This is one reason why China isn't only mad about the war I suppose. They don't want a nuclear war, that is for sure, but if this war weakens other countries and even Russia, that helps China to get into an even better position for negotiations. The more isolated Russia gets in the global economy, the cheaper can China get energy from Russia. The incentives all those different countries have are so complex especially in situations of war that it sometimes is hard to understand who wants what the most. In this case though I think China is already planning with sufficient resources from Russia.

Why were you so sure that they would win that game when they are not playing at home? I agree that they were the favorite in this game, but I wouldn't have been too confident. I remember that I think two years ago or so Leipzig has already beaten Manchester City once. When Leipzig plays their best I think they should at least be taken seriously in home games. I still believe that Manchester City will advance to the next round now, but saying this was an obvious win for Manchester City seems to be overly confident.

Just a thought experiment: assuming that major economies around the world start banning Bitcoin and they also try to get as many other countries involved as possible. The reason being that all of them don't things they can't have control over. Wouldn't at least one decently sized economy have a huge incentive to become the new major hub for the entire industry? Exchanges, mining facilities, all kinds of service and app providers related to crypto, business headquarters, foundations, you name it. Now when that happens, isn't that a way to actually get control over Bitcoin? I know it is not possible to fully control it in the sense that you can freeze non-custodial wallets, but if the whole industry is essentially based in a handful of countries, I think that would give those countries a lot of control and benefits like tax revenue, workplaces, fintech innovation, and many other things. People from other countries could still buy and hold Bitcoin via non-custodial wallets and offline exchanges or decentralized exchanges.

Hosting an industry, owning part of it perhaps and closely collaborating with major representatives of that industry is the best way to have some control over it when otherwise you hardly can have any. I am sure that there would be some countries that wholeheartedly would welcome the crypto fintech industry. You acquire so much knowledge in key research fields like cryptography, computer science and programming in general. The country would be the hotspot for the next generation programmers to go to.

These are just my two cents and I do think that countries have a serious incentive to not ban Bitcoin. That is the magic of Bitcoin.

I agree that the majority of people get into crypto because of speculation and investment reasons. But that isn't bad per se. It is just how they get involved and familiarize themselves with cryptocurrencies while playing around with it and getting to learn the market dynamics as they pay closer attention when they own some Bitcoin. In a second step though they also get to find out about Bitcoin's utility and how it makes sense to use it in some situations. That was the case for me as well. Own it at first because I saw the potential for it to rise in price as I was sure that many people will at least slightly get the idea that a decentralized currency has good reasons to exist and spread globally. But once you own it and you travel for example, you quickly find out that it can be practical besides any speculative reasons.

There is a lot going on in Switzerland and ever since a delegation of Ethereum decided for Zug to become the place where they registered their foundation, Zug did a lot to attract more and more crypto businesses in order to build and expand the blockchain ecosystem. There are further plans to become even more crypto friendly and Alberto Diaz said in an interview that Crypto Valley is a “focused ecosystem that focuses on blockchain technologies" and "one of the world’s leading, densest clusters of blockchain and crypto companies".

A Coindesk article states that Lugano has serious plans to make Bitcoin and Tether legal tender. That's an interesting read and in this article it says that Lugano claims to become the cryptocurrency capital of Europe. They are also planning on introducing their own token.

We will find out where those plans of Lugano are going, but the fact that those considerations are being made shows that the Swiss government allows for the infrastructure to be built and that they are a crypto friendly place for sure. But it isn't surprising that Switzerland welcomes an industry that is about financial technology and innovation.

On top of that it never happened that all countries around the world agreed on something and even if they officially do, most of them won't stick to it as the incentive is too big to resist. If the entire crypto industry gets banned in the US I am sure it won't take long until some other state will announce the most welcoming legislation and regulation, incentivizing an innovative industry to just completely move to another country.

No matter how hypothetical or even realistic OP's idea might be, we will never ever see a situation where there is no place to go for the industry.

I haven't been following any action taken by the SEC ever and I don't know whether they disclosed more cases than just the one about Kardashian because that puts them in a better light?

There are so many influencers or celebrities promoting scam tokens that the SEC could actually be posting several reports every day about that. I really think that this Kardashian thing was something they couldn't ignore because of the public awareness.

Yet everyday rappers or boxers or people like Logan Paul pull of their scams or promote scam stuff and we don't get to read anything about it. Any other cases where celebrities have been sued or got a penalty by the SEC?

I think the same way. The reason Frankfurt is not really that much behind in terms of their chances to make it to the next round is how they performed in the Europa League last season. Round after round everyone thought that they wouldn't make it, but they did it again and again. Napoli is insane this season in Serie A, but you still have to beat Frankfurt first before you can claim anything.

With the experience that Frankfurt also has in international competitions, I think Frankfurt is on par with Napoli in their home game. In Italy I think that Napoli will beat Frankfurt. Now let's see and enjoy how this is going to play out.

Juventus performance wasn't weak, of course not and it was a home game. But this is the portion of luck when you are the outsider and can secure a draw. Nantes would have never asked for a win before the game started and they would certainly taken a draw right away. Now they have all the chances they could wish for before the two matches against Juventus started. I actually would like to see a team like Nantes to make it against such a huge favorite. That's what soccer is about right.

OP has confused some terms here which has been outlined before already. Generally speaking, you are right that inflation is related to a decline in purchasing power if increases in salary levels are not sufficiently offsetting that loss.

Though inflation is also related to expected inflation vs. unexpected inflation and how they play out in behavioral economics. Now when you talk about the speculative aspect of Bitcoin then we are actually discussing volatility whereas the expected inflation in terms of the number of units getting into circulation is known and fixed. Since we still convert Bitcoin in USD and then compare prices of goods and services, the difference between Bitcoin inflation and fiat inflation is still not that obvious. But one thing is for sure in the long run: Fiat USD has no upper bound in terms of the money supply (M1, M2 and M3), but Bitcoin definitely has. That will have an effect at some point and those are into Bitcoin expect that this will attract more people to become Bitcoin owners.

Manchester United has lost only one game out of eleven home games so far. Since Barcelona has to win it it's either through luck in a penalty shootout or they need a pretty good day to take this away from United.

Nantes vs. Juventus will be rough for Juventus I think. Nantes must be unbelievably motivated to brighten the final result of their season. If they make it against Juventus it is already a huge success for them. They are also still in the Coup de France and they are relatively safe from relegation in Ligue 1. The draw in Italy is now one big step to a great success story for them. I expect a strong fight from them.

There isn't actually anything on the horizon that could realistically stop them from winning. As we know there are injuries which could bring that incredible run to an end, but that would need a lot of bad luck to get so many injuries that they have a significant loss in performance. Motivation and fatigue just doesn't apply to them this season. Even if they lose a game or two, I would be totally baffled if they don't win like three or four games in a row. If that is the case the other teams would still have to win their games and Milan, Roma and Inter will also tie a game here and there at the very least.

These are all very good and comprehensible points and the contradiction of China's behavior remains when they are threatening with war against Taiwan as I explained here. The speed at which they are buying up and building new infrastructure al around the world is astonishing, but a clear indicator that it is indeed aiming at increasing their soft power around the globe. This is why an attack at this point in time would make no sense. However, if they have increased their soft power due to a dominant control of global economic infrastructure, they are also more immune against sanctions.

I don't know what Xi Jinpings plans are and whether he thinks he is going to live and reign for another 30 years, but I do believe that guys like him do not only want to go down into the books of history as someone who build his country into an economic superpower. All this military spending is a sign to me that he is dreaming of pulling the trigger one day against Taiwan.

I am wondering about something else when we talk about the dominant role of Taiwan in the microchip market. I know that it is the case now, but doesn't China basically have the resources to build a competitive microchip industry? They have been reverse engineering for decades now. Why wouldn't they be able to copy large scale microchip manufacturers? I haven't been digging into this yet in detail, but as far as I know China owns the base resources for that technology or am I wrong here?

If I understand this article correctly, the US and its allies can only slow down China in the competition for the best and fastest semiconductor manufacturers (and China is way behind), but it is a question of time until China can catch up. The base resources they need are also available in Russia. There we are again that China perhaps want to import rare earth metals and Russia in exchange secures contracts for long-term deliveries of semi-conductor technology.

Damn, the world is complex... but discussions like these help understanding it a little better step by step.

Manchester United is a different beast. In La Liga they now feel comfortable and other teams know that it is difficult to score against them. That makes it harder for other teams to play confident against Barcelona.

Lewandowski is also among the top scorers when it comes to preparing goals. His overall statistics are awesome, but I just noticed that it declined a bit compared to the first months.

I am excited for the next el clasicos in Copa del Rey, those will all be great games. It is even more fun to see them play the final against each other because when they kick one out in the semi final it's almost certain who is going to win the final.

I would have to have another look at the games from back then, but I think in the season 2014/2015 they had even more clean sheets in total. If I understand you correctly, you just mean out of the 22 matches played so far right? I just know that 14/15 was amazing as well as they started 22:0 goals out of 8 games. Lewandowski had a head start with scoring goals and he is still doing great but he slowed a bit down.

Now we can be looking forward towards the game between Manchester United and Barcelona. Both are well prepared and will go into the match with high motivation.

The defense of Barcelona can still make the difference, but playing against Manchester United is quite different from playing against Cadiz of course.

But I highly doubt that that does also count for the average trader who gets some software on the free market for a few hundred bucks. The first bots that have been coded for crypto markets might have been successful, but I think by now you are mostly competing with highly developed software from financially strong companies. That is surely the case if you trade on the big registered crypto exchanges.

I have been around for quite some time and it did surprise me often times when people told me they bought some trading software from some random dude on the forum. It usually doesn't work as nobody would give away a software that is almost guaranteed to make some money. Now that the markets got so huge it is full of big businesses who are able to hire the best coders, or probably you are already competing with bots from Google and Facebook who have all the data in the world to build AI-based trading software.

This is why I think that it's wrong to say that "a trader", like anyone who is a trader could make use of it and benefit from it. For most people I am convinced that long-term investment strategies, or let's say longer term investment strategies are the better choice.

I can only agree with what you have said but you could say the very same thing about Russia as well. They could have instead used their vast amounts of resources and expanded their economy and create wealth and live in prosperity. But now they don't because there is a one-man-show going on that makes no sense for anyone who is thinking rationally.

Xi Jinping is the same kind of guy. From an economic point of view an invasion of Taiwan would make no sense, but does that mean they won't invade Taiwan? If Xi Jinping gives the go, it is going to happen.

One major issue I have with all of this is that we as a global society already forego potential wealth by just pumping excessive amounts of money into military. Usually nobody really noticed it in their everyday lives, but this is going to change tremendously when the whole world starts to take away significant amounts of money from other causes and instead wastes it on military equipment. I just don't see how we can put the arms race to an end anytime soon. Even if Russia stops its aggression tomorrow, every country in Europe will still increase their military spendings by a lot. Finland is now building some sort of defend walls and I am sad to say that it makes sense to me. Nobody is interested getting hit by a surprise attack. 

Yes but poos would still lower the barrier to entry to at least some degree. Since the transaction costs are still relatively high, I don't know how those pools would be best handled, but anyway. In a centralized interface when we talk about exchanges offering stable coin staking, the money is just coming from the exchange itself. In a decentralized interface we are talking about algorithmic stable coins I suppose, but I have never really looked into them or used them. I just came across some theories once where attacks on algorithmic stable coins were discussed. As soon as you want stable coins to be backed with fiat currencies, the risk for those offerings to get shut down is very real as we have now just seen.

However, if those companies like Coinbase have the required licenses and can prove that stable coins are backed by "safe" assets, I don't get why they would make a difference between a bank offering interest rates on deposits and registered crypto exchanges. Sure auditing requirements would perhaps have to be adjusted, but as long as there is sufficient backing of pegged cryptocurrencies, why shut the offerings down?

'Rashford is growing up these days. He had some better and some worse times, sometimes changing every week. Now he brought his game to a certain level and is able to keep it. It is not only about scoring, but the pace he has and the space he is creating for other players. Most importantly he uses his chances and scores. I just watched a summary of the game and I think that they do even have an advantage over Barcelona in the second leg in the Europa League. Apart from some time in the first half when they were under pressure against the Foxes, they played a very solid game. Besides their accurate passing they also created chances all the time. The reporter even said that now is the time for them to start thinking about the EPL title again.

This has been an issue for Manchester City quite often this season. They are just not making use of their opportunities very well. It was 23:4 shots for Manchester City and 74% possession, nothing unusual so far, but they are missing too many chances. Usually Guardiola's teams have always been very strong in using their chances. Not the case this season so far and that is what helps Arsenal a lot. But Arsenal was quite lucky in the end even though it wasn't undeserved. The shot that was deflected into the own goal by Martinez in the 93rd minute also doesn't happen every week. I get the rule that if you touch the ball and change the direction of it, then it is said to be an own goal, but this goal doesn't really look like a classic own goal. Anyway, that win was important for Arsenal as a fourth game in a row without a win would have been a first crisis. Now it will be a difficult game against Leicester City as they have been stronger recently again.