The media thrive on bad news, because that is what is selling newspapers and that is what is drawing people to their sites. It is the same with all subjects that are printed in newspapers and also posted on sites, so it is not necessarily targeted at Bitcoin. We cannot deny that some media platforms are owned by "Fiat" supporters and that they are using those platforms to shill for their Fiat masters.

You can easily spot them after a while, when they only report negatively on Bitcoin on their platforms.  

Satoshi transcended to the next step in the evolution of Bitcoin, which is ALL Bitcoin users becoming the NEW Satoshi Nakamoto. WE are now Satoshi Nakamoto. It is our duty to hide his identity, because his identity is protecting our investment. Once his identity is revealed, all HELL will break lose.

Criminals will try to get their hands on his coins and governments will prosecute him for whatever reason they might conjure up to throw him in jail. People might be disappointed, once they realized who he/she is and they will dump their coins. 

Your first name and last name is already enough for most hackers to target you. If these people hack these centralized services and they get their hands on this information, then they can track you and steal your identity or they know you are a Crypto currency holder. They follow the money and these KYC/AML infringe on your private identity and your private financial data.

Let's be very cautious on the indirect attack on our privacy and the unmasking of Crypto currency users.

Ripple was never a good investment, because it is based on the old Fiat mentality of Banks. They want all pseudo-anonymity stripped of their coin and that is exactly what Banks wants. People who know the difference between a real Crypto currency and what Ripple is, will stay away from it. Ripple is just another cheap stunt to mask the hidden agendas for Banks.

When they first introduced it here on the forum, you had to give them your real identity/Facebook profile, to participate in the free drop. 

Can I ask a silly question? Well, I am.... How does this increase the bankroll, if those coins are inaccessible to you to distribute? Or do you use it without the users permission and if he or she regain control of that account, then you credit the account again? I seem to be missing the point here.

I know those coins are not actual coins, but just a entry in your internal ledger. 

Bitcoin owes it success to the failure of the Fiat system. The Banks were raping poor people with high fees and granting rich people with large deposits, offers with accounts with zero fees. Taking fro the poor and giving to the rich! The remittance services were doing the same thing, by taking 10% to 20% of people's money that are being send globally. 

We should thank the Fiat services for exploiting people, because that forced Satoshi to think out of the Box to come up with a better alternative to replace or disrupt them. 

Yes, every merchant or service that starts accepting bitcoins will increase adoption. People like to use Bitcoin rather than other payment methods for different reasons. Merchants like to accept it because there are no charge backs and people like to use it for online purchases, because your data is not stored on a centralized server, like with credit cards. <I started to use Bitcoin, because I was a victim of credit card theft.>

The few people buying World cup tickets will not have a huge influence on adoption, but if you add vendors and merchants in the Russian cities, during this event, then you will see a massive increase. <People can go there, knowing that they have a backup plan, if their credit card or cash is stolen by pick pockets.>

No No No, if this was implemented, then Satoshi's coins would have gone to the miners < about 1 million coins > and all the burnt coins would come back into circulation.  All lost coins are beneficial to the other people who use this technology, because it decrease the coins in circulation and also in theory the total supply of coins. A decline in supply, will increase the price of the available coins. 

If you could tweak this proposal and change the output to a secondary address that you own, then this might work. You might have lost the private key to your primary address, but you might still have access to the private key of the secondary address. <fail safe>

The people who are saying that, has no clue what they are talking about. I have send Bitcoin to friends in 15 countries and I have bought products and services with Bitcoin in even more countries. Bitcoin is borderless and you can send it to anyone in the world, even if Bitcoin is banned in their country.

We do not have to ask permission to send bitcoins to someone, we teach them how it works and we send them bitcoins and viola! This is why this technology is so great, it is unstoppable. 

Other coins might be cheaper, but are they as secure as Bitcoin? We have just seen successful 50% attacks on smaller Alt coins, because
these coins nearly have no miners mining these coins and the ones mining these coins have more than 50% of the hashing power. A lot of them are just riding on the popularity and success of Bitcoin , like Bitcoin Cash and as soon as people who are pumping these coins, start dumping their coins, then the whole Alt coin collapse. 

Be very careful of these so-called Pump n Dump coins. 

Let me telll you about one method how a hardware wallet might be hacked. They do not have to physically hack the hardware, they just
intercept the data or take control of your computer for a few minutes and in that time they quickly execute a "transfer" of coins to their Bitcoin adress. <They freeze inputs to your keyboard or they blank out the screen while you logged into the wallet>

The transfer process only takes a few seconds, so they only have to wait for you to access the hardware wallet and then they hijack the session.  

What happens with the accounts that has won the Lottery, like the 2 x lottery ticket winner of the last draw? Say, they just logged in to test this site and used a throwaway email address to register?

I know I do this a lot for many shady sites on the internet, so I might even be one of those people. The only reason why I do this is to protect my main email accounts from becoming a spam nest. 

There should be some rule enforced that all accounts with no activity for say 10 years should be closed down and all money on those accounts be transferred to the faucet or lottery pool for a bonus draw.   

Merit was never introduced to make it easier for people to rank up. If you do the research and take the time to post something constructive, then people will appreciate that and they will award you some of their sMerit.

At one stage just after this merit system was introduced, I wanted to be generous by rewarding lower ranked members with some sMerit for "average" posting quality, but this quickly backfired, because I received a shitload of PM's from newbies with requests to Merit them for "below" average posting. So I decided not to do that anymore, and these PM's decreased drastically.

I now take a lot of time to grade these posts and if they are of a high quality and very constructive, then only will I award merit to the posts.  <sMerit is like a Gold medal, if you work hard for it, then you will receive it.>

Talking about sh*ts and giggles, I used to go to the Mall with $100 back in the day. <Daily budget> I then went to the Music shop and got myself 15 x Music DVDs and then to the "Sweets" shop and got myself a bag of Wine Gums and 5 bars or chocolates and then to the "Gaming" shop to get me 5 video games and 5 x Gaming themed T-shirts and a cap.

The rest was spend on food and drinks at the fast food places and some arcade gaming and a Movie in the Cinema.

You cannot get all that for $100 today, because there are CCTV everywhere. 

The migration from GitHub to other platforms like Gitlab and Gitea and Sourceforge will only make those platforms stronger and more popular. In the end, GitHub will implode and Microsoft will have bought a platform that are not as popular as before.

Nothing is stopping our talented developers and out huge Bitcoin community to fund and develop our own version of a independent and decentralized repository platform. 

You should gather a small team of coders and develop some kind of software that would help newbies to buy/trade Crypto currencies. You can even combine that with a small investment company that gives online trading advice and training or invest Crypto currencies on behalf of other investors that does not want to be hands on.

There is a huge untapped market out there of people who wants to invest in Crypto currencies, but who lack the knowledge to do that or those who wants to be invested, but do not want to take the time to learn about Wallets & exchanges and what not....

What do you think, will you be able to handle that as a Project manager?

The USA have been isolating themselves from the rest of the world, by imposing trade restrictions on some imports. The majority of the ASIC miners are being manufactured in China and imported from the USA and other countries. This raise some important questions :

~ Will this influence imports of ASIC miners?
~ Will US companies step up to manufacture their own ASIC technologies?
~ Will GPU sales increase, if ASIC miner shortages increase?
~ Will companies import these ASIC miners from other countries? <China -> Italy -> USA>
~ Will Mining farms in the USA relocate to other countries where there are no trade restrictions?
~ Will a decrease in sales/demand from the USA, drive down ASIC prices?
~ Is this a storm in a Tea cup?

Please share your views on this subject, because any "restrictions" will definitely have some kind of impact on Bitcoin mining and the overall hash rate over time. 

Every financial network in the world have to scale to keep up with the growing user base. <Increased user base = more transactions> The Lightning Network is the scaling solution for Bitcoin, because it takes a large quantity of the micro transactions to a second layer solution. <off-chain>

Last year, we saw what the impact of a congested Blockchain was, namely slow confirmation and high fee transactions. The Lightning Network will reduce fees a lot and it will be much faster than on-chain transactions. 

Many people say it is impossible to fight an enemy that you cannot see, so you should fight their actions. I see all attacks against financial freedom as a action from our hidden enemies. Every time you spend money with a credit or debit card or via some centralized service like PayPal, you divulge some of your personal information. <<You location / How much you send on certain commodities / Your daily routine <if you repeat this action daily> / What you buy>>

Your enemy can use that information, if they want to track you or if you used it for sensitive matters, to use it against you. Crypto currencies takes that power away from these people and they hate that.!

You came in under budget at $600, so that was amazing.  I know you were pressed for time, but the Crypto currency themed clothing is so boring.  You should have done something more "Out of the Box" like offering a service that can only be paid in Fiat, and where you come in as a intermediary to pay with Crypto currency.

In any way, you have shown that it can be done. How much of the services that you used, did you pay with Crypto currency?