firefop

I'm finding it difficult to disagree with your feeling that it might be greencard related. But I don't really think that's a difficult question to answer. At some point (promptly after starting any sort of relationship?) the truth becomes very easy to get to. Either she's going to accept being confronted on the previously mentioned emotional issue around her friendships & betrayal or she won't. If she doesn't it can only be because she isn't willing to seriously invest in the new relationship. If she responds well to that (and other times that issues are pursued) then he'll know that she's willing to invest emotionally... in which case the greencard question becomes moot.

So my daughter recently turned 4, she's far far ahead of other children her age when it comes to communication. She has no problem walking up to anyone she happens to meet and striking up a conversation. Several weeks ago she asked me why most of the adults we see are always in a hurry. I explained to her that most people have jobs during the day, feel like they're behind, etc. So for the last few weeks she's been stopping people, introducing herself and asking them what their job is. We've spent a lot of time talking about the very rare occasions where someone is rude or not willing to talk to her... She's already learning to notice the broken people... That being said, she's voracious when it come to educating herself. She's not quite able to pickup a book and read it, but she's getting there. My wife and I are scrambling to sort out the home schooling thing since we don't want to send her into the mental mugging that is state schooling. Since she's socially fearless and curious now, I can't imagine that she'll somehow become socially deficient through being home schooled. Even if she becomes a 'social outcast' - I don't think she'll really be missing anything. The most broken people will simply avoid her because she'll scare them on some deep level and it will be that much easier for her to find those people who's are willing and able to connect with her.

You won't see it below 100 ever again imo. That being said, the deflationary nature of bitcoin is the primary reason that it has any traction with consumers. Sane Consumers do not want inflation. In the fiscal environment that bitcoin will gradually create there will be no need for banking in the traditional sense and very little need for money lending. Bitcoin will start to show it's true value once it begins to replace the existing bank wire transfer system. Moving value around is what bitcoin excels at. The moment we have can complete the circuit between consumer, retail, supplier, manufacturer and back to consumer (probably via wages) we'll finally get to see bitcoins actual value. This is potentially decades from now... but if the bitcoin economy continues to grow we'll get there eventually.

Your claim that BTC is considered a 'high risk investment' in finance seems counter intuitive to me, sure it's volatile in the short term, which makes it a high risk market to play in... but long term the price will continue to climb unless it fails completely (and by this I mean complete and catastrophic failure along the lines of quantum computers being able to break SHA256 in realtime). Right now there's ~13,776,375 bitcoins that have been created - the estimated inflationary period only lasts until 2136 before it becomes mostly trivial, as in double digits of satoshis. But this is open to some debate, because at some point the block reward is going to be less than the transaction fees and thats when it flips over to being deflationary. I would say if you'll plan on holding your btc for 10 to 15 years then buy buy buy.

I've been involved with bitcoin from close to the beginning. Done mining and I still use it often for purchasing. Part of the reason that the prices are where they are is because in 2014 there was a large push by the US government that effectively forced any domestic exchanges who wanted to continue operating to start identity verifying (and reporting on purchases and sale of bitcoins) for tax purposes. This is what has stalled out the growth. It's still slowly growing but it's become a hard sell in the states. Also if you take a longer view 16 months ago bitcoin was under 100 bucks. Then we had an end of 2013 spike to 1400... and then it crashed into our current range (slightly less than present). All in all - 200% growth over 2 years isn't bad at all. I'd simply look at it as an investment, by whatever you can afford on a fixed schedule... I think in some years you'll be quite happy with it. In the long run it's only going to go up... unless it fails completely. But it does have such amazing benefits compared to fiat that in my mind it's sure to survive and prosper.

I've actually been thinking about this topic for awhile myself. As a former pastor and bible scholar what finally did it for me personally was a rejection of the morality of the leadership involved in every church I visited. Except for myself I couldn't find anyone who wasn't corrupt. Over the past 10 years or so I've been concentrating on philosophy as a scholarly pursuit instead of religion. UPB actually took me from agnostic to atheist. But now as an atheist I'm think we spend entirely too much time debating with theists... All you really need to do to shatter someone's faith is argue from within their context, I've been intending to post an essay i'm working on called "the red letter argument" discussing specifics as this relates to christianity. Now I'm not as well versed (pardon the pun) when it comes to islam, but I think the best tactic there is to address the morals of their prophet... he's a self admitted child molester and describes in the qu'ran ways in which a 'bride' who's under the age of 9 can be used for sex. Once you can show the immorality there, their faith should depart quickly.