You can't really compare Bangladesh with Sri Lanka. The population of Bangladesh is around 8 times that of Sri Lanka. On top of that, there are large and affluent Bangladeshi diaspora communities in Western nations. And despite all this, the BPL has struggled to stay profitable. Another issue with Sri Lanka is that there is hardly any cricket infrastructure outside the top 3-4 cities.

I don't think that Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala will be able to do much more to the African continent, when compared to the current director-general (Roberto Azevedo) of the World Trade Organization. WTO is a global organization and the director-general is supposed to act without any regional bias. Also, having an African on the top posts in the past hardly had any impact on the well being of the region. A perfect example is that of Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who is the current director general of the World Health Organization (WHO).

Well.. just one small question here. Why can't they just re-denominate their currency? Not saying that it is going to slow down the inflation rate, or keep more money in the treasury.. but having bills of 100,000 or 250,000 sound really weird. If I was the finance minister, then I would re-denominate the currency by a factor of 1 million. So the rate becomes 1 New Bolivar = $2.30. It is not going to last long.. but still, it is worth giving a try.

Apart from the transaction fee, the volatile exchange rate is also a big concern. It is definitely possible for the exchange rates to do down by as much as 80% or 85%, as we experienced first hand during 2018. In such instances, making automated monthly payments using Bitcoin can be tricky. Because if the exchange rates go down, you need to spend more BTC to make the payment each time.

As of now, indications are that Bitcoins will be available only to those PayPal users who are residing in the United States. So the question of legality in territories where cryptocurrency is not legal does not arise. Obviously they need to deal with it, if they want to make this option available to the global users. A few years back, when Overstock made Bitcoin available as a mode of payment, they also did the same. This option was limited for registered users from the United States.

BTW, who want to invest in a stable asset? Volatility is bad, as long as the prices are going down. If an asset is volatile, and the price is going up, then I don't think that a lot of people will object to it being used as an investment. Why do people prefer investing in stocks instead of bank deposits and treasury bonds? They do that because the prices are volatile and the chances of getting good returns are high. The same is the case with Bitcoin.

You want to use a shitcoin just because the Bitcoin transaction fee is too high? I don't think that we'll ever get to see transaction fee of $100 or $200. If that happens, then no one will be able to move their coins and they will just dump BTC and move to BCH or ETH. I hope that such a scenario will never realize. In case the transaction fee gets out of control, then hopefully the community will sanction a hard-fork to increase the block size, or approve some other measure that will bring it back to tolerable levels.

I hope that the acceptance by PayPal will change the mindset of some of the regressive governments, such as the one we have here in India. For the past two-three years, there have been rumors that Bitcoin will be banned by the government. Till now, no such ban has been imposed. But ordinary Bitcoin users face all sort of harassment. Hopefully the acceptance by big corporations such as PayPal will put an end to this.

PayPal is the first mainstream payment processor to include Bitcoin in its platform. It is like a glass ceiling being broken, after a frustrating wait of many years. Since now PayPal has done it, we can expect others such as Visa, Master, Moneygram, Western Union, Amex.etc to follow suit. Also, I would like to have Bitcoin as a payment option in online retailer sites, such as Amazon, Ebay.etc.

Bitcoin is one of the better options, at least compared to the Petro shitcoin. But the big question is whether the regime can afford to purchase BTC? They have sold almost all of their gold reserves, and I don't think that they have anything valuable left in the state treasury. Petro is very similar to their worthless banknotes. They can mine as much as they want. But that is not the case with Bitcoin.

This is the worst thing that can happen to Bitcoin users in India. Already we have a system that is very hostile towards the usage of cryptocurrency. Exchanges and Bitcoin ATMs are not permitted here in India. A banking ban was in place for many years, before it was struck down by the supreme court. Two years ago, a top bureaucrat came up with a draft law, which makes holding Bitcoin a criminal offense which is punishable by up to 10 years in jail. Fortunately the government didn't agreed with the bureaucrat and fired him. But things may change now.

When someone scores 14 runs from 29 balls in a T20 match, and that too against bowlers such as Ravi Bishnoi and Murugan Ashwin, it raises a lot of questions. When Manish Pandey came to bat, SRH were 56/1 from 6 overs. In the next 14 overs, they scored just 58 runs. It is very difficult to believe that all this is not intentional. By the time Priyam Garg got a chance to bat, less than 4 overs were remaining. BTW, UAE is quite infamous for match fixing in cricket.. just saying..

Well.. I agree about the authoritarian nature of the Chinese government. But from what I have heard, the population is not complaining as long as the economy is going up. And talking about face recognition and other surveillance tactics, the so called "democratic" nations are also using them very often these days. And worse, in many cases they are using the Chinese technology and equipment for doing this.

PayPal is the first corporation to realize that cryptocurrency will be a big thing in the future, especially in the finance sector. BitGo is not a very large sized firm, and I suspect they are going after it as a test run. If the acquisition is successful, then they may acquire larger crypto businesses. And one more thing. I won't be surprised if PayPal acquires one or two major cryptocurrency exchanges in the distant future, and merge them with their main platform.

That is exactly what OP had posted. If you check the volume of online financial transactions around the world, then you can find that a large majority of them are associated with online marketplaces such as Amazon, and done using payment processors such as PayPal. If PayPal accepts Bitcoin, then it become possible to make payments in online retail sites such as Amazon using cryptocurrency. From what I have heard, PayPal will make Bitcoin available only from mid 2021 onward, and now they are giving access only to a few selected users. If everything goes as per the plan, then I expect a huge spike in acceptability and adoption.

But there is a catch though. Will PayPal allow users to make payments directly using Bitcoin, or do they need to convert these BTCs to fiat first? As of now, they are only allowing the users to purchase and store BTC.

Six years ago, there was a time when I desperately hoped that I would be able to purchase BTC with PayPal. Being a resident of India, it was extremely difficult to purchase Bitcoin at that time. Exchanges such as Mt Gox and BTC-e had no fiat deposit option that I could use. Finally I was able to make the purchase through peer-to-peer platforms, but I had to go through a lot of frustration and despair. I understand that a majority of the users have reacted negatively to this news. But for me, it is more positive than negative.

That is not the situation now. One or two decades ago, they were dependent on plagiarism and technology stealing. But now the Chinese are capable of doing innovation. Show me an example of any Chinese company being accused of plagiarism, in the past 2-3 years. It is not easy to replace the Chinese products from our markets. The reason is that no other company has the capability of manufacturing high-quality products at such affordable prices.

Most of the RR batsmen have flopped this season and Robin Uthappa is not the only one. You might be surprised to hear that their best batsman during this season was Tom Curran, who averaged 83.00 with the bat. They actually managed to drop him from the playing XI. 

Tewatia is the second in the list, as he averages 44.80. Others are Buttler - 30.11, Smith - 26.50, Samson - 24.72, Stokes - 22.00 and Archer - 21.40. Uthappa is far down, with 16.33. 

I believe that now it is too late for the Kings XI Punjab. They have lost too many matches in the initial stages (some of which they could have won easily), and now it will be difficult to make up for that. They need to win all of their remaining matches. As of now, they have won 3 matches in a row. Can they make it to 7? I think that would be a new record in the IPL.

I am residing in India and therefore I don't think that PayPal will offer this option to me. For now, it seems to be limited so selected users within the United States. But overall, this is great news for cryptocurrency users (as can be seen from the sudden jump in Bitcoin exchange rates). For less tech savvy people, purchasing cryptocurrency from PayPal is going to be much easier than going through all the pesky KYC process associated with various exchanges. I am willing to give it a try (if they ever offer it to the Indians), but I guess I have better options available (as Poker Player posted, PayPal seems to be imposing certain restrictions).