I don't fully understand the concept of sea lioning. Basically asking any question at all is "sea lioning", if the person being asked doesn't want to answer? OP made one statement, I asked one question, and it is sea lioning?
Is that some kind of hyper progressive safe space thing?
All the OP said is "I don't like Bitcoin people", without giving any reasons (even saying he can't give reasons). Why should people assume he made an informed decision, based on merely that? Also, many comments really show that people don't properly understand it - can you blame people for noticing and dismissing those comments?
And I question your claim about enthusiastic people being the least informed. I'd say the people who work on it and dedicate their lives to improving the infrastructure are both enthusiastic and informed. Of course there are also enthusiastic people who are misinformed.
If you mine a Bitcoin and don't spend it, you are making the remaining Bitcoins more valuable (in theory). You have reduced the overall supply.
With Bitcoin, the maximum number of Bitcoins that will ever exist is fixed.
It doesn't really matter who mines them. Of course at the moment, indeed, new Bitcoins are mined all the time, but the timeline for the future is clear.
Whether it is a good thing, I don't know. There are a lot of weird aspects about it.
As for China - sure, some miners will accumulate a lot of BTC. But they can only affect the price by selling or not selling it. If they wouldn't mine the BTC, somebody else would. It doesn't really give them that much more power, except for monetary power.
It's probably true that right now there are several people or entities who could crash the Bitcoin price by simply selling off all their BTC. That's not very reassuring.
On the other hand, such a crash could also be a chance to distribute BTC more evenly. It would actually be in the interest of the rich BTC people, too, as it would lead to more adaption and hence more value and stability.
Distribution is a hard problem.
There are several problems with crypto, but they are also interesting, and smart people are trying to solve them. At least it is fun, even if it is unclear if it will be worthwhile in the end.
I doubt Zimbabwe Dollar paper is worth millions, but OK...
I'll check the value of the Reichsmark, but again, I suspect the market is limited.
Network going down: in theory you could keep it up with a Raspberry Pie, so I suppose somebody will. Although I don't know if all the mining hardware out there would make it nonviable (as anybody could start a mining attack with such mining hardware, against a Pie).
As for proving Bitcoin isn't a scam: we don't need the inventor or their plans, we have the implementations of it. That can be validated, as much as possible. I'd argue that if it still has flaws, then they weren't because of scamming, but because of technical issues nobody could foresee.
Edit: they seem to be selling notes of one billion Reichsmark for 1€ on ebay (here in Germany). Not really worth the effort.
The value of Bitcoin is not something Bitcoin makes any promises about.
The technology is obviously not a scam. At most it could turn out that it has technical flaws, like the crypto algorithms could be broken or whatever.
People selling you Bitcoin or making you promises about Bitoin might well be scammers. But that's not the same thing.
Worthless fiat money: it seems to happen a lot, actually. I have a couple of Billion Reichsmarks I could show you. I don't think Zimbabwe $ are worth enough to support your argument.
Of course to use Bitcoin, you have to trust that it will have or keep some value. In that sense, yes, you are back to trust.
"What about government supported fiat money implemented with blockchain?"
Not sure how that would supposedly work.
There is one interesting application of government, though: the distribution of the coins. That is what all the cryptocoins struggle with. A government could give every citizen an equal amount of coins, because they have a database of people.
"Is it really viable not to have safe exchanges?"
Some would say that they don't need exchanges, they want to be able to pay everything with Bitcoin. So they wouldn't need fiat money.
Apart from that, exchanges can be at least as safe as banks or traditional stock exchanges. I am mostly using one that is associated with a bank, in fact.
No another app is just another implementation for a wallet. That is what I meant by apps - in response to Schneier's argument that you have to trust the software anyway.
Maybe with Bitcoin I have to trust the software a little bit, but at least if it turns out to be faulty, I can switch to another app.
That's much harder to do with governments controlling fiat money. Or with banks. What is a person supposed to do, who is denied financial transactions by the established financial service providers (paypal, credit cards,...)? There have now been several cases where paypal and others have tried to silence people by cancelling their accounts. What can you do, in the traditional banking world?
And many complaints are not about things Bitcoin actually promises to do. It doesn't promise to make exchanges safe.
The environmental impact is a concern. Miner power perhaps not so much. For example mining hardware coming from one company doesn't seem that bad - you can simply verify the transactions the miners find before sending them out to the network.
I must admit, I don't see how positive thinking could possibly help?
Assuming suicides are usually a result of violence (bullying by peers, pressure by parents and teachers...). Wouldn't it be better to show practical ways out of it? Saying "I'm so great and thankful" while bullies pounce on you might feel rather hollow quickly?
Don't get me wrong, this seems to be set up as an experiment, which seems like a good thing. Maybe they'll find it will actually help.
Your argument sounds like "something has to be done, because..." - but something is not always the right thing.
Not Markov chain, but I have been wondering about Dwarf Fortress. Some stories of Dwarf Fortress sound quite interesting. So I wonder if an automated writeup of an automated Dwarf Fortress game could yield something worthwhile.