We have just had the halvening. Historically that leads to upticks. Then we are moving into that part of the year when the jumps in price happen. One worldwide worry has been that despite the bad employment situation, the markets seems to continue to surge. This gap between the wealth of richest and subsistence level income for salaried classes MAY lead to some form of social protests. Yet, world over, people don't really have the belly for protests at this time.

A drop to 5900 from ~9500 seems unlikely. Though, one has to ask, what kind of service are they giving if they will start liquidating the assets. As long as they have your BTC, It is with them, right? What is the meaning of providing a loan service that would depend on liquidating your collateral without even checking if you can repay back in time. How does that make sense? Is this the model that most such "loan" services are following??

Are there even that many companies in the services board to whom a manager can send such a PM?? Most of the casinos already have a signature campaign or have had one in the past. Just about anybody should be able to send a simple message asking the potential client whether they are interested in some form of advertisement. In case they show interest by replying, the manager can then show them portfolio, results and such.

Campaign management space has become very competitive lately with a lot of new people offering such services. Ditto for people looking to stack sats in signature campaigns. There is less fish in the sea and more fishing boats with every passing day. If a separate board means a more professional approach and standardization of these services, then its a welcome move. But that would need a far more collaborative approach between all stakeholders (including forum admin, staff and companies that choose to advertise) than just a separate space for CMs.

Your disagreement to his disagreement results in agreement to the original suggestion. Your explanation says otherwise..Which one is it?

Thanks @fiulpro and @Artemis2 for trying to take the "light" out of my interplanetary solar sails.
There is no fault in the equation but you don't need to attain speed of light to begin mars colonies. Why doesn't anyone take Elon's plan seriously?? It is hard, but not impossible. Like JFK said, we chose to go to the Moon not because it was easy, but because it was hard.
We only have to wait till 2024 for the first planned BFR to take with it crew and cargo to Mars.

Transferring messages from Mars to Earth will not take 5-10 years if it is not audio-visual content. The Mars Rover and the Reconaissance orbiter can transfer upto 30MB in 20 hours. That when there is just one rover and one orbiter.Data transmission isn't as such a big issue. Also, you could easily have a local network which can be synchronized with earth later. Like LN does with On-chain transactions.

No floating cities. We directly go to Mars.
Once industrial revolution kicked off, it took very little time for all the further advancements. Once we figured out electromagnetism and semiconductors, it has been breakneck.

People who buy Gold at such times for safe-keeping are not really worried about ways to move it but only concerned about hoarding enough for an apocalyptic scenario. Apocalypse not in the full Mad-Max mode but in a kind of instability where governments are unable to function properly and there is a dearth of services and goods. Bitcoin replacing this doomsday utility is a little unlikely as of now because not enough people know about it. For those of us who get it, this is just a good time to spend time in investing and learning about it.

The future will definitely come in the most radical, wildest way different from what we can imagine. For more, Welcome to:

BITCOIN-An Odyssey: SETTLING INTER-PLANETARY TRANSACTION SINCE 2050

I am in a Sci-Fi mood today and saw a topic about "Will Bitcoin replace Gold"? Lot of people express doubts on this. I think they just don't realize the future. I think, bitcoin's time will definitely come.

Imagine a few decades from now, when people and corporations start moving to Mars. Imagine that Inter-planetary mining has become a reality and the first trillionaires are being minted. The workforce of miners, workers, engineers, doctors is regularly travelling for seasonal contracts. What do you think would be a better option to take and bring back as your "wealth"?? A bunch of heavy gold coins, a centralized ledger entry or a titanium block with your mnemonics etched in it in some way that only you can uncover them. A property that truly belongs only to you. You the explorer, who dared cross boundaries of normal thought and your planet to find work and life on a new planet.

This will once again be a time of daring exploration. Smart, dexterous people will be its most important commodity. As an individual, would you like to carry money in a bag or depend on a bunch of banking dinosaurs?? Bitcoin will be the the natural choice to be money for this brave, new world of heroes.

Imagine setting up a legacy banking system on a colony with all its paraphernalia of bankers, their servers, daily settlements, Forex trading, currency settlements etc. The normal banking system's bandwidth requirements would simply be unsuitable for the kind of bandwidth that the first inter-plantetary data-links would be capable of. Compare this with an LN based solution on Mars with single settlement transactions back with earth per day. You get to spend your bitcoin at Mars at your local pub on using your LN wallet. The settlements with your "Mother Earth account" happens depending on when you close the channel.

Can you see what I see? 

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Bitcoin is the future. History shows that a new form of money has always been invented much before the actual future comes to pass. Ancient people started using shells and corals before they learnt to trade and sew clothes. The first coins were invented before people started cultivating silk to exchange for gold. Paper money, banker's cheques came into being much before the Industrial revolution they financed. History has repeated itself and bitcoin is here as the money of a future radically different from what we can imagine now.

Learn about it, Buy it, HODL it. Your "Starship Hydraulics specialist" Grandson will thank his visionary Grandpa.

So finally we will have the IPL afterall. It would be interesting to see how it feels to watch it on TV without the usual exuberant, rancorous crowd noise in the background of commentary. Imagine cricket but with the background noise of a golf match. This will feel like twenty-twenty with a test match crowd. Will it make the experience a little less interesting. They should come up with some excuse to introduce background static in commentary to simulate a crowd.

Logic ki maaaaaaa... chis jala di bhai?? Festivals are correlated to the harvest season not to developing or developed countries. And no, Rama did not return during Diwali so he could harvest his grains at Ayodhya.

Without enough knowledge, not just crypto but even simple UPI payments have been used to scam people. People have been scammed into giving away their PIN and credit card details.

You are talking about the "black money" issue and crime money. The point is that this is just a convenient excuse for the authorities. Bitcoin is particularly targeted because people see Bitcoin as a method to weaken the control of central banks and the government. Bitcoin is an inflation-free, peer-to-peer asset for the people of the world which cannot be confiscated and cannot be exposed without your permission. It can be moved across borders and between people with just a list of words. This does not mean that it is illegal. If you are a law-abiding citizen who pays his taxes, what right does anybody have to know how much wealth you have? What right does your bank, tax authorities, search engines have to monitor your spending patterns? Yet, keeping law-abiding citizens in fear while letting criminals roam free, even help them get elected, is what happens in reality.

Bitcoin targets high level corruption. Bitcoin transactions are traceable and available to the public. Imagine if government expenditure was done using bitcoin. It would be the end of middlemen and under-handed deal with every transaction up for verification on a public database. It is the perfect solution but it takes power away from our politicians and babus. So, they choose the option to demonize it instead. As an individual, if you fail to see it then it is your problem, not bitcoin's. Bitcoin is a technology based on mathematics, computers science and cryptography. It couldn't care less what we feel. The only important thing is that keeping a part of your wealth as bitcoin is your own insurance.
 
You are right. A lot of those blogs, especially being written by jobless Indians, simply copy verbatim that "i don't trust banks", without even understanding the underlying arguments, some of which i have explained above. Bitcoin gives you the power to be your own bank. A bank keeps your money safe in the form of numbers on their central ledger. Bitcoin is a decentralized method of maintaining that ledger that does not depend on any bank or any governments guarantee. The value of US governments guarantee isn't the same as that of Zimbabwe or Venezuela. When economies collapse, it can happen anywhere. With bitcoin, we have a worldwide system where people are willing to bet money on it and you can exchange it for value in any part of the world, if you can find the right people. It is a system based on people themselves, not on anything else.

When we talk about not trusting banks, its the central banks that follow the policy of printing money to help rich businesses tide over blunders caused by themselves. This system rewards those who exploit it the most. The people who lose are the middle class whose investments lose value as more and more money is pumped into the system.

There is a lot to understand before you can decide whether bitcoin is for you or not.

I think this below was a response to this.
Building artificial islands and threatening other countries is just part of CCP's ongoing self-aggrandization.

It is not simply anymore about China inevitably flexing muscles because its a superpower. The Chinese philosophy and methods are antithetical to the concept of mutual respect and fraternity amongst nations. Chinese operate with an assumption of superiority and being above international law. CCP has shown that it is unsuitable to be an honorable member in the comity of nations. The world cooperated with them and they benefited immensely from the investments and open markets in the last two decades. What did they do in return?? Back-stab everyone, Steal technology, try to undermine social stability and cohesion by playing on fault lines of democracies and use a pandemic as a stock-buying opportunity.

Geo-strategic think-tanks have long battled with the question that what would a rising China look like. It is getting clearer by the day. Ask Hongkongers.

Thanks for your replies guys. Some really good inputs here.

This is one of the typical examples. There are plenty of such groups on telegram where the scammer will throw an air of sophistication and knowledge to gain confidence of these people. You are absolutely right about the semi-urban/ semi-rural demographic that they target.
This is an area where I think we as a community can actually be of some help. We have to find some anonymous means of undermining such organized attempts on telegram. I would personally be very interested in something like this.

Naturally. But kudos to you for attempting this. Now this is something we need to do in a more "planned crusade" manner.



Those are not strong words at all. Heisenberg is absolutely right. He is one of the few, probably only post-2017 Indian member at the forum who has actually ventured into the intricacies of bitcoin technically. The frustration on seeing people just falling for bounties, scams, trading etc and then earning the "Pajeet" tag from the global community is real. Most of the new exchanges are only turning people towards trading with all sort of options and derivatives trading. Experienced stock/ forex traders are then making use of the volatility to earn good profits but the overall ecosystem suffers.
Heisenberg, Man, I don't think anything can be done for the trading aspect. It is a necessary evil now. As individuals, we have to choose our battles. Getting into the technical nitty-gritty is as good a choice as any. People in India are mostly interested in Alts. The biggest communities are in Alt-projects like Ziliqa, Bluzelle, even Tron. I would say that we HAVE to find common ground with them to see how it can be beneficial overall.

They are not really intelligent. The standard is pretty low in India at least. It needs just basic knowledge about something novel and a shallowness of soul to wrap that knowledge in big words and be willing to fool people. All these jobless passouts from Tier-2 engineering colleges who want to earn a quick buck. From UPI scams to fooling the elderly out of their ATM pins. Pretty soul-less people. They deserve no mercy or understanding. Giving their country a bad name AND spoiling countless lives.

The link on blockchain.com shows an Android wallet. If an address was generated on this wallet, how can that address say "This BTC address is unused". If the balance shows up on the "blockchain" wallet for an unconfirmed transaction, that means they should be acting as the escrow or arbitrator for such a transaction. Judging from the fact that the OPs incoming transactions never got confirmed, Blockchain.com effectively "ALLOWS" such a double-spend attack.

If the confirmation count is still zero, hopefully, OP wouldn't have parted with whatever digital good he was giving the other person. He never intended to send the money and expected that a ticket will be raised. Then sent a email to fool you into sharing your wallet mnemonic. Social engineering hack at the most.

Also, can anyone explain how does a transaction that shows up in the blockchain.com wallet (or explorer) can end up being "wiped" clean?? Is this about non-confirmed transaction being reversed if the attacker used a RBF option at the time of creating the transaction??

You used Unocoin, Is this India? Relying on instant settlements in bitcoin or any other PoW cryptocurrency is fraught with risk. So always wait for that 1 confirmation. Blockchain.com doesn't claim to provide instant settlement so accepting an incoming wallet balance with zero confirmation is a decision that the user has to make. They probably just give you the option to "see" an incoming transaction in the mempool without going to the block explorer.

 

Guys, You must have all heard about the Cashaa hack after they used a blockchain.info wallet. People like this Kumar Gaurav are typical fake artist, Indian scammer who uses fake website rankings and snazzy presentation to make an idiot out of fellow indians. They trap gullible people and rob them of their savings, often selling them shitcoins. These people typically fly under the radar and use false advertising on websites, youtube and such to trap gullible Indians. You will also find a lot of Hindi youtube crypto channels doing the same. They follow the MLM and Ponzi artist methods employed by many such scammers in India.

It feels really shameful to have these people become source of information on the Indian crypto scene. We should do something about these idiots so that scammer are called out in the Indian crypto scene. Let us atleast make it difficult for these idiots by posting information that we know about their incompetence onto twitter.

Let us try to spread the word. Retweet and share please.

That settles it I guess. A man ought to get paranoid if you suddenly realize your post history to be enough of a reflection of who you are.

So this "Private platform" Any wold-domination plans from erstwhile uber bitcoiners going on there?? Should we, the lesser mortals hope for some bitcoin champions to arise and infuse life into the mundane repetitiveness of trading and price and regulation??

Trump is an indecent human being, an abomination. I wish there were more honorable conservatives to take his place. His viewpoint on the western allies feeding off of America is a very rudimentary, layman's viewpoint that resonates with a lot of the populace. The underlying explanations on how these "investments" safeguard the world for American trade, American corporations and allowing America to retain its position is much more difficult to understand than, "I give more money to NATO or WHO, I want money back". This indeed led to a few ruffled feathers and a re-organization of the world order seemed very much inline.

Fortuitously, the Chinese threat rose at almost the right time for US leadership to realize these blunders. Reacting to China has been high on Trump's agenda and he did not miss the chance to do so in the case of recent Chinese aggression at Indian border. China had been playing games for a long time at the SEA-Pacific ocean (Taking cue from @STT and not gonna call it South China Sea). The land based aggression at Indian border probably proved to be the tipping point. This is important because it seems the US leadership is not in the mood to let China become the new Russia (Remember Crimea!!).

The door has long been open for China. It remains to be seen what happens when China takes the crown of prime ideological aggressor from Russia. Meanwhile, China seems to be sending warning to the US Navy in the "South-East Asia-Pacific Ocean" or SEA-Pacific Ocean.

What is up with all these people praising Chinese Govt being strict and able to recover from the pandemic. Do you all realize what is the difference between a communist country and a democratic country?? The difference is not that the people are somehow less disciplined. The difference is in flow of information and free media. In your average democratic country, everything will be out in the open and ready to be video recorded and posted on Social media. You are free to do what you want with your life and have the dreams you want to have.

You are not some accounted for resource in the hierarchy of the politburo. Unlike the Chinese peasant to the Chinese businessman, your pecking order and things you can do or cannot do is not pre-decided. Surely, this has its advantages but it also has its disadvantages. Ask those generations of Chinese parents who had to nurture a single child and not have any of those family dreams that you are free to have. The CCP has total control over its people and has strategically opened themselves to the free market. The western economies in their naivete transferred their Know-how freely to the chinese. In cases where they didn't, the Chinese stole it by employing cyber-warfare on unsuspecting targets. The strength of economy and complete sub-ordination of its people helped them to curb the virus but not without casualties. The Chinese media is silent on casualties and there is no way for anybody to get the real information out. The ultra-nationalism has been flamed at the same time so that people can be distracted from their human losses.

Democracies are not perfect but CCP is no role model either. It is amazing to see how all these people frequenting Satoshi's forum are quick to fall to their knees praying to some communist overlord to swoop down and save them. Disgusting is what you all are. These communists have wiped out cultures like Tibetans and Uighurs to make them "better-suited" to CCP. If that means, inhuman conditions or Human Right Violence, so be it. Without a free media, people don't even know what transpires as generations of chinese spend lives in servitude and following a path pre-written as per their role in society. That is not what humans are meant to do. This is not to say that the Chinese achievements are not exemplary. Yet, comparing that to your own democracies because of a pandemic, shows your own failure to truly understand what it would have been like to have your children turn into mush under tank-treads, just because they dared to protest.

The weirdness lies more in what exactly led him to such disliking about his interactions at the forum that he deleted EVERYTHING. Even the topics that he started, he diligently deleted the content. Is there an automated way of doing this, btw??

His parting post says that he will continue to participate in the BTC Observer thread but has no desire to interact with the people here anymore. That is kindda sad. It looks like he must be an old participant in the bitcoin community and is disillusioned by the interactions here or the productivity of discussions therein, for himself individually and for bitcoin in particular. So he decided to retreat to the Ivory Tower i guess.

Like Vishnu said, this is going away from US Presidential election but then the geo-strategic issues are of vital importance to Americans too. Especially important is to recognize the Chinese threat. The cold war is long over but with the CCP, this is again going to be a battle of ideological supremacy. As far as Tibet and upper-riparian rights are concerned, nobody was in the mood to question Tibet. It was more of less a settled question with unabated dam building by the Chinese. As per international agreements, they are bound to share information regarding their storage and flow due to these dams. The Chinese used even this as a leverage against India during various standoffs at the border. The aggression has nothing to do with "Control of Tibet".

For the CCP and typical Maoist leaders like Xinpig, this is about realizing their world-view of a dominant middle kingdom. They harp onto a medieval nationalism of Han Supremacy. Why do you think they spend so much on keeping the Uighurs under the boot?? To them, it is about ensuring absolute control utilizing ultra-nationalism. To look strong and decisive within the CCP, Xinpig is forced to takes these steps.

China has no ethical claim to South China Sea or to Indian territories. Whether its Biden or Trump, they can neglect these Chinese noises only at their own peril.

Okay so apart from being a bitcoin FUDster, you are here to promote Monero. Well, there is no need to have a beef then. Monero will always have its niche users. You don't need to pit them against each other. Bitcoin has gained considerable network effect, institutional interest and market stability. In comparison, Monero has enforced privacy by design. The fact that it obfuscates everything makes it a niche option.

Talking about "hijack of dev team" is just your opinion. The contributors and those sponsoring them are as diverse as they come. Bitcoin's development continues to show a high level of integrity sticking to the basics. Stick to monero if you want but it is no use trying to go against the honey badger of crypto.

Chinese have never let the border issue settle with india and they kept vacillating about exchange of maps as well as demarcation of boundary for the longest time. Like the expansionist, deceitful entity that the CCP is, they wait for the right opportunity to poke India. They simply hate that India is cozying upto other world powers. That throws a wrench in their plans of dominating Asia and then the world. Regaining their historical place as the "Middle Kingdom".

The world's largest democracy at their borders is also pretty much an ideological affront to these Maoists. They obviously hate the comparisons between the Tiger and the Dragon. They regularly fail to make India tow their line, whether it is BRI, Vietnam or getting close with USA. Indian leadership realizes that having normal relations with China is important which is why Indian leaders keep trying to have meetings and summits with them. Yet, they are just too self-absorbed to see anyone at the same level as the CCP. They have a reliable ally in Pakistan to use against India. Indian Army is regularly at conflict at the western border and there is always talk about being ready for a two-front war. This is also one of the reasons that India is one of the largest "importers" of Arms from the developed world.

India is just in a hard place when it comes to geo-strategic reality. A poor neighbor who just wants blood at any cost. Pakistan famously follows the "Bleed India with a thousand cuts" strategy. Their is the historical narrative fed to the Pakistani public about the Muslim ruler conquering the Idol-worshipping Hindus, what they call as "Ghazwa-E-Hind". The other neighbor is a rich and powerful one which is desperate to play the big brother and show its ideological superiority over the world's largest democracy.

United Nations will do close to nothing in the border dispute. It is upto Indian Army and diplomacy to maintain the status quo till the situation erupts and a war--outcome decides the new border. That is just the grim reality. The chinese love to keep this pot simmering. They cannot have a democratic India invest in the well-being of its people in a peaceful manner and march on without any hurdles towards progress.

For all the desperate attempts at debunking masks, why is it so hard to understand that an N95 will prevent virus carrying aerosols in case you happen to pass through a crowded area OR a room OR a workplace setting. Its basic precaution to maintain distance and check the spread. If it spreads in your community, you WILL get it sooner or later. You may recover without knowing or may need medical care which needs to be available and not occupied by someone else if you get it.

The mask, avoiding crowded areas, maintaining physical distance is only a very small attempt at letting those who will have severe cases have a chance at getting the right facilities. What is so hard to understand about it that people are so worried about masks and shutting down businesses. Also, how exactly do the bankers benefit by social distancing and people wearing masks?

Honestly, what good do you think you are doing by protesting wearing of a mask?

The US made all the right noises during the Ladakh standoff which means that Trump pretty much has the Indian diaspora in his pocket for this very reason. Yet, all the issues that have been mishandled within the country seem too big to be just covered up by making it about CCP. Who could have thought that USA, the country that gave much of the modern world's medical standards and pharma research to the world, would lead the pandemic's body count. I don't know how any straight thinking, patriotic American can accept that without hanging their head in shame for such inept administration.

In terms of absolute count and even deaths, a country like India will cross the US, yet, the vast difference in population density and medical facilities just does not justify the kind of human calamity that COVID-19 turned out to become for the US. 140K dead. How is that not the most monumental failure ever for any American president?? The fact that media outlets and "independent" mouthpieces can still sway his core base to believe that Mr. Cheetos did everything right and it just happened the way it was meant to happen, will one day be counted as one of the most ridiculous tragedies of the information era.