I would answer why not. Looking the world countries India, Eurozone members, Australia is easy to see that we go to a cashless money monetary system. After that, imo people mainly will use debit/credit cards and web/mobile banking. And next or after next generation crypto currencies will dominate the world. Bitcoin is the leader of them. So it's natural for me that will have a bright future.

My assets in bitcoin are less than 10%. From my point of view this is related with the age each of us. Older people they have most of their savings in fiat money and probably some stocks and/or bonds. The younger ones is logical to have bitcoins as main asset because has less than 8 years in exchange markets.

I believe that the past hacked incidents for exchanges was something like lessons learned for them nowadays. On the other hand if they store most of their funds in cold storage wallets how easy  and quickly can satisfy their customers withdrawal needs especially the hours exchanges are closed?

For a few mBTC I use blockchain.info wallet. It was my first client and I stuck with this. Nowadays has only one good feature very useful for me. Pairing with my smartphone. Mainly I use a desktop client and I go with electrum. I thinks are obvious the advantages of an open source light SPV client.

As @OP said his friend is working in a financial company. So it is not strange give to them as a bonus 1 Btc. Maybe company has bought bitcoins long time ago when price was low. Therefore is a very good Christmas present or bonus give to them 1 btc per employee without a big cost for company. Maybe company wants to evaluate the judgement of its employees and want to see who will exchange it right now or will keep it.

I am quite skeptical when I read a small local newspaper something which is very good to be really true. I believe that journalist is optimistic or he wants to please his readers. It is too early and shows like the Indian government was defeated by bitcoin if she admits something like that. I urge you to read the article of Forbes where the Reserve Bank of India notes that "....distributed ledgers will be monitored and regulatory framework, as required,...." http://www.forbes.com/sites/krnkashyap/2016/12/22/indias-demonetization-is-causing-bitcoin-to-surge-inside-the-country/#7c107291738a. This statement is very different with the principles that bitcoin advocates.

I cannot understand @OPs thought. There are many people, btc owners, with only 1USD = 0.001Btc in their wallet. The same time there are some people with more than 100.000 Btc in their wallet/s. So how can be sure how many network addresses has anybody of bitcoin users? 

I want to reverse the question and ask; If gold price is $10000, will fiat be worthless? Is there any difference? Moreover when someone bought two pizzas with 10000 Btcs was a clue that btc was worthless? Some people need to understand that fiat is currency and there are strong and weak fiat money. In addition there are strong and weak cryptocurrencies too. So, If people decide that a monetary system is worthless they will ban it from their life.  I believe that after the next generation people they use only digital money not because of bitcoin price but because of internet and human needs.

      I would say next generation of money will be "cashless" money. Under this rationale bitcoin and some other cryptocoins will be the future money. Of course will be a transitional period. This is referred as cashless money. In this period the plastic money i.e credit/debit cards as well as web banking will monopolize the world. It is not excluded a small amount in banknotes in circulation until people fully acquainted with this monetary system. When conditions permit, and people have forgotten the money as something they can grab with their hands and feel it only as value digital currencies will dominate. Centralized/Decentralized ledgers and any kind of currencies will circulate so as people to choose anything is handy for their needs. The latter I call it after next generation of money.

All of the above had given advice to find money. So I present another view of the life.

1. Face the truth
2. Do not spend more than you have
3. If you have pay cash
4. Control the charges of your account
5. Restrict the costly way of your life
6. Every penny counts

I have never face this situation with login and email. I test it right now and is working like a charm. I have many complaints with blockchain.info (cannot sign a message, remove the option to export private keys) and I will go with electrum but this is not one of them. You could open a ticket here https://support.blockchain.com/hc/en-us If I remember you must first sign in. Give it a try.

Many people they speak about investments and they mean scam, ponzi schemes with fictitious, unreal profits and after two three weeks cry and say that they lost their funds. They believe that these schemes are startups with vision and experienced traders. Only some of them they understand that spending their btcs in these scam sites they have a very small to almost zero probability to earn some money. The rapid increase of bitcoin price will increase the greed of scammers.

Bitcoin is used from most of us as an asset and not as a payment system. So I agree that some thousand of coins could change the direction of the price. Maybe could lead many users to sell their coins in panic. And yes million of dollars of transactions is easy with btc. We must feel that 1 million USD = 1000 btc now.

Many people in my country believe that bitcoin is something evil used only as a cyrrency in darkweb  between drug dealers. Some others more "informative" they see it as bubble and some "smart" ones they believe it is a fraud of Chinese to dominate the world. Two months ago I was speaking about it with some of my friends but they were laughing. Media are speaking about it saying the same things they had told in 2013. People, especially the middle aged they don't understand and they don't want to learn what is bitcoin.

I also agree that the only way gambling is a profitable activity is only if there are free giveways and faucets so you don't lose your money. People must understand that gambling is a fun activity and someone have not compare it with trading.

I installed this app. Someone can see known markets such as Bitstamp, coinbase, okcoin and others weekly highlights and briefs. Moreover there is the option to share or invite and earn. Not only bitcoins but this app supports litecoins and alt coins. Exchange tab offers buy/sell order list and also trader settings. At last there is wallet to transfer in/out. I believe that is a complete app with many choices.

Bitkan user, id: bitkan2003, 5358914

The way I see greedy of gambling you can apply these rules.

1. Open a web wallet with small amount of your funds.
2. Use only this wallet to deposit/withdraw to/from gambling sites.
3. Define specific period of time ( after a week, 15 days and so on) to re-fill the this wallet if you lose your funds.
4. Speak about your problem and ask for help with people you trust.

You know that bitcoin is pseudonymous and no anonymous. For this reason, if you are willing to pay, there are services to "clean" your coins. A google search will bring you some of them. Moreover if you want only some coins to circulate anonymously why not trade with other crypto coins? Monero is one of them. Turn btc to fiat quickly is only face to face if you offer competitive prices compared to those who provide the same services.

I am almost sure that this time you will not find this kind of bank in Europe as far as I am able to know. Most of the European countries like the distributed ledger technology but they want it private and centralized. In addition they want their digital coin and neither bitcoin or any other crypto coin. Maybe the most friendly is Estonia because is the most internet friendly in European continent. Take a look here http://www.cuber.ee/en_US/news/ and here (reveals the way governments and banks thinking) https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/492972/gs-16-1-distributed-ledger-technology.pdf

I am afraid your thought is wrong. In my country the tax legislation says that an investor with a portfolio of stocks and bonds when sells a part of these stocks pay a percent of fiat money as tax. Although I don't live in Russia I believe that your government considers bitcoin as a similar asset as a stock. Maybe you have the same rationale in Russian tax legislation.