I don't know if the story is real, but in case the op's friend bought at the end of 2018, that would give a 10x boost at current price. If the story is true, I'm happy someone you know was patient enough to hodl for a long time and get a really nice profit out of it. I think a 10x boost is, in principle, still possible with the current BTC price if we wait for a couple bull markets. So it's not too late to invest, there's still time to profit from Bitcoin in the future, considering that the adoption level is still very low, and there's a lot of excitement about Bitcoin's future as a major asset of big investment funds.

I don't expect an approval this month. The SEC has a very clear position regarding Bitcoin (not a security) and other altcoins (securities, subject to the SEC's regulations). As long as Gensler is the head of the SEC, I don't think this position will change. They're facing some pressure, but they can deal with it by pretending to take Bitcoin ETFs seriously, by asking for more documents and buying more time. Maybe they'll make Gensler resign or something, and in that case, things can change very quickly. If an ETF gets approved, I'll see it as a big win and something somewhat surprising. Especially if it happens so fast, just this month.

We don't know the exact reason of halving, but it seems to be a great and simple way to introduce a way of slowing down the pace at which new coins enter the circulating supply, and making the process fully autonomous (no centralized authority is required to control the supply).
Cycles also give people a feeling of something being completed, give motivation and things to look forward to in the new cycle. Perhaps it's because of how we're used to living. We have days as cycles of Earth's rotation around its own axis, years as rotations around the Sun, so cycles are just something we are very used to. Many look forward to halvings, anticipating an increase of BTC price afterwards, and miners can try to make the most out of the rewards before they get reduced.

Depreciation of the USD is not bad at all. The USD has been pretty stable for a long time and it did better than most even in 2022. I'm happy to see the ruble losing almost a third of purchasing power, but that's unfortunately, nowhere near enough to make a big negative impact on Russia's ability to continue waging a war against Ukraine.
Iran is a country making a lot of damage internationally and to its own citizens, so it's good to see that their currency is so worthless. I'm also truly surprised that a single satoshi is 230 of their currency.

I liked the video, I haven't seen it before.
The history of adoption of the Internet is interesting because it really was slow, and it did seem like it wasn't going to become a huge worldwide thing that it became. Bitcoin is revolutionary in the area of finance, and I think it might still gain a lot more attention and adoption than it currently has. But there are also fundamental problems like the number of transactions the network can handle per second, and the fees that rise when too many transactions are waiting for confirmation. Also, PCs and the Internet were way more universal than Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a currency, and while blockchain is a fairly universal underlying technology, it didn't become a major success in areas other than cryptos. So while there's hope and there are similarities, there are also major differences.

The SEC has been silent for months, and can't they just keep postponing their decisions, one way or another, indefinitely? Are they required to give a definitive answer to BlackRock by a certain date, or can they just keep claiming that some additional documents are needed from time to time, and keep the policies they way they are, neither approving not rejecting ETFs? I agree that an approval would be a big win, with a solid price spike to be expected. As for a rejection, I hope that would only drive the price down for a couple of months before recovery to the pre-rejection level. The current situation of anticipation seems to work just fine, both for the SEC and for Bitcoin users.

There's no way to know for sure. The most common assumption I've seen is taking the number of Bitcoin addresses and assuming that there's roughly one address per person (some people have more, but some addresses also contain the funds of tons of people, like wallets of crypto exchanges). But that's, of course, a very rough estimate. There are also repsentative polls, which can be quite useful, but they usually only cover specific countries. This can provide insight into how many people own some BTC in specific countries, but that doesn't give the full picture. As Bitcoin users don't need to provide IDs, and it's easy for one person to operate multiple Bitcoin wallets, it's hard to make a good estimate of the total amount of users.

I do believe that there's a future in the business of crypto insurance because lots of people worry what might happen to their money and would like to have an insurance just in case they get hacked. But if the insurance comes with hodling coins on the company's centralized platform, then there's a big issue of trusting that company to not steal your money. This particular company, as others pointed out, does not look trustworthy, so there's a very good chance that they'll scam people who entrust their coins to them. In that case, it's much better to have no insurance but to store coins safely independently.

Wow, suing people who protest your company's political stance is a weird thing to do. I don't know how the judicial system of Malaysia is, but I hope McDonald's loses the lawsuit because boycotting a company over their financial decisions is a normal, democratic thing to do. In my country, it's different with McDonald's because it was one of the earliest major brands to leave Russia after the full-scale invasion, so Ukrainians appreciated it. But I understand that to other people who are more focused on other wars and countries, McDonald's can seem worthy of boycotts.

I understand the struggle of hodling. While $3k would be an unimaginably high level of income in my country, I suppose it can be barely enough if a person has a big debt somewhere in the US, so big chunks go to paying off mortgage, student debt, etc. I think that if you feel like you don't have enough to invest, it's totally fine. Just hodl what you can, when you can, and when it doesn't hurt you and your family. That's how it should be, and it's reasonable not to risk it when you're on a tight budget. I try to treat BTC as savings, so I don't spend BTC when I can, but sell some when I have to.

First of all, investing monthly sounds like a good idea because it can take some anxiety away and become a routine thing to do. Secondly, the percentage you invest should depend on the percentage of your income that doesn't go on covering monthly expenses. If, say, you have 10% left per month, you can invest half of it in Bitcoin (just to keep some money in fiat for fast use in case of unexpected expenses). But that depends on your situation, and it's important to make sure you are always left with enough to pay the bills, buy food, etc.

I like this comparison. Bitcoin is indeed getting more valuable with time, although I'm not sure that it's working better than it used to (considering that the overload of transactions is sometimes leading to issues that weren't there before). Adoption is happening at a slow pace, but there's still a lot of potential there. The comparison is optimistic, but it's the start of a new year, so perhaps a good time to be hopeful and to expect Bitcoin to actually get better over time. Not just more expensive, but also better in terms of usability and reputation.

Game 1:  30, 26'
Game 2:  30, 11'

If one has less than $2500, I think investing in Bitcoin is better than investing in real estate. You can buy Bitcoin and store it yourself, you don't have to worry about liquidity (difficulty to sell if you choose to sell). Of course, you should be prepared for volatility and that your investment can go down a lot and stay down for a while, because that's how the Bitcoin market works. But as for real estate, I don't think you can actually buy any decent real estate with that kind of money, and as for stocks and that type of thing, that's not the market I'm familiar with.

Some people are addicted, so even though they are losing, they find it very hard to stop gambling. Some aren't addicted, but are being irrational. They think that the more they lose, the more likely it becomes that the next time they'll win, even though it doesn't work like that. And then there are people who simply enjoy the thrill of gambling, so they are okay with losing, as it's just a way of spending money on a form of entertainment for them. The first option (addiction) is the most troublesome, the second option (irrational thinking) is unfortunate, but manageable, and the third is completely okay, in my opinion.

Iran and Russia are under sanctions, I don't think they can actually use USD. Maybe illegally, unofficially. But it's a big struggle for such countries. Also, they aren't big economies. Russia is #11 by GDP, but that's less than 10% of the US economy, for example. Iran is much smaller, at #42, with the economy smaller than that of Hong Kong and around the size of what Romania has. So their impact is certainly overestimated by the op. Whatever they do will have zero impact on the USD stability because they are nowhere near being strong enough to do anything about it.

I agree with the op that, by some accounts, cryptos became mainstream in 2017 because they gained tons of attention during that bull market. On the other hand, one could argue that Bitcoin (and cryptos in general) still isn't mainstream because only a tiny minority of the world population actually owns it. But as for FTX collapse, I'd actually say it had a pretty minor impact on the crypto market. Bitcoin went down from around $20k to below $17k, but then recovered to $20k+ in just a couple of months. And that was the end of its impact. Then the market started slowly recovering over 2023, so there was no market collapse.

Some companies are smart enough to realize that they can make decent profit if they invest in Bitcoin, others aren't. Microstrategy is in the first low. If they obtained more BTC recently, perhaps they expect the price to rise soon. But that doesn't mean that they actually care about Bitcoin or that they will continue supporting it if it stops being profitable to them. So it's important not to put faith in corporations when it comes to Bitcoin adoption. They can sell their coins just as easily as they can buy them, and the more they obtain, the higher the impact of a sell-out might be in the future.

Whether you lose before you gain depends on when you invest, how long you hodl, and how much negative change you consider a loss.
If you're lucky to invest when the bull run is starting out, and then you sell at the top of it, you don't have to lose before you gain. If you invest at the same time as before but decide to wait for more bull markets for a bigger profit, you might lose before you gain. If you consider something like a 5-10% price drop a loss before gaining, then it's extremely likely that you will lose before you gain.
But if you aren't selling, you aren't really losing when the price is temporarily down. You can just wait it out and gain. At least, in theory.
If you're worried about volatility and losing what you invest, I think it's better not to invest because there are no guarantees that everything will go smoothly.

The idea of a BRICS currency is still something I don't take seriously. How can they agree on a common CBDC for usage? Who will be in control of it, and why would others agree for that particular country to be in control? Even if somehow they manage to agree on that and launch that currency, it won't compete with cryptos like Bitcoin. It will be competing against fiat currencies for percentage of global reserves and trade volume done in it. I don't think it will compete well against the USD and EUR, considering that the primary alliance of BRICS countries would still be to their own respective fiat currencies and that BRICS is not a powerful alliance. As for Bitcoin, I think that sort of stuff will have zero impact on it.