What you mention there at the end, is something which disturbs me - not the argument by itself, because I can see why people fall for it.
However, it makes it sound as if there is no choices, it sounds like there's two choices when it's phrased like that:
1. sacrifice functionality/speed/etc to get some privacy
2. have no privacy

I think this is the wrong way to look at it.
I mean, anyone who's not very stupid and is committing serious crimes, would likely be protecting himself, which means that in general, those who store all our data and such, they don't really gain anything in terms of "fighting t*rrorism". it's just done to get people to accept their loss of privacy.
It's not nature's path to take our privacy, it can of course be changed! (and I feel this will happen with the crypto movement, somehow..!)

Although I guess that doesn't really apply to using facebook and sites like that, but those are irrelevant since we can simply choose not use those services. using a VPN and logging into your real name facebook doesn't do much in terms of protecting yourself, I guess I'm referring more to the general surveillance of the internet. Everyone suffers from privacy intrusion, with the argument of "preventing t*rrorism", while it actually does nothing apart from making us more 'docile' in some way.

Hi, not sure what to put as the subject but what I'm curious to find out about is if someone/a group from the forum has at some point followed up various bounties, probably not all, just within a period of time?

I mean information such as, how many of the projects ended up paying out bounties, how many cancelled their ICOs etc -
if noone has done this, maybe it'd be a fun thing to do, although time consuming I guess.
and a bit difficult to get a good spread of bounties. Perhaps joining every new bounty that starts within a timeframe, and wait until they've all finished/cancelled..

well, to begin with - is there any information like this, has someone already gathered this type of information? It'd be interesting to see how it actually looks,
considering alot of people regularly mention bounties not paying out, and after all, it seems like the majority of traffic coming lately to this forum is people only looking to do the bounties.
does people still stick around after, say, 6 months(since january), or is the bounties too unrewarding on average?  

(I refer to people who join only to earn money, just read a thread in the Beginner & Help section which made me wonder if those who come here only for bounties, also stick around after x time)..

it's an interesting concept but, as mentioned, we've already got bank cards.
there's still need for physical money, I think. how would the entire population somehow know how to use digital currencies all of a sudden?
like all the old people and such.

I think it's not really a good comparison anyway. there's lots of jobs not involving handling money that still puts people at risk.
the concept is interesting but it feels like it's starting the solution in the wrong end 

Who are they?

The market will increase when there's more people buying than selling.
Seeing how well the market took the last news of two new hacks in just a week, I think it's safe to say we're nearing the bottom, and there's not many weak hands anymore.
If that's the case, we'll probably start going up slowly but steadily, until many of those who left Bitcoin(and not just 'tethered up') will realise Bitcoin was in fact not dying!
then we'll get a new ATH and repeat.

This is really cool, and this quote:
"But virtual currencies may – will – become part of the economic practices of any country, anywhere."

Wonder if he's talking about actually decentralized and uncontrollable currencies or if he's referring to some type of government-controlled virtual currency? 

I think your first point is great, the market is very small. Apple has a 900b market cap, crypto as a whole has ~300b.
And that's including all the useless crypto projects!
Take the great crypto projects, add them up and give it a few years, how could that not be valued in trillions?

I think any market will experience growth and decline regardless of size, but to call it a bubble I'm not sure.

It's definitely a good thing to check, no reason not to.
GitHub code as well as alpha products are all good signs, while not having either is a red flag in my eyes.
There's too many projects that only has a whitepaper to show, and yet hope to raise millions of dollars.
wouldn't a serious project try to make sure they can attract as many people as possible, by ensuring that they have something to show?

It being the largest and most talked about token (and probably indirectly token sale?), is that really a good sign?
sure, the Telegram team would get lots of money but since everyone were able to get tokens early on, it'd not be very good growth early on I think.
and secret private sales.. not good!
however it seems like they cancelled it

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Lots of experts are predicting lots of different things, surely one of them will be right in the end.
Looking at the history of bitcoin, and the current state of crypto as a whole, I think it's naive to assume we'll never break the ath again atleast 

if you want to teach people something, you should explain it! 

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How much is a Bitcoin per ounce, then?
How could you try to compare this?..
It doesn't matter if you buy 1 ounce of gold or 1 bitcoin or 1 ton of sand, the amount itself is irrelevant, what matters is the market itself and the value as as a whole.

Without knowing the technical details too much, Proof of Stake sounds like the currently only option for a viable future growth in crypto?
considering how much electricity Bitcoin consumes as an example.

but I don't know too much about the security and such.
Couldn't a "bad actor" simply just get an equally large amount of power from mining if it's PoW,
compared with just staking a large amount? 

I tried googling, couldn't find it, but I definitely remember reading here or on reddit about next sale definitely not happening before [certain date],
OTC they should definitely do, Kraken I think said they had contacted them offering to help selling OTC but they didn't want it apparently..

care to elaborate on it, just a bit what it's about?
anything mentioning a ref link and earning generally is not worth it for the majority afaik 

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I joined a long time ago and signed up via the site but it seems like it has not been processed

Are you talking specifically about coins that are intended to replace the functionality of Bitcoin?
there's tons of those, and none of them can ever achieve the same decentralization as Bitcoin, because nowadays, people jump on any ICOs or if there's no ICOs, they get in early on the mining and thus can amass a large amount, which people weren't aware of with bitcoin. so, unlikely to see any crypto replace bitcoin..

but if you're talking about crypto in general, then I can't understand what you're saying -
there's tons of great crypto that are made to fund/create/work as an underlying payment token for new types of systems (not work as a currency).
those definitely has their reason to exist. not all, but there are many fields Bitcoin isn't covering, and will take decades considering the current update speed..

to reply to topic, I don't like that Bitcoin moves the market and I think we need to decouple from Bitcoin.
Bitcoin can (and likely will remain to) be #1, I don't really care about that, but it has too much power for the (currently) application field it has..
but I guess we'll see this change when the market picks up, think about it - crypto as a whole has 1/3 the market cap of one singular tech giant (like Apple),
yet there's 100 Apples in crypto.

You say 'we' alot, who are we?