It's true and unfortunate! However, in a real world business, no financial services firm can operate without "knowing their customer". That's the rule everywhere! I am sure companies are learning from their mistakes and they will make themselves better over a period of time to secure their user's data. But at this point, no legal entity can operate without implementing KYC framework. Unfortunately that's the law!

I believe, companies will be more serious about data security of the government starts imposing heavy financial penalty for each data breaches regardless of the fact why and how it happened. Then only these companies will take data security seriously and start investing there!

Working hard is a great thing for society in general. Hardly working is a disaster! try to read the case study of Venezuela to know why their economy failed. Ample case studies are available on the internet. Freebies are one of the major reasons for their failing economy, alongside other things. So if some obligations make the men work hard, that's a good thing! Obviously, everyone needs to push their best to achieve great things in life

Inflation was always there and it will be always here! There's no way to escape it! Debts are very important for the economy because that's how new money is created! Buying something using installments, is not always a bad thing. What is bad is the rising price of food grains and energy! That's something government needs to control on priority.

That's quite unfortunate! I am concerned about what the future holds for Binance! They are already facing a federal investigation regarding money laundering, and this incident will allow the regulatory bodies and enforcement agencies to launch a full-scale investigation on Binance and eventually try to close their operations from US soil. Even though they are not directly involved in the drug trade, they will still face the heat. My concern is, that the ordinary public like us may see delayed withdrawals and suspensions due to all these nonsense matters. The cascading effect will be seen on the market which is already struggling with the falling price! Not ideal at all!

I Don't think the breakdown between poor and rich is correct here! It's all about the risk taking appetite of a human being. For example, Mr. Warren Buffet is extremely against the whole idea of cryptocurrency. He denied to invest in cryptos. He isn't poor. It's just that he is unwilling to take risk into crypto market. That's what the issue is!

I know people who have become poorer after investing in cryptos because they took loan for investment and didn't make any profit. That's what is is! Nothing to do with rich and poor.

CBDCs are indeed evil! With cash, we still had some certain degrees of anonymity. But with CBDC, that last amount of anonymity is gone as the government will have a bird's eye view on its citizens' finances. It will become extremely easy for the enforcement agencies to catch money launderers and tax evaders. But also, it will create multiple issues on a normal person's life. Fully digital economy is a highly risky proposition.

Bitcoin and other decentralised cryptocurrencies are definitely going to act as a vaccine to a centralised system where privacy doesn't matter anymore!

Car and housing markets are two very important indicators to understand the mode of the economy. Because these are two things that families own when they have some surplus money and a stable income source. So whenever there is a decline in car and housing demand and a rise in non performing assets, it's usually a very concerning matter for the economy. It shows that the income sources are drying out and new sources are not getting created. That also initiates a decline in demand of general consumer goods which eventually leads to more job cuts and income losses.

Probably the first world countries are moving towards a recession and the third world countries are going to be benefited out of it.

Good for Nigeria! It's great to see that Nigerian government has come out of the decision of completely banning bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Rather they are looking to legalize it. So Nigeria should be able to build businesses around cryptos in coming years with the availability of legal framework.

Nigerian government has finally realised that they can't control it. I hope other governments also acknowledge the same in next few years after trying their best!

I believe our lifestyle is the major obstacle in achieving the financial freedom. We are social animals and the society plays a big role in our lifestyle. We always keep on upgrading our lifestyle as our income grows and that's where we all make mistakes. We should keep a consistent lifestyle even if our income keeps on growing.

I will give you my example. I used to drive a very small and basic car since 2015. It was a zero maintenance car with low fuel consumption. Now in 2021, I had upgraded to a SUV. I didn't need that car but I bought it anyways just because my wife wanted to show off. The amount of EMI just tripled and the maintenance became expensive. I could have easily saved that additional amount of money. But my lifestyle didn't allow me so do so.

So for me, my lifestyle is the biggest blocker to achieve financial freedom early in life.

It's a very tricky thing to handle! One of the KPIs of an HR personnel is how much he/she is able to save from the budget given. So it's extremely rare scenario where a candidate will be offered 100% of the budget for a certain position.

Having budget doesn't mean that everyone will be eligible to achieve that. A candidate with 5 years of experience can not ask for a salary befitting a candidate with 10 years of experience. This is applicable for certain highly skilled positions only!

In crypto market, past trends has no value or relationship with the future. Take bitcoin for example. Usually the pioneering cryptos enjoy a decent upward trend and the traders are usually ride through that. So I won't use such kind of statistics to buy ETH. However, I will buy ETH because it is a pioneer in smart contract functionality.

Price trend is not really a great indicator in the crypto market to take up investment decision. Rather we will have to look into the demand and trading volumes in various exchanges.

Wow! Futures contract in electricity then! But if things will change in 2023, the situation may become even worse it seems. Energy price is constantly showing an upward trend so in 2023, if the miners need to renew their contract, that will be much higher than the existing price.

So the industrial miners will then have to face further issues with their cash flow. From what you know Franky, do you think 2023 is going to be bumpy for crypto market?

The main reason why the bitcoin miners are failing is the electricity price all over the world. Especially the European and US miners are hit by this constant surge in energy price. But it's good to know that their bitcoin mining business is still cash flow positive. I am not sure how long it will remain the same.

It's always unfortunate when a company has to file a bankruptcy. But here the only silver lining is that the bitcoin mining is still profitable. Hopefully they will be able to pay back their debt through mining. The chances are slim but worth a try!

I personally believe that staking is a great way to make some almost risk-free return on your investment. The only downside to staking is it's lock-in period. As OP rightly pointed out, if the price plummets during the lock-in period, your returns will evaporate. Otherwise it's almost risk free. If you are ok with small return but at a low risk, staking is a good option. Otherwise, trading is another option but with high risk.

Regulations are inevitable, regardless of whether you like it or not! Such incidents like FTX are only making the process faster. It is putting more pressure on regulatory bodies to bring in a framework so that any such future events can be avoided.

I understand a lot of people don't like regulations but if exchanges are centralized and established as a legal entity, they are expected to follow certain regulations. So a more structured regulation will make the centralized businesses more transparent for its users.

If you already have millions in your bank account, such kind of bitcoin payment may make sense. But for the majority of the workforce who lives from paycheck to paycheck, it's a stupidity. The volatility of bitcoin can put any salaried person into big mess especially those who have liabilities.

A certain percentage of bitcoin payment may make sense but definitely not the entire salary. Edward Snowden may have made millions from his excile days but not everyone is fortunate like him. Unless the price of bitcoin shows stability, majority of the workforce would never accept bitcoin as salary payment.

Lol! The pictures are hilarious! Also what's surprising is that, all NFTs are sold out within a single day! That effectively proves that even garbages can be sold as NFT and that will also make you a good amount of profit for no reason or effort.

The entire NFT ecosystem is non sense and the biggest non-sense leader of all time, has joined the bandwagon! Like a match made in heaven.

Having a clear direction is better than having no or ambiguous direction. Bitlicense was hugely complected and was a blocker for small companies to engage with banks regarding crypto related businessman. If the new guidelines are removing ambiguous directions, then it's good for the the overall crypto ecosystem.

But I really don't like the idea of banks to get into crypto related services because of the centralisation risk. But new capital will flow into the market for good reasons.

What OP is doing, is advisable for all investors if you have a long term outlook. Bitcoin market occassionally provides such opportunity to score more bitcoins at low price points. If you are able to identify and act on it, you will be able to effectively average out the buying price.

No matter what amount you are buying, the important part is that you are buying low. The upside potential is really significant!

Don't we already have a superior cryptocurrency available in the market? Which are faster and cheaper than bitcoin and also more anonymous than bitcoin. Did bitcoin lose its importance? No!

Bitcoin enjoys the perks of being the pioneering cryptocurrency. Millions of miners around the world have set up their mining rigs to mine bitcoin and secure the bitcoin network. So it's highly unlikely for bitcoin price to come down to zero for this reason. but anyway, I understand this is what an AI bot wrote, and AI can't match human intelligence in any way. Nothing to be take seriously here!

I don't think so! There have been a lot of discussions around PVP/skill-based gambling but I have not seen it materialized yet and I don't think it will ever be! At least not in the near future! But there were some telegram groups who arranges such kinds of gambling events where they used to pay out using bitcoin. I don't know if they exist now. Hopefully, someone will be able to point out some such groups who still arrange similar kinds of events.

But I have not seen such things in any of the well knows crypto casinos till date!