that is still not "voting" though. it is a "choice" to reject certain transactions. and it is not just SegWit transactions (which I haven't seen happening like that reddit link is saying) it is also the fee thing which they are rejecting any transaction that has low fees (like lower than 1 satoshi/byte or even 0). and is also not "voting". and it can be mitigated by having more competition in the scene.

I have never felt the need to understand how bitcoin works or as you call it understand "bitcoin tech" in order to use it. I only cared to know how it works as a beginner, so I only bothered with the basics of it and didn't confuse myself with anything advanced.
later on, as time went by I became more interested in learning more about bitcoin so I also increased my knowledge which is still don't find "necessary" to use bitcoin. I just learned it because I like to know more.

yeah, from day one that bitcoin was created, anything was possible. it might have died in first thousand blocks and never meet the second month of its existence but it did continue existing for 10 years and not just that, it continued to grow and be adopted by countries as a currency too!
and since I don't believe bitcoin is dead, I'd say the chances of not seeing a bull run is zero.

that is your own fault though because you were blinded by greed!
there simply has never been any reason whatsoever for an ICO to ask for KYC. Know Your Customer laws only apply to things that are regulated and want to follow the regulatory laws. no ICO in the whole world has ever been regulated. in fact they are illegal in most parts of the world!
that leaves only one reason for asking KYC, and that is to sell it and make more profit.

that is only true if you assume the puzzle was designed correctly. but not everyone is capable of designing a well thought puzzle, so there is always a chance that OP thought it is a good design with a good "hint" but in fact it doesn't make any sense.
of course it won't be clear unless the answer is revealed in which case it would already be too late to decide.

I would start finding new friends if I were you or stop taking investment advice from them. maybe that is just me but the more I look at that bot the less convinced I am about it being any good. and to answer your question, yes I have been trading for a while now. I don't claim to be an expert by any means though, I am just saying what I see.

there is not much of a preach going on in my opinion, it is more of a cry for help. ever since the dumps began and many newbies lost a lot of money specially when their altcoin bags lost about 90-95% of its value, they began their cries for a bull run. and that is one of the reasons why it is not happening by the way.
in any case, in my opinion if people truly believed in the future of something and the "bull run" then they wouldn't be preaching about it this much here. they would have silently started accumulating like what I am doing with bitcoin these days.

the only hope that people had in the beginning of 2019 for an ETH pump was the fork which turned out to be a hard fork with a high risk of splitting the network into two and possibly even 4 or 5 altcoins because others were planning on running some shenanigans and create some alternative forks. long story short the pump was a big failure and disappointment to all the ETH bag holders who were waiting desperately for a small rise to get out with a smaller loss.

as the bug was found in the fork and they had to postpone it, the small pump buildup was crushed and the dumping began hence crushing the bag holder dreams once again.

that was happening at the same time and causing a lot of issues but the reason for it was not all about the bubble and the surge of new users. although they contributed to the big back log but most of it was because of the spam attacks done by different sides of the scaling debate plus the altcoin pumpers which were trying to undermine bitcoin to pump their own shitcoin (such as  Dash which were running campaigns for spamming bitcoin network).

neither of these two have anything to do with bitcoin price, and the rest of the market doesn't matter at all because the rest is mostly pump and dump altcoins which are constantly being pumped and dumped with or without the overall market being bullish or bearish!

as for those two, the scams and hacks have been happening ever since bitcoin gained value and began being traded. they are not a force to be able to postpone a bull run. what they can do is to cause temporary panic among weak hands which whales use to their own advantage. and since nowadays the market is mostly free of weak hands there is no reason for any drop due to any of these dramas.

one many occasions I have said in this board that the altcoin dumps which were  at those specific times very big dumps caused a big sell pressure on bitcoin market and pushes its price lower because of that pressure they put on the market which would not have existed otherwise and was created because money was existing those shitcions and were going back to fiat through bitcoin.

BUT I would never go as far as saying they were "dragging bitcoin price down". if we start that theory then you should also consider the fact that the same shitcoins may have been the reason for the price rise in first place so as a result price shouldn't have gone up and consequently the altcoin dumps is not dragging price down, it shouldn't have gone up in first place!
which is mostly false in my opinion. the altcoin and ICO hype of 2017 surely contributed to bitcoin price rise but it was 90% in reverse meaning the bitcoin price rise meant more hype for them and people who were investing in bitcoin were then exposed to shitcoins and invested part of their bitcoin in them. and after their dump they went back to bitcoin not to fiat.

price doesn't have to reverse back up immediately for the dump in the final month of 2018 to not be a manipulation! you logic is flawed, that's all. otherwise it was a manipulation that crashed the price below $6k which proved about 10-12 times to be an extremely resilient bottom. in fact if there were no BSV fork drama the price would have never gone below $6k in first place. the evidence is the 9 months of constant whale attempts to break it and every time without exception facing a strong resistance from buyers.

what makes you think that there is some arbitrary number that if it is reached then there is no return?

no, the strong support is at $3000. $3500 is the secondary strong support which is formed after reaching the lowest level. and both of them are prices far below the intrinsic value of bitcoin.

bitcoin's "glory days" are not days that price is shooting up. in fact those days are the worst because although you may be blinded by the profit, the reality is that we are entering bubbles at those times and bubbles are never a good thing.

if you want to start trading then it is an excellent time to begin because it is the hardest time to make profit and you will be forced to learn instead of being fooled into thinking you are an expert just because you took a couple of shots in the dark and make profit. like all those who entered in 2017 and thought themselves to be experts and then 2018 shattered their illusions.

as for the bot, I wouldn't touch that one if I were you. it is too specific and it doesn't seem to be working as you think it is. the idea behind it is feasible but the bot itself is not. and the lack of interest in it looking at its topic makes that very clear.

now if that was open source then it would have been a bit more different.

but unfortunately at the moment this "newborn baby" is being used in the wrong way.
nowadays I keep seeing it being mentioned in weirdest contexts which it doesn't even belong. each time it reminds me of that meme where the guy goes to his boss and tells him we have to adopt blockchain technology and keeps on hyping it up with nonsense.
and that is one of the biggest problems that has been preventing the technological advances in this field in my opinion. then on top of that we have the pump and dump altcoins and ICOs which are making everything that much worse.

as someone who has done translations (not bitcoin related) I have to say, translating something into another language is always a hard task. people spend ages to master this skill to be able to produce a good translation. because you always have to be careful to convey the message instead of converting it. and when the topic becomes technical the task becomes even harder.
with that said I am sure many of those who attempted translating the bitcoin paper aren't skilled translators but simple enthusiasts trying to help others. my suggestion is that if you found some mistakes and think you can improve them, then try suggesting them on bitcoin.org's github repository in form of an issue.

this sounds more like the old Nigerian prince thing which purely relies on gullibility of the receiver to succeed in its scam. and it is obviously targeting kids who are scare of their parents finding out they were watching porn and don't know enough to know that there is no way they could have gotten a "video" of them playing with themselves
and even if they did, they would have embedded a screenshot of it in the Email.

by "exit" I mostly meant "stay away". all those who wanted to sell have already sold but they have not put their money back again. so we currently have a backlog of fiat waiting to enter but it is scared because of manipulations.
the "fresh money" is also either seeing the situation and decides to wait (out of fear or greed for possibility of lower price) or if it enters it will be crushed as whales dump and prevent the rise. that is why it is not rising yet and whenever we see a rise we also see a big sell off of large amounts by few whales not multiple small amounts from multiple people.

how much the fees are going to be will depend on the level of adoption. it is more like a competitive market (similar to blockchain and how a transaction you send has a competitive fee). but the competition is no longer on block space since there is none in LN. the competition is with nodes, you can always choose a setting to go through a route that gives you the lowest fee. so if some nodes decide to ask for higher fees, they won't get to process any transactions.

it is not about "lack" of interest, nor is it about "losing" interest. it is mainly about "decreasing" interest which is best referred to as overly-excited people leaving the market. in 2017 when price was shooting up near the end of the year without any stop to be seen (talking about around $8k shooting to $20k period) the media was talking about bitcoin nonstop and there were a lot of big talks about it such as NASDAQ entering bitcoin and even opening up a bitcoin market! so obviously a lot of "overly excited" people entered and the bubble formed.

their exit caused the crash, but it didn't mean "interest" in bitcoin went away! in fact the real crash, shorts and all the rest came a couple of months after that exit and correction when price was being pushed down below $9k with lots of artificial sell pressure slyly dumping into orderbooks to break the strong buy supports every couple of months to push it lower another step.

the "stagnating" period in my opinion is the product of that manipulation and the fear that it causes. traders don't like a market which they can't predict so they make their exit and wait until things become more predictable and come back then. and until that time the volume shrinks and price stays the same.