To be honest, I don't think we can all agree that 2023 has been a good year for Bitcoin. Was it better than 2022? I guess so, although the price in the first half of 2022 was largely higher than in 2023. In 2023, we've seen a general upward trend, but the price has been climbing up very slowly, with major setbacks, and it's still more than 40% down from the ATH point, and the year is almost over. Perhaps next year, the price will continue climbing up gradually, but that also can disappoint a lot of people if we see the price going a bit up, then down, then a little bit higher up than the last time, then down again, etc.
Nobody can predict the future, but I simply think that this general slow upward trend will continue, unless major negative events won't drive the price way down.

I'm sure many are feeling good about the gains made by Bitcoin recently, but I think that holding Bitcoin no matter what is not a great strategy. If someone invested a long time ago, the current price might be good for that person to sell. Or, maybe a person wants to keep hodling but sell just a bit to enjoy the profits made due to recent gains. I think it's totally fine, and it is important to actually benefit from the profits once in a while. I agree that Bitcoin will probably rise with or without an ETF approval, but it can easily happen after another year of a bear market, for instance, so if someone wants to sell a bit now, it makes sense.

It's an interesting image, but I wouldn't trust it when it comes to predicting the future. Maybe it sort of predicted the cycle low once, but that doesn't mean it can predict the next high point accurately. I, for one, think we'll see a cycle high earlier than August 2025, but it's also merely based on the way I see the price chart and movements, which I realize is not scientific and cannot count for more as a mere prediction. But technical analysis isn't scientific either, it's just fancy-looking, which might buy some people's trust.

I don't think there's anything perfect in reality, apart from, perhaps, parts of Maths, such as perfect geometric forms like a circle, and some numbers, but even those barely count because they aren't real in a sense that things are real.
Of course, it's totally fine that everything has its upsides and downsides.
Bitcoin transactions being irreversible can be an issue when someone made a mistake, but it's also a good thing because you know that once the first confirmation went through, the money won't disappear.
As for volatility, it can be bad for retailers because it's inconvenient for pricing, but it's an opportunity for traders.

13. Alex Pereira
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NOT go the Full Distance 7

Game 1:  26, 18'
Game 2:  26, 17'
Game 3:  26, 24'

It's good that the op is trying not to push too hard, so that people don't see the op as a scammer.
People can have false information about Bitcoin, but, to be honest, I think it's way more than just Bitcoin. Education often does not include learning how to fact-check information, how to spot suspicious things, how to judge reliability of information, etc. Then there's also a lack of logical thinking skills, such as being able to make nuanced distinctions. For example, Bitcoin is not itself a scam, but many people pushing for Bitcoin can actually be scammers. If people use guilt by association instead of carefully sorting different information, it can lead to many mistakes.
I believe it's crucial for basic school education to transform and start consistently providing critical thinking skills to help people navigate the world in a better way, and those skills would help reduce the amount of Bitcoin misinformation as well.

I also think that Bitcoin is a fairly safe investment these days. But there are just simple things that we can't be sure of. There's a risk of being hacked, scammed, losing access to one's funds accidentally, mistakenly sending the coins somewhere with no way of getting it back. Then there's also a risk that Bitcoin won't recover from this bear market or any future bear market. It recovered from all the previous ones, but there have been just a handful of them, and there's no guarantee that it will always be like this. Or maybe Bitcoin will eventually recover, but you'll need the money earlier than it happens, and you'd have to sell at a loss, for instance.
So when investing, people should consider the risks, even with Bitcoin.

I believe that we often overstress the importance of hodling and ignore the fact that money is nothing until you actually do something with it. And sure, one could wait longer for a bigger profit, but I think using the BTC profits to arrange a nice wedding is a good use of that money.
Congratulations on getting married, I wish you love and understanding with your spouse.
And who knows, maybe some day, you'll be able to invest in Bitcoin again and also use that money for something good that will have an impact on your life and the lives of those around you.

I think that to get regular income out of investments, one needs to be a trader. But not just a trader, a good trader. It's risky, and it's hardly passive. But if you have $8k in cryptos, I think simply putting it all into Bitcoin (because altcoins are way riskier) and waiting for, like, a year (maybe more, maybe less) is a simple plan. That sort of long-term investment is passive (you don't need to do anything with it), and while it's not $10 daily, it can add up to a nice profit once Bitcoin recovers. Of course, there's zero guarantee that Bitcoin will actually recover, but it's a reasonable expectation, considering that it has done it many times before.

EUR 34,000
kryptonomous

a. Newcastle
b. 1-0
c. Newcastle
d. Newcastle
e. No
f. Same
g. Newcastle
h. 19'

I've never considered him a friend, to be honest, so this switch doesn't surprise me. I guess I'm just generally not very trusting toward extremely rich people, and, as usual, he's been in some controversies, including investigations for financial crimes.
Guys like this are only interested in profit, they don't care about anything else. If it suits him to invest in Bitcoin to make even more money, that's what he does. But it doesn't mean he believes in Bitcoin and in its mission.
Also, a really nice catch by Helena Yu that this particular article is actually old, from 2020. But it doesn't change the matter of untrustworthiness of Saylor to me.

I haven't fully understood the op's story about a baby and a girlfriend, but I think that it's important to build relationships on honesty and trust, and being a forum member isn't even a bad thing. It's not hard to explain that the forum and Bitcoin aren't just for scammers and aren't necessarily harming the environment.
I live with my spouse, who of course has known about the forum since the beginning because we were already together when I started getting into it. But cryptos aren't really considered a bad thing in my country and society, so I can't relate to it being a risk to share this information.

The op talks about a balance between saving and enjoying life, but, to be honest, the lifestyle plan sounds pretty rough to me in some points. I wouldn't live in a shared apartment to save money, and I do occasionally order takeaway, even though 90% of the time I eat homemade meals my spouse and I make. I don't have a car, and I do salute the decision to sell it, but it's harder in some countries than in others.
I just sell what I have to, and I'll try to save up more, but without any major lifestyle changes.

Covid was unexpected by the public but actually predictable and predicted a few years earlier based on scientific evidence as a major potential challenge for humanity. But looking past that, Bitcoin recovered pretty quickly and managed to go on a bull run when the world was still frozen by the pandemic. It was around $8k-$9k before the pandemic announcement, then it hit nearly $5k following the announcement, but by the beginning of May (so, less than 2 months later) it was back to its pre-pandemic level.
In my opinion, it shows that even a pretty huge 'black swan' event can be handled really fast and really well by the market. 2 months is nothing, it was a really fast recovery. And as for FTX, its impact was way smaller, as others have already mentioned.

Bitcoin has been dominating the crypto market for more than a decade, so I see no reason to believe that it's going to change any time soon. Bitcoin isn't losing dominance over time, and its closest contestant, Ethereum, is nowhere near it. Sure, hypothetically, at some point, there can come a more attractive currency that might beat Bitcoin, but it's going to be really hard to do because of the sheer number of altcoins as a widespread dismissive attitude toward them. In any case, if that happens, one can choose to remain true to Bitcoin or to sell Bitcoin and switch to the next big thing. So it's not really a problem.

I've never fully committed to considering Bitcoin as an investment, and I generally don't believe in 'no matter what' scenarios. If you have a chance to assess the situation and adapt your reaction, why not do it? Why stick to something that clearly isn't working or should be revisited because of unexpected events?
Since mine was and continues to be more of a personal guideline than a plan, I'm sort of following it. But sometimes I find it harder to do because of changes in my life, so I think it's totally fine to make the appropriate changes and not worry about that.

Elon Musk's opinion doesn't mean anything to me, but let's discuss the topic itself. AI is pretty disruptive and exciting, but even Elon Musk doesn't say AI will put an end to jobs. In the video clip, he says people would be able to do jobs for self-satisfaction, but not out of necessity, so it's not a gloomy prediction, really.
If there's no need for people to work, it doesn't mean people will be poor. If robots generate wealth, it can simply be distributed among the people. Also, I honestly don't think that will happen in the near future. New technologies tend to create new kinds of jobs, not just take the previous ones. And there are still lots of jobs AI can't perform nearly as good as human specialists, despite all the progress we've seen. So I don't think we'll see that world where all jobs can be done by robots/AI and humans only work out of desire within our lifetimes.

Investing in fiat is largely a ridiculous thing to do. Fiat functions in a way to encourage spending rather than storing the money. It loses value over time, and it's just a matter of how fast it's losing value, not a matter of it at some point recovering or gaining value (with very few exceptions). Sometimes, of course, people in countries with more volatile fiat put their money into less volatile fiat, and they can profit from it in comparison with their local currency. But that 'profiting' is still losing, just losing less. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is gaining value over time, even though there are major setbacks that can last a while. So, in the long run, I think investing in Bitcoin clearly makes more sense than investing in any fiat.