So, all of us had at one stage, introduced some family member or friend or work colleague to Bitcoin and at some time they decided to buy some bitcoins. Many of these people trusted us as the "expert" in the field of Bitcoin, but we do not have control over the future of Bitcoin and the final outcome of this decision.  

Can you share your experience with the forum and how this turned out for the majority of them. Did they buy bitcoins as an investment or did they buy bitcoins to use it as a currency.

If they bought bitcoins as an investment, did they make a profit or did they lose money? Was a possible loss as a result of their own doing or did they ignore your advice?

If they bought bitcoins to use it as a currency, did they have a positive experience or were they disappointed? If they were disappointed, give us some reasons and more detail about that. If the experience was positive, also share with us why they liked it.    

We can learn from other people's mistakes and also their success, so please share your experience with us.  

It will become even more difficult to compare performance, because the Lightning Network makes provision for non-routing nodes and these nodes has “private” channels and the tx's on these nodes are not counted. So to have the full picture, you will have to have access to all the information on all the transactions that are done and you will not have that with Bitcoin. 

PayPal is also a centralized service, so the public will never know if the statistics that are done on PayPal are "real" of "fake" transactions. They can run tests and then add those transactions to their transaction volume and nobody will even know it. 

This will only be bad if the Fiat ATM operators does not require any license, but I think it is applicable to any operation that handles Fiat transmission. Bitcoin to Bitcoin transactions cannot be regulated, because there are no Fiat currencies involved and how do you regulate something that cannot be controlled or monitored? < How will they know if I send bitcoins from my Ledger to a Paper wallet > 

It gets complicated when Fiat gets involved, because Fiat is very regulated and controlled by third parties like Banks. These third parties have loads of checks and balances and customers have to adhere to strict KYC/AML regulations. 

Well, I think the people of China should be more worried about this, than being worried about the anti-extradition bill protests. Fiat currencies gave the Chinese citizens some financial anonymity, because cash still has an element of anonymity. If the coins and the cash was not marked or recorded, it would be difficult to follow it's path through the financial system.

Now with centralized Crypto currencies like this, government can follow every token and they can even block transactions or color code or blacklist some of these tokens, so that people cannot use it. They can reverse transactions and they can seize people's wealth.

It is also easier for them to manipulate the supply, because they have full control over the protocol and the development of the software.  

So, ask yourself this question... does the average person on the street know how the Fiat system work? People I have spoken too, still thought that every Dollar bill was backed by Gold and that Gold gave Fiat currencies it's value. They still used Fiat currencies, even if they did not know how it worked and after I told them that it was not backed by Gold, they continued using it. <People simply do not care, they just want it to work> 

Let's take it one step further, do people know how governments and Banks are manipulating Fiat currency value? Do they know how the value of their Fiat currency is dropping over time? <buying power> 

Something that intrigued me was that you can load a Bitcoin wallet with small change and then rinse and repeat the process with the same coins, if you owned the ATM. So the idea behind this, would be to transfer fiat to BTC and for that you need a money transmitter license.. right?

I still like the idea, because I do not see any Bitcoin vending machines anymore and this could be a much faster way to convert Fiat to BTC. Let's hope this goes mainstream soon, because the other Bitcoin ATM's out there are not this fast. 

There are a positive side to all of these fake Satoshi claims.    The more people claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the more anonymous the real Satoshi Nakamoto would become. People hunting for Satoshi would be kept busy chasing all these fake Satoshi and the real Satoshi Nakamoto could remain hidden for a longer time.  

People hunting for Satoshi Nakamoto will eventually get tired of chasing all these wannabe FakeSatoshi's and they might give up eventually. It also helps to constantly grab people's attention and we get free publicity for Bitcoin in the media.  

Well, I do not know if the proposed legal representatives are knowledgeable enough to deal with international law, because the trustees in Japan are already familiar with the laws in that country. I have my reservations that the current trustees are knowledgeable about Bitcoin, because they sold coins on exchanges, when the price were at it's lowest levels.

Anyone that knows anything about Bitcoin, would tell you that it is never a good idea to sell at a low price, if you are trying to get the most return for the clients that lost a lot of money and when you do that, you stay away from exchanges, because that would further influence the price and you will get even less money for the remaining coins.  

I would rather suggest that they get a professional trader to sell those coins, to maximize the profit for the clients.

Wrong! The 2017 price pump was mostly due to the ICO boom that was happening back then. When large social media companies started to ban Crypto currencies, the price took a 80%+ price nose dive and things has not changed since then.

Interest rate cuts will only have a small impact on the price, because informal traders will look for a hedge to protect their investments. We mostly have a debt driven global economy, so people with debt will not invest in Bitcoin, when there is a rate cut.. the majority of them will make more debt and some of them will pay back a higher amount on that debt to reduce  it. 

It will help if you can give us some more details or possibly a sneak preview of what it is all about. Is this connected to email or file encryption or something to do with web wallets and your browser? Is this related to Crypto currencies or privacy in general for other things that you do online?

When you first want to introduce this here on this forum, you should post it here --> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=84.0 <Service Announcement section> and you can also register here --> http://trustsdiscussionforum.co.uk/privacy for more discussion.

Why is this a surprise? Burundi is known as the hungriest nation on earth. The whole country has a population of about 10,86 million people, so it is just a very small country with a corrupt government. The main activity in Burundi is agriculture and they are constantly fighting over land. 

So, if countries and governments cannot see or do not want to see how a global currency can create more jobs and how a currency like this can help them, then they will just continue to be a struggling 3rd world country.   

Teach somebody to fish, but if they are too lazy to fish, they will die of hunger. 

Nah, I do not think that will work, because facial recognition software use a special software to scan the face with millions of dots to create a 3D map of the face. A picture has no debt and if you read more about this, you will see that they actually require you to turn your head, so it will detect if the source is a flat picture or if it is a real person.  

Technology like Bio metric fingerprint scanners can even detect if you are using a finger that was detached, so technology are improving and they will detect if you are trying to fool it.  

No, you are missing my point. I am not saying you have to day trade with Bitcoin to take these small profits. There are normally a week or two between the dip and the recovery, so you just need to buy on the dip and then wait a week or two for the price to recover and then you take a little bit of profit. <I would warn against day trading Bitcoin, because it eats into your profit, because you pay 1% and more on trading fees.>

Also, when you day trade, you cannot take profits every hour or day. Some days the price will just constantly go down and you will not make any profits. 

The uncertainty of the identity of the person behind this transaction, is exactly what we wanted from Bitcoin.    The fact that this ghost whale has not been identified, shows that pseudo anonymity is working and that is very good for everyone.  

I still think this has something to do with Bakkt, but only time will tell if this was a Bakkt transfer of coins.    Why is this timed with the opening of the Bakkt warehouse? It would be interesting to see, what happens when people starts using this platform and what their response would be. 

I totally agree that we need some kind of reputable "helpdesk" for newbies to contact when they want to know anything about Bitcoin. It is also a daunting experience to come to a forum like this and then to post your questions here, because people tend to be hostile towards people, when they repeat the same question and searching for a answer, might point you to some wrong information. <Not all posters know what they talking about> 

When you use a wallet provider or an exchange, they usually have some kind of call centre that would respond to your requests, but when you know nothing about Bitcoin, searching for information might get you into trouble, because there are a lot of scam sites out there. 

A lot of talented artist knows that a singing career only last a few years, so they start building on other ventures while they are still popular, so that they can fall back on something when that career comes to an end. Akon is one of those artist that has a short shelf life and he is hoping his "Crypto" coin might help to secure his future.

Like many of these celebrity coins, it only last a week or two while it is hyped in the media and on social media platforms and then you hardly hear anything again.    - Shitcoin incoming... 

The fact that you do not know what will happen in the future, is the exact reason why you should take small profits when the opportunity allows for it. The long-term hoarder is taking a gamble that it might reach the Moon in the future, but it might just go in the opposite direction and just collapse for some reason. 

If you take these small profits and you put it aside, you reduce the risk of losing your whole investment. I would much rather do this, than stepping away from a total loss.. if something goes wrong. 

Yea, facial recognition technology is definitely not something new, but to my knowledge it has not been used with a payment option before this.  I know some Banks takes photo's of all their customers and you simply link that to your fingerprint... so when you want to do something in the Bank.. you simply use your finger to "unlock" the account and then the Bank clerk can see a picture of you.. to verify that you are the owner of that account.

The concept to pay with your face is nice, but as you said... what happens if identical twins use this feature? Would it also "verify" your account, if you use a facial mold of someone else's face, like they do in the movies with makeup?   

I reckon many people have seen the latest “Smile-to-Pay” facial payment technology that are introduced in China. Large companies like, Tencent is using this in their popular WeChat app and other companies like Alipay are spending millions to develop their own technology like this.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/04/smile-to-pay-chinese-shoppers-turn-to-facial-payment-technology

So, do you think this is a truly revolutionary payment option or is this just an extension of the Chinese surveillance goals? Now, you cannot deny that you made a payment or that you were involved in a payment, because every face is unique.

Will the millions of people in China blindly adopt this technology, because these platforms are widely used already or will they opt for something a bit more anonymous like Bitcoin? <The Chinese people are very disciplined, so I think they would just bend the knee again and go for facial recognition.>

The convenience is also a big factor, just imagine leaving your home to go shopping without a wallet or anything to remember... you just take a product or pay for a service by looking into a camera and you pay with your face. 

Let's discuss.

My money is on "Bakkt" but I have nothing to back this opinion. It is a new service, so there are not a lot of tracking history to determine what service this is, like most of the other services that were identified through their transaction history. 

A 1 Billion dollar transaction on the Stock exchanges will hardly get noticed, because institutional investors move that kind of money with a single click of a button, while they are eating a sandwich with the other hand.