It really does look like a coordinated effect of "the West" to cripple Binance and not let them dominate the crypto industry globally. All the troubles dropping on them almost at the same time cannot be a coincidence.
And they're not getting any break, further bad news came from Mastercard, who ended up their partnership with Binance in the Latin America:
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/mastercard-binance-end-crypto-card-partnership-2023-08-24/

It's not just the size of economy, but also the lower mobility of the capital could play a factor. With no internet or even fast means of travel, arbitrage took a very long time (as compared to today's world), so any local effects lasted longer.
But according to the Wikipedia, the effect on the price of gold wasn't as great as some might think. According to some Arabic writers, gold dropped from 25 to 22 silver dirhams for about a year, which, according to some historians was within a normal fluctuation of that time.

Just a reminder that posting plagiarised content is not allowed on the forum. So if you see violations of that sort, please report to moderators (and quote original sources).

Why did you put your post in quotation marks? Are you quoting someone else?
Is it supposed to be a brain-storming exercise, or will you follow with an explanation of the Monopoly strategy that you've mentioned?

Anyhow, I find having a goal of achieving a whole bitcoin silly. There's nothing special about number "1", I'd much rather have 0.49754 of btc if it trades at $100k than have 1 btc at $10k.
You should be aiming for your btc holdings to be a certain % of your portfolio instead.

He has included that in the table already, unless you mean something different.

Amen.

It's also worth adding that each of us very likely has much higher comfort of life than any of the ancient rulers. That's simply due to technological progress, access to running water, sewage systems, electricity, and most of all - to nutrition and modern medicine (the last one is much overrated but still).

Your argument is oversimplified and illogical. You claim that the lesser number of reported incidents means higher security. This could be true but could be completely false.
You need to compare the scale and specifics of those 2 industries. Exchanges are an order of magnitude greater than casinos (we're only considering crypto-casinos here) and have way more complex crypto-related operations, therefore have more vulnerabilities and attract more attackers (as the incentive is far greater).
To give you an example: if I had a mobile crypto wallet downloaded from an unknown source and had my seed phrase written down and lying around, but never been hacked - would that mean my security measures are better than those of exchanges (or casinos)?

Many, if not most of the casinos used online are operated from exotic jurisdiction and often unlicensed and unregulated in the countries they provided their services in. Which means, that if something goes wrong, they wouldn't care to inform their customers to not scare them away.
Big exchanges are mostly regulated (one way or another) and have to follow much stricter requirements, including keeping the customers informed of any breaches.
Also, the top exchanges are much larger than casinos, so any hack of the exchange is much more "newsworthy" than of the casino that most people haven't heard about.

I guess the market took Powell's statement and his lack of conviction as a bullish sign as the major indices went up after his speech. I would expect the opposite move as he confirmed more rate hikes will probably be needed, but I guess not sounding too hawkish can now be considered a pivot.
I haven't been following market news recently so am clueless on the current moods.

Thanks for an interesting topic.

The problem with those historic wealth estimations is there is a chance they can be completely inaccurate. Positions 1 and 3 are incalculable so not sure how are they ranked in those places. In the case of the rulers, there's often no distinction between personal wealth and the wealth of the entire empire, so we end up comparing apples to oranges.

I had no clue Henry Ford was that rich. He was a decent guy from what I know.


You can't colonise a successful and well-run country, such would have to be conquered. Colonies were established where there in underdeveloped or unpopulated areas. I'm not an expert on African history but believe most of the African empires fall on their own or due to infighting.

Correct, although it's possible that, in exceptional circumstances, that 6 months period could be shortened by USADA. What would constitute an exceptional circumstance? I have no idea.
To me, it looks like UFC know it's unlikely to happen but they don't want to admit it and let the hype die out.
Again, I'm starting to feel sorry for Chandler, he pushed really hard for the fight with McGregor but might end up with nothing but wasted time. At least he's earning some money from The Ultimate Fighter show, so it's not all that bad for him.

You mean gold-backed fiat currency? Why do you think it's an impossible scenario exactly? US had a gold-backed dollar for quite a long time until 1971. They moved away from it (and many consider that a mistake) but it's not like having such currency is impossible.

Sure, but the question is if the US influence/power is getting stronger or weaker.
They have the strongest military, but it's a well-known fact that they've been struggling with recruitment. Most of their military recruits are openly there only for the money, free education and other benefits. They wouldn't be willing to die for their country. So in case of a full-blown military conflict, US would have to solely rely on the superiority of their technology and on their nuclear power.



Gold price can be manipulated but only to some degree. When the price of paper gold and the actual, physical gold are going in opposite directions, everyone will see through it.
As for the actual gold holdings, US is by far the largest holder. UK holds a lot on behalf of other countries. The problem is that those reserves have not been properly audited. There's a long-lived rumour that declared US reserves are massively overstated. If that's true - I don't know, but if significant amount was indeed missing, they'd never admit it, as it'd be against the national interest.

That's a good point but, to be fair, it's not like any other crypto with tiny transaction fees (there are quite a few of them) got any massive popularity in those poorest regions neither.
So I wouldn't draw the conclusion that the main reason for the 3rd world not to use bitcoins is the high fees.


According to a quick Google Brave search, currently there are around 56 million millionaires in the world. It's impossible for each of them to own a whole bitcoin, doesn't matter how rich they are and how much are they willing to pay. This goes to show that owning 1 btc in the future may not be an easy-to-achieve goal.

That's quite a conundrum. If the casino is legit and honest - they will not try to scam you by stalling your KYC verification. But if they're scammy, even if you pass KYC first, they could find a thousand other made-up reasons to freeze your funds and deny withdrawal.
So, if you have to gamble at all, it's best to use a casino that operates legally and is licenced/registered in your jurisdiction, in such way you should be able to use legal means to get your money back if things go wrong.
Or just use unlicensed crypto casinos that don't require KYC but are trusted and have been operating for a long time.

Maybe, but I didn't have that impression and thought those performances were pretty solid. People often have the impression that top fighters' form is in decline forgetting that they fight other top fighters and on their way up they were facing lesser-skilled opponents (not to say bums), so the performace can't be as dominating in comparison.


They probably have naturally higher testosterone and were training Sambo/wrestling even before they could walk. I watched documentary about Khabib, his entire life was one big fighting camp, that's completely different from getting dropped by mum to taekwondo class twice a week  .

Holloway is a specimen. He ate a lot of shots in that fight against Allen, but Allen is no joke as he was on 12-win streak before that fight.
Surprises happen but I can't see Korean Zombie winning the next fight, unless by an injury. Odds for Holloway are 1.12 (Unibet), which is as low as it gets.
The problem with Max is he has nowhere to go. He fought Volkanovski 3 times already, so I don't expect UFC will be super happy to run it again, and not sure if Max would want it either.
I'd love to see him against O'Malley, but he wouldn't make weight and if O'Malley is to move up, it won't be anytime soon.

Oh for sure, they're not even remotely comparable. Some jokingly say that MSTR is de facto the first Bitcoin spot ETF. My back-of-the-envelope calculation, taking their total Bitcoin holding of 152,800 and using figures from their last quarterly announcement (Q2 2023) shows that their BTC holding is almost 80% of their total assets.
I wonder if the SEC would intervene if MSTR decided to get rid of all the other operations morphing into a purely Bitcoin-holding entity.

Tak było w przeszłości, ale mam czasem wątpliwości czy ten sam scenariusz znów się powtórzy. To wszystko wygląda trochę zbyt łatwo i zbyt pięknie. Absolutnie każdy spodziewa się nowego ath w 2024 przy okazji halvingu, a w życiu rzadko się zdarza żeby większość inwestorów/spekulantów miała rację.
Następny cykl może mieć też inny przebieg np z powodu tego że każdy rozgarnięty inwestor wie że każdy następny halving ma o wiele mniejsze znaczenie i wielu uważa że halving 2024 może być ostatnią cykliczną pompą bitcoina. Presja sprzedażowa może być o wiele większa gdy BTC dobije do nowego ath. Liczba "hodlerów" chcących trzymać w nieskończoność też pewnie zmaleje. Nawet najbardziej zatwardziali bitcoinerzy będą chcieli wyciągnąc w końcu jakieś wymierne korzyści, bo czas leci i młodsi się nie robią.

Guernsey is not part of the EU, or even UK, so I expect the access to that ETF will be pretty limited for an average retail investors.
This article: https://www.etfstream.com/articles/jacobi-am-s-bitcoin-etf-marketing-masterstroke kind of confirms that:


Nevertheless, it's a step in the right direction.

In a situation where we have multiple superpowers competing for global dominance, having reserve currency backed by nothing (be it BTC or any of the fiat currencies) is risky. It would make more sense to have a currency backed by commodity, or better yet, by multiple commodities. Or we could just not have one, global reserve currency and be using few different ones instead.