Yeah, the 3 points also took them back to 3rd position on the EPL table after Newcastle lost 3-0 to Aston Villa and Tottenham Hotspur lost 3-2 to Bournemouth, Manchester United were never going to let the opportunity pass, and even though they were missing a couple of their players, they still got the 3 points to strengthen their grip on the top four. Manchester United are now 3 points above Newcastle, and six above Spurs that have played one game more than them. I think Manchester United are going to finish 3rd, thus 4th position would be a competition between Newcastle and Spurs.

Straight from the horse's mouth:
Lost Bitcoin basically reduces the coins that are and would be in circulation (when all has been mined), and if there are fewer Bitcoins in circulation, it somewhat increases the value of the Bitcoins that are in circulation, it is all basic supply and demand.

Yeah they are gone, even though James Howells hasn't given up and is still trying to search for his lost hard drive, but i don't know how fruitful his search for it is going to be, considering the fact he lost it a long time ago (in 2013). Your questions shows you don't quite understand how Bitcoin works, so mind you that this scenario isn't peculiar to only James Howells, the only way to spend Bitcoins is if you have the key, anybody who loses their key, has lost their Bitcoin.
No you cannot know that, blockchain analysis companies help the government to link addresses to identities, but it is not possible to know who owns all the Bitcoins in circulation, some coins have never moved from the address they are in, some addresses have no connection with centralized exchanges, etc.

Nope, there are centralized as well as decentralized exchanges.
If you want to trade via P2P then Bisq is your best option, they are truly decentralized with no KYC requirement whatsoever.
It is your decision, if you don't worry about privacy and you want speed over privacy and security, then carry out your trade there, but don't leave funds there, send them to your non custodial wallet afterwards.
Half of the funds in your savings account is a whole lot of money, hope it is an amount you can afford to lose. BTW on Binance you register with KYC and once you send funds into their platform every transaction you make there can be linked to your identity. It is not so in Bisq because there is no KYC requirement and your funds go directly to the seller. If you want to buy Bitcoin there, you take up an existing order or you create yours, the seller's Bitcoin and your security deposit will be locked in a 2 of 2 multisignature wallet, once you send the payment to the seller's account, the both of you signs with each of your keys and the funds is released into your wallet, which you can then move to any of your address you wish, this way i don't think it's possible for anyone to know what you bought with half of your savings.

Yeah it is definitely not the end of the road, but it will feel like it for the Arsenal players and their fans too, considering the points gap they had over City some weeks ago. These two draws against Liverpool and West Ham would almost feel like defeats, even though it is not. Arsenal have to pick themselves up and go again, if they let this slip up get into their head, then it is over for them this season because City have an elite mentality, and once they find themselves on top at this stage of the season, there's no coming down again. Well the game between City and Arsenal is now more like the title decider, Arsenal have to win or draw, a defeat and City would surely be champions.

Every investment asset in the market today has its own characteristics, Bitcoin is pretty volatile and its short term movements might not be convincing, especially for short term investors, but in the long term Bitcoin performs better than most assets in terms of appreciation in price, but it isn't every investor that's looking for that, some want a safe haven (store of value) asset which Gold is, and Bitcoin isn't, thus many people would invest in gold and hedge their wealth in it, or they'd just diversify between the two assets. Another thing is Bitcoin isn't close to 40 years (the period for which the hypothetical father has been investing), but gold has been around far longer than that and has proven to be a safe haven asset.

Your bank and your government would not know you bought BTC if you buy it P2P/in a decentralized exchange, it is when you use Binance, undergo compulsory KYC and link your identity and your bank details to Binance that it becomes obvious to your bank that you bought Bitcoin. You can buy Bitcoin in a P2P exchange, or even make an offer to buy Bitcoin on this forum and see who takes your offer up, that's if you are concerned about your privacy.
Taxation and confiscation of wealth are two different things, your funds can obviously be confiscated in any centralized exchange, either through the directive of your government, or by the decision of the exchange. As for taxation of Bitcoin, it would depend on the country you reside in, in the United States for example Bitcoin is taxable, but not in every country. Mind you also that taxation doesn't denote control.

It is a 4 point lead that Arsenal have over City, but Pep Guardiola's men have a game in hand, and a game to come against Arsenal on the 26th of this month, City are in a position they love to be in, and that is with their destiny in their own hands, if they win all their games from now until the end of the season, they are EPL champions for the third time in a row.

Having said that, i believe Arsenal have bottled it, the pressure has gotten to them, to throw away a two goal lead in two consecutive games against Liverpool and West Ham respectively is pretty bad and evident that the team is feeling the heat. City are going to win the league, this team know how to get the job done in EPL title races, it is going to be painful for Arsenal fans, spending this long on the summit and not winning it in the end, but that is going to be the reality i'm afraid.

The problem in signing Jude Bellingham is the money that would be involved in the deal, we read a couple of days ago that Liverpool have pulled out of the chase and have agreed to stop the pursuit of the English international because they don't have the financial strength to make the purchase and buy the other few players they need next season.

Having said that, the remaining teams vying to sign him would be City, PSG and Real Madrid. I don't think City would be too interested, unless they lose a few players in the summer. I think Bellingham would go to Real Madrid, it is a great club and they can handle his salary/wages and transfer fee, we'd see who finally signs him in the summer.

Well this meriting criteria/prerequisite would work only for non merit sources who have a few amount of Smerits to give out, thus if a user has around 5-6 Smerits to share, they can have the liberty/time to be this fastidious to ensure their scarce resources (Smerits) is given to the best possible posts. But for a MS who has quite a lot of source merits to give out to users, i don't think they would have the time to check previous posts of the user, they'd basically focus on the very post they are reading and want to merit, it is only when they find something suspicious about it that they can then dig a little bit deeper.
There is no system that is perfect, and the merit system is not, but it has somewhat being the most effective in combating spam in the forum. Smerits do not decay, even if Theymos says he might make it possible to do so in the future, and the only supply (except you're a MS) is 1 merit earned produces 0.5 Smerits.

Coca cola is a company that has a product to advertise, a product they want people to consume for their profit, Bitcointalk isn't a business nor a company, neither does it have a product to advertise. Coca cola spends millions of dollars annually on advertising, in order to make many times more than that in profit. It is funny comparing Bitcointalk and Coca cola in terms of advertising.

Having said that, Bitcointalk is just a forum for discussing Bitcoin and other whatnots, what product is the forum going to be advertising, and what profit is the forum going to get if it spends millions of dollars on advertising, the forum makes no profit, and it isn't run for that, the forum already has quite a lot of publicity and traffic because of Bitcoin. Gambling companies, mixers and exchanges have also made the forum more popular because they run their advertisement here to make money, and as long as paid signature campaigns stay in the forum, the traffic would stay pretty high.

There is no specific amount of deleted posts that would lead to a permanent ban, at least based on the unofficial rules of the forum, everything would be handled by the moderator on a case by case basis.

Well i don't think i have ever seen a ban appeal by a user who claimed they were banned because they had too many deleted posts. For newbies they would basically just be nuked, but for users who have been here for sometime, i don't think they should be worried about a permaban for deleted posts, but they should work on the overall quality of their posts to prevent this from happening.

Your responsibility if you discover this kind of bug should be to return it back to the exchange, it would be foolhardy to try and go on the run with this money when the exchange knows about you through your KYC documents, it might take sometime but the fact still remains that the exchange would come after you and would drag you to court, especially if the sum of money is quite substantial.
You can't create infinite money for one obvious reason already mentioned earlier in this thread, and also because it usually does not take long before the exchange would detect what's going on and immediately lock your account.

Bitcointalk is a forum to discuss about Bitcoin and other whatnots, what would be the benefit of the forum spending money to run advertisement. Notwithstanding the number of users here, there is no financial gain for the forum. Bitcoin is quite popular around the world, and for the most people who find out about Bitcoin, it does not take long before they discover Bitcointalk and register on the forum. There are old users who have left the forum, but new users register everyday, though what we miss is the knowledge of some of the old users, and not the number they added to the overall traffic.

Having said that, because of Bitcoin, businesses like exchanges, mixers, gambling websites (that accept crypto), etc, have all sprung up, and there is no better place for them to advertise their business than in the biggest Bitcoin community, thus the users here can earn money through posting in the forum, and that is an added incentive and a reason why the traffic remains pretty high. I think if there is ever an end to paid signature campaigns, that's when the traffic in the forum would really go down, and we'll experience shortage of users.

City sought his signature two summer's back, but as always it is always difficult to negotiate with Daniel Levy, thus the talks broke down, and City then went ahead and signed Haaland last summer, and they definitely have nothing to complain about. It is almost impossible for Kane to join Arsenal, they are North London rivals to his current club, talks would hardly ever be productive between the two clubs, if ever started.
Personally i don't think there's anything wrong with him moving to the Bundesliga with Bayern Munich, but i'd love to see him remain in the EPL, and i am pretty sure he would want to do same, mainly because he is chasing the all time goal scoring record in the EPL and if he stays in the EPL for the entirety of his career, he is going to break Alan Shearer's record of 260 goals. For Manchester United, he would complement their team and make them title contenders, and maybe Kane can then finally get himself a trophy.

Yeah, they need 3 goals, not even to win the game, but to level the scoreline and prolly take the game to extra time, City have to completely go to sleep for that to happen, and that's not something that happens quite often. City are known for scoring quite a lot of goals, and it is difficult to outscore them, even more by a large margin. The odds are completely in City's favor, if Bayern come into that game all flying forward looking for goals, it leaves gaps in their defense, and City are good at exploiting such, if Bayern are patient to wait for their time, City would be content with that as they already have a huge lead, i cannot see a way back for Bayern Munich.

Well, over the years i have read people's claims that all they do for a living is crypto trading, i find it difficult to wrap my head around it because i know how risky it is to depend 100% on crypto trading, but my conclusion on the matter is that these people didn't just start trading crypto to make money, they were already prolly rich or had enough money from another source, and rather than just sit idle and spend money, they found a hobby (or a job) in crypto trading. I don't think it is possible for someone who does not have enough financial strength to depend on only crypto trading.

Having said that, i can only speak for myself, every earning from anything crypto is an additional source of income, i'd be standing on a very thin rope if i made a living solely on crypto, life is so demanding in the country where i live and the cost of living is quite high, thus a single source of income is somewhat unfeasible.

The goal of Bitcoin is to give you financial sovereignty and complete freedom/liberty with your funds. The early adopters like Satoshi and the others didn't buy Bitcoins, they mined all the Bitcoins they had back then, it was not hard for them to do so, but it was impossible for them to exhaust the fixed supply before Bitcoin accrued value and mining became more difficult and sophisticated.
Hodling entails being your own bank, and that does not come easy, it comes with quite a lot of responsibilities that many people fail to have, that's why people find it pretty difficult to be their own bank, either they send their funds to exchanges or they make mistakes keeping their seed phrase, my point is basically that hodling isn't easy and people should be well prepared and learned before they start hodling.

The thing is, it is almost impossible to replace players with the quality of Luca Modric, you can only get a younger player with similar talents, and one that would develop well into the future and could then be as good and successful as Modric, or even better. Having said that, the midfielder Real Madrid are looking to slot into that Modric role is Jude Bellingham, there's rumor that Liverpool have pulled out of the race to sign the English international, thus it is now between Real Madrid, Manchester City and PSG. Real Madrid can afford to allure any player in the world, thus it is definitely going to be an interesting prospect for Bellingham to play for Madrid and i think they might recruit him in the summer.

There are no easy games in title run-ins, and City have tough games against the likes of Chelsea, Brighton and even an Everton side that are fighting for their lives at the bottom end of the table, these games aren't easy ones. I think both Arsenal and City have almost similar fixtures from now until the end of the season, similar in terms of opposition team strength, thus whoever wins the title deserved it, and not because they had easier games right at the end than their fellow title contenders.

Having said that, the only difference between the two teams is that City are still alive in three competitions, whilst Arsenal have only the EPL to play, they have a full week to prepare for games from now until the end of the season, it could increase City's fatigue level, but City are built for title races like this, they have a good squad depth, and the quality at their disposal is enough for them to challenge on all three fronts.