Not an expert on slots, I hope we mean the same thing with the Bonus Pay, it's when you collect tokens and after enough rounds you can buy/get for free the bonus rounds? I rarely use the option for Bonus Buys during my slot sessions, because I never get enough tokens to get it for free. Whenever there are free spins, I am happy for it and use them straight away. But with the Bonus Pay it seems that I still have to pay a large sum of money to get access to it. And the few times I tried it out I didn't make any profit out of it, maybe I was just unlucky. It's nice that they seem very profitable for you, but for me I never really had luck with them. Are you keeping track on how much you spend on the Bonus Buys and how much you make out of them? Would be nice to see a summary over a few weeks/months using them to see if the profit is consistent and it would be advisable to always use them.

There are several factors why most casino games are player vs the house and not vs other players. First of all, the casino makes the most money if they are playing against the customers directly. All of the casino games have a house edge that makes it more likely for the casino to win over time. It's a profitable business model for the casino and there is no real incentive to change it. The second big issue is that you need to find games that everybody knows, only if there is enough demand for a game then it would be worth it for the casino to offer it. When player vs player games would be the main attraction than the casino would only make a small profit in form of a flat fee. Card games seem like the type of games that are played all around the world and most people know the rules or can learn it quickly. If you are looking for a competitive game where you only play against other people I would recommend you Poker.  

It sounds nice to have a pay to earn scheme that includes a specific skill for us to make a profit. The problem with it is that for you to make money someone else needs to lose that money. That  also means only the best of the best with the highest skills would regularly play for money and allow betting on it. Without a skill system in place it becomes very unfair matching against each other, and even with a system the chances of having smurfs and people with multi accounts becomes a real problem. And then there is the issue of having a large enough player base to get regular matches people can bet on. If it's not a popular game then there won't be a lot of traffic and it will not be worth it for the casino to provide the infrastructure. With new games there could be a lot of demand for it, but so far I haven't heard of any casino offering it.

I agree with you, just because there is now a digital version of the Dollar or the Euro doesn't mean all the problems of the fiat money is solved now. Personally I am looking at the digital Dollar the same way I look at the physical Dollar. Both of them are controlled by the central bank. If politicians decide to print more of it then there is nobody stopping them. The main attractiveness of crypto currencies and bitcoin in particular is the independence from national governments and the limited supply. Only when there is a finite number of coins that can't be created out of thin air overnight, will it be a real protection against inflation and a good store of value. The digital dollar is an attempt by the USA to advantage of the rise of crypto currencies. So far I am not convinced that it will be a threat to the crypto community.

We are all humans and humans have issues among each other. Any company that has reviews online will have some negative reviews. The question is how reliable are the negative issue and how often do they occur. For example, even the best restaurant in the world has some negative reviews from people who were not satisfied, or might not even been there and had some other issues with them. There is also the chance of a competitor to try and make false accusations in an attempt to ruin the business. When it comes to posting reviews online I am always a bit sceptical, because there is no verification how legit they are and they could be bought. Here on the forum it's a bit the same, does the member really tell us everything that happened or is he hiding something? It could also be an honest mistake by the person in cusymer support. In my opinion it's important to follow the claims more closely and see how many people have issues with the casino, one bad review is not enough to leave the casino.

No I don't think so, investment banking today is complete from what it was 40 years ago. If you look back to the 1980s the lifestyle of a banker was much closer to that of a gambler from the Hollywood movies than it is today. Back in the days banker would do anything to get their hands on a deal, going to strip clubs with clients, doing cocain and hiring prostitutes was part of client management. In 80s there was much less compliance, regulation and oversight. All the major deals were discussed in some cigare lounges among white man
Today there is a much higher demand ratio among bankers, so the game changed a lot. Also the public is much more sensible about stories of bankers being involved with prostitutes and drugs. And Warren Buffet likes to do business with wall street, he was the one who bailed out Goldman Sachs in 2008 and made a lot of money with his loan.

Slowing down and going back to smaller size bets is a nice idea to try and recover our losses. I might give it a try next time I face a bad gambling evening. There a few issues however for me when it comes to recovering losses in one session. First of all, I am a huge fan of martingale strategies, so whenever I face a loss I kind of have to double my betting sizes to recover all my previous losses. The problem here is that this leads to large bets fairly quickly when suffering a few losses in a row. Normally I don't believe in loss streaks, but there are evenings for me where I can't get into the greens at all, no matter how hard I try. Usually when facing too many losses I tend to switch games and start from scratch. Going from Black Jack to Roulette or Dice, is a good switch for me. Slowing down could also be a good idea when facing a loss streak, this would help with the issue of losing a lot of money quickly due to doubling up every bet. Instead of trying to recover our previous losses in one single bet, the idea would be now to stick to smaller bets and recover over a longer period of time. Another problem is also my head, whenever losing 3-4 times in a row my brain keeps telling me it's only one more round for me to win. It feels a bit like I deserve to win now because I lost so much already, which is of course not true. The rounds are not connected and the casino doesn't know how much I lost or won, the chances are always the same.

It's true that it sounds a bit counterintuitive to have blockchain based, decentralised casinos that require us to complete a KYC process. We have learned over the years to stay as anonymous as possible in the internet and don't real too many personal information. The number of scammer and phishing websites increased a lot in the last 5 years, this could also be linked to the increase in crypto prices which makes it much easier to shift around stolen money. The main thing for casinos to require KYC is to prevent money laundering in larger scales to not attract the attention of the government. If a lot of criminals would be using online casino to try and launder their money then the government could step in and ban gambling all together. Therefore some form of regulation is necessary to show the good will of the gambling industry. I noticed that KYC is mostly required when you are dealing in large amounts of money, some casinos only require additional information when withdrawing more than 1,500 - 2,500 USD, which seems like a good compromise to me.

I feel the same, this was a final of a lifetime, so much action and adrenaline during the whole match. France not really playing their full potential in the first half, only to bring the game into over time with Mbappe to score the two goals in less than 2 minutes. Getting the game into penalities always means a lot of randomness for the outcome, one missed shot can change everything. I am glad that Argetina won, had most of my money on them and Messi really deserved the titles. He has been playing football at the top level for so many years now and the titles was the only thing missing for him. The performance from Martínez was also insane, one of the best goal keepers there are. Also France won 4 years ago, and reaching 2nd place this year is a great achievement in itself. A bit sad that there is no more big games now to bet money on it. It's true that the team from Argentina is not going to look the same, Messi won't be playing again. So maybe in 4 years we can see France again on the top.

The bar finally arrived after a little hassle with the delivery company. This is the coolest thing I have won in a long time, thanks a lot again to @MrMojo for doing the raffle here, you really make great bars. There were already some pictures from the bars, but I also want to show the cool box - great design:

https://ibb.co/5n31gcx
https://ibb.co/4JR8X7p

The package actually was at my house last week already, but somehow there were some taxes to be paid and the delivery guy isn't allowed anymore to accept money  really strange to see the package, but not being allowed to open it and only getting the notifcation to come to their office 2 days later. Anyways also a big thanks @minerjones for shipping the package over the Atlantic, very fast and professional delivery.

Thanks cygan for this awesome raffle, the cards look really cool.  Seems like the Germans are taking over the collectibles forum this week With so many raffles I might win one more this year. Going to try it with 73 this time:

73 - Mauser

Good Luck to All and happy Holidays.

Thanks Willi for the great raffle, this would be a nice combination together with the Betnomi wallet. Hopefully I am getting a new wallet for christmas and that would be a perfect match. Already voted on the Bitcointalk awards and will pick two numbers: 

37 - Mauser
73 - Mauser

Good luck to All and happy holidays.

Oh wow another round of the cool Benomi wallet, thanks a lot @betnomi for alle the free raffles here on the forum, maybe this time I will be more lucky. Already voted on the Bitcointalk awards and will try my luck with 37 & 63 this round:

37 - Mauser
63 - Mauser

Good luck to All and Happy Holidays

I noticed another phenomena in my country when it comes to large producers trying to push prices up without any boundaries. The large supermarket chains started to not give into the demands from the producers to increase the prices for consumers. For a few weeks we had no Coca Cola and other big brand names in the super market anymore. Which was a bit funny because I always thought that the big corporations had all the power, but it turns out that supermarkets that get the actual money from the consumers holds the real power. This is a quite interesting developed because at the same time the supermarket chains is increasing their own low budget brands into a lot of new segments and will happily take away the market share from the products that are not being offered anymore. So for consumers trying to save some money the only real chance was to go for the own no brand products from the supermarket. It seems that the retailers that are closest to the consumers are the ones that can decide on the prices for the consumer to pay the most, they hold all the power now.

I fully agree with, gambling has been part of human life for hundreds of years. One crisis is not going to change anything in that. As long as there is demand for gambling there will be casinos and so far nothing has changed since the FTX disaster. Among my friends there is not a lot of concern about casinos going bankrupt and not being able to pay out customers. This is probably the case due to us not leaving larger amounts of money at a casino. For me a casino should be treated similar to an exchange, its fine to use it for your purpose, but don't leave your money on there. Whenever I have a higher win I will withdraw some of that money. This would also spot any issue that could be there with possible withdrawals if we do it regularly. The only drawback is that we have to pay more fees and have to invest a little bit more time. So far I don't think that there is any real pressure on casino to give a proof of funds. This might change if we have a bankruptcy of a big online casino.

I do think that guns and ammunition will always be a busy industry, because humans can't live without war. There is always a conflict around the world that will require new armaments and other military supply. And even if we could end all the conflicts in the world, countries would never give up their military. Also any major war like we have seen this year is going to increases the budget countries will allocate to the military.
Water seems like the one trend that should keep going upward in my opinion. Every human needs at least 1-2l of fresh water every day and there a few factors that will reduce supply and increase demand. First of all, the world population is constantly increasing which means that we will also need more fresh water every year. Then we have the effect of global warming which increases the occurrence of natural disasters. Whenever a big disaster happens there is a huge demand for water as most local wells will be polluted and not useable. That is why I would consider investing in companies that sell water directly, or in companies that offer filter systems to purify contaminated water.

This was probably one of the biggest news in 2022 and very positive news indeed. Energy prices have become a huge problem in the world over the last few years. Its not only the crypto community that is struggling with rising energy prices, the whole economy relys on affordable energy. The big question is now how fast that can be replicated in large scale and be rolled out for industrial and consumer needs. This could change a lot for the green energy approach as well. More and more fossil fuels could be left behind to use the most ecological friendly energy sources. Another issue is going to be the accessibility of the technology. Can it be used by other countries free of charge or will it be expensive to get access. Hopefully it's not going to take too long and will make energy cheap for all of us.

This sounds very nice and would be awesome if we could implement it in todays world. It would be so much more efficient to have a decentralised payment system that works directly between the buyer and the seller, without the banks sitting in between all the transaction. First of all consumers could cut down on the huge credit card fees. Just imagine how much money would remain in the pockets of consumers, if there were no more credit cards. This is the most lucrative business of banks and they will likely fight hard through lobbying parties to try and stop and removal of the payment monopoly. Another huge saving factor would be on all the bank fees that consumers have to pay on top of the credit card fees. With a decentralised payment system in place we could save a lot of money, but this is also increasing the chance of people not paying their taxes. I think that politcians are too afraid to give up the payment monopoly. Without they can’t enforce easily that all the taxes are being paid directly to the government. We would need some form of oversight that ensure that there is no misuse of funds. So the system would be very practical, just hard to get it rolled out across a whole country, if politcians are trying to sabotage it.

So you want to gamble on your own esports game that you play against an opponent? Do you want to gamble directly with the opponent, a 1 to 1 bet? Or do you want that a lot of people are able to place bets on your game? Because there is already a huge sports betting market in esports. On big tournaments in CSGO, Dota or Lol there a thousands of people betting a lot of money it. I am not so sure about Mortal Kombat, never played the game and so far I haven't seen any betting on it. Maybe some smaller bookmakers who specialise on less popular games will run some bets on Mortal Kombat. The main issue I have with betting on your own game against the opponent is that do you know how good he is before? Are there some kind of statistics that match players in their skill rating? It would be a bit dull if smurf players are allowed to play against beginners and take all their money.

A demo account is as close as it can get to real trading without risking any of your money. Trying out new strategies on a demo account is a good idea in my opinion and I would always go back to checking strategies out of sample if I am not fully convinced that they work. The idea behind a demo account is to make it much easier for you to simulate your trades than having them run in an excel sheet. During university we were offered a stock trading game by a big bank, where we could run our own portfolio for 6 months without using a real money. With my friends we really like it and where doing quite well. After the event was over we running our own portfolio with real money and where able to continue with our returns. That is why I would say that there is no big difference between a demo account and a real account. If you manage to be successful with your demo account than you will also be successful with your real account, just keep following the same strategies.