Bitcoi does not solve economic decline or inflation, so it cannot hello rescue the financial situation in Hong Kong.
Bitcoin has utility as a currency and can be used by the citizens to attain some sort of freedom and autonomy, particularly following recent news of banks in China withholding public funds.

On the national stage, Bitcoin would not have much of an impact on the countries economy and being used as a legal tender would not encourage wide spread adoption, as there are not many physical outlets accepting it.

Worldie of a strike from Luiz Diaa. The dribble, close control and the finish, were close to perfect. Now Liverpool need to find a winning goal from somewhere, to avoid starting the season with 2 draws.

Being a man down and less than 4 minutes (+stoppage time) puts them at a disadvantage, but this is football after all.

Mining is the confirmation of transactions in blocks inorder to receive the coinbase reward which is halved every ~4 years or 210,000 blocks.

Mining depends heavily on the amount/quality of equipment you can purchase to be competitive.
There is no easier or cheaper way to own bitcoins; So many variables play a part.

Bumping old threads are usually distasteful, but in this case, it fits perfectly.
Great that you discovered bisq. It's one of the most highly recommended decentralized exchanges around the forum, along with hodlhodl and is a great option for any bitcoiner who is interested in using Bitcoin the correct way.

Unrelated but it's odd how much of the early users (from before 2013) are no longer on the forum. Would be interesting to know how many hf them actually still use Bitcoin and why they left bitcointalk.

Bounty managers do not care if a user rehashes jargons on their fake social media accounts, with dozens of fake followers and then spam the project to death without even knowing what its utility is; it's no surprise they do not care much about the trust system.

Imo, the trust system has for a long time not been used at it was intended, and many joined in (giving feedbacks and flags) to attain a status symbol, rather than to keep the forum clean, leading to what we have today.

Can it be fixed?
I do not think a perfect system exists, and any which is created would be subject to how it is used, but some changes can be made to improve it.

Commonly, yes.
They control the protocol behind the project and can make decisions like burning coins/tokens or changing how it operates.
Bitcoin is different cause it is built on a consensus program, although there exists a core team which weighs in on improvement proposals.

• Run an ICO and investors exchange their coins for BTC, ETH, USD etc,
• They could allocate certain amount of coins to the team, which they can sell later,
• They could run an outright scam,
• The could also buy their coins early with the confidence that it would be more valuable if they worked hard at it.

If I understand correctly, you're asking for a section where discsuopns are kept serious and highly moderated, similar to the serious discussion and ivory tower board. But signatures are allowed regardless and it's not for a specific niche, like Development & Technical Discussions.

AFAIK, such a section does not exist and for it to, we need to have extreme levels of moderation on the existing boards. (I believe existing boards, like Bitcoin Discussions or Economics would fit the idea, if it had less spam)
Signatures normally attracts all type of posters as there are bounties/campaigns for different users, majority of which are spammers, so strict moderation would be necessary.

Welcome to the forum, hope you would have a great time here.

It's great you have a learning span already, this would make it easier for you to adequately utilize the resources available to you here on the forum. It can be a little overwhelming, with the multiple links provided here (and more which would likely be added) and thousands of posts on the forum.
Understand that no one here knows everything, so take it a step at a time.

Find your interests and best ways to learn, then leverage on that. Good Luck.

I'm keeping the discussion on Bitcoin and not cryptocurrencies, which is a general term.
Firstly, "many" people don't believe Bitcoin to be an asset at all. Only a minority percentage of the population understands and invests in Bitcoin.
Also, Bitcoin is not valuable cause its price tends to rise more than it falls, leading to an appreciating pattern; Its price appreciates cause it is valuable.
This mean that people get into bitcoin (or at least used to) cause it had qualities that attracted investors, and hence its price rose. Like any speculative asset, after the price rose remarkably, lots of people fomoed in.

Demand and supply are the two main factors of any market.

This is correct for the most part, except that a user can send a maximum of 50 smerits to a particular profile within a 30 day period (or ~1 month).

Merits were introduced to combat spam. Prior to the merit system, users just created posts and boosted their activity inorder to rank up, leading to lots of spam in the forum.
Now users have to contribute constructively before ranking up.

I'm not a miner, but I understand that the profitability of mining depends largely on your location and the availability of electricity around you.

There are also lots of other variables to consider such as; purchasing quality equipments and its maintenance, etc. Buying bitcoins on the other hand does not have extra requirements, besides maybe owning a hardware wallet or a steel backup.

The crypto market is on the downside atm, after the peak of late last year. This results in majority of coins losing most of their value, and forms part of a cycle of ups and downs.

Not all coins gain their value after dropping as 90% (and this is a conservative percent) of them are shitcoins which were built on hype. So, there's a 90% chance that the token you own would not regain its lost value.
Always do you own research, before making any investment decision

Great read. It's best that your friend got interested on their own, with the information provided.

First point to note; I assume that since they are investing for the long term (10- years), then they are not putting in money they urgently need. One should never invest amounts they cannot afford to lose, especially into a high risk asset.

Second point; How to secure the asset is more important than acquiring it.
For a purchase of that amount, your friend should definitely get a hardware wallet for cold storage. They should also preferably be privacy cautious when buying, or sending to their different addresses.
Back ups are also an important factor.

Thirdly, they should be aware of taxes regulations in their area.

About 27 users joined that poll, which is a low number to generalize the opinion of the community.
But, I would expect majority of the community to be in agreement with a net inclusion of 1 and minimum of 2 inclusions. This would help curb users getting placed into DT2 by increasing the entry barrier.
Maybe theymos organizes a more publicized poll to reach a decision.

Some honest users might be affected by such a cut, but if their judgement can be trusted by one DT1 users, then they can always be trusted by another overtime, as long as they are active in the trust system.

Higher than the above suggestion may make it too steep for new users to get included.

Cause they are baseless speculations.
You should not be listening to banks or financial cooperations about a decentralized technology, when they are promoters of a centralized system.

As I said, do your own research.

The trick is to zoom out on the charts.
The naira as with many other fiat currencies have been getting devalued, due to inflation, while Bitcoin has been progressively appreciating in value, making it more of a hedge within a mid to long-term time range.
Of course, there would be intermittent price drops due to the speculative value, but the value always recovers. This is not the same with NGN and many other fiat currencies.

The government and banks are against decentralization, so definitely they would be against Bitcoin.
Powerful nations, corporations and individuals can be wrong as well, or they are protecting their interests.
There are also countries, corporations and individuals who are enthusiastic about bitcoin.

You should however, not let others think for you, do you own research.

Baseless speculations.
P.S, we don trust here, we verify.

There should be an email address in the ban message you received on your main account.
If you have any proof as to why you are not related to the account linked to Mia_houston. Although, with the evidence provided, there's very little chance of the account getting unbanned.

Thanks for sharing, I was not aware of such distinctions in how taxes are calculated and what someone can be taxed.
I remember reading somewhere that in real estate you can reinvest (flip a property which has appreciated in value, for another) and you would not be taxed on it. Up until you sell the property for fiat; cashing out.
Not sure if that's still applicable and why crypto would be exempt.

There is no single utopian system in the world which has not been exploited by bad actors. Banks which are constructs of the government have been involved in numerous illegal activities, some which it has mediated or actually carried out itself.

That's an impossible ask from developers. And the reality is the government does not really care about bad actors or the minority which uses it for illegal activities, the focus is on untraceable movement of assets to acquire more taxes and revenue.

AFAIK, it's just for cashing out or for when you make a purchase which can be taxable.
The tax rules vary from country to country, but in majority you shouldn't be taxed for converting BTC to ETH or vice versa, but on capital gains at the time you "cash out" relative to when you purchased the said asset.

It's of course a bummer that many are not properly educated on how taxes work, so what was originally designed to take from the rich, is now mostly affecting the poor and middle class who are not very informed about it.

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About the percentage in the U.S who haven't paid taxes on traded (capital gain), that is impossible to speculate in my opinion.