Take a look around the crypto community, both in meatspace and online, and it would be fair to say that the majority of participants are male. This is borne out in a recent survey of 2,000 Americans which shed light on the makeup of the bitcoin space, highlighting a stark gender divide. In fact Google Analytics data estimates less than 4% of bitcoin users to be female. The question is, why?

Source: https://news.bitcoin.com/why-arent-there-more-women-in-bitcoin/?utm_source=Why

I don’t know how much more. My $1350 investment is worth $526.78 as of this moment.My coins were BTH, LTC, and ETH.

Just after your few hours of posting bitcoin has stated moving upwards and it is now at +3% with green zone. So im pretty sure that bitcoin is the real deal and now you believe it too. This is the up rising of the bitcoin and no one can bit the challenge of bitcoin where it went all down to 70% and in single day came back to 3% and more. Thats the real beauty behind it and lets hope we see +70% again and the bitcoin goes ATH of 20K soon. Lets party guys because that is what bitcoin is trying to get for us. So yes man, this is normal in crypto and you should hold and hold.

I'm not in this to get rich quick. Yes, you can make much nicer money than traditional banking/savings/investments, but the days of 10000% gains are over.

I'm in this because I believe in the technology. Blockchain technology is changing and will continue to change the world. I believed this at $20k, I believe it now at $7k, and I would still believe it at $1k.

Let's check back in 10 years, and see if blockchain technology is still around.

I hear from many sources that btc is used for trading much more than it is for goods and services; doesn't that make it an asset ??
and is that necessarily a bad thing ?? and what can we do about it as a community ??

It will evolve (Bitcoin will have smart contracts), this is the whole point from making it open source and by your logic, Ethereum will be useless too, and so is anything else each time a coin with a more advanced blockchain techonlogy is released.

The answer is in our hands,if we continue to sell the bitcoins the it will die soon so we need to hold as long as the the demand of bitcoin gets increases which increases the price also.

So people or investors just hold your bitcoins to make it alive.

No one knows the future so any answer would be a prediction of the possibility. I believe that Bitcoin needs upgradation to deal with high transaction fees and confirmation time. Bitcoin has a tremendous potential to acquire the huge micro transactions market but in order to do that, the fee must be less than $0.01 and confirmation time should be less than 10 seconds. If we could somehow reach this target then I do see huge potential for the growth otherwise Bitcoin would remain as a player of international funds remittance industry.

If there is an coordinated dumping from the whales then can we assume that they are the one who brought mislead information in the community about the news on India? anyway I saw a lot of articles/news about explaining that India will embrace the Blockchain technology so let's just wait a few hours or days then the market will recover after this FUD's.

In addition to activity, everyone now has a merit score, and you need both a certain activity level and a certain merit score in order to reach higher member ranks. The required scores are:

Rank	Required activity	Required merit
Brand new	0	0
Newbie	1	0
Jr Member	30	0
Member	60	10
Full Member	120	100
Sr. Member	240	250
Hero Member	480	500
Legendary	Random in the range 775-1030	1000

You get merit points when someone sends you some for one of your posts. Additionally, when someone sends you merit points, half of those points can be sent by you to other people.

Certain users are designated as "merit sources". They can create new merit out of nothing, up to a limited number per month (which differs per source). I will not be posting a definitive list of merit sources (so that people don't bug them too much), though you'll soon figure out who they are if you pay attention.

There is currently no such thing as a "demerit". I'm hoping that the positive merits alone will be fine. I could add demerits pretty easily later on if necessary, though.

I'm hoping that this system will increase post quality by:
 - Forcing people to post high-quality stuff in order to rank up. If you just post garbage, you will never get even 1 merit point, and you will therefore never be able to put links in your signature, etc.
 - Highlighting good posts with the "Merited by" line.

While we will not be directly moderating this, I encourage people to give merit to posts that are objectively high-quality, not just posts that you agree with.

Do not beg for merit excessively.

Useful infographics

Forum users have helpfully created some infographics to explain the merit system:
paxmao's infographic
ibminer's infographic
8Habits's infographic
JetSet11's infographic
zentdex's infographic
alia_armelle's infographic

If you want to be a merit source:

 1. Be a somewhat established member.
 2. Collect TEN posts written in the last couple of months by other people that have not received nearly enough merit for how good they are, and post quotes for them all in a new Meta thread. The point of this is to demonstrate your ability to give out merit usefully.
 3. We will take a look at your history and maybe make you a source.

I am especially eager to have merit sources in sub-communities such as the local sections.

Trivia:

For current members, your initial merit score is equal to the minimum required to your rank. Of that, a certain amount (less than the usual half) is spendable. The spendable amount was calculated based on your current rank and the number of activity points you earned in the last year. A Legendary member who hasn't posted in the last year would still be Legendary, but would not have any spendable merit.

If someone sends you 1 merit, the 0.5 sMerit is not wasted; it is just not shown until you get another merit point.

There are stats here, and you can find someone's merit summary by clicking the "merit" link on their profile.

Interesting!

https://www.tokens24.com/news/bitcoin-news-blockchain-technology-boost-microsoft-earnings/

Starbucks is going to become the pioneer in high street shops to accept crypto currency payments.It has said that it would soon incorporate blockchain as part of payment strategy but says no to bitcoin.

Starbucks Chairman Howard Shultz said that they would not be ready to accept bitcoin.

What might be the reason for this?

Is it bitcoin's high volatility or high transaction fee issue?

Here is the link

https://www.express.co.uk/finance/city/910629/bitcoin-cryptocurrency-news-latest-Ripple-Ethereum-price-value-surge-starbucks-payment

I would think there are many reasons for not accepting Bitcoin as payment.  Volatility (how can you price anything when Bitcoin changes value so much?), long transaction times, and high transaction costs would be the main reasons.  Personally, I would never accept Bitcoin because it's electricity usage is bad for the environment.  It just seems unethical to use it.

I think most governments oppose Crypto initially due to the scale of the change that it will bring, nobody likes change especially when the control is taken from them! I think that all of us in this forum and anyone involved in Crypto agree that it is the future (in 2,5,10 or 15 years we will be saying 'remember that FIAT money bullsh*t'). I hope that the UK is one of the first to begin accepting Crypto as something that's not going to go away and the sooner they welcome it the better chance they have to benefit themselves from the growth as others take on the challenge.

I also think that the bans, sanctions and regulations that try to be put in place against Crypto are more of a knee-jerk reaction to power being taken from them and a temporary action to try buy time. Governments only want control, if something is out of their control then it must be stopped (in their narrow minded heads). So we can expect that it's going to happen, all we can do as Investors/Hodlers/Traders/Enthusiasts is ride the storm and wait for the sunshine