I was really surprised to see that new white card in football. When I first read about it I thought that maybe the referee was colourblind and someone made a bad joke. But this seems to be a new trend now to make football more about fair play and sportmanship than about big rivalries. Not sure if we really needed a white card, even though this might give some new opportunities to bet on matches and how many white cards we are going to see per season. Many football teams are very hold and have a long history of team where they are friendly which each other, and teams where they have a big rivalry. Losing an important match against your nemesis can increase tensions a lot for the next several matches. So I am wondering now if there is any opportunity to make money with it. Are they maybe some special games where we would expect to see more white cards?

Not really sure if this is the case in the crypto market right now. Looking at bitcoin for example we see the price is up 38% in the last month. That is a huge profit for anybody who bought his coins around the 16,000 USD. To me it seems that the bottom for bitcoins is around that level. The price has dropped a few times to that level, but nowhere close to the 10,000 USD level from a few years ago. I still remember Robert Kiyosaki stating publicly on Twitter that he will be buying a lot of Bitcoins at 17,000 USD. Like him there must be many big investors who would be willingly but a lot of coins if prices would ever drop further. The best thing we can do is to not try to find the exact bottom, because if we are wrong we could miss out on the next rally. Better to stay invested and participate on any new upwards trend.      

The last four matches of the BLAST Premier Spring 2023 are being played today and tomorrow. Was a bit of a surprise to see NaVi losing 2-0 against G2. For the last few weeks NaVi has been struggling, but still they two matches weren't even close. G2 looked so dominant in the match and simple with an ADR of only 55 couldn't perform. Especially NiKo is playing so well since leaving FaZe Clan. For the next big tournament I will go with G2 to win it probably. Today is playing Astralis vs NiP, two very equal teams where the match could be going either way. Astralis is a bit more likely to win, but to me it seems like a coin flip. I will go with a small bet on NiP. The second game is going to be NaVi vs Complexity, which is going to be an easy win for NaVi. Tomorrow will be BiG vs Heroic which is going to be hard match for BiG. It's my favourite German team and I am going to make a small bet on them, even though it's very unlikely for them to win against Heroic. BiG played really well in their 2-0 match against Team Liquid, maybe they can pull of a small miracle. The last match will be OG vs the winner of NiP/Astralis.

I agree with you that without the big money in the crypto world the prices would be much more stable and be more attractive for people looking for a save way to store money. The last big  bitcoin rally showed us how fast and high the prices could rise when there are a big investors like Elon Musk trying to influence the bitcoin market. To a certain extent it is good to get the publicity for the crypto community, as we still need more people to get involved with it. By now everybody has earned of bitcoins and so many more companies are willing to accept bitcoin as a form of payment. The problem is of course that we can't deny anybody access to bitcoins and other crypto currencies. If some rich investors want to diversify their portfolio with cryptos than there isn't much we can do about it. Same goes for the traders who are only looking for a short term profit, they will buy what ever project that seems the most profitable to them.

I had no idea Tom Brady was doing so badly in 2022. When I was younger I always felt a bit jealous about him, because he managed to get Gisele Bundchen, my number 1 crush when growing up. Seems a bit crazy how you can "ruin" the perfect life with so much money and the perfect family. Ruin is probably the wrong word here, he is healthy and will so fine in life. Even in case he lose a big fortune, he can just rebuild it. A few new advertising deals and he should be fine. No idea how you can lose a lot of money in the FTX scandal, with the millions he had it would have been best to spread the money out, buy different properties to rent out, a well diversified stock portfolio, a save retirement fund. High net worth individuals usually have money managers that make sure they don't take all the risky deals out there. What we can learn from this is that even the best among us can lose big in gambling. We should always gamble within our comfort zone and make sure not to use money we can't afford to lose.

Renting is definitely not a waste of money. Just because you own a property doesn't mean you live for free. There are fees and taxes you have to pay if you are owning or if you renting. Then there is the whole topic of modernisation. In my country when you are doing repairs on your house or apartment you are required to meet new requirements for insulation. This makes even smaller projects very expensive. So in case you own an older property or there is an external damage that is uninsured it can be very costly to own. The biggest issue for me is at a younger age that you are fixed in one location. If you get a better job in a different city it might be hard to sell your house and move.

That's pretty normal, why should a casino even pay out 100%? They can't afford it, or where else would they make a profit to run the casino. Casinos are private companies that need to make a profit to exist. Buying slot machines, renting a place, paying taxes and electricity all costs money. The online casino needs to run a website, have IT security and support staff and also pay taxes and electricity. We shouldn't feel bad about not getting back 100%, as this would also be no guarantee for us to get all our money back. There is still randomness involved and this will only make the jackpots a little bigger, but not change our chances of winning much.

In my opinion money is only a tool to make life easier. Before people were using money to buy and sell things all trading was done with goods directly or by using precious metals in between. I don't see today's world functioning without money, there are thousands of different goods which would need to be traded somehow. People are not graving for the money itself but rather the goods they can buy with that money and the freedom it gives. Would a country without money really? I don't think so, who would make sure that everybody gets what he needs and not takes things from others? As long as there is evil in the world it will be hard to live without laws and rules that protect private property and income.

What a sad story, taking advantage of a person like that. And even if she returned 317k USD, what happened to the other 220k USD? It's all gone or did they manage to retrieve the rest of the money? I feel like that people are not willing to learn from such stories. Every few years there seems to be a story where family members betray each other for a money. A lottery winning is a life changing event that will let people disregard everything. In my country there is a saying that any friendship will stop once there is enough money involved. That is why we should never put a friend or family member in such a position where they have easy access to our money. I would probably never speak to my cousin again if he stole 500k USD from me. It's one thing to come and ask for money after winning the lottery, but stealing all of it is a nogo. Even if she returns the money to me, how can you trust someone like that again?  

That is a good take on the gambling life and how to deal with losses. I would even go a bit further and say that our loss is not only a payment for the pleasure we get from gambling, but also a required loss for the common good of other gamblers. It's clear that we can't be winning all the timing, because then the casino would run out of money and go bankrupt. So maybe it can make us feel a bit better after losing a big game that at least someone else has now the chance to win a lot of money and we helped to build up the jackpot. There needs to be people losing money so that the casino can build up jackpots for some lucky gamblers to win. It's like with a lottery, were 99% of the people need to lose so that there is enough money for the winners to have a decent amount to win. My main motivation behind gambling is that I value a large win much higher than a small loss. It is more likely to lose a higher number of games than we are going to win, that is why the plan is to keep losses as low as possible while having a chance to get a big win eventually. The longer we gamble the harder it becomes to control our emotions. It's important become to heavily invested in every win or lose, because we can't control the outcome of a game.

He is definitely right, online gambling is so much more easily accessible than gambling in a physical casino. We could spend 24/7 at an online casino and only take small breaks to sleep. We can start the day with gambling in bed before standing up, keep gambling in the train to work and during our lunch break. In the evenings we could gamble again in front of the TV. With tablets and mobile phones we can basically gamble anywhere at any time. That's why it's so important to have clear rules in place to keep our gambling habits in check. Personally I don't really like to do anything important on a small mobile screen. That's why I tend to only gamble on my desktop PC, even on a laptop I am not as comfortable. Another one of my rules is to not leave large amounts of money at the casino. Like this I have to at least deposit new money when I lose it all. It's another layer of safety to keep my gambling balance in order.

Da gebe ich dir Recht, die meisten neuen Leute hier im Forum schreiben im Bitcoin oder Altcoin Bereich und wollen erstmal mehr über Kryptowährungen lernen. Das ein neues Mitglied hier im Forum direkt ein Gewinnspiel startet ist schon sehr unwahrscheinlich, es sei denn er hat über Freunde und Bekannte vom Meritsystem erfahren. Als ich nach meiner Krypto Pause wieder zurück zum Forum gekommen bin mußte ich erstmal verstehen wie das neue Merit System funktioniert. Das alte System mit Aktivität und Anzahl der Beiträge fand ich besser. Ich glaube dass sich viele neue Mitglieder erstmal schwer tun mit dem Merit System. Ist leider schon schade, dass für normale Beiträge so wenige Merits vergeben werden und bei Gewinnspielen dann wiederum so viele. Und wenn man dann neue Mitglieder sieht die 1-2 Jahre im Forum dabei sind und die Hälfte meiner Beiträge haben aber schon Hero Rang sind frage ich mich auch öfters ob dass alles so mit rechten Dingen zugeht. Das Zweitaccounts überhaupt möglich sind ist auch schade, da sollte härter gegen vorgegangen werden. Auf der anderen Seite ist es auch natürlich schön wenn es mehr Gewinnspielel hier im Forum gibt, solange alles ordentlich abläuft.

That is a coo looking notebook, thanks for the raffle Willi.

Already voted on the Bitcointalk Community Awards and would go for 2 numbers:

29 - Mauser
61 - Mauser

Thanks and good luck to all.

I don't think this is going to be a profitable strategy for a casino. Limiting the whole operation to only use their own token puts a lot of pressure on possible clients. For example there are people who are only interested in bitcoins and don't own why alt coins, would you really want to force them into using your own tokens? I would expect them to rather stay away from your casino then to buy the token. Even if the casino is a one of a kind with their own new game that nobody else has. Then is still the question how will new customers come and try out your new games. If you don't allow fiat money and other crypto currencies you are limiting your reach of new customers a lot. It would make much more sense to give incentives to the gamblers to use your token than blocking all other cryptos. One idea could be to run special promotions that can only be withdrawn in your casino tokens, or you could give an extra deposit bonus for anybody who deposits your own token. The more crypto currencies you accept the more customers will come in my opinion.

It doesn't really matter where you want to invest the money, I would always advice against taking out loans to buy risky assets. You might have a good feeling about bitcoins and think there is going to be a bull market around the corner which you don't want to miss out on. But even with the best research and predictions there is no guarantee to make our desired returns. When it comes to investing borrowed money we face the risk to lose the money. In case our investments fails we will be still forced to repay the loan, which could ruin us financially for a long period of time. The best advice is to only invest the money we can afford to lose.

Yes it's crazy that Japan has a ban on gambling and at the same time in all the major cities you have a huge gambling culture with the famous Pachinko slot machines. I am not really sure why Japan has that strict laws on gambling, they seem to have come in 1907 which is more than 100 years ago. To me the laws seem outdated and today it's clear that many people would like to gamble more freely. I was two times in Japan already and every time I visited a Pachinko it was packed with people. Like in any society there is some people who enjoy gambling, in Japan they have a restricted chance to gamble only for goodies and not money itself. This seems like a unnecessary step as there are still ways to exploit the system and the government is fully aware of it. It seems that the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan tries for more than 20 years to change the laws and allow big casinos to be opened up. Japan is a fast growing population with a lot of old people around, they are selling more diapers for old people than for babies. Maybe the government is afraid that older people would punish them if they legalise gambling again, or maybe the Japanese people got so used to the limited form of gambling they have that they don't want it to change anymore.  

Welcome to the forum, it's great that you took the first steps in the crypto community and signed up here. Like you the first few times I heard about cryptos I was very cautious and didn't think this would last. Now with hindsight I wish I would have joined much early the crypto world and also had been more active right from the start when I first got involved. The forum here is the past place in my opinion to learn about cryptos. You can learn about trading and investing bitcoins or alt coins with a lot of different users here. You are absolutely right that we need to constantly learn to evolve and become better in all aspects of life. Stopping to learn something new each month means that we are standing still and since the world of changing so rapidly we are moving backwards. Keeping uptodate with all the new trends is hard. Good luck with your endeavours in the crypto community, I hope you will stick around.

Definitely a good strategy, who ever bought bitcoins right after FTX bankruptcy must already be a happy investor today. You need to a have a strong stomach to buy when everybody is selling. The main issue is that we don't know how low the price is going to drop. I am sure there were quite a few investors who hoped the price would drop down to 10,000 USD and would have bought a lot of coins then. It's hard to really predict where the bottom is and when prices are going to rise again. I kind of stopped trying to find the exact points where to buy and sell. For me it's much more relaxing to buy my coins over a longer period of time. So instead of making one big purchase, I rather make 3-4 smaller purchases over 3 months. That might result in a slightly higher average purchase price, but I save some time on doing research to find the perfect time to buy.

I have never hit that hand myself, but I saw it two times already in the past. One time was around 6 years ago at a friendly poker game with my friends. We had to preflop all ins and my friend with Al in spades hit a Royal Flush. It was a huge sensation and we took a photo for Facebook even though there wasn't a lot of money involved in the hand. The other time was on a online poker sit and go table last year. I wasn't involved in the hand myself and only watched as one player lost it all on a flush against the royal flush. And then there are the famous YouTube videos where you can see the professional players get lucky on TV. My best hand was a straight flush, but it's been a while since I got one. Getting 4 of a kind is much more common, the only problem with these monster hands is that you are not getting paid most of the time. For really profitable hands you want your opponent to hit a good hand where he is going to call you down, but not good enough to actually beat you.

Being cautious is good to a certain extend, but if we worry to much about all the things that could go wrong then we might miss out completely on the next big trend. It's still another year for the next halving, and it's true that many things could happen until then. The real question is if you expect crypto prices to drop much lower if something bad in the world happens again. In my opinion we are not going to see prices much lower than the 16,000 USD level. Who ever bought bitcoins in the last few years will be very happy by the end of 2024. I would rather stay invested and face the risk of short term price drops, then selling all my position and be at risk of missing out on the next big rally.