IMO Bitcoin is not going to completely replace banking but rather be a option for people to use in the future. eg, at checkouts you will have the option to use bitcoin along with cash, credit card, debit card etc.

Yes satoshi founded this forum and used it before he went inactive in the community

The fee is slightly on the low side and there are currently quite a lot of unconfirmed transactions in the mempool right now. Just wait, the transaction will go through eventually.

Bitcoin is permission-less, so by it's design anyone can copy and hardfork it. Anyone can make a "bitcoin dog" or whatever anytime. The question is whether you can rally a community around your hardfork so the coin actually has value, this is much harder to do. I imagine in the future crappy hardforks will be harder and harder to pull off as people start to see they have no real value. Right now there is a tendency for people to see it has free money which gives the new coin some value.

People are only buying now so they can get the forked coins. After the fork the price will go down by quite a bit, then it will be a good time to buy

There has always been a idealistic thought that bitcoin will be useful to unbanked people. I don't think that is possible yet due to fees and usability. In the future with lightning network and better wallets, maybe. But we still have a long way to go.

I would say bitcoin. The important thing is to buy small amounts at a time spread over a period of time. eg around $1000 a day. Bitcoin is at all time highs, personally I would average in to reduce risk.

Russia seems to be really upping their game in the crypto field. Very good for bitcoin decentralization.

Makes sense that governments will try to replicate crypto currencies in the fiat system. I imagine all currencies being digitized in the future with bitcoin being one of the options that people can choose to use.

It is possible a future of fork will take over bitcoin but these upcoming forks will not.

It should not affect bitcoin long term at all. It will just cause short term price swings because the market must price the new coins.

You need to use a wallet that lets you manually set the transaction fee. If your transaction is not urgent you can set a very low fee and it will still confirm after a while.

These forks will have to stop at some point when everyone realizes they are worthless. Until then use it as a free dividend to accumulate more bitcoin

So sorry for your loss. Thanks for sharing your story

There is no chance that government backed money will disappear. They simply have too much institutional support that bitcoin cannot match.

The end game for bitcoin is to be a competitor to traditional money and offer a choice for people to use a decentralized censorship resistant money.

Bitcoin won't go up forever. By it's own definition that it is a currency, the end game is for bitcoin to have a stable price once adoption reaches equilibrium. It could be a very high price but not a forever rising price. No point predicting what it will be, pretty much impossible to predict.

Don't worry about the fork. You will get some free coins to increase your bitcoin holdings.

People say bitcoin is gambling because it is a speculative asset. Be honest with yourself, most new people here got into bitcoin to make a quick buck, they don't believe in the technology, they are not here for a long term and will be selling if bitcoin drops more than 50%. Bitcoin is gambling if you are speculating on short term profits

If you have a record of where the money comes from you will be fine. Make sure you understand the tax implications of cashing out bitcoin, best talk to an accountant beforehand.

Yes this is true. A fork by definition means you will get the same balance of bitcoin gold in your existing bitcoin addresses.