Overall, there's no doubt things will be bleak in the coming months

Nevertheless, the economic downturn now unfolding, as any other such crisis, may in fact offer good investment opportunities. That's what Warren Buffett's wisdom is teaching us. The idea behind it is fairly simple, though. If we assume that the current troubled times will be over one day, it makes sense to buy up assets that are going to pull through while everything is cheap around the block (technically, we are not there yet, thus more pain is about to come). So, when the dust settles and the sun shines bright again, you will be ahead of the pack and able to reap mighty profits coming up on top of your investment acumen

I'm curious if you are aware that your stats actually prove my point

The dude wagered over 845 bitcoins, took home some measly 0.31624212 BTC (in relative terms), which is less than 0.04% of the wagered amount, and was obviously using "some kind of sophisticated betting strategy" (read, martingale). If you followed my martingale thread over there, you would know that with more or less safe martingale settings I managed to earn times my initial amount and with a way higher wagered amount to profit ratio (close to astounding 50%):



But I'm not saying that I was betting randomly with half of my balance at stake at once (which would kill me in the blink of an eye)

It is a matter of understanding variance, and how you can profit off it


Luck gets completely averaged out over thousands of bets (in fact, more like millions of bets), and that is exactly the point of running so many tests to determine when it will happen, or rather start out to, for 999 players out of 1000. There can be extreme outliers, but in real life before you hit one you will have lost your balance many times unless you bet small. However, in the latter case your winnings will be as small compared to the balance, so your only reward will be witnessing such an outlier for real eventually (like in a decade of nonstop rolling or so)

These stats are not telling what OP hints at

You could set the multiplier to something like 1.01 and then the total majority of your rolls will be winning -- easily over 90%. And so what? Does it mean that you will be able to score big wins every other day, multiplying your balance a thousand times in the process? Not in the least. You could actually win in the long run (see here how), but your profits will still be tiny compared to wagered amounts (as the stats clearly show). In other words, luck folds pretty fast while house edge takes over, and there is no chance you can win huge amounts on a regular basis, year in and year out, without losing as much or more

You can't brute force a 2FA code

For the simple reason it is a time-based one-time pass code (the most widespread variety that I know of). It changes every minute, and after it expires it is less than useless. The only way to get around 2FA is to get the secret phrase (or a QR-code associated with it). But if you are using a mobile device for its generation, to pull off this trick would require hacking both your email and the device itself. Not a totally impossible task on its own but a feat that would most certainly call for more than just one method of penetration, like a lot of social engineering coupled with direct physical access (forum was partially hacked this way a few years ago)

In fact, you don't necessarily need anything extra for 2FA (like a cellphone or whatever). Just use a browser plugin instead and you are good to go. I'm using one myself for sites where 2FA is a requirement (with Google Chrome)


I don't really see how it is different from going with password only. Your scheme would make our lives more difficult, not more secure, as far as I can tell. If they can steal your password, they will be able to steal your pass code as well. So the conclusion is simple and straightforward, 2FA does add to more security overall, while the second option presented does not (unless I'm missing something)

Transactions won't become faster

I mean beyond what is specified or implied by the Bitcoin protocol, which is one block of transactions per 10 minutes (unless you are using LN or similar technology for off-chain transactions). But you probably already know that, don't you? Of course, if there's a dramatic surge in the hash rate, we will likely see a boost in the number of new blocks found, which will bring about faster confirmations as well, but this rise will soon be leveled out by the respective rise in the mining difficulty. And then we are back to square one (minus some miners having to pull the plug)

It's the same with long-term investing, in a way

You may have to literally wait years until a particular investment starts to bring in dough. But unlike poker, you can "play" many hands at once. This is Warren Buffett's approach. He can wait decades simply because some (well, most) of his investments made decades ago are now paying off. Is it possible with poker or is it more like a life of a butterfly which has no future and no memory of the past?

freebitco.in has an insane house edge of 5% or something to that tune

So it is no surprise that you can lose 32 bets in a row on x2 multiplier (provided you have that much money in the first place). With a regular house edge of 1%, I've seen streaks of 28-29 losses, although on a somewhat higher multiplier (like 40% winning chance). People anecdotally report and I can confirm that variance (which is responsible for longer losing streaks) is surging with odds below 37% up to a point where it becomes completely unmanageable (read, don't try your luck and practice martingale at odds lower than 37%)

The change of hearts would be negligible

Online gambling has been around for a decade if not longer, so whoever wanted to play at home are already playing at home. People go to Vegas and similar places because they want real interaction and socialization, maybe not even so much gambling itself but the entourage of it, the environment and the spirit of gambling, plus things that typically come along with gambling (e.g. hookers if you win and drinking buddies if you lose)

The coronavirus death toll is estimated to be at 244,000 to date

Just curious, do you know how many people die daily in road accidents? Over 3,700 people, which produces a total of 1.35 million people worldwide every year, month in and month out. Now imagine that all these people, mostly healthy adults and youths, stay at home due to this pandemic and don't die in car wrecks. Simple stats and 3d grade arithmetic. Now tell me that the virus cannot be a blessing in disguise, or turn out to be one eventually, to all those people who would have otherwise died in these accidents (and their dear ones)

This logic is not without flaws

And its major flaw or weakness is that the people you refer to (investors) would be better off financially if they just chose to buy bitcoins with their dollars (or whatever) at a market price instead of buying mining rigs, and then simply held the cryptocurrency. It makes sense to mine at a loss only if you are already heavily invested in this business, know all of its ins and outs, and see the bright days ahead when your efforts and pains will be rewarded accordingly (like Bitcoin hitting 100k in a couple of months)

Yeah, that thought eats at me when I think about it, thank you. It was circa 2015, and what I lost was worth around 500 dollars back then


In the PD signature campaign we were paid 0.4 BTC monthly in late 2013 and early 2014. So it was like 4 months of posting. On the other hand, just selling anything below 1k turned out to be a disaster and waste of capital (unless you managed to buy back at lower or even somewhat higher prices)


What makes you think that casinos are looking for addictive gamblers, which is what you seem to imply? But really? Casinos are interested in a steady cash flow and deep pockets (aka cash cows), but gambling addicts are neither here nor there since they can lose only so much, apart from them being bad for karma as well as being the cause for a host of legal issues that they can inflict once they start to wreak havoc upon themselves and their families

Simply put, gambling addiction is as bad for a reputable casino as it is for its players (read, play responsibly)

I replied to your post here

Let's keep it simple

You show me these people who "are in overall profit after making millions of bets" while not using "some kind of sophisticated betting strategy" (like "Martingale-DOGE" by my invention), i.e. by pure luck alone, and I will agree that there is however small a chance that you can still be in the game after so many rolls betting randomly (as we are talking about luck here) and risking your entire balance at each roll of a die (don't miss this part)

It would be an extreme outlier, most likely caused by a glitch in a casino RNG expertly exploited by a smart gambler, even though in that very case it makes no sense to place so many bets when you could just bet high once or twice and then run with the spoil. Unless, of course, you mean successfully betting high a few times and betting 1 satoshi 1 million times afterwards. Then you would likely remain in profit indeed

Well, it was a little different with me. It is not like I started to gamble because I wanted to participate in a gambling signature campaign but rather I took to gambling specifically because I had enrolled in such a campaign. It was probably the first ever signature campaign on the forum back in 2013 (correct me if I'm wrong on this), and it turned out to be the PrimeDice signature campaign, one of the first Bitcoin casinos out there. So I thought why not try it out with the free coins that I received via that campaign

And then I ended up losing ~1.5 BTC

That's one of the reasons brick-and-stone casinos use chips

Indeed, chips are more handy and convenient overall (compared to paper money or coins), but we shouldn't throw away a psychological aspect of them either. As the case described above proves, most people deep down don't feel like they are playing with real money, and that's what casinos want. Otherwise, gamblers would be way more cautious, careful and prudent with their shekels. That's not what casinos want. They want you to be reckless and wild, so when you see a pile of chips, they are just that, round pieces of cheap plastic

The higher price on its own won't suffice

More specifically, small miners dancing around the breakeven point can survive only if the price keeps rising over a long enough timeframe (say, a month or longer). If this is the case, they will be able to mine at a loss and hope (read, pray) that the price goes north in the near future so they are able to sell for a profit

However, if the price just rises and then stays there, the difficulty will catch up in a short while, and their losses will come back with no chance of making ends meet. In this manner, small miners are like small businesses -- generally full of hope but more often than not ending up in pain and debt

Actually, I thought about that

These are all valid concerns and considerations. However, if this info is freely and easily available on relevant sites, why not share it with us? We would then check these stats and see for ourselves. I looked through the entirety of this thread (yes, all 13 pages), and haven't found any links other than to some construction worker jumping "from rags to riches" (an obvious case of luck at play) and another poster showing their stats, which are nothing out of the ordinary from my point of view (as I explained, you can beat the house edge with martingale)

You don't get it

But let me help you. A miner's profit consists of two independent variables, i.e. the block reward (a variable set in stone until changed by halving) and the fees that she collects from the transactions included in the block (a floating variable). Then, if the network fees now constitute the majority of mining profitability (over 50%), the coming block reward halving won't make a dramatic dent in profits, even if the fee structure remains essentially the same