You tell me, there's that user in B&H that I replied regarding that s/he just wants to earn from SCs and writing articles. I stopped visiting Bounties section after I just did a "dip" of an attempt in one of the airdrops there and it tried to phish me.
Pretty sure that many of those 80%, you're even mentioning don't even care about the forum at all.

This is a forum not an earning platform, buddy.
If you're really desperate in getting merits, you need to stop chasing bounties first as that is what I saw usually in your post history which I have doubts that you will due to your intentions here in the forum. You even made a duplicate thread in the Marketplace section (I reported it btw)

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Freelancing would be your best shot if you're into writing articles and stuff.  This is not the best place for that.

None. I don't trust a lot of projects with my money regardless of even if it made me regret in the end if the project took off. It's not worth the risk anymore to how many scum devs and scam projects are polluting crypto right now. Even by smaller percentage of my capital, that would mean I could be feeding these hungry pests in the crypto space with money making them attempt more to scam people.

Same goes to any newer projects out there, we've been into ICOs, IDOs, IEOs, STOs and stuff and seemingly every single of these trends just tend to fade out. One day, NFTs would be like just a history from how some people are perceiving it as another PNG file in the internet edited to make it look like a good piece of an artwork.
The interactivity of some NFT games kind of prolongs people's interest to it, but hearing that some devs from NFT games are even considering of a rug pull. It might be foreseeable on where would NFTs end up in the future.

I often here about this Solana when it comes to investment questions by the newbies. Was the coin really hyped that bad to be recognized a lot along with these trends like metaverse and NFTs?
Obviously 99% of the altcoins in the market will just disappear into thin air one day, as most of them are particularly copy-pasted coin from another similar project. I can imagine having another snapshot of CMC this year and another decade forward and it will be all hella different.

It's not that easy of a mindset, OP if you even care. For newbies, the usual term "FOMO" becomes common to them when it comes to those situation. Whatever ROI that they had missed due to another ATH caused them to panic to immediately buy because why not right? It keeps them thinking that there will be another ATH. Don't believe me? It came from my experience when I was still starting in crypto and it was a truly horrendous experience.

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Good thing I wasn't fully committed yet to crypto that time.

There are just those people that are taking advantage of some altcoins for short-term gains. I went full with Bitcoin after I sold my Ethereum back around 2018-2019, as I do not want to touch the altcoins side as much as I can for now after I gain a lot of losses when I first day traded some other coins in the top 10.
And yeah, as some mentioned in here, don't even bother with shitcoins or even meme coins.

I might not have asked it in the thread but reading around in the forum helped me in my first few days in here. You should read more and posting less especially if you're still learning either about the forum or even about Bitcoin itself.
Aside from that, everything is pretty much the technical stuffs about the forum including the merit system.

It's still luck. Meme coins aren't even worth the risk. My colleagues all quit in these meme coins 2 years ago and turned to NFTs now as it is well hyped more than these meme coins. It's more worth of a risk to just go for the top 5 coins in the market, although I can still recall Dogecoins making it through  the top coins. Depending on hype by a certain celebrity, it's still risky. Maybe another tweet of Elon Musk wouldn't trigger a hype. It's a "walking in an eggshell" situation.

Yeah that's actually going to be it for the many, however in my side, I put up a little more restriction that I would never buy below top 5. I might be missing out a lot, although I do not really buy any altcoins just yet, but it's just me trying to avoid out every means of possible of being victimized by these pumping coins that are randomly popping up and disappearing within the top 10.

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I also don't invest in meme coins.

That kind of depends on my case. Remember when many people were eyeing Bitcoin to reach past 20k, but then it managed to get way past higher than that and it was even past that predicted price.
Just selling immediately just because it reached a new ATH would be quite risky. Wait for the price to at least stabilize before you decide to call it all quits.

If I can recall correctly, India even had a proposal long time ago about banning the usage of it and I am not sure what happened truly after that since I don't live in that country. Sure they can tax it now, though I am curious how would they do that to those people that are doing p2p transactions though.

My colleagues are considering NFTs as investment just because their value grows overtime even if it was just another in-game item in a NFT game. It's quite common here in my country to stumble upon those stuffs and heck they're even hunting for more NFT games to buy some more items at and keep grinding the hell out of whatever that game is/was.

I won't even if one pays more than hundred USD in Bitcoin. It is not something that you could maintain in the long-term. Think of it as just like an icing on the cake.
I can't imagine people wanting to choose SCs instead of their office jobs.
If your 8-5 or 8-4 isn't paying really well while you're in an SC, you should think of finding a better job rather than relying on these.

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Freelance is one hell of a fun thing to earn money from as well.

I read that speculation quite often.
It wouldn't be surprising if it was indeed a group. To be honest, I don't really mind if s/he or even they would prefer to remain anonymous in the end. Imagine how would his/her/their idea gave more ideas to other people out there creating their own coin.

Imagine thinking that an unstable market would lead to easy money. Thinking crypto would be a money-maker within few days is the stupidest mindset that one could ever have. Sure there are a lot of alts out there that could be taken advantage of before the dump, but with these Metaverse and some crappy NFT games experience rug pulls, it's much more dangerous to throw in your money unlike before.

It's a bit meh. I mean there could be something more than just sending Bitcoin to the person. Why wouldn't everyone just give money to their loved ones in Christmas as well?
Stuffs like flowers might fade out, but there's an attached memory to it along with sentimental value.
Mbitr mentioned a great way near the OP on what's one of the best stuffs to give in Valentines Day with the use of Bitcoin.

Yeah, it's luck, OP. Nothing more than that and it doesn't make you a skilled trader if you're purely relying on it. Good thing that you still made money out of it regardless. Shiba is like the least meme coins that I would even consider to be somehow "a little worth" of investment and other meme coins can just go and disappear out of the market.
Shitcoins also won't sustain you in the long-term, so you might need to change your mindset in that, OP.

I don't thread quite often in that board as I am not that quite active of a investor of any projects these days, though I am cautious on those fake websites being posted there. Mostly I make a bookmark on the websites that I commonly visit especially if it involves my own money.
Back then I even recall one scum project trying to phish me into their fake MEW website, lol.

Well that's actually what some of my friends are planning to do. They will get out of Bitcoin for a while and invest to some of these metaverse and NFT stuffs and when it dies out, it's all just going back to Bitcoin again.
My concern is what happens if Bitcoin just went go bullish the day that Metaverse/NFT hype dries, lol.

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I don't invest in these Metaverse and NFT, btw.