Dose of Reality --- Bank deposits are fractionally-reserve bank IOUs; when you see $10,000 in your account balance for example, that figure is not actually backed up by physical dollars. Instead, that figure is backed up by a broad mix of less-liquid assets including Treasuries, mortgage loans, credit card loans, business loans, a bunch of other assets, and then a small percentage of actual dollars.  US Banks currently have just $3 trillion in cash to back up their $17.6 trillion in deposits. The majority of this cash is just a ledger entry with the U.S. Federal Reserve, and so it is not tangible. Somewhere around $100 billion of it ($0.1 trillion) is held by banks in the form of actual physical banknotes in vaults and ATMs. So, the $17.6 trillion in deposits are backed up by just $3 trillion in cash, of which perhaps $0.1 trillion is physical cash. The rest is backed up by less liquid securities and loans.
  When you buy BTC with dollars you are buying assets owned by millions of others in the blockchain network, so that BTC is a very liquid asset. When US (and perhaps global) banks start failing, where do you want your dollars to be? How easy will it be for you to get those dollars when the failed bank building is locked and their web site is down?  When dollars, yen, and euros are unavailable from the bank, it is highly probable that you will be able to get your BTC from the blockchain.

Mr. MH,  Although you are only 16 yrs of age, you still have much to learn.  With regards to the internet, usernames should be considered like Avatars.  You should have have lots of them to hide your true identity.  You may be surprised about how much trollers can discover about you from your real name.  Whenever you create an account on these types of forums or social media sites, no one cares who you really are, so pick any name you choose.
With regard to Bitcoins, definitely keep them in a hardware wallet.  Others have recommended some good ones. (personally I like the Ledger Nano-X).
If you plan to keep buying BTC on an exchange, then check the price charts regularly and try to buy the BTC when the chart price is below the 50 day Moving Average.  That way you will be able to capture more profits from price increases over time.  Try not to expect quick profits, just take your time to accumulate your stash.  Hold that BTC for many years, wo when you graduate from college you may have enough BTC to buy a nice car or a house (not stupid junk) in a decent neighborhood.
Good Luck.

I am interested in Bitcoin primarily because millions of people want it and have it for whatever reasons.  It's always puzzled me why there is so much demand for something so superficial which has no tangible value (like gold or oil or jewels).  But the fact that millions of people around the world have somehow justified their ownership of it, adds some magical attraction that can't be explained.  Personally, I own some as a store of future value.  Since my bank was only paying 2% interest on my savings account, I figured I would buy some Bitcoin with those funds the next time the price dropped.  I was lucky to buy some last year in December 2022 after Bitcoin prices had dropped, and seemed to be stabilized.  Since them, due to the price volatility of Bitcoin, its value has increased 42% just in under 2 months.  To me, that is much better return than from my bank savings account.  I expect to just hold my Bitcoin stash for the next 10 years.  No matter how the price fluctuates, if I manage to get more than 2% APY out of it, over 10 years, then my funds will have grown much more than if I kept them in the bank.  The way I see it, the only risk will be that Bitcoins will disappear in 10 years, and my holdings will be 0.  Therefore, I'm betting that Bitcoins will continue to survive for a long duration.

While I agree that the SEC wants to enforce the Securities Act of 1933, they don't need to make a blanket statement that all cryptocurrencies should be treated as securities.  There are some tokens currently considered commodities, which places their regulation under a different regulatory agency.  Sure there will many con-men and scammers taking part in this blockchain alt-currency revolution, and the SEC and CFTC bureaucracies feel obligated to protect investors from such activity.  But rather than trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, I would prefer to see them create some type of amendment to their existing regulations that would accommodate the uniqueness of blockchain tokens separately from stocks, bonds, and debt instruments sold by corporations.  In the mean time, I'll just wait and watch on the sidelines and hope that the highly paid legal authorities battle out some type of enforceable regulation without damaging the current successful blockchain technology.

Cryptocurrency and the evolution of blockchain technology is a real visible revolution in trading and worldwide monetary exchange.  One key ruling by the SEC was that they decided that a Token represents a security by the company that issued that token. 
https://www.theblock.co/post/197387/ftx-ftt-token-security-sec
This is wrong, and I truly hope that there a many lawyers around the globe fighting this rule by the SEC. 
Example:  Mattel makes dolls, and sells dolls, just like FTX made FTT tokens and sold them.  But, just because investors by large quantities of some product does not make that company indebted to those buyers.  If Mattel were to file bankruptcy like FTX, then Mattel would not owe any debt to all the investors who bought those dolls.  Therefore, I believe that the SEC is truly wrong about calling any cryptocurrency a security.  It is more like a commodity.  Especially when many cryptocurrencies are decentralized, and there is no central company that controls their price or supply.  That may not be true across all blockchain tokens, but my opinion is that the SEC is not the ruler of the world of finance, and the cryptocurrency business lawyers need to revolt and sue the SEC against their security ruling and forthcoming regulation.  The SEC should stick to chasing down bad actors like SBF, Bernie Madoff, ENRON, etc.  The flim-flam con-men who would use legitimate blockchain tokens for nefarious purposes.

What about bitcoin mining in outer space?  Could you piggyback mining software on communication satellite computers?  Or maybe get Richard Branson to launch a communication satellite filled with ASICs for bitcoin mining.  Plenty of solar energy to run computers.  No cooling problem, either.  What would need to be the minimum price of a bitcoin to make it cost effective to operate a satellite for bitcoin mining?  Satellites already communicate internet traffic.

Just curious..... BTC.com data shows that a mere two mining entities—Foundry USA and AntPool—currently control over 51% of the BTC network’s overall hash rate. Earlier in 2022, it took the top three BTC mining entities to account for a similarly dominant chunk of the overall hash pie.

Now in 2023, add in the third-ranked F2Pool, and the top three miners control over two-thirds of the hash pie. Add in ViaBTC (#4) and Binance Pool (#5), and the top five miners control over 85%, leaving the rest of the pack scrambling over the scraps.  How is that DECENTRALIZED cryptocurrency when 85% of the bitcoin mining is controlled by just 5 major mining pools?  How can any small-scale miners possibly make any profit over time?

For a transaction to be validated either quickly or slowly depends on the fee rewards for those transactions.  Bigger transactions usually require larger fees, making them more attractive for miners to process.  Smaller transactions with very small fees may wait a long time in the queue before being validated by miners.  In 2024, when block rewards will be half what they are today, the miners will need to make up the loss by getting higher fees, or processing more large transactions than small ones in order to maintain their profits.  So while the blockchain network may not be slower, the end-user wait time will be perceived to be much longer than it is now.  I believe that will have an impact on users who want rapid financial transactions, not slow ones, resulting in either  less demand for bitcoins, or higher transaction fees for all rewards.

This number is hard to pin down in 1/3/2023, but according to the World Economic Forum, there are approximately 3372 functioning satellites orbiting the earth, and about 1/3 of them used for communications purposes. Would it be possible to convince one of the companies operating their satellites to let some bitcoin miners piggyback some mining software on their internal systems to see how well it works? What would need to be the minimum price of bitcoin to make the mining rewards cover the costs of operating a satellite? Think about bitcoin mining nodes in outer space....Solar powered electricity = unlimited.  GPU cooling = unlimited.

While you are correct about the time of  block creation in bitcoin mining, that does not describe the time for transactions to be processed.  For a transaction to be validated either quickly or slowly depends on the fee rewards for those transactions.  Bigger transactions usually require larger fees, making them more attractive for miners to process.  Smaller transactions with very small fees may wait a long time in the queue before being validated by miners.  In 2024, when block rewards will be half what they are today, the miners will need to make up the loss by getting higher fees, or processing more large transactions than small ones in order to maintain their profits.  So while the blockchain network may not be slower, the end-user wait time will be perceived to be much longer than it is now.  I believe that will have an impact on users who want rapid transactions, not slow ones, resulting in less demand for bitcoins.

Every single bitcoin transaction that takes place has to be permanently committed to the Bitcoin blockchain ledger through a process called “mining.” Bitcoin  miners compete using specialized computer equipment known as application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chips to unlock the next block in the chain.  In these years running up to the next bitcoin halving event in 2024, the bitcoin miners will need to develop faster, cheaper, more energy efficient ASICS.  Otherwise, the incentive to keep mining bitcoins will disappear.  When something costs more to make than the rewards for making that thing, then there becomes no business reason to continue.  Remember, all the current bitcoin transactions need to be proofed by these miners.  Therefore, the degree of difficulty for hashing and proving the legitimacy of each old block become greater and greater.  My prediction is that the price of a bitcoin will drop to a low enough level such that miners quit mining.  Then a level of bitcoin transaction saturation will occur such that it will become too slow to even use a bitcoin for any financial transactions.  When that happens, cryptocurrency transactions will migrate to other altcoin blockchain networks that are faster, cheaper, and more efficient than the Bitcoin network.  In other words - bitcoins will become dinosaurs.

You heard it first hear folks.  Remember this day - December 28, 2022

There appears to be solid support for bitcoins from many of you, but I want you to answer this question - Where is the value of bitcoin?  Presently it only is perceived value, not any tangible value (like gold, silver, copper, jewels, oil, etc.) Boil it down, and in reality it is just a bunch of 1s and 0s stuck in some computer chip somewhere on earth. Let's talk reality here folks, not some dope-induced pipe dream from your virtual reality consciousness.  Where is the value of a bitcoin? Is it the fact that it consumes a lot of energy to mine one and prove the crypto hash for more blocks in the chain?  The energy wasted is certainly valuable, but what is the result? (wasted energy). Can not we use other cryptocurrencies (altcoins) to do the same blockchain jobs much more efficiently, consuming less energy?  Or is there only one thing that bitcoin can do better than all the others?  Or is it because it can be traded like stock options or Forex currencies on fragile exchanges all around the globe? What is it? Please help me to understand what is the real value of a bitcoin ??

Most electric utilities will pass the cost of their carbon tax on to the consumer.  Therefore, a Bitcoin Miner would be operating at a loss, if they are consuming utility power.  So why mine Bitcoins?  For what purpose?  Bitcoins inherently have absolutely no tangible value (only perceived value).  The only thing that makes sense would be for a Bitcoin miner to consumer 100% renewable power from wind/solar/hydro.  Even then, renewable sources of power are not constant, so that would require the miner to install storage batteries that could provide power when there is no wind or sun.  Again, that requires more $$$ investments.  Given all of these costs to eliminate the bitcoin miners carbon footprint, why do bitcoin mining at all?  It appears to be a very unprofitable business, and environmentally hazardous if the miner is not consuming renewable power.  The truth demonstrates that the process is very inefficient.  SO why not utilize different blockchain technology, that is more efficient than Bitcoin?  In this year of 2023, there are many more crypto-tokens available that are more environmentally friendly, and can perform the same function as a Bitcoin.  Why mine bitcoins at all?  I'm very curious to know the benefits?