Where did I say verification is not essential. Are you reading my post correctly?

This might have been answered elsewhere but couldn't find it, if it has.

The miners get paid less and less as time goes on. 
With the ledger also growing bigger and bigger, wouldn't the cost of mining start to exceed the profitability of mining?  If no one would mine bitcoins anymore, wouldn't it shut the whole system down?

dont get yourself confused with bitcoin and cryptocurrency. no different between the 2 because bitcoin is cryptocurrency. Blockchain can be different but it is not an asset in any way when it is not cryptocurrency.

Over time, these third parties — Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc. — have tracked our behavior to better design products and services. Sometimes, they sell that data so others can do the same. We consented but not in a meaningful way. Repeatedly, our data was taken; increasingly, it became clear that even when legally held, it was being used in ways that were exploitative and invasive.

At the same time, all but the most elaborate physical documents can be forged. In many areas of the world, paper cards, PDFs and printed emails are being accepted as valid proof of COVID-19 testing. Similar methods are being considered for vaccination proof, requiring just the recipient’s name, the type of vaccination, date, location and provider. How is this likely to turn out? Recently, a group was arrested for selling fake COVID-19 test results at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport. Unless physical proofs of vaccination have the tamper proof qualities of actual passports, they will be forged.

There’s also a third problem: An “immunity passport” is a misnomer. It does not ensure immunity because our understanding of COVID immunity is incomplete. Scientists have found that having contracted and recovered from the disease in the past is not a guarantee of future immunity. For this reason, the World Health Organization has actively discouraged the use of “COVID passports.” Similarly, not all tests for COVID-19 are created or treated equally, leading some institutions to only recognize tests from pre-determined providers and locations. Governments have different mandates for when travelers are tested. A passport needs to be a living document that adapts to science and policy.

Verifiable credentials mitigate all these problems. A verifiable credential can be issued by a health provider to prove that you have been tested or vaccinated. The form of that credential is written to a distributed ledger — but not the content. So, if you are asked for proof of a COVID-19 test, the proof is the form of that credential and the specific cryptographic keys that show it has been issued to you. The content — all your personal data, including the outcome of the test — is held by you and you alone. You get to decide if you share that information or not. The form it is bundled in — the credential — is the only thing that needs to be verified as coming from an authentic source.

Decentralized identity means that people have control over their own private information instead of being required to relinquish it to some corporate database. Additionally, because the form of the credential and proof of issuance are written to a distributed ledger, verifiable credentials are tamper-proof and cannot be forged. They can also be simply and quickly reissued to adapt to new medical information and government mandates.

Only few points here are valid.
Most of them are not lost just someone else have them.

The inflow chart has some dips or gaps between rising waves or spikes. I can not get figures on the chart but it seems to drop to zero in gaps.

I am not familiar with Grayscale activities and I guess these gaps are correlated with their investment plans (monthly ?). Something like CME future gaps in weekends.

Would you mind explaining it a bit, @fil. please.

Robbers posing as cryptocurrency buyers have stolen about 3.5 million Hong Kong dollars ($450,000) from a woman in Hong Kong. According to a report by the South China Morning Post on Tuesday, the Hong Kong police are currently conducting a manhunt for the gang. A spokesperson for the police revealed that the group operated by having one member complete multiple transactions with the victim, presumably to win the target’s trust. Indeed, an investigation into the matter showed three previous deals ranging between $77,000 and $90,000.

On the day of the robbery, the other members of the gang rushed to the scene as soon as their colleague received the Tether tokens in exchange for the $450,000 payment. Armed with knives, they proceeded to lock the woman in the office where the deal took place but not before snatching her iPhone and the $450,000.

According to the report, the woman was able to use her second phone to inform her husband who subsequently contacted the police. The police said that the woman’s uncle who chaperoned her to the meeting place reportedly saw four men fleeing the scene. Luckily, the woman was unhurt in the attack, unlike other victims that have suffered physical injuries and even death at the hand of bandits looking to steal cryptocurrencies.

A Satoshi is not even worth a twentieth of a penny. We need something in between!!! Right?

- Too complicated for masses

- No 100% reliable back-up protection if private keys are lost or stolen

- No charge-back option (this is both pro and con)

- Not enough big merchants

What if A's wallet doesn't allow spending unconfirmed outputs?  Smiley

I always flag my transactions as RBF whenever possible since replacing by fee is cheaper than paying for parents. The only inconvenience with rbf is that it cancels the original transaction and creates a new one with a totall

If you know how to be anonymous you don't need decentralized social media platforms.

The title should be "Why we need P2P/decentralized social media", because not all P2P/Decentralized social media are based or use Blockchain.

Additionally, there few centralized social media which respect your privacy such as Signal and regular user is most likely to use it compared with P2P alternative