It sounds like a budgeting issue; either the OP has a lot of money and doesn't care about proper management of funds, or the exact opposite. Cash is difficult to keep track of, which is the main reason I've stopped using it, along with safety reasons. Moreover, I find it inconvenient to use, as I don't like the idea of having to withdraw money every once in a while. Thus, I resort to paying with my debit or credit card every time, with which I can easily keep track of how much I spend and create a budget.

Some claim that cash is king, but I disagree; it's not convenient for our day and age anymore. While card payments also have disadvantages because governments have started tracking our expenses, something that I absolutely hate, they are a necessity.

Alright, I'm not going to point out Linux's advantages over Windows; plenty of other users have already mentioned them. I've always used Windows and am currently storing Bitcoin on my Electrum wallet, knowing that it's not the safest option. Linux may be open source and safer, but a few years ago I struggled using it because it has no correlation with Windows and I have zero knowledge of how it operates; it's a completely different operating system. Personally, I wouldn't use it as my main OS; it seems a little complicated and restricted compared to Windows. Perhaps I'd use it with dual boot and isolate it completely for my Bitcoin wallet, but it's certainly not to my preference.

All people are useful in a community, we also saw what happened in France, Paris if I remember correctly, when cleaning workers went on strike. The whole city fell apart and was full of rubbish. Everyone plays an essential role in a community, not all people are to be doctors, lawyers and generally have an academic career. We also need handymen, such as plumbers, electricians, cleaning workers and so on for the community to function properly.
I disagree, people barely making a living contribute to the country's economy, as I mentioned earlier, they are a vital gear in the community, without them, cities wouldn't be able to function properly. On top of that they contribute a great deal in the economy, because a large number of them are unable to save money and spend every bit they earn, while wealthier people tend to save and invest instead of spending them.

Those who don't have the capital have no money to waste; thus, you're more careful and considerate when it comes to investing. While what the OP mentioned isn't necessarily true, it's often found in newer users who, as some of us have noticed throughout the forum, are focusing directly on how and how quickly they can multiply and grow their investments. Personally, I can relate to what the OP is referring to since I myself started with zero capital and everything has been earned through my personal work, such as microtasking, signature campaigns, trading, and Altcoin mining, and I'm thankful for the whole experience and journey.

We have approximately 5 months until the end of the year, so I'd say that anything is possible. However, I'd say that it's still quite early to see such a major recovery due to the ongoing economic uncertainty, and the latest incidents with the SEC didn't help at all. In my opinion, I don't anticipate Bitcoin surpassing $40,000 to $42,000 within 2023, and to be honest, I'd be satisfied after all that we've been through the past few months. I'm almost certain, though, that the bottom has been reached, unless something unexpected happens, such as a large exchange closing. Perhaps some time before or after the halving, we'll see a major recovery, possibly near mid-2024.

The current recovery is likely to be a result of Binance reaching an agreement with the SEC after several days of negotiations. During that time, a large variety of Altcoins that were declared securities plummeted in value. Only Bitcoin and maybe Ethereum managed to retain their ground. Some claim that the whole incident wasn't as serious as it was portrayed, especially if you take into account how quickly it was resolved in an attempt by the media, perhaps whales, and people of influence to manipulate the market.

With that being said, the current upward trend is likely to be only temporary; without claiming that it'll crash again, such sudden growth in the market can hardly be sustained. 

Covid-19 disrupted the global economy; from 2020 and onwards, inflation's growth was halted, and the current situation is the result of a paused economy along with the ongoing war.

The main concern is that the situation isn't improving at all. Inflation has supposedly slowed down, but in reality, whatever happens, prices will always be higher than they used to be. Thus, even if inflation's growth is halted, prices will remain the same without the necessary increase in salaries. On the plus side, I'm positive that we won't have another crisis with Covid-19 in the upcoming winter; the whole topic has really died down, and I'm hoping that it isn't brought back to the surface ever again. On the other hand, though, the war in Ukraine is continuing with unrelenting force and has minimal chances of stopping any time soon, disrupting the whole world in major export sectors.

I also chose not sure; the market is extremely unpredictable, and the SEC lawsuit was completely unexpected and caused a major market crash that also affected Bitcoin. Now that it has been resolved, even though Bitcoin wasn't that greatly affected, it's recovering. On the one hand, I want to believe that Bitcoin is capable of achieving a further recovery, but on the other hand, the environment seems pretty uncertain. We can't predict what may happen in the upcoming weeks, as news keep pouring on a daily basis. Thus, I'm quite skeptical and supposing that if matters don't take a sudden turn for the worse, recovery should be expected somewhere during late 2023.

During an economic depression, people are striving for survival; thus, investing in Bitcoin isn't their first priority. As you may have noticed, we're already in a state of financial depression; the war against Ukraine is still going strong, which is hurting the economy on a worldwide scale, while inflation is still through the roof. And how has Bitcoin performed over the past two years? Certainly not that great, as you may have noticed. It's still more than 50% below the latest ATH, and while that isn't as bad as it sounds, the market is far from recovering, even though it's showing some positive signs.

I'm pleasantly surprised to see the SEC and Binance come to an agreement. I was expecting the whole incident to be a lot more serious, which sheds doubts on how serious the confict actually a larger plan to plan to manipulate the market and/or hurt cryptocurrencies and analyze at what degree they were affected.
Everything you mentioned is true, Bitcoin has shown a speedy recovery and has already almost surpassed $29,000 in a matter of a few days after the incident was resolved. Thus, it's fair to claim that it wasn't a Bitcoin issue, but an aimed condemtion against selected altcoins, including BNB, which is yet to recover to what it previously was. Moreover, as you've already mentioned, it's known for Binance to list random tokens, which is probably why the lawsuit occured in the first place.

This recovery is proof that Bitcoin isn't the issue, and governments and the media know that hurting it is only temporary.
We haven't won but at least it wasn't further escalated, there needs to be some kind of regulation regarding ICOs and tokens that keep popping up every day, with the majority of them aiming to scam investors.

Alright, I finally got my laptop's charger replaced and will go ahead and write the Utopia review.

My review is regarding the desktop version, but I was amazed to see that it's available for Windows, MacOS, Linux, and Android. The website is versatile and easy to browse, with an intriguing interface. Downloading, installing, and creating a new account were simple enough, so I'm not going to post any screenshots or waste any more time analyzing this process.

After completing the registration and logging in to your account, you're welcomed with the following welcome page, which briefly demonstrates all the necessary information you need to get started, along with four different themes to choose from (light, dark, etc.) and your public key, which is also your uWallet address in order to receive payments.


Utopia's native currency is the Crypton (CRP) and the newly introduced (in 2021) a soft-pegged stablecoin to the USD, featuring anonymous and instant transactions.

The key features of the Utopia client will be briefly explained and are the following:

uMessenger: An instant encrypted messenger, supports text and voice messaging, file transfers, and the creation of group chats.

uMail: An efficient, simple, and spam-free email provider for secure communication.

uChannels: Allows the creation of encrypted private and public channels for all data and messages.

uWallet: An electronic wallet for anonymous and instant transactions between Utopia users in the Crypton (CRP) currency.

Mining: Receive rewards for supporting the network.

Idyll Browser: A built-in browser designed for anonymous and private browsing.

One of the most delightful and useful features are the channels, you'll find pretty much every kind of channel you need, from off-topic, to local ones and most importantly, to request assistance. Personally, this kind of layout reminds me of Discord and pretty much resembles a gaming and out-going platform.
Another great feature, a private encrypted mailing provider, simple and efficient enough to get the job done. Nothing much to explain here, it performs like your regular Gmail or Outlook.
This is a rather unusual but interesting addition to spike things up, games. They features an chess and poker game. I'd play chess but didn't have a companion to invite and decided to try Poker, even though I'm not a fond of card games. I created a new table and waited for a while, unfortunately, no one joined but this might be a personal issue because I have zero connections on the ecosystem.
And last, but not least feature I'd like to mention, are the crypto cards. Basically, you can create and customise your own crypto card, a small note here before I continue, I'd prefer if there was a larger variety of colors and customisations, minor and petty detail, but I believe that it'd be a nice touch. The card required a 3 CRP issue fee, and proceeded with the card creation, which required only a matter of a few seconds. Then, I sent the remaining 2 CRP on my crypto card.

In conclusion, the Utopia ecosystem serves exactly its purpose and its name. It's an entire ecosystem, consisting of a huge variety of services, from chat messengers, to email providers, to anonymous payments, games, a browser and plenty of other additions, all of which are great. In my opinion, the platform shows great expectations and capabilities. One of the main complaintsfor myself is that the application seems to slow down older and budget computers quite a lot. My older laptop struggled a lot to keep up, but any other semi-decent laptop is likely to have performed just fine.. While there's always room for improvement, Utopia offers some top of the notch advantages, such as:

1. Anonymous transactions
2. No KYC required
3. Instant and affordable transactions
4. Beneficial network infrastructure to avoid congestion
5. Crypto cards for anonymous payments
6. Linux, Windows, Mac OS and Android version

It was an honor to have the opportunity to try the Utopia Ecosystem and I wish the developers good luck and to keep up the great work!

That's true; you have to completely forget pirated software, especially if you're storing or using cryptocurrencies on that computer. I also suspect that I had been infected with a malicious Chrome extension through pirated software that I had downloaded. Luckily, I only suffered minor losses of a few dollars worth of XRP, and it could have cost me a fortune if it wasn't for that transaction. However, this incident taught me an important lesson: not to use pirated software ever again, at least on the computer I'm actively using for cryptocurrency purposes. There is an abundance of free or affordable alternatives, and if there isn't one and you have to download specific software, then isolate your cryptocurrency or trading activities on another computer.

Simple: you don't. You have to take their word for it. Binance supposedly has a Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) in place and also provides their wallet addresses, which contain millions of dollars' worth of coins, from Bitcoin to BNB and the stablecoins USDT and TUSD. Their SAFU is supposed to be an emergency fund funded by a percentage of trading fees in order to protect users' funds. Does that guarantee that your finds will be secured if things take a turn for the worse? Probably not; as I previously mentioned, you need to take their word for it.

The issue with DEX exchanges is that, so far, they haven't proven to have any significant advantage over CEX, apart from being decentralized.

As NeuroticFish already mentioned, deposits up to €100.000 are protected by EU regulations; thus, there's nothing to be afraid of. As for exchanges, you simply have to trust the exchange you're using. Personally, I deem Binance a safe option, even though I have no guarantee that my funds are secured. I simply doubt that an exchange as large as Binance can go bankrupt from one day to the next. It even settled the lawsuit against the USA's version, and things are looking quite bright now.

Whether we like it or not, centralized exchanges are safe-ish and convenient to use, which are the main reasons they'll continue to be in business. You can avoid using CEX by switching to DEX platforms such as Bisq, where your funds always remain in your wallet.

I understand that the SEC is against a few selection of Altcoins that were labelled as securities, and not Bitcoin or Cryptocurrencies in general. However, firstly, I don't agree with the declaration of BNB as a security and a few others coins as well, I don't understand why it was declared as such, perhaps because it's a product of Binance, i haven't investigated any further. Secondly, the whole lawsuit may not be against Bitcoin, but it's hurting it in the process as well.

Anyway, I just read that the SEC has reached an agreement in order to keep the exchange open. Thus, I'm suspecting a speedy recovery for the market quite soon.

Source: https://www.binance.com/en/feed/post/660451?ref=500919000&utm_campaign=app_share_link

Correct, the USA isn't the whole world, and while a possible withdrawal of Binance in the USA will hurt cryptocurrencies, it'll only last for a short period, and the gap will quickly be filled by another exchange. Governments don't care about innovation and technology; they see it as a threat for a variety of reasons, such as tax evasion and privacy, which they are against. While it may seem that purchasing now may be a huge opportunity, current purchases may be a liability because further allegations may hurt Binance on a worldwide basis. There's no guarantee on what will happen next. The situation requires cautious moves, as things may quickly take a sudden turn for the worse.

Certainly, no one can guarantee that Bitcoin won't fall below $25,000; it already fell a little below that a few days ago but recovered. As I've mentioned in another post, if the current SEC lawsuit progresses and we have further investigations and possibly the abandonment of the US market by Binance, then we're almost bound to see another crash, similar to the one that occurred with FTX. It may last a couple of weeks to a month or two, but eventually it'll recover. DCA is a decent solution to lower the risk, but it's not an infallible solution nonetheless. While this may seem like an opportunity to purchase BNB, for instance, the current situation isn't ideal.

The funny thing is that I always used pirated Windows software on my computers and never thought of such a possibility. Certainly, I hadn't ruled out the likelihood of a copy not being 100% free of viruses and malware, but I'd never have thought that it could potentially come with malware aimed at stealing wallet details; I never thought that I could possibly lose my Bitcoin that way. Nowadays, it's almost inevitable to diminish these kinds of threats; you'll have to practically avoid anything suspicious, and sometimes it's not always possible. Eventually, you might be caught in a similar trap and end up losing your hard-earned coins.

It's advisable for anyone who's using a pirated Windows edition to check if the downloaded torrent is any of these mentioned in the article and proceed with a full fresh install immediately.

Bitcoin will be affected if Binance goes down, similarly to how it was affected by the Mt.Gox and FTX exchanges' falls. Just because Binance is closely related to BNB doesn't mean that only their coin will crash; such a disruption causes a chain reaction of events. Binance holds the largest transaction volume; such news would cause a disastrous disruption in the market, leading to a bloodbath that would take Bitcoin with it. So far, it's doubtful that Binance will shut down completely; there's no way it's happening. Perhaps it could stop operations in the USA, which is still negative and will cause a minor drop that may last from a few weeks to a few months in the worst-case scenario, similarly to how the market was affected a few months ago with the FTX exchange.

It's not as simple as it sounds. Some people don't have the budget to make continuous Bitcoin purchases, and starting as small as $30–$40 a month won't get you that far either. Thus, it's perfectly understandable that there are people who may need this sum of money at any time because they don't have any other significant savings, which renders it almost impossible to invest, let alone trade, which itself is extremely risky and requires experience that someone new doesn't possess.

Personally, I'm not bothered, and waiting is fine for me. I'm not in dire need of money, so volatility doesn't immediately affect me, as I've stopped focusing on Bitcoin's price.