wozniak, Buffet and lately Schiff? Do people only use stuff because its endorsed by famous and successful people, or do they actually do their own research do determine it themselves? I'll tell you a secret - all these famous guys didn't look deep at Bitcoin, they've just read some articles that had the usual narratives like "brilliant new technology but with high energy cost and criminals use it", and they just parrot it just like shitposters on this forum parrot what they read from news articles.

I generally don't care about for what posts others get merit and how much, and even in this situation this is not the case - the problem is that such kind of meriting creates incentive for repetitive and low-effort threads that clog this board, thus preventing valuable threads from being visible. There's a larger problem here that this board is viewed as some sort of merit-farming ground, and different people are beating a dead horse with their guides that were posted many times already.

Nuclear war or other similar-scale disaster that results in destruction of the Internet is the only scenario when Bitcoin can literally crash to zero. Other scenarios can lead to Bitcoin's price tanking significantly, but Bitcoin would still exist, even in your example of some superior cryptocurrency Bitcoin will still be used and as the result have value.

Now, about a better cryptocurrency - it should be fundamentally overall better than Bitcoin to dethrone it - so far various shitcoins say that having faster/bigger blocks makes them better than Bitcoin, but that's a lie aimed at people who don't understand the basics of cryptocurrency technology. If you don't educate yourself, you will not be able to truly tell if a coin is better than Bitcoin or not, so you will leave yourself vulnerable to all these scammers with their marketing teams who try their best to sell shitcoins.

And this board really becomes flooded with them - I blame the people who merit such posts for causing this mess in the first place, like why does stating that you earned hundreds of merits deserves more merit? Like, it's good that people tell about their experience and show that ranking up is possible, but it doesn't take much effort to do so. If you want to help that member, check their post history and find posts that you legitimately want to merit.

Whales are a boogeyman of Bitcoin's market, every time the price changes people start talking about whales, but they don't make any in-depth analysis, they don't make any investigations that would uncover these whales, instead people just make shitposts like "zomg the whales crashed the market again" - you can't know for sure if the price moved because of a single individual, a small group or if it was a result of thousands smaller traders. People in Bitcoin community love conspiracy theories, so it's no surprise that they created their own conspiracy theory about whales.

My advice is to stop caring about whales, all these "whale alerts" are useless and can be used to manipulate the suckers. Try to base your trading on quality TA, learn more about how Bitcoin works so you can judge its fundamentals, etc.

I just read the Press board on this forum as well as Bitcoin discussion. And since I'm subscribed to the /r/Bitcoin subreddit, it occasionally pops up in my feed. I think visiting crypto news websites is a waste of time, there's not much important stuff happening in this field, so they spend a lot of time covering the smallest possible news, often about some useless shitcoins. You're not missing out on anything if you spend less time reading crypto news, everything is already priced in, and if it's some truly important even, you'd read it from a lot of sources.

It doesn't make much sense to ban Bitcoin, with its current level of adoption its not a threat to the established financial system, so the government would have to waste resources on enforcing the ban (more work for officials, law enforcement, etc.) and achieve what - nothing? Plus they will be killing some legitimate businesses that could be paying taxes, creating jobs, etc. - even if its small compared to the whole economy.

A lot of countries are outlawing cash payment for big transactions, like buying real estate, so Bitcoin can be viewed as a loophole to circuvent this regulation, but if this will become too popular, the regulators will eventually close it.

I personally would never buy real estate with Bitcoin, there's way too much scams that trick people into buying houses, and then taking them back with some legal tricks, like having children or disabled people living it and in that case the new buyer can't own their house. If the payment was done via bank, there's some chance that the court will freeze their balance and force them to return it, but with Bitcoin your money are gone forever.

It's true that trading is the most popular use right now, but it doesn't mean that it will keep being that way forever. It's just an observation, not a prediction.

As for 51% attack - it's not about just amassing hash power, you also need to constantly burn electricity to sustain it, which is why Bitcoin is so resilient. It's really not a big threat to Bitcoin thanks to how it was designed.

Speed - Lightning network takes care of it. And you comparison with ETH or other shitcoins is wrong, because 1 confirmation in Bitcoin has different amount of security than 1 confirmation in ETH.

Bitcoins are never lost in a way that dollar bills are lost - they exist on blockchain and stay there forever. The private key (what you call a secret key) gives access to those coins, so when this key is lost, no one can access anymore. However, there's no way to prove that you indeed lost your coins - it's impossible to prove that you don't know something, hence there will never be a system for replacing lost coins.

What can happen in the future is if some powerful quantum computers will be developed, they might be able to crack private keys of old addresses, especially if those addresses were reused and hold coins, but no one knows if it will actually happen or not.

The word "unicorn" has some strict meaning in finance - it refers to a startup company that reached a valuation of one billion USD and is not traded publicly. Bitcoin isn't a company, it isn't a stock - it's a currency or at least a commodity, and it was always traded publicly, so comparing it with stocks is completely pointless. It's like if someone discovered a new chemical element or a mineral and started comparing its price with stocks just to impress people.

Bitcoin is the only "safe zone", the coins that you named are just shitcoins that are dying slower than blatant scams, but they are still dying - they don't see much real world use, they don't make large improvements to their protocol, many of them are based on completely flawed fundamentals, like Bcash with their big blocks. Ethereum will likely live the longest, so in some sense it's "safe", but it doesn't mean that it's a great long term investment.

There's nothing wrong with earning merits fast on its own, I've seen some low-rank members who have more merits than activity or even posts - this happens when a person is extremely knowledgeable of Bitcoin and makes good posts that demonstrate their knowledge.

What you are describing is cheating the merit system and breaking many rules of the forum, so no wonder it gets people banned and results in red trust. I think the person that you shows as an example fully realized that they were up to no good, they just thought they will get away with it. Still, newbies can sometimes break rules without realizing it, like when they copypaste articles - so it's important to learn the rules of the forum first.