a. Milan
b. 1-0
c. Milan
d. Milan
e. No  
f. Milan
g. Milan
h. 61'

Game 1:  42, 21'
Game 2:  42, 21'
Game 3:  42, 21'

11. Valentina Shevchenko
10. Kevin Holland
9. Raul Rosas Jr
8. Daniel Zellhuber
7. Fernando Padilla
6. Lupita Godinez
5. Roman Kopylov
4. Daniel Lacerda
3. Jasmine Jasudavicius
2. Josefine Lindgren Knutsson
1. Charlie Campbell


NOT go the Full Distance 5

I would say that was the difficult part because there was just no expectation for Messi to not play. I didn't check it at all and I also submitted relatively late. He recently said that he will choose to be substituted more frequently to save some of his energy. But who would know that he takes this sentence to the next level and skips an entire game just a few days later?

As for Harkorede not sharing his VAR, I think that's totally ok. Kudos to him for being on top of things. But seriously, I think it makes sense to watch out more frequently for thew news when Messi plays or is supposed to play for the Argentina team. I wouldn't be surprised if he does indeed skip games more frequently. I wonder if this has something to do with his nausea attacks he had for a long time. Here he said it was due to bad eating habits, but what on earth would a stay player at his level eat that makes him throw up all the time?

So it is a solid 0/3 for me so far and good to see that Strongkored also has given his best up until now!

No, if you want to do something like you proposed, you would actually have to back it with something much bigger than Bitcoin itself and with very low volatility, and you would destroy one of its main features. Anchoring Bitcoin into something that is centralized itself would add an element of centralization to a system that is made to be decentralized and exactly for that reason widely accepted.

Bitcoin's volatility is easily explained. Yes there could also be manipulation at work and that is most likely happening, but for the most part Bitcoin is based on collective trust and expectation. Since Bitcoin doesn't provide dividends like a classic stock, there is also no metric like a P/E ratio or any of those others numbers used to price a stock and make investment decisions accordingly. There is a big number of people who are not doing a lot of research but want to be involved anyway. Those are the people who also are most affected by either FOMO or FUD. They buy when everything seems amazing and they sell on bad news irrespective of the actual impact of those news. High trader sensitivity also leads to high volatility.

But volatility is also attractive to people in general. If it wasn't for Bitcoin's volatility, the global community would probably not be as big as it is. There is an upside and a downside to that.

It would be more important to decrease friction and increase velocity, making Bitcoin a useable currency for everyday transactions in every situation at every time in any place. The Lightning Network would be such a solution, but there is still a lot of work to be done before we'll see higher adoption rates.

I took the time and read the entire thread here and one thing I also wonder about is the "no-custody" part for the instant exchange mode. The reason that caught my eye is because I was using a service from a competitor of yours a while ago and they also said that the service is not centralized and they could not intervene with the transaction if they wanted to. But the issue is that they obviously can because something didn't work in their backend, I reached out to the customer service and they manually got it solved. While this does of course involve trust that you honor your obligations, I wonder why you think that there is no moment of custody involved on your behalf?

I get that the service is automated, but that doesn't mean nobody could push a button and decide to not initiate the actual exchange. I am using these exchange services and in many situations it is definitely the easiest and quickest way for crypto to crypto trades. But I have only used modest amounts so far because I am quite sure that there are centralized elements involved in the process. This is what some people here referred to when they are saying that sent coins could get stuck without receiving the bought crypto in return. I think this is not to express distrust here right away, but technically people care whether it is really trustless or it is not.

In your FAQ 4. says "...and Sanbu can easily complete the transaction." I wonder what is "Sanbu"?

This is a good point as you can essentially apply that price increase to almost any good and you could of course make it much funnier than measuring it in iPhones. Imagine you would make it in terms of rice. A metric ton is around $500, which means you could buy 50 tons of rice today with 1 Bitcoin whereas in its very early days you would just have gotten a few kilograms for 1 Bitcoin.

I think the funniest meme will always be the pizza meme because it's easily understood and also funny because it's food and however long it took that person to eat the pizza, one can put themselves in the shoes of the pizza buyer and think about every bite he took back then and how much it cost him to chew those bites.

I noticed that this case is still a thing and looked it up and yes it is the Howell's case. I wonder if this really makes still sense to go after those Bitcoin. We are talking about a hard drive that has been in a giant hill of trash for years now.

If I understand correctly, he has been trying it since 2013/14(?), but I don't quite get the council's reasoning here. What is the point of not letting him search for it when they can first come up with a set of requirements that he must adhere to?

I agree that the chances are basically zero and he might be as well off playing the lottery instead (although it is tough to find one that pays that much money for the jackpot win ). But I also get why he is trying so hard. It must be a nightmare. Though there was a report about another guy who lost 7,002 Bitcoin because he forgot the password for his hard drive. The one good thing about it is that some of the hard drives really seem to be safe places and nobody could crack them.

I guess that centralized exchanges are just not as good as banks are at disguising the activities that are going on behind the scenes. FTX is a great example for that. Financing political campaigns on that level is insane. The dude with his curly hair and the jogging pants makes contributions in excess of $100 million to politicians. Then it turns out he ran some of the accounting for a multi-billion dollars company with spreadsheets and I think it was a free accounting software or something.

Banks are running their own scams, but I think they know better how to do it then a young dude like SBF.

KYC at most exchanges is definitely a scam. I think when you take a publicly listed company like Coinbase, there is at least some oversight from regulatory bodies to make sure that they have a certain level of data security in place. But I have been asked by exchanges for my data that couldn't even spell the KYC shortage right. One time a customer support agent wrote it as words to me like "K Why see" or something like that. It was absurd. It's a few years ago and I wanted to trade one specific coin that at the time was only listed there. Better not trade the coin in the first place I guess. At some point they closed my account and I lost a few hundred dollars.

This is once again one of those questions that are doomed to fail in providing you with helpful information, if that was your goal.

It depends on a countless number of things, the type of responsibilities someone has and above all, how much someone is making on a regular basis.

If we stick with "what portion of your overall income" idea, there is so much variation to still be considered before sticking to a plan that someone else might suggest. If someone is making $100,000 a month and is investing 50% of that into Bitcoin because it feels right and the lifestyle allows to do it and take the risk, maybe no kids or family is involved and no mortgages have to be paid back, then I guess there is no issue with that. But if someone has to feed 2 kids and pay a mortgage for house, I would say that 50% is too much even when the person is making $10,000 a month.

I think it's just not really helpful to hear from someone how much is invested in Bitcoin. Whether it is 5%, 20% or 50%, without any background info those numbers lack meaning for anyone else.

I guess in relative terms the more someone is making, the higher the percentage can be because that person could cut down on many things if necessary. 

Free bets already received, thanks @jeremypwr!

The questions for the last round were great. Very well chosen and of course luck is involved when Kosovo scores a goal in the 94' minute of the game, but in general I think these questions had great potential to let experience go into the choices we made. The Slovakia - Portugal game is a good example with the 0-1 goals scored option. Sure it could go wrong all the time, but from a probability perspective that answer made the most sense to me.

I also chose Gauff to win the tournament because I thought it is about time that history is written such that an American woman takes it home. At some point I thought Sabalenka is really too strong this time, but there we go. First thought was the right thought.

@cryptofrka when will the next cup round be? Has that been determined yet?

Na da bin ich ja mal schön das Schlusslicht mit lilbert19!

Ich mag an solchen Tippspielen eigentlich am meisten, dass sie wirklich gut aufzeigen, dass diese ganze Prognostiziererei verschenkte Zeit ist für diejenigen, die sich ernsthaft was davon erhoffen. Technische Analyse und was auch immer. Wollte dazu die Tage auch nochmal einen umfassenden Post bei Turbatuluk hinterlassen, aber muss vorher nochmal den Thread von 1miau durchgehen, um da Redundanzen zu vermeiden. Generell ist's aber nach wie vor eindeutig: bin ich von Bitcoin überzeugt? Oder bin ich es nicht? Dieses Ranhalten mit dem Geodreieck und dann noch ne Linie reinziehen mit dem Mauszeiger, um zu gucken wo da jetzt alles hingeht, ne, das ist nicht meins.

Bin also sehr gespannt, wo das hier weiterhin langgeht. Interessante Updates.

Is the "first submit - tiebreak auto-win-rule" already in effect?

I am not sure whether it is the best way to go about the tie-breaker issue. It is a bit against what we as a community here want the participants to do. Take some time, do some analysis, also familiarize with a new or rather unknown sport. I am not against the idea, but I am trying to figure out whether this is really the best option we have.

The situation with Trofo vs. cryptofrka was really an outlier, wasn't it? I haven't looked into the details, but weren't most of the h2h duels solved relatively quickly?

I think having some time to research info for the questions should not come at a cost. But again I see that there is an implicit cost anyway. Submitting early means foregoing additional info, which could then be rewarded by the advantage to win the free bet. I liked the system so far even when duels for free bets carry over to the next round. I think it is ok, but am also ok with the early submission solution.

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Disappointed that Alcaraz failed to reach the final. Medvedev could screw the excitement for this final. If he has one of those days, then this is going to end in a quick 3-0 for Djokovic, unless he himself has some struggles to cope with.

Dass das mit der massenhaften Adoption nicht lupenrein funktionieren kann, wenn nicht auch die nötige LN-Infrastruktur vorhanden ist oder aber auf Plug-and-Play-Weise von wirklich jedem installiert werden kann, war doch von vornherein ziemlich klar.

Ich glaube aber auch nicht, dass Bukele da jetzt innenpolitische Pläne geschmiedet und daran gedacht hat, Stimmen oder überhaupt Fürsprache für sich gewinnen zu können.

Ist das nicht zuallererst der Versuch gewesen, wirklich internationales Publikum (Informatiker, Investoren, Firmensitze durch Steuerbegünstigungen, etc.) anzuziehen? Ich habe das eher nie als einen innenpolitischen Schachzug verstanden.

Wahrscheinlich ist die Hoffnung mitgeschwungen, dass El Salvador durch das Investment an sich schon dicke grüne Zahlen schreibt. Vermutlich hat Bukele darauf auch spekuliert. Und vielleicht hat er seine Wirkung auf internationalem Level überschätzt, weil er vielleicht dachte, dass er mit der Ankündigung am Markt irgendwas Nachhaltiges auslösen könnte. 

This is true for the people who have a reasonable holding strategy and don't try to increase their Bitcoin holdings by trading it back and forth. Usually nobody would do that with fiat money unless they are forex traders. This is why Bitcoin is still considered and investment or speculative financial toy instead of a currency.

And regarding making huge profits, that would be the moment when you either sell your Bitcoin for cash again or you buy something else, but either way you'll have to use your Bitcoin at some point in order to realize gains.

A quote can't hurt here so it rings the bell twice for everyone who's got the bot activated!

Count me in and maybe others can also confirm whether they are in. That might give a potential sponsor a ball park of what to expect here, so maybe some sponsor shows up once it turns out that there is a decent number of people willing to play.

The odd-based idea is definitely nice. It would be more of an experiment as it hasn't been done here before as far as I know, but I have been thinking about it from time to time as well and followed your suggestions in the BSFL, too. Maybe the Champions League is the perfect event to give it a try.

+1 from me for that suggestion.

Seeing how well Leverkusen has been playing recently, it's a pity that there is this break now. I wish Bayer Leverkusen would play Bayern this upcoming weekend when they are still into beast mode. Quite often these breaks help some teams and harm some others. The worst case would be if Leverkusen loses one or two key players due to injury because of those national team games. That's when Bayern is at a slight advantage I guess because they would have less of a hard time to replace them.

Anyone else thinks that Alonso is the new 24/25 Bayern coach?

I would like you to not imply things I haven't said. I was talking about a hypothetical scenario (I called it hypothetical plans) and then said that where power is centralized, there is also a window of opportunity for fraud (or conspiracy as you call it). The LIBOR scandal is one example of that and Anshu Jain, a former Deutsche Bank boss was also involved (surprise surprise). If they didn't have the power, they couldn't have executed the manipulation.

This is the so called fraud diamond:



I have investigated a few fraud cases during my academic path and the fraud diamond is simple, it almost looks trivial, but a lot can be derived from it. Capability in most cases reverts to centralization of power. Top-down structures that can either command the execution of a fraudulent activity directly or indirectly by creating pressure/incentive. The LIBOR scandal can be very well explained and it is also very well documented. I assume you have never looked into it from an investigative perspective, because if you had would would know what I was talking about.

Yes, Banks collude! Absolutely do they collude. Again, this can happen either work through discreet implied "contracts" / collusion because everyone knows what to do without talking, or there can be the obvious version, meaning a few CEOs meet for a coffee and afterwards something happens (which is probably rarely the case ).

Do we have examples? Oh hell yes, the subprime mortgage crisis was a kind of collusion, but eventually everyone colluding was competing with each other because of fire sales and the subsequent liquidity crunch, blowing up balance sheets and letting them crash altogether, or at least those who were worst at the round-robin-game.

The funniest of it all is that you are bringing up the term conspiracy and that "centralization of power doesn't inevitably mean widespread manipulation". A knife doesn't inevitably mean murder and a chair could mean murder and not inevitably mean sitting. But Bitcoin exists because "not inevitably" could translate into "possibly", and since the world has not fared that well with your "not inevitably", Nakamoto thought about the system that sets in stone the rules and the mechanics of the game.

The fraud diamond shows that there is massive incentive to tamper with the blockchain, rationalization for tampering it is also conceivable, but capability and opportunity are possibly infinitely small.

Can Bitcoin the market be manipulated? Yes, but Bitcoin has an interesting feedback loop because as the price rises through manipulation, adoption and the network actually grows because rising prices usually draw attention to something, increasing future resilience for further manipulation.

Centralization is among the most important factors reflected by capability and opportunity in the fraud diamond. How could the mortgage crisis enfold like that? Because of centralization of power. Banks paid the auditors that attested to the validity of MBS reported fair value. A lack in independence led to those misstatements. An enmeshed network of top-down power and dependencies without negative feedback loops including penalties led to the whole thing to burst in the end.

They can't ban Bitcoin and it doesn't matter whether they have good reasons or not.

I had a look at the etymology of the word and although it isn't surprising, the etymology states for to govern "late 13c., "to rule with authority," from Old French governer "steer, be at the helm of; govern, rule, command, direct" (11c., Modern French gouverner)..".

As far as I know there has never really been anything that the government could not control when they wanted to. They can slow down cryptocurrency expansion and adoption, but they can't ban it in its entirety. This has to do with both domestic policy and foreign policy consequences. Banning it in a home country could mean that a different country makes use of the opportunity and accepts it or even fosters the use of cryptocurrencies. Open and free countries have to carefully consider their decisions. China doesn't give a damn and has therefore announced every three months that Bitcoin is now finally banned, but the truth is:


Here you can see that Bitcoin has never disappeared in China because of a ban. Even better, I doubt that any court would rule against what the CCP really wants them to do. To me this seems more like a backdoor that the Chinese government can one day say that they except the independent judiciary system. The Chinese saw that instead of taking the lead with a ban, they are actually falling behind when many other countries choose to be more open-minded towards decentralized financial technologies.

Isn't it really still negligible? There was a time when some starts went to China and there was a time when some stars went to the MLS, but none of those leagues has really turned into serious competition for Europe. If I am not completely mistaken, the players that now went to the SPL are what, 15 or 20 or how many? This doesn't change much. It kind of reminds me of forks and I have read this somewhere else already, you can't fork the ecosystem, but you can fork the blockchain.

Europe has not just been Messi + Ronaldo. It has been so much more and there is a reason it is the most prestigious place on Earth to play football. Messi vs. Ronaldo in La Liga is not the same as Messi vs. Ronaldo in the SPL.

Let's assume that La Liga from 10 years ago would have been integrated into the SPL. And then? Nothing would be the same anymore, no more Champions League between  Liverpool and Barcelona or Madrid and Manchester City. This - if at the SPL they really plan to become a global competitor - will take at least a decade to build something visible. It won't be done with just transferring 20 players per season from Europe to Saudi Arabia.