Blockchain or a local exchange?  Those are bad ideas unless you are incompetent about securing your own computer.  Then you don't own bitcoin, you have an IOU.

Electrum is secure if your computer is secure.  People saying that "they" have lots of security issues are misinformed.

I am curious what OS you are running, anti virus software you are using.  Not that it matters since it is gone, but perhaps it will help someone else.

Electrum is quite secure if your computer is secure.  Anyone saying otherwise is spreading FUD.

But bitcoin's confirmation IS faster than current payment methods such as Visa.  Visa's initial approval may be a few seconds, but you can contest a charge for months afterward so it is NOT confirmed for months.  Bitcoin transactions are confirmed much faster than months.  An hour or two.  Bitcoin's initial broadcast to the network is a few seconds at most also.

I do agree though, the scalability drama is just that, drama. 

With Lightning, you can have more or less instant broadcast and instant confirmations.

Most (all) side chain functions can be duplicated faster and cheaper on things like lightning.  Sidechains may be interesting for some uses, but federated sidechains that require trusted 3rd parties aren't very interesting except as experiments.

Assuming coins haven't moved since 2010 are lost is a poor assumption for at least some percentage of them.  Slashdot's first article on it was July 2010 and a lot of people got involved and started mining then and just mined into an address and left them. 

It reminds me of the (continual it seems) proposals to require coins to be moved in order to keep them - one should not assume that coins that are of X age are lost.

Agreed.  It would be like if my grandfather gave their 13 year old grandchild a 1/10 ounce of gold and then the kid went outside and it fell out of her pocket in a lake.  Then they said, "I didn't lose it, my pocket it."

Blame the gold or blame the person who didn't take care of it?  It is like blaming forks for making people fat and guns for shootings.

The real question is not who does it, but why is it anyone else's business who does?  :-)  What gives one group the right to specify how you can live your life and who and how you deal with other people?  The anonymity of being able to use cash (vs more trackable payments) is an important component of liberty.  Just as the ability to publish an opinion anonymously is.  Hopefully more anonymity will come to fruition in bitcoin over time.
 

To protect the value of your wealth (like PMs for example) when either central banks and governments inflate the currency to make the debt more manageable or allow one to escape currency controls if a particular country does that.

Bitcoin is an asset that smart people can use to protect themselves from the power at all costs people who are charging up debt that will never be able to be repaid without a huge inflationary period. Or a debt jubilee.  Either of which will damage whomever does that.

Yeah, some of that though is to let people who haven't been following the insanity know what is going on. 😀

All he has to do is sign something to prove he is satoshi. It is obvious from the fact that he hasn’t done so for years and keeps getting called out for lying to a federal judge that he is unable to do so. That should’ve put an end to this years ago.

Not to mention the fact that satoshi went to great lengths to hide his identity and this is pretty much 180 degrees from that. Plus his behavior in all this mess is opposite the way he always behaved in email, message and forum posts.

The long term goal of bitcoin is to use it and stay in bitcoin.  Sure you might have KYC to buy, but once you have bitcoin, you use bitcoin and don't cash out.  With additional privacy additions to the bitcoin ecosystem then it would become much more difficult to track who is doing what.

Privacy is an important right, having some bureaucrat in government being able to track your every move and purchase isn't compatible with a free society which is many of the statist authoritarians goal.

You are right.  In the US (and some other jurisdictions) that is known as "structuring" (31 CFR 1010.100 et seq.) and that in itself is illegal - e.g. if you do 10 cash deposits of $9500 each over 10 days or if you get 10 of your family members to do $9500 each etc.  Big brother wants to know who is doing what with whom and want to be able to control it, so if it isn't already illegal, governments will make it so soon enough.

I'm not so sure it will impact the global fiat price of bitcoin on its own as long as people think they need to cash out of bitcoin. The problem is that authoritarians the world over want to control people and this is another example of how they intend to do it.  Once people realize they could just buy bitcoin and stay in it, with upgrades to the protocol to enhance privacy, it would be a big win for liberty in the world.

Solidity?  Sure if you are working with ethereum.  For bitcoin and related cryptos, I think that there are much different skillsets required.  Ethereum is so centralized that I am not convinced it will survive long term.  With the combination of bitcoin and lightning, it will face challenges.

Agreed and it may be a feedback loop.  Whatever gets clicks, no matter how inaccurate, is their goal.

The entire article is based on stupidity and hype from a clickbait source, just note the facts:
 
* In May 2019 Localbitcoins "officially shut off service for Iran-based users"  (https://www.coindesk.com/localbitcoins-bans-bitcoin-buying-in-iran-in-blow-to-rising-crypto-commerce ).
* Localbitcoins still says:  "Unfortunately LocalBitcoins is currently not available in your selected region. Please look for other location or come back later." whenever you click on the buy bitcoins in Iran.
* The article is quoting the trading volume IN Iranian rial.  NOT that takes place in Iran, but that is priced and transacted in the rial. And the author didn't understand the difference between them.  Are there many people outside Iran using the rial?  Sure, but not a lot it seems.

Inside Iran is the volume that matters because that is where people want to protect their wealth or where they want to convert the rial into something that can bypass capital and currency controls.  LocalBitcoins doesn't allow that right now.

No one is buying bitcoin inside Iran using localbitcoins because it is not allowed on the localbitcoins platform.  What is allowed is people using the rial to buy bitcoin if they are outside of Iran.

Without good data showing what is being bought and sold inside Iran (and even whether it is permitted) the statement that people are or are not purchasing bitcoin to protect in Iran their wealth isn't verifiable or falsifiable.  I don't doubt that IF localbitcoins was allowing transactions inside Iran, there would be many people attempting to convert their wealth into something that they can then take outside of Iran.

The entire article seems to be based on a complete misunderstanding of the information.

The entire article is based on stupidity and hype from a clickbait source, note the facts:
  
* In May 2019 Localbitcoins "officially shut off service for Iran-based users"  (https://www.coindesk.com/localbitcoins-bans-bitcoin-buying-in-iran-in-blow-to-rising-crypto-commerce ).

* Localbitcoins still says:  "Unfortunately LocalBitcoins is currently not available in your selected region. Please look for other location or come back later." whenever you click on the buy bitcoins in Iran.

* The article is quoting the trading volume IN Iranian rial.  NOT that takes place in Iran, but that is priced and transacted in the rial. And the author didn't understand the difference between them.  Are there many people outside Iran using the rial?  Sure, but not a lot it seems.

Inside Iran is the volume that matters because that is where people want to protect their wealth or where they want to convert the rial into something that can bypass capital and currency controls.  LocalBitcoins doesn't allow that right now.

As far as you "not [being] certain if the data from localbitcoins.com represents what the article is implying", you were right to be skeptical, it doesn't represent anything like what the article is implying.  No one is buying bitcoin inside Iran using localbitcoins because it is not allowed on the localbitcoins platform.  What is allowed is people using the rial to buy bitcoin if they are outside of Iran.

Without good data showing what is being bought and sold inside Iran (and even whether it is permitted) the statement that people are or are not purchasing bitcoin to protect in Iran their wealth isn't verifiable or falsifiable.  I don't doubt that IF localbitcoins was allowing transactions inside Iran, there would be many people attempting to convert their wealth into something that they can then take outside of Iran.

Expect, no. Possible and likely, yes.

Looking at the price 6 months before halvings and 12 months after has resulted in large fiat gains. Betting against it is a bad idea.

This year after the halving, there are more uses, more people aware of those uses, and a much smaller new supply as compared to the previous halvings. So more demand, less supply leads one to think it is likely the price will increase.

It can impact the fiat price of bitcoin because smart people in the region will want to protect their assets (if they haven’t already) from what is happening- confiscation, destruction, capital controls, currency controls and the like. More demand means a higher price all else being equal.

Actually, it seems to be the opposite, these events decrease the doubt that there is a correlation between bitcoin's fiat price and geopolitical turmoil.

Perhaps it should have said, "Could crypto’s correlation to geopolitics be in doubt any longer?"

Who is Tendayi Kapfidze and why should we care?  Until now I'd never heard of him (economist at Lending Tree as it turns out), and he is the type who has been saying since bitcoin was $0.10 that it was a ponzi, pyramid scheme etc.

He neglects the fact that if something has value to someone else, then there is a market for that something and just because other people also later recognize that value does not mean it is a pyramid scheme.