Big companies are funding open source projects that they are using all the time, sometimes they even hire the devs as consultants or to make some custom modifications for their use cases. Why should it be different with Bitcoin? If big companies that participate in Bitcoin ecosystem want to stimulate Bitcoin development, there's nothing wrong with that. If you want to throw accusations, you'd better back them with proof that there are actually development decisions being made that benefit those companies as the result of donations.

You shouldn't really invest in anything with borrowed funds, even more so in a risky asset like Bitcoin. This is basically a more extreme version of leveraged trading, because for leverage you have to start with something, but if you're taking a loan you could be tempted to invest without any of your own money.

And with Bitcoin specifically, its volatility plays a huge negative role here. You don't know when there will be ups and downs, but you have to pay back the loan at a fixed date. Now imagine that when that day happens Bitcoin is in a huge bear market and you have either to sell at a loss and find more money to repay the loan, or suffer the dire consequences of defaulting.

Not a good question, because risks heavily vary even among those activities. Some businesses are riskier than others, some "online investments" are riskier than others.

The fundamental difference between these money making methods is that if you invest in your own business, you have a large share of control over the outcome, while with investing in something you have on control at all, but also no responsibility too. But choosing the right investment is a skill in itself, so it's not like investing is fool-proof.

IMO people who have no clue about business or investing should just stick to low-risk investments like savings accounts and with some time and learning dip their fingers into other more demanding activities.

Banks are not threatened by crypto payments because so few people actually pay with crypto and the total transaction volume is just a tiny drop compared to global fiat payments. But the competition in the field of investment is more likely to happen - if people would buy Bitcoin instead of opening bank deposits, that could force banks to act. The first thing banks could easily do is to disconnect all crypto exchanges from their system, and that would kill a large share of crypto market liquidity. If that would be not enough, they could start lobbying the government to impose more restrictions on crypto activities. But so far we have seen nothing like that happening on a large scale.

I'd say volatility is the biggest issue for merchants. The worst case scenario is you accept some Bitcoin, hold it and it crashes and now you have to sell it at a loss to keep your business going. And this is bound to happen at some point, because Bitcoin has many crashes per year, which can be 5% or 10% or even 20-50%. You could say that they are cancelled by the price surges in the long run, but still some unlucky timing can cause immense damage to business.

I don't think that people deserve to get scammed. Many people enter this market because they hear stories of high returns, they see hype about blockchain and cryptocurrencies and decide that this is something that really has potential. And the problem immediately starts with the fact that they don't have knowledge, experience and analytical skills to recognize that most of these cryptocurrencies have no real value. Does this mean that people deserve to get scammed by those who blatantly lie that their coin will perform well? Because in traditional markets like stocks you can be brought to court if you lie to your investors and basically pocket their money without even trying to deliver anything. But in crypto this is the norm.

As crypto investor, you should have separate environments for your investment activities and for your other stuff. If you are trading thousands of dollars worth of coins, you should just get a cheap laptop for trading instead of using apps on your phone which is always online and does whatever it wants on the Internet. And for your wallet you should have a hardware wallet or a cold storage PC/laptop. Mobile wallets should be only for tiny daily expenses.

ETF is just one platform out of many, and the price is the sum of all market activity across all platforms, so you can't really say that Bitcoin is now fully regulated. And I don't see why Bitcoin volatility should reduce now that we have an ETF. This effect could be really small because the volatility is caused by fundamental reasons - the purely speculative nature of Bitcoin price forming. There's no method for calculating how much should Bitcoin be worth, so all market participants are just guessing.

Do we actually have any even approximate statistics of percentage of scammers that get caught and those that get away? Because I have a feeling that it's easy to cherry-pick some high-profile examples, but looking at the bigger picture it might be the case that most scammers avoid justice.

Also, those scammers that steal millions and still get caught are often scamming for the first time and don't take enough measures to hide. Stealing millions in crypto is not a proof of skill because people so easily invest in anything that promises high returns.

Land is rarely bought as a speculative investment, it's either for rent or to use it. And offering land for rent is much more appealing investment for most people than buying Bitcoin, because it's a relatively predictable investment with timed dividends. The fact that land goes up in value is a nice addition, but it's not the main reason to invest in it.

Basically, land has utility and it gives it value, and with Bitcoin its price growth is its main utility, which is a vicious circle.

Because it's a meme, and memes are fixed expressions. It wouldn't be really as funny if people were using different expensive car names, because our brains woud have to think a bit more to get the joke, while "when lambo" is immediately understood. Maybe if in the early days another car brand was used for this meme, it would have stuck instead of the "lambo".

This is a bad idea, you will be basically working as their unpaid investment manager, bear all the risks and get nothing from it. Situations like this is why it might be best to keep your Bitcoin investment a secret even from close family, because you gain nothing from telling them and can only create problems.

Huge relief from what? Anyone who learned the basics of Bitcoin always understood this. We don't need any analysts to tell us that. This could only be interesting to some outsiders who are thinking about buying Bitcoin, or to those who bought BTC without doing any research.

Net worth is not a very good metric. I can imagine that during the Bitcoin ATH some top holder will get close to the level of the richest people in the world, but so what? They can't liquidate all their coins for that value, and they will probably won't liquidate any big amount and will keep hodling, just like those rich people don't liquidate their stocks.

This is wrong, I doubt there's a single high-merit user who posts just to earn merits. All of them are hardcore Bitcoin enthusiasts who like to share their knowledge or discuss everything surround Bitcoin with other knowledgeable users. Their posting patterns didn't change with the introduction of the merit system.

Also, the idea that this forum is a place of knowledge is just a merit fishing narrative that gets spammed by newbies. This forum is a place of discussion, which is different from knowledge. This is not a stackoverflow which has harsh moderation and community voting - you can ask questions here and have no idea whether the replies are actually good or bad, because everyone is equal here - posts can't be downvoted or removed for being wrong.

AAA games these days cost $60-70 - if such deviation from your plan is big enough to cause concerns, you have a much bigger problem. You need money to make money, $60 or $100 is not enough to realistically turn you into a millionaire. Yes, it was the case in the past when someone who bought BTC for $3 and sold for $60k is not crazy rich, but Bitcoin will not go from $40k to tens of millions, there is no chance it will happen for many fundamental reasons. So you need to be making a lot more money to earn decent profits from Bitcoin investment.

There's a saying - "don't be the perfect be the enemy of good". Many less experienced traders are so focused on finding "the best" price that they actually miss out entirely on even just good trades and then wait for long time to make one, or even become demoralized and cut their losses.

In this current situation it's not important whether the price will slide further or will bounce back soon. A bull market is nearly 100% guaranteed to happen, so why not just buy now and avoid risking missing the opportunity to see the price skyrocket while you wait for "perfect" opportunity?

Some are and some aren't. Back when I was a newbie I was sometimes intimidated to reply to posts of higher ranking members, but I quickly stopped worrying because there's really nothing you can lose by doing so. Even if you'll embarrass yourself a few times, no one will remember that interaction.

And actually replying to high ranking users could be beneficial, because even if you'll be wrong, you will be corrected and could learn a lot. But keep in mind that just having high rank is not a sign of expertise, especially if someone obtained that rank before the roll out of the merit system.

You can test the address by signing a message with it. If the message can be verified, then you own the private key corresponding to that address and have nothing to worry about. When I was a newbie I also worried about the need to test wallets and addresses, but these days I know that if you are using a proven wallet like Core or Electrum, you will never encounter a problem with addresses not working, because it never happened to anyone.

The reason is simple - after the price goes up very fast, it almost always goes down. We had a big rally from $35k to $48k. It was unrealistic to expect for Bitcoin to grow even more and more, because this is not the early days when Bitcoin could just double in price every couple of weeks. Expect more of this pattern in the future - when the candle is vertical, it will always correct.