Why can't they? Unless the SEC gets involved and tries to regulate things and comes to terms with CBN, I believe, they're free to do as they wish. In addition, I think the court might press charges against crypto traders in terms of tax dodging and undeclared income.

Neurologist

There are some good points here, it's nice to be able to find some positive sides in something bad.
However, I'm not so sure about the second point in the op. On the one hand, Nigeria is the country with one of the biggest Bitcoin circulation, so, considering this, I don't think that talks about the ban will influence peoples' knowledge. I think nowadays 99% of the population already know about Bitcoin, how can they not know?
On the other hand, if we look at that tiny percentage of people who still don't know about Bitcoin, will it actually be a good sign? To hear about something you've never heard about before in the context of banning? I don't think those people will become the new converts.

That's pretty much basic stuff, if only everything was that simple. Naturally, when some significant event takes place (e.g. some company denies crypto-related contract causes the price to drop, or an influencer expresses an opinion in support of crypto causes the price to increase, etc.) there will be a certain trend. If the price is dropping - it will keep dropping, if the price increases - it will continue in that fashion for a while. But, the truth is that in most cases you can't predict these kinds of events, they occur sporadically.
Sometimes you can wake up in the morning and see that the price has changed while you were sleeping. And when the events have already occured if you don't want to lose any money - it would be unwise to sell, even knowing that the price will keep lowering. One has to either seize the moment and purchase even more or simply hold.
So, in the end, that kind of knowledge, understanding the psychology isn't really helpful, when all the major price runups occur unexpectedly and for different reasons.

That's unlikely. It may have been the case in 2017, but not this time. The most recent halving was in May 2020, when the block reward dropped to 6.25. However, if we look at the Bitcoin price chart 2020-2021, it can be seen that the price was pretty much stable from May till mid-October. Only after that, the price started to increase drastically. The possible reason for that was PayPal's announcement about launching the service, allowing users to use cryptocurrency, and then there's been a series of events, that might've influenced the price. Anyhow, the halving happened far before the bull run, so it's unlikely it had a serious impact.

All of the economical systems have their flaws. On the one hand, if everyone were to be just farmers, traders and merchants, etc. the economy would be more sustainable to situations like this, but only in terms of food and supplies we use in everyday life. But what about everything else?
Who would improve and develop modern technologies? Who would teach and spread new knowledge to the world?

We already have an example of a farm-based economy: rural communities. Yes, they didn't suffer as much from the pandemic as big cities, life goes on in those areas, everything is similar to what was before covid. But they're also not developing and, we can't say that people in such places can afford much. Food and minimal life needs are pretty much all they have.

IMO there can't be any "perfect" economy, there will always be flaws and vulnerable spots. We improve one thing - another thing comes up, and it goes on and on in circles, which are perfectly depicted in Kondratiev waves.

Human evolution and technical development have led to environmental disaster, who saw that coming? People need to learn to look far ahead, analyze before implementing stuff. Then and only then the situation will improve. Otherwise, we are doomed.

Likewise, I think people should move away from debts - not head for it. I find the idea of using Bitcoin as collateral very risky, also, I can't imagine what kind of organization would accept it. What if Bitcoin keeps dropping and there'll be no end to it? Anything can happen, and then what?
If these kinds of practices become popular it might lead to a serious crisis! It's bad enough that people take loans not exactly knowing how and when will they return their debt, and we all remember how the mortgage system overuse ended...
But if there were debts with collateral as volatile as Bitcoin - it would be a disaster.

I think the main reason why Bitcoin is volatile is the fact that most people buy only a small amount of btc, and, yes, probably they rarely trade with what they have partially. Those who are interested in long-term investments just hodl, and the ones who are using btc for money transfer probably sell it right away, so that the price volatility won't affect the amount they send/receive. So, as a result, only a few people (relatively to all the btc users) acquire btc in large quantities and "play with it". And when they do - it affects the price drastically, because of their large-volume transactions that account for a big part of daily trading volume.

That's interesting and yet another big step towards Bitcoin adoption. I wonder what impact will it have on public awareness towards cryptocurrencies. Also, it's interesting how will the pricing committee determine the stock price, considering the volatility of both cryptocurrency prices, fees, and trading activity, what will the final valuation be?

Neurologist

Right now using btc for money transfer isn't the best option, txn fees are high indeed, and even if you pay $10-15 it might take a while for the transaction to be confirmed.
On the other hand, if you want to transfer a big amount of money - using btc will still be more reasonable and cost you less money. than money transfer with credit cards. Plus, if time isn't of importance to you - you can always pay a minimal transaction fee, even around $1, just be prepared that it might take weeks 

While long-term investments can require fewer funds and, at the same time, bring more profit than staking and/or mining, I think it is not suitable for people who are looking for a regular income. I always thought the latter can be achieved with mining rather than investing. I mean, if you do it wisely, e.g. join a mining pool in order to combine your hash power with others, it should no more be dependent on luck, and compensate the expenditures for equipment and power, bring a regular income. Didn't it work out for you this way? At least some of my acquaintances did it this way and were quite happy with the results, and I can't say they really put much effort into it. Though I should note that it was a couple of years ago, things probably have changed since then.

I panic when I see txn fees lately When I saw BTC reaching $56-57k I felt like it's about time to sell, but the fees were just skyrocketing, so I thought that maybe it would be wise to swap BTC for ETH and then sell (this used to work some time ago), but fees for ETH are even worse! So I decided to sell BTC as it is and paid a decent txn fee (or so I thought), based on transactions in mempool, but it still got hung up. Now I regret not paying the max txn fee, because I ended up losing more due to the recent BTC price drop.
I guess buy nice or buy twice, in times like this it's better to overpay

From one point of view, you're right, we can explain the reason for btc price changes the past few months and how it reached the current price, as it is correlated with some public events, well-known business arrangements, etc. On the other hand, if you look closely at the price tendency it can be seen that the steep rise began earlier. Even from Oct 2020 to Dec 2020 the btc price has doubled (in just 2 months!), reaching its new ATH. What caused this rise in autumn? Do you think it could be just PayPal alone? And all of the other known events that most likely influenced btc price happened after that, starting from Jan 2021. The question remains: what happened in between that kept the price rising even more?

The correction is yet to come, it's inevitable. The Bitcoin market cap is too big at the moment to hold still just because of Tesla's and some other companies' investments. However, this year the bull run wasn't caused as much by market manipulation as it was back in 2018, so I think we might expect some smaller corrections.

Although, if you look at the all-time BTC price chart, the exponential-like growth since Sep 2020 does look concerning and suggests we should be expecting the bear market soon, so it really is hard to tell right now what will follow.

If more people adopted Bitcoin and if it had full governmental support around the globe, and by support, I don't just mean legislation, but also creating programs to enlighten people with the information needed to understand how the crypto world works, maybe working on taxation, price stabilization - it would become much less volatile and businesses could be run using crypto without a problem. The fiat system is going to fail sooner or later, so it would be better if the govs could accept it and start working on a strategy to implement cryptocurrencies in the best possible way instead of fighting it.

Neurologist

Will others follow, though? Now that some other companies have already shown their interest in Bitcoin, and with the largest investor being Tesla is there really a point in investing for others, knowing that they won't have much influence on the market? Apart from the FOMO, maybe. But given the fact that the investor-company stock's volatility will most likely be increasing, not many would risk it simply because of the fear.

Besides, Elon Musk is constantly saying different things, and the latest was calling Tesla's investment in Bitcoin "adventurous", which is kind of ambiguous and may sow the seeds of doubt in others' minds: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1362598034866118658?

He also then claimed that he's not an investor, he's just an engineer, and Bitcoin is "almost as bs as fiat":
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1362600676174557186?

It's almost as if Elon is admitting his regret for this investment. Not exactly the best way to make others follow your steps, IMO.

It is good that people in Venezuela have found a temporary solution for all that disaster they're currently struggling with. Using crypto gives them some freedom and the possibility to avoid giving their money to the government, while the latter keeps stealing it. And that is why, I think, none of the state-backed cryptos will work in Venezuela, for the same reason Petro didn't work. It's just the same old government, only trying to manipulate people and the local economy for their own good by means of self-made cryptocurrency, over which they have total control. I think, for now, the population will turn to Bitcoin as a lifesaver until this whole situation is resolved.

I think it's okay if casinos advertise using streamers/youtubers and sponsor money. It's a fair and, I think, effective way to increase your brand recognition and attract a new audience, no one should blame them for that. As for me, this kind of advertisement is even better in some ways, than, say, a web banner. The video allows you to see the software, some cool features, and some pitfalls at the same time, these vids are often honest and straightforward about everything, which I like. Plus, like you said, it can be entertaining.