IMO it's not a matter of if but when. Sooner or later they'll probably also approve ETFs for ETH and will eventually allow in-kind selling of ETFs.
Money talks and chairmans change, just as presidents. Bitcoin can wait them out.

I see no reason why they'd claim that bitcoin can be manipulated. If that was the case why would they allow futures trading in the first place which they did in 2017. If that was allowed everything else will be because you either claim it's a speculative bubble, or it's an asset, a commodity.

Milei is a tool. I had high hopes for the guy especially after he said some good things about bitcoin, but after becoming the president he proved that he doesn't understand bitcoin at all.
I wouldn't be surprised if all he did was use his image of an outsider to be ellected and once that happened it was back to money printing and bowing before the World Bank.

Will central banks collapse? Eventually yes, but they'll have so much time before it happens that they'll simply reset the currency like they did in Germany, Poland, Zimbabwe, and many other countries.
Maybe some of you remember that it happened in Iceland and Cyprus and it can happen in a bigger country like Japan or China since they both aren't in a good shape.

Really? Then you must have some IT background. The book is pretty difficult for beginners with a lot of complex stuff and many pages about the code. Most of us aren't really interested in bitcoin code, so honestly I would not recommend that for your first book.
What I would recommend is The Bitcoin Standard by Saifedean Ammous. If you're not interested in learning the inner workings of bitcoin and are more into finances, how bitcoin works as money and the importance of holding, choose that.

If you really want something by Andreas, watch his youtube videos. They're much more comprehensive than the book.

IMO they can, but only locally.

How?
Bitcoin depends on exchanges, ATM's and such. If you close gateways that people use to trade bitcoin, you'll stop its use.You won't stop people from holding, but they'll have to exchange it for cash, which will limit at least 80% of users. 

Silver lining is that people can easily leave the country with their bitcoin and exchange it somewhere where it's allowed and the country that banned it will only lose tax money that they'd have if they allowed bitcoin in the country.

Do you know what's most interesting in this whole situation? I'd point at two things.
1. He obviously was accepting bitcoin from shady groups, hackers, sanctioned entities and so on, but never really faced anything besides fines. How many people do you know who are found guilty of something like a fraud or money laundering and don't get at least a mandatory year in prison? IMO this is one big extortion from the US gov. They know he's got money and he's willing to pay them off.

2. I thought he struck a deal last year and they still decided to prosecute him. IMO they wanted more money, or they wanted to suppress the price of bitcoin by going after him. This is obviously much bigger than CZ and Binance. This is about shaking out weak hands and allowing rich people who missed the first ETF wave to accumulate.

Yup, Ver is obviously guilty, but I'm amazed how ridiculous some of these laws are. Maybe he is guilty of omission, maybe he had too many bitcoins to manage and could not remember about every single one.
Maybe by the time he had to sell it, he thought he was already a citizen of another country so he doesn't have to pay taxes in a country he doesn't live in, which to me would be obvious.
I lived in a few countries in my life, traveled a bit and stupid laws and government oppression always make the rebel in me scream. I wouldn't put someone in prison for hiding his bitcoin, that's for sure, especially that bitcoin wasn't treated as money and was largely ignored and treated like fool's gold back in 2013 and 2014 when he was leaving the US.

This would be on me 100% so if I lost it I'd do everything I can to earn it back.

I don't know how much that was, but lets assume it's an achievable amount, not millions of dollars. I'd take a loan to put money on the account and I'd lie to my parents, tell them I have it all on the account. I'd be in debt but they'd still trust me and that's what's important here. You don't want to lose their trust and you don't want them to worry, so if you could get only 80% of the money in a loan or 50% tell them you borrowed the rest and will slowly earn it back, while the rest is for them to take right now if they want it.

Some things to consider:

Why should people agree to the government taking away their cash? How would this happen? Would they be told that they have until January to put all cash in the bank because later it won't be accepted? What if someone inherits a house and finds cash inside? What if someone's grandparent was saving cash and you find out after the launch of CBDC?

Many people, me included, would see that as attack on freedom and privacy. I wouldn't want the government to know what I'm spending my money on.
CBDC will open a new options for the government. They'll be able to say that they don't want you to do this or that and will make the digital cash unusable in certain places or for certain goods and services.
They don't want you to donate to certain organizations - done. They don't want you to visit certain countries - done. They don't want you to drink alcohol, or eat sugar - done. I know these are extreme, but certainly possible situations.

It's sad that so many people still make these mistakes, even though many wallets automatically set fees and ask you to verify everything before sending, they even make you click a message saying that you read and confirmed the address, amount of bitcoin and fees.

As for the halving and prices, we're going up when this short sell pressure is over. It's the only inevitable way for bitcoin, so I hope you won't make the mistake of panic selling at a loss.

I never liked Roger, especially after that video where he showed us the finger, but what amazes me is that he sold so many BTC for less than $1k - that's one.

Then the part where he changed citizenship and was required to pay exit tax - like WTF? The country bullies you, you decide you don't want to live there anymore, so they want you to pay them for leaving? What kind of law is that? I'm sure many people aren't even aware of such rule.

It's also amazing that Ver hasn't been a US citizen for a decade and they come up with that right now? I feel like this isn't a coincidence and either some model citizen reminded the IRS about him, or maybe it has something to do with the recent attack on bitcoin wallets.

"or threaten you to send over the funds to them by using a deadly weapon or a basic tool that can be used for harm like a kitchen knife, a hammer, a screwdriver"

They literally have a hammer and a crowbar in that movie. Hardware store villains

The trailer isn't that bad, pretty normal for a b movie. I've seen worse than that.
More or less the same genre as Don't Breathe, just worse budget, fresh actors and all that. Probably going to be disappointing, but I like thrillers and I'd watch it if there was nothing better.

As for the safety of your home, most of us underestimate it until they have to really face a burglary or an invasion. Then we hope we had that lock on bedroom's door, or a video camera, but it's too late.
These things usually happen only once in our lives and you either are prepared or not. Buying all that stuff after the fact won't make much difference.

I agree with OP and this is how I usually describe things to people who tell me they should own altcoins because they're cheaper and have more potential to grow. I tell them that owning bitcoin may feel like something risky but owning altcoins is adding on top of that risk because altcoins react to problems of bitcoin and the whole cryptocurrency ecosystem, but their price also reacts to their own problems, problems of their inventors and even people who advertise them. There's no reason to add risk on top of risk.

All investigations follow clues.

I'm sure that you heard about many murder cases that were never solved and missing people that were never found. Why is that? The answer to that question and the one you asked is the same. There were not enough clues left.

Many suspect that Satoshi died in an accident, so maybe one day this case is solved once and for all.

I feel like his wife needed that lie He's probably a weirdo if he's really waiting to lock himself with his phone, regardless of what he's doing there, pooing, masturbating, or gambling.
Yes' we sometimes have to lie because people expect that from us. They don't want to hear the truth.

I've never lied about gambling because I do it with my own money and I use cryptocurrencies so nobody knows how much I won or lost. It doesn't affect my social life and finances, since I consider money put aside for gambling as lost. If someone ever asks me about it, I won't lie (unless it's the IRS ).

Usually the more influence over the game you have the less risky it becomes. In a game of dice or roulette it's usually 50/50 and you can't do anything to increase your odds rather than doing it by decreasing the payout.

This means that the least risky will be poker, blackjack, sports betting, while the most risky will be dice and of course lottery games because the chances of winning are so small.

It's funny that skill-based games are always going to give you some additional opportunities, but will require you to learn them and the learning curve is steep.

I don't take them into account at all. I honestly don't care if there's a way to communicate with other gamblers and most if not all of the casinos that I used over the years did not have that feature.

In my case it helps that I've been here for a few years and played on early versions of crypto casinos and nobody had built in forums back then. A chatbox was rare at the time and I've never even used it because mostly people were saying high or spamming.

1. Miscalculations in their bankroll and bets. Bad math. Not knowing that they can lose 3 times in a row they bet 30% of their money and find out they have nothing left to play with very fast.
2. Believing in beginners luck and all that. That they can't lose on a new account, that first bet after registering should be a win, that after 2 losses in a row the third one has to be a win, and so on. Basically lying to themselves.
3 Trying unknown casinos just because they offer a small bonus or something instead of starting on a well known, established site. They end up going into battes with these scam casinos from the start.

WTF? That's the worst thing you can do since early in the morning your body craves oxygen and the best thing you can literally do is to run a bit, ride a bicycle, walk a dog if you have one, just go outside and get some fresh air along with a light workout, then get back and drink a cup coffee that will get blood pumping through your lungs. Smoking in the morning when your body is trying to wake up and stretch is suffocating your cells.

In some countries smoking is in the decline, while in others it's on the rise. I know that in Russia most people smoke. It's the same in many former Soviet states like Bulgaria or Belarus.
Harsh environment and hard jobs make people look for ways to relax, take a break. Many employers allow workers to take cigarette breaks, maybe that's one of the reasons.

As for the honeypot, we're yet to find out what information they get from there, how well the servers were protected and so on. I'm not an expert here, but I've read that they had their own nodes and most of their users did not use them.

As for the US government, It's a great example of double standards where a person can kill another person and get 10 years, while these guys are facing 20 (correct me if I'm wrong) for running a privacy oriented software! That's insane.
At the same time Jamie Dimon's bank was FINED for money laundering. Why aren't these devs let go with a fine? Because the government rules with fear and likes to make examples of people to scare the rest.

I feel like both of these (the bid for the first sat and the bifd for "buy bitcoin") are the result of people not knowing what to do with the money.

Nobody on a normal wealth level would do that. 33 BTC is over $2 million, which for most people is more than total value of assets they own and will own in their whole lifespan. For instance, both of my parents together, each living past 80, never reached that number, so you must already have everything you could dream of to buy a piece of paper with one word for a million dollars.

Value is subjective, but I wouldn't even have the money to buy that, even if I wanted to. Not to mention that I could think of a 100 things I'd rather buy than this.