If they get a lead of 200 or more and still doesn't enforce the follow on, then it will be plain stupidity. Because there is a very high chance of rain interruption and if India bats again and takes up another 90-100 overs to do that, then the Indian bowlers may not get enough time to bowl South Africa out for the second time. Three days of play remains, but given the weather, they should not take any chances and enforce the follow on if they are in a position to do so.

I don't understand the logic behind not enforcing the follow on. The only reason that comes to my mind is that they might want to improve their personal batting statistics. As a team, India should learn from Australia. The Australians never go after individual records, and they always put their team first. I have seen Australians declare their innings, when one batsman was just around 10 runs short of a double century.

It is difficult to answer this question. If you were talking about personal wallets (both online and desktop versions), then I would have said that in case you get hacked and your coins get stolen then you have only yourselves to blame. In such cases, the majority of the incidents occur due to carelessness from the user (such as 2FA not activated or email confirmation not enabled).

However, hacks on exchange wallets can occur due to multiple reasons. They can occur due to carelessness from the side of the user, as well as due to mistakes from the part of the exchange. Sometimes the exchanges get hacked and user data (passwords, email address, phone number.etc) get stolen. In such cases, you can't blame the user for the hack. But sometimes, the user is responsible. For example, the user visits a phishing website and enters his password. The hacker gets hold of this password and uses it to steal the coins.

Many of the recent IEOs got listed at a discount to their original valuation. This may be a sign that the hype surrounding the IEOs is beginning to fade. Earlier, the investors were showing a lot of interest in the listings and the exchanges were careful with the projects. But now the interest from the investors have waned and some of the exchanges are no longer screening the projects to keep out the scam IEOs.

If the situation doesn't improve, then what happened with the ICOs will repeat with the IEOs as well. And if that occurs, then it won't do any good for the bounty hunters. The death of IEOs won't have a positive impact on the ICOs. For the bounty hunters, this is not going to be beneficial in any way. Both the IEOs and ICOs need bounty campaigns, and a slowdown means less number of campaigns for the hunters to participate.

It's human nature. I have also a few such trades to my name. Back in 2015, I sold some of my BTC when the exchange rate was somewhere around $200 per coin. Two years later, the prices went up by 10,000% and reached an ATH of $20,000 per coin. Fortunately for me, I still had some coins remaining in my wallet and I was able to cash them out.

But then, many times I was lucky while dealing with the altcoins. I sold some of my alts (BSD, CTX, NMC, EBTC, GBYTE, XLM.etc) when their prices were at the peak. Had I held on to them, then I would have incurred heavy losses. But these trades never remain in my memory. Only the sale of BTC back in 2015 lingers in my mind. No matter how hard I try to forget it and move on, I am unable to do so.

South Africa lost 3 wickets in 20 overs (although one of those who got out was a tail end batsman - Piedt). The good news for them is that their best batsmen are yet to bat (Francois du Plessis/Quinton de Kock). If these two are unable to handle the spin from Ashwin, then South Africa is staring at an innings defeat. Realistically, they should target scoring 303 (in order to avoid follow on). If they are lucky, then rain may come to their rescue and enough overs may be wasted to force this match to a draw.

Bitcoin is a very high risk investment option. There is a good chance that your investment can give you 10x or even 25x returns within less than 3 years. But at the same time, there is an even greater chance that your investment may become worthless within the same duration. You might have researched about the risk factor before making this investment.

One thing I have told to those who wanted to invest in Bitcoin is that they should invest only as much as they could afford to lose. I have seen a few threads here, where the users were claiming that they sold their house and invested in Bitcoin with whatever they got from the sale. I would never condone such actions. On the contrary, I would say that no more than 10% of your portfolio should be made up of Bitcoin (not applicable in case you had initially invested a small amount and later it grew to a large portion of your portfolio).

LOL.. nothing could be farther from the truth than this statement by the OP. For starters, Tether is not a full fledged cryptocurrency and it doesn't even have a platform of its own. As of now, Tether is operating on the Omni Layer platform. I would say that it is a digital version of the United States Dollar, which has been modified to be traded as a cryptocurrency.

And secondly, the trade volume that you see from the exchanges is not the real figure. How can you explain $20 billion volume in 24 hours, when the market cap of Tether is just around $4 billion? Most of the exchanges use Tether as an equivalent currency to USD. The trades that happen in these exchanges are not with the real USDT, but with the virtual USDT. Outside the exchanges, the USDT has hardly any usage.

So in short, Bitcoin remains as the most popular, most traded and most trusted cryptocurrency as of now. Tether doesn't even come close.

India should be looking for batsmen who can perform in all types of surfaces. I have no bad blood against either Mayank Agarwal or Rohit Sharma. But these two batsmen have failed to perform outside the subcontinent. In my opinion, India doesn't need players such as Ravichandran Ashwin, who have the capability to be competitive only on doctored tracks.

But still, the collapse by South Africa during the last session of play today was disappointing. Despite having many experienced players in their batting lineup (Markram, Elgar.etc), they were unable to contain the spin of Ashwin. And the decision to send Piedt as the night watchman was another mistake. How can you expect him to survive out there, when top order batsmen were finding it very tough?

Had Sri Lanka won the match, then you wouldn't have posted this. It was a tight match, and could have gone either way. Sri Lankans proved to be competitive during the first ODI (but still lost the match by a big margin). It was clear that they had a chance of beating Pakistan. Also, it was very much true that the gambling sites had heavily underestimated Sri Lanka, giving them odds ranging from 5.5 to 6.0. And the results prove the close nature of the match. At one stage, it looked as if Sri Lanka were on the top. And Pakistan scraped thorough, with just 10 balls (and 5 wickets) to spare.

Some of the altcoins do have better technology when compared to Bitcoin, but the problem is that the users are not looking for a technologically superior coin. If that was the case, then the third generation cryptocurrencies such as Cardano or NEO would have toppled Bitcoin from the top position by now. On the contrary, Cardano is one of the worst performing cryptocurrencies currently, with a net loss of 98% from the all time high levels reached during the end of 2017.

Ethereum is currently the second most popular cryptocurrency, and the reasons for that is clear. Ethereum is relatively easy to use (when compared to alts such as Monero and Cardano), and there is a large community which offers help to anyone who needs it. If some new cryptocurrency wants to overtake either BTC or ETH, then it needs to gain the confidence of the ordinary user. And so far none of them has managed to do that.

Agreed with this 100%.

Once you convert cryptocurrency from digital form to physical form, many of its advantages will be lost. For example, it becomes easier to counterfeit physical coins and banknotes. In the past, a lot of people have tried to convert crypto from digital to physical form, starting with the Casascius coins in 2013. But they were not very successful. Mike Caldwell was the one who created the Casascius coins, before a directive from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) forced him to shut down the business.

The method used for creating the Casascius coins were simple. A piece of paper with the private key is embedded inside the coin, covered by a tamper-proof hologram. In order to redeem the Bitcoin value, the hologram needs to be broken, and therefore the user can be assured of the value of the hologram was not damaged. Caldwell claimed that it is 100% impossible to redeem the BTC, unless the hologram is peeled off. He had even included an anti-tampering measure on the holograms.

But here, the user is trusting Caldwell, and hoping that he will not try to redeem the coins sometime later.

I heard that Nobuaki Kobayashi (Mt Gox bankruptcy trustee) is getting interested in the Alexander Vinnik case. He has requested for details from the United States Department of Justice (DOJ). But at the same time, Kobayashi hasn't made his opinion clear on the proposal by ZP Legal, to recover up to BTC200,000 from the Mt Gox hackers. However, Mr. Kobayashi admitted yesterday that his team had contacted Alexander Zheleznikov, who is heading ZP Legal. I think it may be possible to do some bargain and get the commission reduced from 50%-75% to around 20%-25%.

BTW, I heard that CoinLab is now claiming $16 billion from Mt Gox (which sounds ludicrous, considering the fact that Kobayashi has less than $650 million in his hand from the sale of the recovered coins). Will this amount (in the unlikely event of the trustee approving their claims), be paid from the bankruptcy fund?

There was a similar incident reported from India as well. Around one month ago, one individual (Abdul Shukoor) was killed by his own associates in the city of Dehra Dun, after he cheated them of close to $70 million in a cryptocurrency scam. As per media reports, he had scammed more than 50,000 people by promising them sky high returns by investing in cryptocurrency.

In third world countries such as India and Brazil, the law enforcement agencies are not prepared enough to deal with crimes involving cryptocurrency. As a result, some of the investors who get cheated will resort to their own ways to get revenge. And this was not an isolated incident. I have read about similar incidents from all around the globe.

Some of the scammers are simulating their own death, as you had posted. A perfect example is that of Gerald Cotten (the owner of the Quadriga CX cryptocurrency exchange). He had used the customer funds for trading and in the end he incurred huge losses, which he was unable to repay.

It is strange that Bloomberg is now resorting to publishing clickbait articles to attract traffic. Venezuela seems to be desperate to inflate its Forex reserves, which as per the latest reports amounts to less than $8 billion. They want to inflate the value of the holdings, so that the national currency (Bolivar) could be exchanged for better rates.

But from where they are going to get Bitcoin or Ethereum for their reserves? A country which can't afford to import toilet paper is now trying to amass cryptocurrency? I think they should stick to their old plan of accumulating gold from the wild cat miners of the Amazon rain forest and exchanging it for foreign currency in the international market.

It was a very close match, and in the end Haris Sohail and Iftikhar Ahmed rescued Pakistan from the jaws of defeat. Sri Lankan bowlers came under a lot of pressure during the final overs and they couldn't cope with it. They gave a spirited performance, but a 2-0 series loss once again speaks poorly of them. Sri Lanka needs to make use of these opportunities and win matches, if they want to be regarded as a cricketing superpower once more.

Sri Lanka lost the match in the first 20 overs, when Fakhar Zaman and Abid Ali smashed the bowlers all around the park to build a 100+ opening partnership. Nuwan Pradeep and Wanindu Hasaranga led the fightback, but it came too little too late. It was a good win for Pakistan. A lot of people call them as chokers, but this time they rubbished that label.

Just because Facebook is one of the largest corporations in the world, you can't claim that they'll get Libra legalized by any hook or crook. A senate hearing is currently underway in the United States, as some of the politicians who were concerned with the plans of Facebook asked the corporation to clarify its future plans regarding the proposed cryptocurrency.

But some of the questions asked during the senate hearing were quite interesting. David Marcus was representing Libra. Some of the questions are:


Looks like the senators are spooked by any potential competition that Libra can offer to the USD.

Wow.. when you made this post, the exchange rate was around $10,500 per coin. And within two weeks, the prices dipped below $8,000 level. If you had kept a target of $8K, then you would have purchased BTC by now. It was a very good strategy. No one really expected the prices to dip so much, especially when the next block reward halving less than a year away. Anyway, if you didn't used that opportunity to procure coins, then do that right now. The prices are still hovering at $8,000-8,500 and this might be the last opportunity to get some coins at four digit prices.

I would regard Hong Kong as a separate nation, although they don't have an army of their own (the defense is looked after by the People's Liberation Army Hong Kong Garrison). They have their own separate currency, flag and national anthem. The relation between China and Hong Kong is similar to the one between the United Kingdom and Australia. Elizabeth II (Queen of the United Kingdom) is the queen of Australia as well. But everyone regard Australia as a separate nation. The same can be said about Canada, New Zealand and more than a dozen Caribbean nations.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

I think that now the advantage is with Pakistan. As I had posted earlier, any score less than 300 is achievable for the Pakistanis. They are playing at home (after a big interval) and the conditions suits them. On top of that, the Sri Lankan bowlers haven't yet got any chance to acclimatize with the local conditions, as they had arrived less than a week ago.

Babar Azam and Fakhar Zaman are in good form, and during the 2nd ODI they were able to score 300 plus (8 runs more than what Sri Lanka scored today). But there is some weakness in the middle order. If the Lankan opening bowlers (Nuwan Pradeep/Isuru Udana) can get either Zaman or Azam early, then they'll be having a chance. Else, it is going to be cakewalk for Pakistan.

This kid comes from a very rich family and fortunately for him, his investment gave him very good returns. He could take the risk, because for his family it was a small amount. But such fairy tales don't happen very often to ordinary people. Anyway, I hope that he continues to stay invested in Bitcoin as his returns can grow by manifold in the next few years.

BTW, early investors with any asset are bound to become rich and it is true in the case of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum as well. Back in 2011 and 2012 the exchange rates were pretty much stagnant, and no one would have imagined that Bitcoin exchange rate would climb to five digits. Those who invested during that era, took a great deal of risk.