There are no big tournaments happening right now, it's been a bit quite with good esports games happening over Christmas and between the year. Probably most gamblers where focusing on the worldcup and not on other sports. At least in China are some Dota matches being played in January with the DPC CN 2023 Tour 1 coming up. It's all of the big chinese teams competing for a 200,000 USD prize pool. On January 5th we have the first round starting with PSG LGD playing against Dawn Gaming which is going to be a pretty one sided match and should be a good win for PSG LGD. EHOME is playing against Invictus Gaming which is going to be a very close match in my opinion, I will go with Invictus Gaming for that one. On the 6th  Team Aster is going to play against Knights which is another save bet and Team Aster should be winning this one.

I haven't really thought about physical casinos and lottery companies only using cashless payment option so far. When gambling online we are used to only deal with digital payments and got used to it. I am not really a big fan of cash anyways, so in case the casinos in my country would stop accepting cash all together it wouldn't make a big difference for me. Since the covid pandemic I have switched to using my card in 9 out 10 cases. But there are people who only want to deal with cash, one of my friends is like that. He always runs around with large sums of cash and never has a card with him. For people like him the ban would be a big deal, for the average gambler this will probably not change much, they can deposit their money first at bank and then use their credit card to play at the casino. In general I am not a big fan of any bans that limit our life in such a big way, gamblers should be allowed to choose between cash and digital payment options. For the government it might make sense to only rely on digital payments to make sure they are getting always paid their taxes, but some gambler don't want to have digital receipts for where they are gambling. It could be that some gamblers want to hide their activities from their wives and can't use the bank account that they are sharing.  

I had no idea that politicians are so involved with cock fighting. Probably makes sense if you have a lot of money and want to bet on an exclusive event. With enough money you could train your own cocks to fight for you. It really depends on how popular and legal the game is itself. In my country it falls under animal cruelty and is not allowed. If there ever would come out a story of a politician running a cock fighting game out of his backyard, then his political career would be over. People in my country love to demonstrate against everything, right now it's mostly against pollution and for climate change, but in the past there were also demonstrations for animals. When it's a big sport in a country for hundreds of years than it can't be changed overnight. In my opinion there is a difference between watching the sport because you have cultural ties to it and betting a lot of money on it with the sole purpose of making money.

Didn't we print enough money in the last 10 years? I am glad that the printing is finally being contained. Since 2008 did the big central banks issued a lot of new debt and kept the interest rates near 0%. The main argument has always been that inflation is low and we need to keep the economy afloat. It was only a matter of time for inflation to finally pick up and now we are screwed with double digit inflation rates. There is nothing politicians can do now, the printing had to stop otherwise we would be facing hyperinflation very soon. For Russia and Ukraine it might be different because of the war, but the international community is happy to pump a lot of money and weapons into Ukraine, so it's mostly Russia that is struggling to refinance their debt since they got removed from the SWIFT system.

It's true that we should look at gambling as a form of entertainment in the first place and not put the chance of winning money in the focus. Making money consistently in gambling is very hard and only a few lucky gamblers among us will achieve it. All the casino games have their own house edge to make sure that the casino remains profitable over time. That is why most people who go into gambling only with the motivation to make a profit will be disappointed eventually. The problem for me is that subconsciously my mind always comes back to winning the jackpot. It's a dream of me for many years to one time win a big jackpot, but that is so unlikely and might never happen. Money is the one thing everybody needs and especially when we are struggling financially the chance of winning big in casino seems like a good solution. Our main focus should always be to gamble responsible and don't focus too much on making money with gambling.

I know this feeling well, my first few big purchases of Bitcoins are always in my mind when looking at the the current price and if I should spend any of my coins. But over the years I bought bitcoins at so many different prices that it's hard to keep track. Instead of buying one time per month, I prefer to make 2-3 smaller purchases every 2 weeks. Dollar cost average strategies are the best in my opinion, even though it's hard to track of the purchase prices. In general I think the same that we shouldn't be spending our coins during bear markets. It's better to hold out and wait for the next bull market to come.

I agree with you that we should be doing research online before choosing a new casino for us. Reading reviews in forums like bitcointalk is my go to source to determine if a casino is legit or not. Trusting in a forum where you can see the user who wrote about the casino is much better than trusting in any of the many review websites. For example, if a senior or hero member here on the forum has an issue with the casino than I would give that claim much more weight than from an anonymous review online. Checking the provably fair policy is a good start, also looking at the ToS is a good indication how sophisticated the new casino is. The main issue would be of course if there are problems with withdrawals, withholding money from the gamblers is a big red flag and leads me to avoid that casino.

It really depends on what kind of relationship you have with your wife. In today's world it became more common for husband and wife to have separate accounts when it comes to a divorce. Woman make much more money these days and it's not like in the past where the husband always had to provide for the woman. In my country separate estates became very common. In such a case I am not sure if I would like my wife to know the PIN to my bank account or the seed phrase to my wallets. There is of course the problem that something happens  to you and nobody has access to your crypto wallets. It would be sad for all our precious coins to be lost for ever. In my opinion, it would be good to talk about it and let her know where she can find all the important information if she ever needs it.

Most of the big casinos that offer poker rooms allow you deposit money with crypto currencies. The balance on the casino is usually in US Dollar, so the casino is going to convert the coins for you. Whenever you want to withdraw money again you can choose the same method as depositing. You are not gambling directly with cryptos, but at least you can withdraw your winnings with it. If you haven't played before at GGPoker or Poerstars I would recommend you both of them. They have promotions for new customers always that are really good, you can get either a deposit bonus or some free tournament and sit and go tickets. I managed to get some decent profit out of them.

Sounds like a good plan but you are forgetting a few factors. First of all, you need land to grow the vegetables. If you have a spare garden with enough space to start farming its great, but most people live in big cities with apartments. There is the chance to grow some herbs on the balcony, but that is pretty much it. There is the chance to rent a small piece of land at the outskirts of the big cities, but they are expensive and there is a lot of demand for them. Another factor to consider is water prices, as in most regions of the world vegetables need a lot of water to grow. Another thing could be protection against storms or frost. I think growing vegetables on a larger scale efficiently is quite a hard job and will require some knowledge before getting into it.

I would be very careful when using a VPN. Are you using the VPN to be logged in from another country, or are you keeping the same country and just want another IP? Most casinos don't allow the use of VPNs because different countries have different regulations. Especially if you are in a country very gambling is limited or even banned it's kind of a big deal to circumvent it with a VPN. The casino could freeze your account any time and all your winnings would be void. In my opinion the risk of losing money is much larger than the extra layer of security you get.

This doesn't sound very promising. Why not give some more information first? Asking for money here on the forum with a new account is not a good idea. Also you need to be careful when moving up the blinds poker, it becomes much more competitive at higher stakes. Don't think you are going to make the same kind of returns you did at lower stakes.

Of course there are risks involved in self custody of crypto currencies, but there risks in any form of storage. Saying that 99% of the people are going to lose thei funds seems like an exaggeration. How does he even come up with that number, there is no empirical proof for that clima, more of a subjective assessment. Also not sure if the CEO of one of the biggest crypto exchanges is the best person to speak up a gainst self custody. It's good to make people aware of the risks involved in being responsible for your own cryptos, but he obviously has some motivation for people not to store their own coins. It's a lucrative business for an exchange to have the customers leave their coins at the exchange. In the past we have seen big exchanges going bankrupt, resulting in large losses for customers who didn't self store their coins. I personally prefer to be responsible for my own coins, even if that means a little bit more risk of theft.

From my experiences I know that poor people struggle a lot to make their finances last a whole months, saving and investing is usually not an option. If you have no portfolio to start with it's very difficult to convince someone to start buying bitcoins or other crypto currencies. And it doesn't really matter if it's cryptos, stocks or commodity funds, there is no strong motivation for either of them. If you really want to help someone then you should do more than to only tell them to buy bitcoins. Why I noticed from poor families in my city is that in most cases not the income is the problem but rather the expenses. They are living above their means and even if they had some additional income from an investment portfolio than they would mostly likely also increase their expenses. Sitting down with them and show to control their finances better and have monthly budget in place would be the best way to help in my opinion.

Interesting question for the gamblers among us. I would definitely take that bet if it was offered to me. Having the chance to make 12x profit with a 1/6 chance of winning is no brainer. Like you showed us the expected value is positive for us. No casino could afford such a game for a long period of time, they would go bankrupt. The issue is of course that we can roll only once, so I'm 5 out of 6 cases we are going to lose our money. In that position I would probably bet 25% of my monthly gambling budget. That's the highest I could afford to lose in a single bet without feeling bad about it for weeks.

El Salvador and Brazil are two very different country. Brazil has their own currency which is used by a lot of people in the world. It's the largest country in South America and there are millions of Brazilian who are living abroad and use money to send back to support their family. El Salvador is a much smaller country that had their own currency pegged on the US Dollar for a very long time. That is why I don't think Brazil could switch overnight to Bitcoin as the legal tender, they would need so much Bitcoins first to make that possible and probably can't afford it. But as far as I understand it they only accept Bitcoins as a legal payment method, so there is no real desire to get rid of the Reais. Which is a good thing in my opinion. Having the option to choose between the Reais and Bitcoins make it easier for people to get into crypto currencies. This is going to make it more attractive for crypto miners to settle down in Brazil. Looking at the cheap living cost in some parts of Brazil it could be a new destination for miners to live. The only problem is the heat, a lot of cooling will be required for the mining rigs.

Weiß nicht ob Kryptowerk dass selbst hier noch posten wollte, er hat ein Gewinnspiel im Collectible Bereich gestartet. Sehr schöne Krypto Kosmos Karten und gibt auch nur 24 Plätze, muß man sich ranhalten.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5431273.0

Frohe Weihnachten und einen guten Rutsch

Thank you very much Kryptowerk for the cool raffle on Christmas, the cards look awesome. Going with the lucky number 13 this time:

13 - Mauser

Good Luck to All and Merry Christmas!

In my opinion bonuses are worth it and we should always take advantage of them, as long as they are reasonable. It might depend a bit on the bonus itself, for example some bonuses are for high rollers that bet in much larger sizes, or some bonuses could be for gamblers that play every day. It makes sense to have a realistic approach to our gambling habits and see if we meet all the requirements for the bonus. The most common bonus is probably a deposit bonus and I would always recommend to use it. It makes such a huge difference if we get 100 or 200% bonus on our deposit. The second most common bonus is probably free spins and I would also always use them. If there are two similar slot games, but one is offering the chance to win free spins I would always go for it.

Don't leave your money in a savings account, that's the worst thing you can do at the moment. 3% interest rate sounds nice, in my country it's more like 0.5%, but comparing that to 10% inflation you are screwed. Leaving money at the bank means you lose a lot of purchasing power each year. It would even be better to spend the money today and enjoy it as long as it has some value. For 2023 the inflation is not expected to come down much, we need to prepare ourselves. Investing is the only alternative to try and protect your money. Putting all of your 100k into bitcoins is to risky in my opinion. It would be better to invest 50% into stocks and bonds, the other 50% I would invest in cryptos, with 25% into Bitcoins and 25% into the top 5 alt coins. The more you spread out your money the better you are positioned against big price drops. Diversification is important to build a less risky portfolio.