^^^ This has been one of the major complaints from the PayPal users. I had posted a few times in the past that PayPal has already stated that they will make more features available on their Bitcoin platform in the coming months, but many of the users here refused to believe that. Anyway, this move will be hopefully welcomed by a majority of the users. However, as fillippone mentioned, now the regulators can target PayPal claiming that they are aiding in money laundering. On top of that if some of the coins that were purchased using PayPal ends up in dark markets, then the authorities can blame PayPal. They need to be careful with this step.

Being a resident of India, I have to agree with you unfortunately. But still, here the situation is slowly improving now. Almost all the states have imposed strict lockdown restrictions and that has managed to curb the spread of the virus. Back in March-April, the people refused to follow social distancing norms and that triggered the second wave. Now the population seems to be more aware of the virus and in general the majority of the population is following the protocol. But the slow pace of vaccination is still a concern. There is no sign of any uptick in the daily vaccination numbers.

The Kochi Tuskers franchise refused to pay the 2011 salaries and this is from where the dispute originated. They were suspended for the 2012 edition of the tournament and the players were auctioned again. So for the year 2012,  no one is actually going to complain. However, the 2011 salaries need to be paid by the Tuskers franchise and it doesn't comes under the auction of 2012. Also, this is where the incompetency of BCCI is exposed. The pending salaries were scheduled to be paid immediately after the completion of IPL 2011. This was not done and the BCCI (which was under the Srinivasan/ Sharad Pawar mafia) refused to act when the players complained. The franchise was suspended almost 12 months after this incident. That is why I believe that the BCCI is responsible.

^^^ Lasith Malinga was probably the last Sri Lankan player who could be classified as "legendary". After him, Sri Lanka was relegated to the category of teams such as Ireland and Zimbabwe. It is clear that the domestic cricket is not producing enough number of quality youngsters. The cricket board needs to look in to this issue and revamp the domestic setup. Else, in the long term they may end up like Kenya. Also, I don't have a good opinion about the SLCB. There is too much governmental interference on the board.

Yeah.. we are talking about the gambling license. I was just saying that when Saudi Arabia started handing out driving licenses to women, it was lauded as a revolutionary move by the global media. When such a simple move was delayed for many decades due to opposition from the conservatives, you can just imagine what would be the reaction from the religious circles, if anyone suggests to start granting gambling licenses. I know that UAE is much more progressive when compared to Saudi Arabia, but even then talking about permitting gambling is taking it to another entirely different level.

Not here in India. May be in some of the developed nations the police department has the resources to track down the blackmailers and recover the amount. But here, there are too many similar cases and the cops are either not interested in resolving them, or they don't have the manpower and equipment to do that. Also, in many cases the calls are being made from another country and that complicates everything. Unless some powerful individual is involved, the law enforcement authorities don't bother to link up with the officials in other country to gather the information.

I disagree. Inflation should not have any direct impact on competitiveness. Final price of a product is determined by the market conditions. If the cost of services and raw materials go up, then obviously the price of the final product will also go up. But it will be uniform for all the companies (i.e manufacturers). It is not like the cost will go up for one manufacturer, and it will remain the same for another. Real estate prices (as mentioned by you) on the other hand are vulnerable to inflation, because of limited supply. When people are having surplus money, they will be ready to pay a premium for preferred real estate spaces.

As discussed manytimes in the previous post, this argument is extremely difficult to prove. And that is why Elon is so brazen about his open manipulation tactics. Elon doesn't own any coins directly. So it can't be said that he is benefitting from the fluctuations in the exchange rate of either Bitcoin or Dogecoin. Even if we claim that his friends are benefitting from it, we need to prove that there is a solid link with Elon for these fund inflows. I know that the SEC is closely monitoring the situation, but at this point there is hardly anything that they can do.

That is a great thing. Many of the super-rich keep their wealth to themselves and they refuse to support the poor. Pacquiao is an exception and we need to admit that. But at the same time, his intention will be questioned now. He has stated that he would like to contest in the next year's presidential elections. Obviously a lot of his opponents are going to argue that these charity contributions are done so that he would get some positive coverage from the press ahead of his candidature. Politics, especially Asian politics is a sector without any sort of ethics or values and personally I would like Manny Pacquiao to stay away from it.

The indemnity agreements demanded by vaccine manufacturers such as Pfizer and Moderna have triggered a lot of suspicion among the people. According to the agreements, the vaccine manufactures are not responsible for any adverse reaction resultant from the vaccine (including deaths). On top of that, they are not even responsible for negligence (even criminal negligence). So in future, if someone gets handicapped or undergoes a serious medical condition due to an adverse reaction to the vaccine, he won't be able to file a lawsuit against Pfizer or Moderna.

In many of the cases, the elections are not 100% free and fair. There is a lot of voter intimidation and fraud. On top of that, there are several countries which are controlled by military dictatorships. And even in cases the elections are completely free, a lot of Africans have the tendency to vote for the candidate according to religion or ethnicity. In a heterogenous continent such as Africa, that can create a lot of issues, when compared to the relatively homogenous European or Asian nations.

Elon Musk fooled a lot of Bitcoin users. When he first stated that Tesla would accept Bitcoin, there was a lot of hype (even here, in this forum) and a number of people were saying that they would purchase Tesla with their coins. But once the hype settled down and he received the initial orders, Elon changed his stance. Those who gave orders for Tesla, to show their support feel cheated. But this is how business works. The lesson here is to think twice before spending any of your hard earned coins.

It will be too much to expect from a team which is currently at the 12th spot, to get promoted to the 5th. And from what I have heard, their next ODI series is against England and India (the latter one looks doubtful though), and getting enough wins from these series will be very tough. But fortunately this league stretches to 2023, and therefore Sri Lanka has probably enough time and matches in hand to secure their promotion to the top-8. Playing in the qualifying tournament can be quite humiliating.

The richest sports board in the world never makes a delay in the payment of their administrators, but here we have a bunch of players who have been waiting for a decade to receive their payment. I don't understand the mentality of these people. They need to understand that they receive their salaries just because these poor players put the effort in the field. I hope that the BCCI will soon clear the pending dues, with interest. BTW, why can't these players approach the courts?

There are blockchains such as Cardano and NEO which are superior to Bitcoin. But they will never be able to take the place of Bitcoin, because first and foremost the users are concerned about security. The PoW algorithm of Bitcoin makes sure that the coins are secure while being transacted in its Blockchain. If something has worked well for more than 12 years, you are not inclined to replace it with another asset, unless the supposed replacement is drastically better than the original one. And from what I have seen, none of the altcoins have some revolutionary new idea, which makes it necessary to switch from BTC to that coin.

I agree. Altcoins were originally invented to cover specific niches. But now the main issue is that for every such niche, we have 100 or 200 different altcoins. And in most of the cases, the white paper and algorithm is plagiarized from other projects. And since hype decides the market fate of these projects, in most cases the fake projects are able to perform well backed up with good social media campaigns, while the original projects lose out. But ultimately, the promoters will dump their coins for BTC or fiat and make the exit.

I haven't resorted to faking my KYC information, but I have to admit that this entire idea of sending the copy of your passport and other ID documents makes me very uncomfortable. Whenever I search the dark markets, I can see plenty of such information put up for sale, for as little as $5 per piece. What is the guarantee that my own ID documents won't end up like that? Nowadays I simply refuse to do KYC. The risk is not worth taking. But the issues is that many of the projects mention about the KYC requirement, only after the bounty campaign finishes.

The impact of inflation won't be immediately visible. It will take some time for its effects to be noticed. Governments around the world are indulging in a cash splurge in the name of stimulus. At least in some occasions, this will leave a lot of money at the hands of people who don't need it. Obviously some of this money will be used to make investment, pushing up the prices of equities and bullion. And some will be spent on luxuries and services, which may otherwise would of low priority. Overall, the impact will start to get noticed in 2-3 years, and the full effect will take at least 5 years to get reflected in the market.

I believe that it is a big blunder for Pacquaio to jump in to the presidential elections next year. First he should serve people as a senator for 10-15 years and prove that he can do a lot of good things for the people. Targeting the most powerful position at this point is a bit overstretching it. In all probability, he is going to lose and if that happens his future chances will get affected as well (according to the opinion polls, he is nowhere in the picture). He is only 42 years old, and therefore I believe that it will do a lot of good if he has the patience to wait for another 10 years.

We are talking about a region, where giving driving licenses to women is considered as revolutionary. Although the UAE is not as conservative as Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, it is unrealistic to expect that they legalize gambling. If tourists want to visit UAE, then they should concentrate more about the duty free shops and artificial islands, rather than the illegal casinos. For gambling, the tourists can visit Morocco (for budget gamblers) or Monaco (for the more affluent gamblers), which are not too far away.