Ah! You disappointed me. Reading all way down, I thought you were going to put some interesting economic flaw in bitcoin pricing. But in the end, it turned out that the thread was just a shill for Bitflate and you were advocating the inflationary supply of bitcoin all along. You do realize that your argument is hilarious, right?

Hard fork simply means change in the network consensus rules such that the nodes no longer accept transactions/blocks based on old rules and vice-versa. There is no notable and intentional hard fork in Bitcoin Network so far. However, there were few patches to eradicate network vulnerabilities from time to time.

But since you are just holding bitcoins on a non-custodial wallet, you needn't worry about anything. In fact, you are not storing bitcoins on Electrum wallet. Your coins are stored on blockchain associated with your private keys. If you have safely backed-up your seed phrase (or private key) then your coins are safe. Even if, Electrum doesn't upgrade to the new consensus rule in the event of any future chain split, you can simply import your seed in a compatible wallet and spend coins on a new chain.

Only problem may come if you are using custodial wallet. In that case, your wallet may not upgrade to the new rules and you will be unable to spend coins on new chain.

No, it isn't like that. There are around 8-9M Indian crypto traders who bought or sold cryptos at least once in last 12 months. The number is not small. The first day after the bill announcement, Indian market experienced a deep fall. Before 2018, Indian situation had direct co-relation with average International bitcoin price. But after the introduction of pegged coins like USDT, market is working in two way: Indian Rupee <--> USDT <--> bitcoin

Current price of US Dollar in Indian Rupee is Rs. 73. Now see the chart below:


(image courtesy: WazirX)

USDT price declined to Rs. 60 (-20% from international price) on 31st Jan. So, first hit was taken by pegged coin. With current Indian volume, impact on USD price of bitcoin would have started if price of USDT declined below the level of Rs. 54-56, after that USDT would have been saturated and bitcoin would have started falling in dollar value. But that didn't happen because Indians expected that Finance Minister would say something about the bill in budget speech but she didn't say anything making people believe that cryptocurrencies are just small petty item in government's list of agenda and bill most likely won't be passed. Hence, positivity once again kicked in Indian market on 1st Feb and USDT price is once again trading around Rs. 74-75 (1-2% premium).

I just wrote a post in Indian section highlighting my views on why the bill most likely won't get passed: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5313704.msg56250260#msg56250260

Okay, there are couple of things that everyone should understand:

1. Content of bill isn't out yet. So, there's a possibility that government is only planning to ban the use of cryptocurrencies as tender. Trading may continue.
2. Government is planning to allow the use of certain cryptocurrencies alongside CBDC. So, we may still able to use bitcoin and other major altcoins even after ban.

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Now coming to the current scenario, in my opinion, it's highly unlikely that bill will be passed in current session. Only 31 days of working left, under-staffing due to Corona, around 20 bills in line, there's very less chances that Crypto Bill would be presented in both house and get passed.

In case bill isn't get passed, two things could happen, either bill will be presented or it won't. In case, it doesn't then current unregulated market will continue and we will have more time to persuade government to go for regulation instead of ban (this industry is growing exponentially, government can't just shut it down). In case, bill gets presented in the house, government has to provide the blueprint on how current holders would dispose their wealth. Around 80-90 lakh Indians are involved in crypto (white-labelled transactions), in case of blanket ban, price in Indian market would drop to zero and we won't left with any option to sell (government wouldn't want to see such situation). So, with healthy parliamentary discussion, the bill may refer to standing committee to further think about the situation. If it does, I am expecting that the committee would call for the recommendation from industry experts and stakeholders. If that happens, we all will try our best to change the government's decision. By we, I mean the major exchanges and crypto startups in India, as far as I know, all of 'em have all already prepared the necessary report to be presented in case (I also contributed in one draft).

So, there's nothing to be panic about right now. We are matures and want direct dialogues with government unlike farmers' situation.

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And guys, stop troubling USDT! Let it breathe around ₹77-80. Stop plunging it to ₹60.

Don't think that house edge is some hidden-underlying super-secret algorithm which magically gives advantage to the casino over player. It is rather an easy to understand phenomenon.

Next time you play the dice game, notice when your casino is paying you 2x. Is it when you roll above 50.5/under 49.5 or is it something different?

0% house edge means you and casino both have equal probability of winning or losing. So, for 2.00x odds, you should be winnings to roll above 50 or under 50. But that's not the case, casino will only let you win 2.00x when you roll above 50.5 or under 49.5, reducing your winning probability by 1%. This is known as the concept of house edge.

Let's see when Betnomi would be able to solve the issue. We can have #2 tournament on next Sunday (like Steamtyme suggesting).

As we are not having poker today, enjoy your Sunday with a nice movie and beer guys.

Mmm!! Things are not looking right today. I can't register for the tournament, 'Register' button is frozen and not working. Maybe that's the reason only 2 people registered so far. Let me talk to Betnomi support in a meanwhile. Let's hope it will be fixed, still around 100 minutes left.

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Password sent!



EDIT: Yeah, it's a confirmed issue.

Haha, I guess I wrote those words in one of the group yesterday. And thanks for not including what I wrote in bracket after 'Nirmala Behen Ji' else I would have been in big trouble. 

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I really hope that government is just planning to ban the usage of cryptocurrencies as legal tender (medium of exchange, mean of foreign remittance, etc). And this is also justified because government is unable to collect 5% TCS which it levies on foreign fund transfers. Trading in heavily regulated environment should be allowed. Let's see. 

However, I don't agree much with Zebpay here. Don't expect too technical definition of 'private cryptocurrencies'. I won't be amazed if Section 2 of the bill simply defines 'private cryptocurrencies' as 'the cryptocurrencies issued other than those issued by government'.

Exactly! It doesn't make any sense to ban cryptocurrencies. The government's view is that cryptocurrencies are being used in illicit activities and money laundering due to its anonymous nature. But the fact is, just by writing something in law book, you still won't be able to stop such activities. People can still use cryptocurrencies for illicit activities and get away with that.

Banning will only result in stoppage of legal activities like trading on KYC-exchange, using cryptocurrencies to pay/receive payments for the legal foreign contracts, using cryptocurrencies as the mean of payment in legal business, etc. This would rather result in lost-revenue for government as all these activities are good source of income for government in the form of tax.

The on-going discussion in Indian section: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5313220

I think the upcoming bill i.e. The Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2021 is the updated version of the bill - Banning of Cryptocurrency & Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2019 proposed in 2019 by the Committee formed by Finance Ministry. If we go by the old bill then it proposed the ban on holding and selling cryptocurrencies too under Section 8(1). If the new bill has same rules then using platform like Binance and non-KYC exchanges would also be deemed as offence.

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Right! This is where I think government is doing mistake. If they think that by just passing a law, they will be able to stop illicit activities which use cryptocurrencies in anonymous nature then they are wrong. Even after passing such law, those activities will continue. Only white-money transactions i.e. sale/purchase on legal and regulated exchanges will stop. This in turn only going to hurt government as it will make dent in government's revenue from taxes. Really foolish from government if they go on with the bill.

By the way,  you can't say China has regulated cryptocurrencies in positive sense. Crypto companies can't use banking services in China so the current Chinese situation is equivalent to what India had between June 8th 2018 and March 4th 2020.

Well, this was unexpected. The information I got from my source was different. It's bad to see that government is still skeptical about cryptocurrencies. I am not very positive about the word 'private'. I don't think government is being technical here and referring to privacy coins. The term 'private' here, more or less referring to the general meaning i.e. the ownership other than that of government.

I am also not very positive about the term 'exceptions'. I don't think it is being used to exclude some of the current coins like bitcoin from the ban. Rather, it would allow certain class of people to create cryptocurrencies. I think this is a kind of corporate favouritism. Since most of the big companies in India have already invested alot in blockchain technology, government will allow them to host their own coins. (Government being controlled by the corporate, this isn't something new we are witnessing, right?).

Anyhow, the details of bill still isn't available in public domain. Let see what it contains when it will be presented in Parliament.

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The image is not from the official bill. It's rather a list containing all 20 bills to be presented in upcoming Budget Session. Such mistake can happen, nothing special.

Hey,

Don't worry! Provide me your Provably Fair seeds for the round and I will verify the result for you. If result is not as per the payout made, I will talk with BC.GAME. Like Yahoo said above, the display can sometimes go wrong because it's just front-end animation but the underlying calculation shouldn't. So, go to 'My Bets' column, click on the round i.e. 23523966537694480 (as shown in image). You will see the box like below:



Click on verify then it will ask you to confirm. Click it and it will re-direct you to a new box, click 'Use New Seeds' and it will re-direct you back to first box with reveal seeds, like below:



Copy and paste the server seed, server seed (hash), client seed and nonce for the round here in the thread and I will have a look.

If the idea is to use bitcoin then yes, it doesn't make any sense to use pegged coin over bitcoin. They will try to sell their tokens by saying that you can use bitcoin with features like quick confirmation time, less fees, smart contract utility, etc etc. But in real essence, it isn't BITCOIN. Moreover, Ethereum network is facing scalability issue these days as well. In-fact, ETH fees is superseding BTC fees many a time every week.

But WBTC may come handy if someone is a regular trader. On centralized exchanges, one can easily exchange between tokens and bitcoin. But with the recent trend of DeFi, the concept of DEX is becoming popular. People are instantly trading with liquidity pools using decentralized protocol. Since, it is not possible to use BTC there, WBTC can solve the problem of BTC as base currency.

Coin control is not a standard term for a feature, it refers to the control on UTXOs to be spent in a transaction. It's pretty easy to manually select UTXOs in Electrum.  Select 'Coins' from the menu. Click the outputs to want to spend, right click and click 'Spend'. Now simply go to 'Send' tab and only selected outputs will be used as inputs in the transaction you create.

Yeah, RSK is one of the L2 solution for Bitcoin, there are more, in-fact there can be 'n' number of Layer-2 solutions. All you need is a separate blockchain (ethereum in case of WBTC and independent in case of RSK) and a way to peg-in and peg-out bitcoins. I never said WBTC is the only BTC-pegged token.

But the model of WBTC is worse than the others. It is way more centralized. They have mandated the requirement of KYC/AML for the users right in their model. So, WBTC can only be acquired if user does KYC/AML with the WBTC merchants, lol. When this DeFi craze started, I thought it would bring some positives to the Crypto Industry. But as we are progressing, DeFi is doing nothing but destroying the basis of cryptocurrencies by bring such centralized coin-models and adding dangerous volatility to market by creating excess leverage.

The price of WBTC doesn't dictate by the market forces of demand and supply. It is a pegged token and it's value is pegged to the value of bitcoin. To understand it better, take an example: suppose I have a poker site and you deposited $100 on my website. In return, I gave you 100 chips on my platform. So, the value of 1 chip = $1.

Similarly, the institutions behind WBTC will give you 1 WBTC if you give them 1 bitcoin. So far, total 114,498 BTC has been given to them for which they have minted equivalent WBTC. The custody of BTC received is maintained by BitGo Trust.

The difference in market cap is because,
Bitcoin's market cap is calculated as  Current bitcoin Price * 18.6M (current btc circulating supply)
Wrapped Bitcoin's market cap is calculated as  Current bitcoin Price * 114,498 (current supply of btc locked for WBTC).

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PS: WBTC is nothing more than a token created by organisations to bring BTC-exposure in DeFi trading. Don't consider it equivalent to BTC. It is hard-core centralized coin/token/whatever.

Reading the buzz, I thought many would join but it turned out to be the tournament with lowest attendance among all series. Pretty comfortable win for me, for most of the part I got favorable hands. Knocked out 5 out of 6 players and got 10 points (which I think would be more than necessary considering the participation as we go). It was funny kicking both @arallmuus and @Jayce with A6 within the span of few hands.

By the way, is it just me or you guys also feel bad folding the hands like the one below? Even though I won but still can't get over the fact that I folded the following hand, lol:

UPDATE

Chipmixer provided me the voucher equal to the amount I lost. Thank you for the same! Now we know why Chipmixer is easily one of the best service out there.

Chipmixer staff is currently determining the cause of the issue. Once they are able to resolve it, an announcement will be made here by them.

I have emailed you the entire case with as much information as I could retrieve. Do inform me if anything else is needed. I would be happy to provide as far as it doesn't intrude privacy much.


I think I overstated the situation. It wasn't changing on every refresh. But it surely changed two-three times and I was redirected to captcha page.


I have included the name of VPN provider alongside the exact server I was using at that time, in case that helps.

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Good to know that your issue is resolved. So, did you get the mixed private keys in the same session where the deposit address changed earlier?

Just because a stupid Exchange wanna stand out in the competition and credit the deposits after only 1 confirmation, it doesn't mean Bitcoin is supposed to work that way. This is an unnecessary FUD spread by Bitmex. Such events happen and there is nothing to worry if parties accept the transactions after more than 1 confirmation (3-6 preferred).

Added @Cointelegraph website to my ignore list.