true but even if it costs "a lot" to run such a node it won't be and can not be close to costing millions to run it otherwise it won't work.
besides, unlike bitcoin's blockchain that needs to store the history of all transactions, such sidechain doesn't have to store the history of all trades so it won't need to store that much data (if any since the trade itself doesn't have to be recorded in my opinion).

actually this is not popular at all. maybe only in certain circles like the banking cartel or the FUD army that tries so hard to keep the bitcoin price down.
otherwise in real world and among regular people, bitcoin is either unknown or is usually seen as virtual money for the nerds.

you don't ever lose money by only "investing" in bitcoin, all the losses come from investing in an altcoin as they dump in the long term or when people try to "trade" cryptocurrencies and make profit from that volatility.
trading means buying and selling constantly to make profit in the difference. it requires a lot of experience and knowing when the market is good for trading and a little bit of luck. obviously many who complain have none of these.

assuming you live in US do you think you can invest in US dollar? that doesn't make sense because the value of US dollar is the same $1=$1 and it is the same with these "stable" coins, 1 Tether = 1 Tether = 1 USD. so there is nothing to "invest" in.
also these altcoins are centralized and highly risky because at any moment their value can drop down to 0 and no longer be 1 Tether = 1 USD and be 1 Tether = 0 USD.

demand and community are not two distinct things, they are the same exact thing. the demand shapes the community and community consists of people who are buying that coin (aka are the demand).
if a coin has a big community, that means there is a lot more people buying it and when drops happen it is so much harder to see it crash big time. for example bitcoin's biggest sudden crash is about 20% while altcoins can easily get dumped 90%

now we shouldn't confuse community with newbies who don't actually own that much coin and keep hyping the tiny amounts they have or the pump and dump army of shills advertising a shitcoin. that is fake community.

you don't. you simply set the amount field of the OP_RETURN output to zero and only have to pay the fees depending on the size of the transaction just like any other tx.

by the way bitcoin blockchain is not meant for "message staking". it is a ledger for monetary transfers.

a wallet is a higher level abstraction that deals with the user and has to have certain protection for the user. one is to prevent them from accidentally send coins to scripts they don't understand ie. OP_RETURN here.
a node on the other hand is enforcing the protocol rules and since it is allowed in protocol to send coins to OP_RETURN they accept it.

wallets also don't have a lot of other functionalities. for example they don't let users send funds to any custom scripts, use locktime related OPs, change their public key type,... all for the same reason.

by the way one of the reasons why OP_RETURN was introduced into bitcoin was to prevent people from inserting messages into bitcoin blockchain using addresses like those examples without burdening the nodes.

bitcoin adoption has always had different aspects, it is not just the price going up. it is all the rest that comes with it, more exchanges, more shops, merchants, payment processors, all kinds of services, and of course ATMs.
we are currently in the initial adoption phase where people want to have ways of converting their fiat to bitcoin so things like ATMs and exchanges are hot these days. in a decade from now that bitcoin will take more of a currency shape, they will also go away as people get paid in bitcoin and use it the same way they use fiat and you don't need an ATM for that.

the real question that nobody seems to be asking probably because they are too busy thinking about the profit is that what kind of guarantee will this exchange give the investor in return?
the answer is absolutely nothing except empty promises. if tomorrow they get hacked, the investor loses its money. if they go wrong in their high risk investments and lose a ton of money and declare bankruptcy the investor again loses money. if some day the US government thinks they are shady and shuts them down, again the investor loses their money.

good luck with your 0.01% monthly profit with such a gigantic risk!

running a bitcoin full node doesn't cost anywhere near millions so why should a running a node on side chain cost that much money? besides what you are suggesting is centralization and if that is the only solution then we are better off using the existing centralized exchanges instead.

i disagree and i'll give you one reason: they created competition and prevented big corporations from asking for ridiculous amount of money for doing a simple job.
now there are competing developers who are sometimes even more skilled and can do a much better job at a much more reasonable prices. funny enough that forced those big companies to lower their prices to realistic ones too.

now you shouldn't confuse freelancing with some newbies who know very little of some subject like website design trying to get a job and make some money. it is up to you to hire the ones who can do a good job by looking at their skills and checking their history.

i don't think so. if anything the world is bracing for the crash that is slowly happening already. the inflation, crisis and depression are more likely in close term than "bull run"!
least of all in US, maybe you fell for some election ad

for starters "crypto coins" have very little to do with world economy and they are getting pumped nad dumped 10000x every day with or without the pandemic or world crisis or bull run.

very interesting information here that i didn't know about.
but i think it is too soon to start discussing the recovery patterns at this point because the crash part is not yet over and with the way this nasty virus has been spreading lately and the fear that it has started mutating i'm afraid the real effects of the economical crash are yet to come.

and i think the recovery in some cases could depend on the type of the crash itself. a gigantic crash might have a W shape recovery while a small one be followed by a U shape recovery.

the worst problem is not just the fact that banks are allowing so much criminal activity happen right under their nose, no. the worst part is that these banks are also doing a lot of criminal shit themselves and they have been getting away with it scot free.
the only reason why they have ever attacked bitcoin was to hide their own dirty laundry by redirecting the public attention away from their own shadiness.

i think most of it is only to keep the masses calm and try to keep the inflation rate of both this year and the next at a smaller percentage. otherwise with the way economy has been hurting over the past months along the crazy amount of money they keep printing we can expect a lot more inflation than 2% for this year alone which we've already started to see too, and a lot more for next year.

masses who don't care about decentralization and security also don't care about cryptocurrencies and instead stick to their banks and other centralized alternatives. this is exactly why every centralized altcoin so far has failed over the long run.

in any case could you give us an example of sharding that is currently handling 1000x bigger transaction throughput?

i don't think the number and the scale or even the source is sufficient enough to make any decent conclusions. but logically it makes sense that many of the new investors at this point are not coming in based on hype and blindness which means they do some research and the history and the future potential of bitcoin clearly tells them that the long term holding and the current accumulation while they can is going to be the best approach.

i'm sure that if this survey were performed in 2015-2016 we would have seen very similar results and it will be the same in 2023 which would probably fall after the next bubble during the accumulation phase of next rally.

well its not just always about the money though. we are technically discussing the best solutions for a particular problem in this board.

it works but the transaction size would be bigger in comparison because in this multisig setup the signature has to contain 3 signatures (2 from A and one from B/C) whereas before it just needed 2 (1 from A and 1 from B/C).
~72 bytes is a considerable size increase per input too which can't be ignored.

when there is one owner, one CEO, one office,... that owns and fully controls something then to shut that thing down all you need is a boot that kicks down its door.

now imagine if there were hundred thousand CEOs, offices, owners,... that were not only spread all around the world but also they all had equal power. you can't shut this system down.
that is what bitcoin is like, it is a decentralized peer to peer payment system. to shut it down you'll have to shut down the internet all over the world not just in your own country!

there is no such thing as "bitcoin data". there is blockchain which is that big and you don't have to store it on your phone.

what can be done is to download, verify and discard. aka what pruned mode does as it was pointed out in another comment.

that is only one of many alternatives, and one of the worst ones.
the better alternative is using SPV protocol that is still decentralized and pretty safe to use without needing to rely on any website or even a server. the client connects to the bitcoin network and acquires any information it needs.

another option would be running your own node somewhere like on your home network and connecting your phone to that which means your storage requirements, traffic usage and security can increase a lot more than any other option. you could also encrypt your communication with a strong encryption between your PC and phone to increase your security even further.

do discuss it, you just mentioned an abstract idea with no details.