My point is, you can't address every problem with a subsidy. Subsidy is necessary in certain aspects, but it can't be a permanent solution. If the government's response is merely subsidy, such government is not working. It's not diving into the root cause of the problem.

I once created a thread here about the price of onions in my country reaching as high as $13 a kilo. As expected, the word subsidy surfaced. I don't agree it's necessary. Why is it expensive to begin with? Perhaps there is a need to create a strong agricultural program for onion farmers. Perhaps there is a need to bring down prices of fertilizers. Again, not by way of subsidy but something else more permanent. Perhaps there is an urgent call to courageously confront cartels and hoarders and smugglers. Or perhaps there is a need to craft policies in relation to the handling of agricultural products.

I mean there must be a number of ways to confront a problem other than simply providing subsidy. Subsidy will indeed bring down the prices almost instantly. That will appease the public. That will give the administration a good face in the media. But will it last?

I don't know how many Bitcoin supporters in the US. But does it have to be several million for candidates to try to win their votes? Does Kennedy Jr. court the support of the Bitcoin community because it will make him win?

Anyway, accordingly, "about 46 million Americans (roughly 22% of the adult population) own a share of Bitcoin."^[1] I don't know whether this is true or not but my point is, in an election season, all communities, big and small, suddenly matter. Candidates utter sweet words in front of everybody: Asian Americans, Hispanics, black Americans, senior citizens, LGBT, gun owners, farmers, American Indians, Catholics, war veterans, baseball fans, Bitcoin supporters, and so on.

---

[1] https://explodingtopics.com/blog/blockchain-stats

It's not free advertisement because the man is courting the people for support. As well as donations, of course. By clearly speaking out his stand in favor of Bitcoin, he's certainly hoping that the community that is also in support of Bitcoin will rally behind him. This is elections season.

Anyway, quite similar to mk4's question, why "as a collectible" when Kennedy Jr. has probably not even once called Bitcoin as a collectible? He called Bitcoin the "perfect base currency," an "exercise in democracy," and others but not as something to be merely collected.

Well, we can only hope so.

Yeah, I agree that we seem to take motivation from being the underdog and when nobody is expecting anything from us. It's like a huge amount of baggage is taken off if we have nothing to lose or if we're going against the world.

Anyway, it's probably expected that this fight will be held in Japan. Naoya very seldom fights outside of his home country. But Tapales isn't a stranger to fighting in Japan and against Japanese fighters. If I'm not mistaken, Naoya is his 5^th Japanese opponent and this is also his 5^th time fighting there. So it's probably not a huge factor for him to once again fight against a Japanese opponent in his home court.

Good suggestion!

In addition, OP, if you are kind of annoyed with all the discussions about anything else outside the Bitcoin technology, then don't go to sections and boards where topics such as basketball or boxing or bounties or trading or even politics are discussed.

If this isn't enough, then, like noorman0, I suggest that you try changing some settings yourself. Manually ignore the boards you don't wish to explore. I'm also not sure if this is available to newbies, but try to go to your profile, proceed to Modify Profile, and click on Ignore Boards Preferences. You can even ignore all of them except Development & Technical Discussion, Mining, Bitcoin Technical Support, and Project Development.

This forum will be a paradise this way. No signatures shown, no avatars, no discussions outside the Bitcoin technology.

I'm afraid it's not really marketplace insolvency that's the problem. The problem is inconvenience to sellers. However, they cannot entirely remove it because it's the direct result of the solution to another problem. You have to take note that Bitcoin transactions are irreversible. Once the buyer sends the payment and the transaction is already confirmed, there's no way he/she can reverse it as soon as he/she got the wrong, defective, or substandard goods. This is the reason why there has to be some kind of party that ensures the safety and security of everybody.

I understand that you've been a pioneer international seller on Ebay and Amazon, and you're trying to find a solution to a problem you've been dealing with. However, much bigger than your problem when it comes to E-commerce in general is the low quality or sub-standard goods. It's a much larger problem and it's being addressed by the escrow system.


Then you're not talking of a decentralized peer-to-peer marketplace.

And what could the arbiter do when the payment is already made? Will you implement KYC or something else to make sure sellers could be held accountable in case of disputes?

Well, Tapales has the chance, but I doubt he will be able to dethrone Inoue. Regardless, however, this is the fight of his life. This is already a huge achievement for him. To be given the chance to face Naoya and, more importantly, to become the unified champion, is a big opportunity he couldn't afford to miss. He should be giving his all not just during the fight but even during the training. Defeating Naoya and unifying the belts mean a lot.

It will be an uphill climb for Tapales for sure. Naoya, on the other hand, will be fighting against somebody who is probably easier than Fulton. He's well prepared for this. As early as now, the odds are heavily in favor of Naoya. 1/10 to 1/12 for Naoya. That's extremely low. That's 1.08 to 1.1. Tapales has 6/1 to 13/2; that's 7.0 to 7.5.

I tried reading the entire paper but because of my very limited comprehension capacity of the technicalities the authors were talking about, I decided not to continue.

I assume those who cherry-picked didn't also thoroughly understand the paper. They spread the cherry-picked lines, nonetheless. OP is one of them. There are many others in social media who did the same. Even those who I think are capable of separating the wheat from the chaff are equally irresponsible for spreading it. 

Worse, they are putting words in BlackRock's mouth. This isn't BlacRock's opinion. This is not a study done by BlackRock. BlackRock has nothing to do with it. Those who started spreading this fake news are just using the huge brand to create a baseless FOMO.

Simply said, this is it. Although in reality this may not be as simple as this. It's probably a bit complicated really. But the fact remains that Africans are mostly exploited by foreign companies and more powerful countries for centuries already. Sadly, many leaders in the continent are all too willing to be complicit in the subjugation of the African people for their own personal benefit.

I risk sounding like a believer of conspiracy theories, but I kind of agree that there is this ulterior desire to keep the African people from becoming truly independent and empowered because that would then deprive the external powers of control over vast amount of resources. For what then is the ultimate reason that for centuries the African continent remains poor despite having "40 percent of the world's gold," "90 percent of its chromium and platinum," "largest reserves of cobalt, diamonds, platinum and uranium," "65 per cent of the world's arable land," and "ten percent of the planet's internal renewable fresh water source"?^[1]

---

[1] https://www.unep.org/regions/africa/our-work-africa

I seriously doubt BlackRock would adopt this analysis and view. This may be something that can easily be adopted by much smaller individual or retail investors like me. But to an institution that is worth billions and is managing trillions, I don't think this is worth the risk. Whatever happened to diversification?

This is so different from the views of other respected figures in the world of finance. The same paper cited Thomas Peterffy's 2%-3% and Ray Dalio's 1%-2%.

Anyway, the subject is misleading. You should correct it lest it be misunderstood as a mega-bullish stand of BlackRock. This actually isn't BlackRock's opinion or view. This is simply the personal view of the three authors who happened to be working with BlackRock. But this study is not in any way sanctioned by BlackRock itself.

In general, I'm not a huge fan of subsidies. Subsidies might be necessary in some instances, but I think it should be considered as the last resort. To a certain extent, a government that has limited resources but is all too willing to provide subsidies left and right is an incompetent and lazy government. It's a government that's not creative or innovative enough, a government that doesn't study, analyze, and look for other ways and means to improve certain conditions. Subsidies are dole-outs. They're a band-aid solution. They're not sustainable. Money put into subsidy is most often money that is wasted.

In my country, subsidy is quickly considered as a response more often than it should be. A rising price of rice, subsidy. A rising fuel price, subsidy. A rising transportation cost, subsidy. Onion price rising, subsidy. Poor families, subsidy. Retirement benefits and pension, subsidy. It's subsidy everywhere. It's not even counting the huge tax subsidies that it also provides to companies and businesses. Almost all departments in the governments are now providing subsidies. For goodness' sake, can we not explore other options?

I guess I've stumbled upon Bovada a number of times in the past. I'm not a user, though. It's not even available here in my area. I took a quick search of it and while it hasn't been promoted here, it seems it has been operating for quite a while already, since 2011.

Anyway, the stolen funds is actually much higher now. The update says the total stolen is already $60 million.^[1] Users of the above-mentioned platforms should brace for some suspensions. If they still can, they should quickly cancel their bets and withdraw all funds.

---

[1] https://twitter.com/zachxbt/status/1683747073227624448


Not just protect but even sponsor them, sent them to reliable universities in China to hone their skills. They're not just protected and state-sponsored; they're state-employed. They don't belong to the 99%, apparently because they're part of a special circle, a very productive one.

It seems this isn't entirely bad news, especially for their users. The email doesn't say that Bundle is closing down for good. It's not bidding good bye. Rather, it only specifically informs them that the platform will cease operating because they will "restructure the business." So, this is temporary. I think this is simply a process of upgrading their infrastructure to integrate certain developments like the growing adoption of the Web3 ecosystem, for example. They will probably come out a much improved platform sooner or later.

To the Bitcoin ecosystem, it might be a positive move because it means adoption. It might also push the price up because companies would then accumulate Bitcoin to be able to pay their workers. However, on the part of the workers, it's going to be a double-edged sword. Especially if you are a worker who is fully dependent on your salary, there's no way you can make the most of Bitcoin's volatility all the time. There will surely be times when you will be forced to convert your coins at a much lower fiat value. We need to remember that the world out there is not using the Bitcoin standard.

I'm echoing Jawhead999. Futuur immediately comes to mind. I guess the platform offers the broadest possible options on what you can bet on. You can bet on almost everything. Odds on politics and entertainment may be few but they're still offered by certain platforms. But betting on whether robot guide dogs will be cheaper than organic guide dogs, for example, or whether the Brazilian dengue fever vaccine will be approved by the end of 2024 is something you can probably do only on Futuur.

I'm not in any way affiliated with the platform.

Ideally, of course, it's best if your post is perfect in both form and substance. But if you can't have the two, then I guess the latter is much more important than the former. It's probably enough that the point is made and understood. Certain aspects like grammar are secondary. As a non-native speaker of the English language myself, I can't help but commit grammatical, punctuation, and other errors every now and then.

But we should all be striving to be better posters nonetheless, both in form and in substance.

Speaking of this, just mere hours ago I've read that more than a thousand coins have awakened after 11 years of hibernation. It is worth $31 million. But I don't think the reason for this is any of the enumerated possibilities in the OP. It seems all the possible reasons cited in the OP are negative. The movement is possibly just a mere transfer to a SegWit address of a new wallet.

Just a month ago, there was also a movement of 1,400BTC, worth around $36 million, after a decade of dormancy. It seems the reason is also none of the ones mentioned in the OP as it seems it is primarily for the sake of privacy because it was moved to a P2TR address.

I don't think we are approaching the end of crypto or Bitcoin era and old whales are moving to fiat. Adoption is fast growing. Demand is rising. Supply on exchanges is draining. The future of Bitcoin is bright.

Gambling sites will have to protect both their patrons and their business interest. So they probably wouldn't introduce a feature that would somehow affect their revenue to a significant extent or discourage gamblers from using their platform.

This feature in particular won't probably save a gambler from addiction, especially if the gambler is already beginning to show signs that he/she is not anymore in full control of his/her urge.

Nothing defeats self-discipline.

Well, yeah, you can somehow compare Saylor with those sacred personalities, although I personally don't like the idea of such comparison. It might send a wrong message. There is already an existing tendency of some Bitcoin supporters to somehow treat Bitcoin as some sort of a religion or cult. Some avid advocates appear very close-minded because of it.

Also, adoption of Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer electronic currency should come first or should have more weight than its adoption as a new class of asset or a new hedge against inflation or whatever.

Well, there must be certain viewpoints which consider the Russian ruble as a big scam. But if we are to consider the reasons, we might end up generalizing that all fiat currencies are also scams. They may differ in degrees, but since they are all operating under this questionable fiat monetary system, then they are all fraud in one way or another.

First and foremost, these fiat currencies are not backed by any commodity. They are of no intrinsic value. In the absence of any enforcement coming from a powerful entity, these currencies have actually no use value.