It's actually trading around 27,500 Satoshis right now, which is lower than it was a month ago.

" Incremental improvements to an established protocol are very often more than enough to keep better alternatives from gaining the necessary critical mass to take over. " You may be correct on

Well, there is a risk of getting hacked with any third party storage. Many exchanges have had issues. Can you name a single instance of Coinbase getting hacked? So far, I haven't heard of one.

I don't doubt there there might be governments that try to ban Bitcoin or cryptos in general.... but the best they could do is make it illegal. They can't destroy it at this point. And as you pointed out,

I think most crypto investors do ignore them, mostly. Either that, or use the news to try and buy the dip.