Probably worth defining the scope of OTC. Since OP is relating it to whales, then OTC simply means deals between buyer and seller, without the supervision of the exchange, typically brokered deals so the broker is the supervisor in this case.

As pointed out, huge cost savings, as fees or commissions are just done by the broker, and usually the bulk of the order is at a fixed price, so it's reliable and predictable for both parties financially. At exchanges, you've to rely on the demand and the depth of the orderbook. Whales probably can wipe out most exchanges' orderbooks, so they have to trade at various exchanges before prices slip.

But without protection of escrows (the broker, or like LBC, built-in escrow), unless you're face-to-face, verifying each party's funds, there is a risk of defaulting on payments that aren't lump sums (and they usually aren't). Buying/selling at an exchange guarantees those funds/Bitcoin (though doesn't guarantee the exchange itself will honour your withdrawal!), since they're locked up in the orders.

Best bet for us non whales, to me, still them P2P platforms. LBC. Bisq. But they're not perfect, still the risk of needing arbitration.

And that's why people shouldn't be throwing around the phrase "decentralised" as they please. The fact that the exchange had a founder, who ran, managed, and operated it, should immediately have made the use of DEX terminology erroneous. The only good thing I suppose was that funds were never centralised but imagine what else he shared with prosecutors (the story claims his fines were actually reduced because he cooperated)? IP addresses? Emails (I don't know if ED uses it)?

Course they had a case. And made it well.

All credit due to all personalities in the space, whoever they are and who they've become. At least there's a concession that lots of things could have been thought of in the beginning but it's no one's fault that they weren't, and it's not a measure of failure, rather what could have been done better. And hindsight is always wiser than the present, too, who's to know what would have happened had "high volume transactions" been a focus instead of the basics outlined in the white paper?

Wasn't it just a week ago though that some other guy talked about the Bitcoin experiment possibly failing but arguably already successful as a store of value?

Hi BK!

Been a month at your sportsbook now. Just to ask here. I sent a support ticket but it's still Open since 24th Oct maybe you could help me out.

1. I tried wagering enough to meet the New Players Welcome Bonus, but wasn't sure if I needed to do anything extra about it. Do I?
2. Logged in today to find a Freebet, but can't for the life of me figure out how that landed. If it's from the welcome bonus in Point 1, I think I was expecting a bit more, plus it wasn't in the amount of the bonus mentioned. Also didn't win any other prize or wagering contest so can't tell where it came from.

How do I sort this out?

Boo Europa League! Arsenal couldn't win, and one of the Red Bulls couldn't beat poor Celtic.

Change of scene, and I like the odds on both teams I'm betting on tonight in Serie A and the Scottish Premier League. So a straightforward WIN parlay is in order:

Also, I got a nice free bet from BetKing, which is really cool, it does pay to play daily, but I won't add this to my stats if I win, just to share: Hannover 96 vs Wolfburg. 468 units on Wolfburg WIN @2.49 (freebets aren't returned as winnings)

Game 1: Frosinone Calcio vs Fiorentina. Fiorentina to WIN @1.77. BCR odds: 1.74
Game 2: Aberdeen vs Hibernian. Aberdeen to WIN @2.44. BCR odds: 2.43

Parlay for 110 units at Betking @4.31. BCR Parlay: 4.23
Odds advantage: 1.89%
Units advantage: 8 units

.

Note: additional -20 units from 2 bets miscalculated on Nov 7 (I calculated on 100 instead of 110 units!)

Arsenal couldn't break down defences at home, so yeah, I got screwed on my parlay too (though Leipzig's "shock" loss to Celtic did me over anyway). Been good riding for Rangers and Gerrard, while not so for Celtic and Rodgers, up until last night. Rangers were really unlucky though, they probably gave Spartak a few jitters, score was even 3-2 at half time already. At least Rangers aren't whipping boys anymore under Gerrard. They just need a consistent goal scorer (ignoring last night's 3 goals, of which 1 was an OG). I think 1 more win, hopefully, and they can progress.

My early pick Bordeaux finally registered a point but I think it's too late for them. Even if they win next 2 games, which they must for any change, they must hope Zenit also wins their 2 games.

Yeah, I used blockchain for a very long time, only because I guess it was my first, and it's just so familiar. But they had several bugs that persisted for so long, most still not fixed today! Like wrong timestamps on outputs, wrong negative balance on some addresses with doublespends that should have been resolved long ago... to name a few I can remember.

Once I switched to bech32, was easier to move on and yeah, I like blockchair the most now - if only because of bech32 support (but their tx details are really nice too.

Thanks for your response! Yeah, the value of the information would be much, much higher just be enabling real-time (or at least minutes of delay) information.

Really would like info on closed channels - duration they were open and amount (I don't suppose they'll show volume as well?)

GEO chart = awesome! Just strange I didn't find any private nodes listed. As suspected, not much Chinese support for Lightning (those 5 could even be from Hong Kong and Taiwan otherwise), equal to the nodes from Singapore in fact. A few other surprises... and almost half in N America alone. Five dropped out too.

Yeah, it's ok. Can't say I know much about Liquid and sidechains stopped getting me interested after the mild disappointment with rsk. Still a ways to catch up with the features of Blockchair (just my current favourite explorer) but this was always going to be Liquid centric.

That's two new explorers I've looked at in 2 days. My feeling is one that combines Bitcoin with all its sidechains and then LN... Would be real popular.

Not every day a parlay crumbles to my delight, as our hedging bet on United worked out well. Let's hope Lady Luck continues to gift us wins, past 3 wins have been thanks to own goals and last minute snuck in goals. I wonder these days if odds makers also have a luck index!

Europa takes over from the big boys, and I've got my eyes on both Red Bull teams from Bundesliga to do their usual. Pad them up with the usual Chelski and Gunners wins.

Game 1 Rosenberg vs RB Salzburg. Salzburg WIN @1.55. BCR: 1.53
Game 2 Celtic vs RB Leipzig. Leipzig WIN @2.06. BCR: 2.04
Game 3 BATE Borisov vs Chelsea. Chelsea WIN @1.37. BCR: 1.34
Game 4 Arsenal vs Sporting CP. Arsenal WIN @1.31. BCR: 1.30

Parlay for 110 units at Betking @5.73. BCR Parlay: 5.448
Odds advantage: 5.18%
Units advantage: 28.2 units

I very rarely bet on Manchester United, who're the devil to me in every sense of the word heh heh, but couldn't ignore the odds last night (6.66) - literally the devil's number calling out to me to bet, which I did... and won. They were outplayed and outclassed, and got the full 3 points courtesy of an own goal. Liverpool have been in Juventus's shoes, too often in past campaigns for me to enjoy it, but they've been showing more grit recently, minus the limp display in Belgrade.

Was it now 3 comebacks in 4 games for United? Mourinho negative football at its best, I guess.


Yeah, and I had the usual spot on method of picking the upsets to parlay, Lyon and Juventus let me down, but was lucky to have hedged with a United upset. Entertaining season so far, both domestic and continental. Just still unhappy that City is steamrolling too easily.

Strange that you might have witnessed the "shitshow" of fees and congestion in December 17 but maybe weren't paying attention to what's happened since?

You keep saying Bitcoin is obsolete. Might surprise you but this is at least a 5-year old argument relentlessly picked up and trumpeted by every other altcoin to have ever floated past (talk about shitstorm).

Scalability is a good problem to have. That's what I keep saying. And Bitcoin has taken care of that, Ethereum probably will... Different from other coins who've claimed scaling abilities but have yet to put the claim to test. Probably never will.

Even if, let's say, that Bulgarian stash were true, they'd surely have used it up in mixers by now. Judging from the popularity of tumblers, keep seeing new ones come up, the world's very happily tumbling it all around now. Then we've got privacy wallets coming out of beta (Just myself saw Wasabi wallet), and then LN channels getting larger... The much discussed perceived fungibility shortfalls of Bitcoin won't be an issue soon.

Worse case scenario if seized coins do fall into final hands of US govt, we'll just wait for them to auction it off to reenter circulation. Silk Road seized funds gave us a few new Bitcoin millionaires that way.

Oh and yeah, the way I've been using and receiving coins, I'd be really surprised if I don't have tainted satoshi...

That was a murderous night for me... but at least I was entertained. Nothing better than a crazy upset to set the blood on fire. Liverpool's group is completely open, and could still be everyone's game even with 1 game left, depending on the results of the next match week.

United are a very tempting predicament with such good odds, so I'll take them as a hedge. You never know how it is with Mourinho.

Parlay 1:
Game 1: Valencia vs Young Boys. Valencia WIN @1.53. BCR odds: 1.52
Game 2: Juventus vs Man Utd. Juventus WIN @1.64. BCR odds: 1.63
Game 3: Lyon vs Hoffenheim. Lyon WIN@2.28. BCR odds: 1.64
Parlay for 110 units at BetKing @5.72. BCR Parlay:5.526
Odds advantage: 3.51%
Units advantage: 19.4 units

Single bet for 110 units on Man Utd to WIN at Juventus with Bitcoinrush @6.66. Betking odds:6.37
Odds advantage: 4.55%
Units advantage: 29 units

Thanks again to the Betking guys, fun contest to enter, and every bit as entertaining as promised. I'll have learnt a thing or two about the way this contest was run... apparently variety attracts a lot of attention, even if the points system were a bit more complex.

@DS indeed, I would have needed to win not 1 but at least 2, maybe 3, more bets (I go for quite long parlays usually) to make up those points in the last week (2 5x/1 bets would have carried me but I don't often get so lucky.

I can fully understand the ongoing infatuation with stablecoins, from a hedging point of view. But these instruments will always be backstops. Temporary solutions until the actual asset itself becomes mature to the level desired (maybe this temporary in our relative view means decades, maybe our lifetime).

They will fail, simply because they are backed by or pegged to currencies whose years are already numbered. Other stablecoins may last longer, pegged to baskets of currencies, pegged to precious metals, whatever. But the fact is, their shelf lives are already limited by the very currency they depend on - which are all part of the old world that must give way and collapse under their own designs.

Call me a pessimist but as much as we'd like to believe that people learn their lessons after making their mistakes (not possibly, they make mistakes first time around, sort of a given. Otherwise they luck out and just happen to make calls at the right time), people don't. Take a look at the world of international finance. We haven't learnt from the various big lessons of the past century. The Great Depression of the early 1900s to the turn of the 2000s "great depression". The global economic crises every decade or so.

Stock market traders, crashing and burning out after riding the highs. No different from Bitcoin speculative markets. They're kidding themselves if they think they got smarter. Imagine all those guys riding the 2017 boom, they probably thought they were a lot smarter simply for owning Bitcoin. They're probably the same ones now whining and wringing their hands. They'll do no different the next ATH.

Thanks for the responses on Starling @LeGaulois and @alani. I'm not a UK resident at all, but was in the past able to open accounts with a rental address, phone and bank statement, and then used Transferwise regularly until 2016, switched to Revolut, which worked very well even with quite plainly Bitcoin-related transactions. As mentioned, the latter's been problematic of late so looking for a similar solution, hopefully less unfriendly towards Bitcoin (and allows non UK residents but able to provide residential proof).


I can vouch that USD accounts for the big banks in Malaysia have no issues for big limits (namely, USD limits that exceed daily MYR limits). Same as you, I just prefer having as many options as possible. I'm extremely mobile and none of my banks give me a 1-size-fits-all solution. It's still possible to get a lot of things done, but not without a lot of hassle.

But as alani123 points out, so far my fallback plan is P2P (localbitcoins or bisq) and that doesn't look in danger of closing shop for the foreseeable future.

Wait, so the stats don't update in real time then? Only when you update manually, or what exactly did you mean. Checked the explorer out and hey it's a first go so well done. Curious to learn how you might update, or verify changes made off chain. Like mocca's node, it should have updated when he closed channel or?

Stupid question here but explorer shows public nodes... How would a node be private and how does that look like?

A privacy wallet for Bitcoin that's out of Beta, nicely done. Can't say I've heard about this before, so wonder where all the beta testing took place. By chance, any link to Samourai (gleaning from the Japanese inspiration...).

Definitely want to try this out, even if the fact that it's native Segwit only might mean (by their own admission) some form of privacy lost (but only revealing Wasabi coinjoin utxo).

Only note that possible leaks could happen with wallet recovery... and I recover my wallets quite often! Just because I delete the client after using on most devices.

Still... looks a decent light client on paper. Anyone else give this a whirl?