A government can't block bitcoin directly.
But it can block sites where people have their wallets, such as blockchain.info.
And a government can prohibit businesses to accept bitcoin as a form of payment, maybe even declare the posession of bitcoin to be illegal.
Those measures would turn bitcoin to be useless for people and would be as effective as blocking bitcoin if this was possible.

From all I know they made a profit in Q3 2016 of 300 millions.
In Q1 and Q2 they made profit as well. I don't see these are numbers from a crashing bank.
Even hedgefonds have reduced their bets aginst this bank in the last weeks again. And they are usually the first who take advantage of crashing companies.

Would it be possible to create a decentralized exchange running by the same principles bitcoin does?
I mean based on a blockchain? Rewards could be exchange fees. About 0.15 % of each transaction.

I think that anonymity is for a lot of people nothing really importatnt.
Sime want to invest their money into something else than fiat.
And if you could combine that with a few services a bank can offer, it could attract a whole new group of people to bitcoin.

Exactly. And I think that people over a certain age might have problems to adapt to bitcoins as well.
I do not think that you will find much bitcoin users over fourty. Maybe none over fifty.
But I think that the younger people will still use btc once they have reached that age if they have learnd it before.
So the time when nearly everybody is using btc will be way past 6 years.

... because the whole crypto currency field is just starting now!
Earlier bitcoin was something for technic freaks and speculants, now it's going mainstream.
Even bigger incidents like hacks could not bring down the price much, so bitcoin can be seen as a stable growing market.
Money can not be invested better than under such circumstances.

Help me here please because somehow I do not get it:
I miner gets the fee when he is the first who confirms a transaction. Nobody else does.
A transaction is confirmed when it is written into a new block.
When all the blocks are mined, how should a new one be found? I don't see how transactions can be confirmed in that situation. And how would a miner could get any fees then?

I must admit that I started with faucets.
But faucets were more creative at that time, and the amount they paid was worth at least a little something.
These days faucets are flooded with advertisements in letters I can not even read and you get 100 Satoshis per claim!
100 Satoshis! If you are lucky! With the chance to get a nasty virus that destroys your computer. That's ridiculous!

Nobody today can make amounts with faucets that are worth the time you put in it. Not the user, not the owner.
The only people who profit from faucets are the ones behind the bot atacks. And I really don't want to support those.

At the moment it is the fact that it depends on the good will of of the person who got the payment to give you what you have paid for.
Just recently I made a deposit at an exchange that did not show up in my balance at the exchange.
The transaction was correct and confirmed several times, but it somehow was not included in my balance.
After a few days and emails to the exchange the problem was solved and I got my coins, but the opportunity of the altcoins I wanted to buy was gone.
It made me realize how dependant to the correct behaviour of the counterparty we all are when we use bitcoin.

Giving away 10% of one bitcoin is quiet a lot for most people. About 64 dollars at the moment.
For most people I do not spend that much for christmas.
A bitcoin advertisement in such a high range just for one person does not seem to be appropriate to me. Even if it's for family.
Unless the givig person is a millionair.

In bitcoin there is nothing smaller than one satoshi.
Maybe an altcoin can be devided up into smaller fractions worth less than one stoshi, but I do not know that.
In general I see no point in transactions which are so low.

I buy my bitcoins when I want to make a payment with them.
There is no big time between the moment when I buy the coins and the moment I make the payment using them.
Of course the amount of bitcoins I buy is always a little bit more than the amount I need.
The difference goes to my savings wich I keep in case a big price increase comes.

Primarily I generate my coins when I buy them for fiat.
Then there is my signature campaign, that gives me a little bit extra.
I did some trading, that that earning option is on hold at the moment for me.
And then I have started to do some advertisements, but that is not going well at the moment. Maybe it will with time.

I see no way that a crypto currency can be any kind of competition to a bank.
For that, the amount of money that's in the whole crypto market is way too low.
Besides, bitcoin is only a way of payment. Banks provide much more services than that.

I could imagine myself supporting some bitcoin startup business.
I think those businesses are the backbone of bitcoin, because they make up the difference between bitcoin and altcoin.
The more bitcoin related businesses there are, the stronger and more stable bitcoin gets

I see the market for crypto currencies growing.
And because bitcoin is by far the coin with the largest market capitalization and the bitcoin community itself is growing as well, I have no doubt that at least the nearer future of bitcoin is a bright one.
Of course smaller setbacks can happen, hacked exchanges for example. But bitcoin has already proven that it is strong enough to handle that.

I am wondering what would happen to bitcoin.
Bitcoin is mostly traded in dollars. Does that mean that if the dollar crashes, the bitcoin would crash along with it?
Or would the bitcoin be worth just much more dollars?

From where I sit bitcoin seems to be pretty much alive and operatable.
Over 2% raise during the last 24 hours, that's something not only bitcoin, but also I can live with!
Hope to see more of these days!

I don't see banks as a threat for bitcoin.
I think that bitcoin is simply too unimportant for them to even care.
As far as I know they are happy for every person that pulls their funds off the bank account.
With the technology of the blockchain it can be different. But I don't see that as concerning as well.
I don't mind if every bank has their own blockchain, that's why I am not taking any measures.

The best advice I can give:
Don't believe everything you read here or what people promise to you.
If an offer sounds too good to be true, it most likely is.
Using your head can save you a lot of trouble, and coins.