Bitcoin dumped because FED hiked rates again exactly at the time when it dumped that's why there was a pump first about 30 minutes before the FED's announcement because people were speculating there would be a pivot. Since there was no pivot some traders dumped fearing the following decrease in stock prices would affect bitcoin.

Why wasn't there a bigger panic? Probably because the stocks have taken into account a possible hike and because bitcoin is slowly decoupling from stocks.

Bitcoin doesn't care about a shitcoiner like Sun and his schemes. Shitcoins don't affect bitcoin.

Not really. A good player will fold instantly after getting cards that don't promise anything and the only thing they use is the blind which often is just a few dollars.
You can keep folding for a long time and then win once and reset everything. This is something you can't do playing dice, unless you martingale.
I agree with OP that poker is a game of skill but most games only depend on your luck.

They had their ideas how to approach it and keep inflation low. The idea was to print slowly and carefully but we all know, as Tyson once said, people have a plan until they get punched in the face.
So the FED got punched in the face when the COVID started and instead of allowing people to trade they shut everything down and put business on the verge of bankruptcy. Then they gave people brand new money so they could cover the debt the US government put them in. This bumped the inflation but it was still under control until the Russian invasion that tipped the scales because it greatly impacted EU markets.

I feel like the FED is fucked. They had a plan that failed. The ship hit the iceberg and they're at the pumps but the leak is still there and eventually they'll have to take a break from their work and let it sink.

If they keep increasing rates they will make the banking sector go bankrupt. If enough banks go down people will lose their savings and they'll have to face protesters.
If they start printing again they will have to live with inflation above 10% and watch more countries opt out of holding dollar reserves and turn to commodities instead.
Both options are good for bitcoin, gold, land...

So how does one put cash into a touchless machine without touching it, and how does not touching the machine make it safer?
I mean you had to touch the stuff you were buying in the store, right? And then you had to touch the gas pump...
If they're so afraid of germs they should stop poking their noses and biting their nails. Also, those long nails that women like to have are never clean. They'd have to keep theyr hands under UV light for an hour to kill every living thing hiding in there.

Powell must be sweating right now. 40 minutes left until he makes a fool of himself once again.
Up, down? Doesn't really matter at this point.

Edit: I see that they've hiked once again.
Earlier this week Goldman predicted no more hikes and BlackRock predicted 25 and that's what's happening.
We can probably expect another bank to go down by the end of the month. Keep going Jerome, let the purge continue.

Assuming both jobs would be the same, I'd get the same hours, the same position, same paycheck, I'd choose a decentralized exchange simply because I don't trust CZ too much and I'd rather work for something that fits my attitude towards the crypto space.

That said, I wouldn't ignore an offer from a centralized exchange if there was no other, or if the salary was twice what the decentralized one would offer. We're talking about a legit company that I don't suspect of foul play offering me a well paid job. You'd have to be very dumb or very rich to walk out on that

That's true. Every time I went to look for work they briefly took a glance at the papers and proceeded with the interview. Usually your certificates mean shit, so they will decide if they should take you based on whether:
1. You're connected. If your friend works there or they know your parents you often have the job before the interview starts.
2. You have experience, which is like the 2nd most important thing
3. If you have no experience, you know what you're talking about and they see you're bright and won't have to tell you twice

Then if they still can't decide because there are 2 people for the same job and you both are equals in all other aspects, they'll look at certificates and stuff but usually being from the same town as the interviewer will have a greater value than the courses you did.

The way I see it, there was a fear of FED, rate cuts, regulations that followed FTX, but at this point the FED is no longer in control. Instead of fixing the system they're breaking it more.

When FTX collapsed they blamed cryptocurrencies and people believed it. Then Silvergate went down and they blamed crypto again, but then CS went down and CS had nothing to do with crypto, which showed the FED blaming was a smear campaign and a straw man argument. They broke the system by printing money and allowing for fractional reserve banking. Bitcoin is the exact opposite of this system as it allows for every coin and every transaction to be accounted for. Nothing disappears in the blockchain.

Therefore, I think that there's a number of points to be made:
1. Inflation is not transitory and it cannot be controlled. It can only be curbed to a point, but it's going to keep rising, like a population of rats. You can keep catching and poisoning them but they will always be there running around and replicating.
2. The banking system is like a building with weak foundation. It's shaking and trembling and all the FED is doing is prolonging its existence by supporting the walls from the outside, but eventually it's going to collapse. There's no way to rebuild it from the top.
3. People are beginning to wake up and they see what FED representatives are saying. That people will pay the price for the bank collapse, that they need more unemployment to fight inflation, that they have no idea if they should go back to printing, or not and that eventually they'll have to and that will decrease the value of the dollar even more.

I never liked this expression. What you can afford to lose? I can afford to lose 90% of my money ant continue to live, but will that be the life that I want? On the other hand, if I play it safe and bet $1k, does that really change anything in my life, even if I win?

Bottom line, invest what you feel comfortable investing and make sure that money won't change your living conditions for worse. If losing your investment would mean you'd have to sell your car or your house, that's way too much. If losing your investment would mean you won't buy a new phone this year, or you won't be able to upgrade your TV from 50" to 80", you're fine.  

It wasn't Australia, but Austria. Not that it matters, since you're probably not located in any of these countries (I guess you're Vietnamese).


What was the reason for denying your withdrawal?

What were the security measures on your account? Did they have a phone or email confirmation requirement for withdrawals?

From the looks of it, they reject withdrawals over a certain amount automatically, because the only one that went through was the smallest of them all (361 USDT) eberything else was over 489 and was denied. Did you do KYC with them? If not, this could be the reason for larger amounts to be automatically denied.

From what I saw I doubt the casino stole from you. It looks like your account was bruteforced. How strong was your password?

So, according to you, the main reason is knowing about a scam vs not knowing about it? So, a person who promoted bitconnect not knowing that it's a scam is OK, but a person who had their suspicions and still did that is semi-OK? No sarcasm, I'm interested where the line is.


That's why I said that IF it is proven. I have no idea what was seized.


What's the percentage of regulated mixers vs regulated casinos? Are there even mixers that are registered as legal businesses and pay taxes?

Another difference is that most casinos should obey AML rules in their jurisdiction. People with large deposits have to go through KYC procedure and laundering through a casino is risky since they can take your money and claim whatever, like you've had more than 1 account, there was another connection from the same IP, you breached ToS because you used VPN, you haven't wagered enough to be able to withdraw, and so on. There are black sheep of the industry like 1xbit, but the majority of online casinos are licensed and try to be fair both ways, towards the client and the government.


The difference here is that money laundering is illegal everywhere. Bitcoin is illegal only in about 2% of the world (correct me if I'm wrong about the number) and I'd argue that no sane person would like to move to these countries, because they're either deep in debt and poverty (Nepal), or strict Muslim countries that believe in the narrative that bitcoin is haram. I'm sure you've noticed that bitcoin is currently banned in Iraq, Qatar, Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Bangladesh, and Tunisia and there's one thing all this countries have in common - religion.

It's self-moderated but he doesn't bother to moderate it. Maybe he doesn't know how?
Anyway, I've commented there days ago and my post is still there. I think he gave up on the forum.
Scamming should never be easy.


There are (were?) cloud mining operators with real hardware, like Genesis Mining used to do back in the day, but their business model was built on taking advantage of their customers.
They were mining, but for themselves, not for you, or any other person who had a contract with them. Mining contracts were there to allow them to borrow money in the form of low interest loans.

They only work under certain conditions.

I'll give you an example:
I had some referrals made in 2017 and 2018 and on one casino I happened to have a regular player who kept wagering for more than a year. I didn't know them, they used my signature link and played from there. After a year there was a decent amount of money on my referral account to be claimed which I've eventually withdrawn.

On another casino I got a few bonuses, mainly ETH and Doge where they were being introduced. All legacy users got their shares back then and there was a lot of new players using altcoins because the bonuses were high. I never used them and ETH and Doge went up so much that my bonuses were worth 10x. It again wasn't a lot of money but I never say no to a random $100.

It depends. Signature promoters are being red trusted if they're aware the business they're promoting is scamming its clients, are they not? So, forum members actively work against fraudulent businesses. I'm not against mixers, on the contrary, but I feel like we've drawn a line in the sand when it comes to deciding what is fair and what isn't. IMO, if it's proven that Chipmixer wasn't deleting data as promised, it should be red trusted. Not that anybody cares at this point. It's not coming back.


It's a bit different because casinos are legal in most jurisdictions, until they start cheating clients. There's a number of bookies in my area and I could go there and place my bets, so promoting a casino in my country isn't illegal, even if someone gets addicted. Casinos are not held responsible for people's mental health, just as liquor stores aren't responsible for people getting drink, car sellers are not responsible for accidents and people driving their cars without a license.

Mixers on the other hand are in the gray area. They aren't illegal, but if people use them to launder stolen coins, the situation changes.

In the EU we have similar problems as tax offices accept your statements and you accept that if proven wrong you can be fined. It's very simple. The tax office will not ask 90% of taxpayers to further prove their statement. It happens usually when the discrepancies are very big, or you're operating on large sums of money. From time to time they'll ask you for something at random, just to show you they care but most of the time they won't.

None of my friends and family were ever asked to clarify their statements, so if you aren't claiming a $100k loss, they probably won't even ask for details.

Protonmail is encrypted. AFAIK they weren't able to access the emails, but the name of the email gave them a clue where to look next. They got to the email name, so they started to look for this email in various domain registrations, forum accounts, and also for the alias used in the email.
They were also checking IP addresses used along with the email for various logins, domains, and so on.
Basically they were gathering anything they could, like if the account had a phone number as password recovery, they'd check that number. If it had an IP address that someone used to log in, they'd search for that IP and if it was used with other email providers.


That's correct. The fact that a user registered a domain, or had admin rights, doesn't make him the only person running the show, but the US likes to give people the good old stick before the carrot treatment. The idea is to get him to talk, give up everything, and later screw him into a life sentence like they did with Ross. Poor guy gave up his wallet passwords in hope for lower sentence and got life anyway.

I guess that you wanted to say "to change your life and stop being a gambler."
To do that, you unfortunately need to either win enough to be able to afford your own business, or lose enough to reach the bottom and start from scratch, but not as a gambler.

You can use these guys as examples of how a gambler can grow, but this is an incredibly hard thing to do. There's over a million people gambling in the US alone right at this time and maybe one of them will one day become a millionaire, but it's like dreaming about winning the lottery. We all do it, but none of us actually win.

And scammers! Like Calvin, who out of his feel for charity supports a mentally challenged doctor of theology CSW. He probably made Calvin believe God made him invent bitcoin.

From wikipedia:
In 2012, Ayre was indicted by the US Attorney for Maryland on charges of illegal gambling and money laundering.

It's great that  they made their fortunes in gambling industry, I have nothing against that, but what's the point of the thread? If you think you can make it in this business, think again. These people weren't starting with nothing and aren't really role models to follow in all aspects.

So, what do we have?
A 49 year old Vietnamese who used gmail, protonmail, and so on, who had a lot of bitcoin, but was slowly exchanging it by offering to sell it to you $100 at a time if you send money to his paypal account?
I feel like this guy was the front man with the real coders working behind much thicker walls. They needed someone to be in contact with clients on bitcointalk and reddit, someone who'd pay the campaign manager, but I don't believe the same person did everything from answering questions on the forum, through managing all those domains to fixing bugs and trading bitcoin.

It looks like he was arrested in Germany but charged in Philadelphia? So a person who isn't a US citizen, who probably never went to the US, who lived in Europe, isn't going to be prosecuted and sentenced in Europe? It's funny that no matter where you are the USA is running the show and all governments bow down to the greatest bully.

Warning! There's a high chance the offer above is a scam.
Don't trust any cloud mining offers out there. In 2015 and 16 it was a popular way of scamming people.
Read before you invest in shady business.

https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/innovation/is-cloud-mining-a-scam/