I agree. Communist countries are likely the worse of all political and economic structures. There is no mobility and the government is very powerful and will use force if you try to think freely.

The bot was just a way for whales to buy a lot of bitcoin while having less of an impact on the price. The whales were not creating money out of thin air but rather were using large investor's money to buy large amounts of bitcoin.

They had no bad record because they had no record at all. They likely had a shorter "testing" phase then they do now but still had longer delays then necessary.

Getting a refund is by far the better choice for the OP. With today's difficulty being where it is, the OP had more or less zero chance of ever earning any where near 3 BTC, let alone 5 BTC

I think both coinbase and bitpay cause a net amount of bitcoin to be purchased rather then sold as people will likely buy some amount greater then what they plan on spending. Companies will also likely hold at least a small percentage of their bitcoin revenue in bitcoin.

I would say that is not necessarily true. If investors want to cash out then the trust will need to sell bitcoin. It is very similar to people holding their bitcoin at an exchange, just in much larger amounts.

This should really be in the off topic section. I would also advise anyone reading this to not answer the OPs question as if you were to reveal how many bitcoin you own/control then it could subject you to a number of attacks, as an attacker would know that attempting to hack you could have some benefit, verses attempting to hack a random person may or may not have potential benefit.

Do you have a link that proves that Wikipedia actually cashed out their BTC donations? I would think that a foundation like Wikipedia would likely want to diversify their investments at least a little bit so it would make sense to me that they would keep at least some of their bitcoin donations in bitcoin.

WTF lol? You are suggesting that the people of Argentina whore themselves out. I doubt those girls really end up making very much anyway.

I do feel bad for the people of Argentina, however they likely knew that it was coming and were able to plan appropriately. For example the price of bitcoin is trading at a huge premium in terms of Pesos when converted to Dollars, which reflects that the black market trade of pesos has already reduced the value of pesos. 

All assets have bubbles as it is part of the market process. The question is how often do you see bubbles. In assets like housing it is very rare that you see bubbles (less then once per lifetime) as the total value of all housing is very large, and this kind of assets is very established.

Newer kinds of assets on the other hand tend to see more bubbles as they have a smaller market cap so small amounts of money entering and/or exiting them would have a greater affect on the price.

Without any news, the prices of most financial assets will not change very much over the weekend as the weekend is not a traditional time to do business and trade. Additionally most announcements by businesses are made during the week. Long story short, it is unlikely that the price of bitcoin will change very much on any given weekend. 

Do you have a link to support this? I cannot speak about the leverage that they offered during the last bubble, but AFAIK they only offer 2.5:1 leverage as of now.

If you are going to mix your coins then you need to be sure that the mixer is somewhat trusted. There are a few out there that are trusted, but are also many scams out there, especially on the hidden wikki.

You need to require collateral to be safe lending BTC on the lending subforum. It is also generally safe to lend small amounts to users who have established accounts (full members or higher) with neutral trust as long as the amount lent is less then what can be made in a month at the lowest paying signature campaign for ~50-100 posts as your could get a trusted member to negative trust someone that defaults on a loan.

Most manufacturers sell their machines via preorder instead of building the machines then selling and collecting funds. As a result the customer will pay for a miner, the manufacturer will design and build the machines, then test it for 2 months (while collecting the revenue from these tests) then ship the machine out to the customer. Do you see anything wrong with this? I certainly do!

I think that bitcoin is generally too small of a niche to be covered by most "real"/professional analysis. As the market cap of bitcoin increases it will likely be covered by more investment banks, however even then it would be difficult for them to figure out what is an "appropriate" price as an owner of bitcoin would not receive any earnings except for their potential profit from appreciation if/when they sell.

What caused the 2008 collapse was loose lending for houses (this also spilled over into other types of lending as well), we are not seeing that today. A secondary factor that contributed to the 2008 collapse was excess leverage at banks so investors could not determine if they had sufficient capital to survive.

Market cap based Indexes make the most sense. If you were to have an index that measures it's price any other way then it would not be able to truly measure the performance of the companies in the index.

If the index used share price (like the DJIA does) then companies that have a high per share price would have a greater effect on the index then a company that has a low per share price, even if both companies are otherwise exactly the same.

Another option would be to have all companies be equally weighed, however this would make it unfeasible to effectively be able to invest in the index as small companies in the index would not have enough shares available.   

What laws encourage speculation? I would argue that in the US the law encourage workers to sit idle (in the form of UI, and other social programs).

It will take a lot longer then 5 years to shrink the Fed portfolio as it has taken them that long to build it up to the level that it is at now, and they would not be able to shrink it to normal levels at the same pace.

This competitive devaluation is essentially happening now as most central banks are doing some kind of QE now. I do not however see the value of any major fiat currency spiraling downward as it would create too many economic problems for other countries. 

You would have your money tied up for the period of the swap. Your risk is that Bitfinex is unable to unwind the specific trade that your swap is tied to prior to the price declining so much that the borrower looses all of his equity.