Exactly. Bans just cut out revenue, and scammy projects found their way around the bans with the same scammy guerrilla marketing tactics (spell crypto with a zero, for example). End of the day, Facebook wants to maximise revenue.

I wouldn't place any extra confidence in anything advertised on FB, though. All it proves to me is that the project is willing to spend money on social media advertising. Doesn't lend an ounce of legitimacy to me.

Objectively speaking, every moment in the present is a crucial time for Bitcoin, but you'd have to say the most crucial year would probably have had to be its first year. Like any newborn project, that's when it's most vulnerable. Who would adopt it? Who would work on it? Who would use it? Who would attack it? The earliest years saw bugs, exploits, other external threats.

People thought last year's fork was a crucial time, but I think it's safe to say the unfolding events since then have been underwhelming. People now will think regulatory decisions will decide the path for Bitcoin, but forget that regulations have always been looking at Bitcoin, in stark periods of activity even since 2010.

I can't see any specific, realistic threat looming this year. And media noise doesn't count.

There are several documents that provide guidance... and these are all specific to GDPR, which doesn't exclude internet, crypto, bounty, etc. Almost every single service you use now that collects so much as your IP address, must now be compliant to this new data privacy regulation (point stressed on regulation, not a mere guideline).

This is a simple starting point for you as an individual: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/

In particular, you should refer to the right to erasure (or the right to be forgotten). While not absolute, the people whom you give your data to must be able to demonstrate cause for keeping your data, should they refuse to erase.

Well damn me. Lost my parlay and lost 2 other line bets I'm too ashamed to talk about. Not doing any better in the predictions either. Predict draws to hedge my bets, predict underdog wins only to have them draw. Tried not watching and the games still jinx. My top favourites are already out...

Thank God I have you guys to whine all this to about. Just you wait til Round 16, gonna slap my Joker out on the result with the highest odds.

Nice list, I didn't realise this has grown so much in the past year(s) since I was last in touch with forex. I only recognised one in there (SimpleFX) but since you're asking, OP, you probably should check out brokers regulated by EU/UK markets (you'd be surprised at just how illiquid there are and just how precariously they balance margins. I recall in 2015 so many brokers filed for insolvency almost immediately after the franc was depegged from the euro, and solid brokers were whittled down then.

eToro (UK) is one of the big ones regulated by UK's FCA, as is Plus500, both accept Bitcoin as I recall. FXCM was also trialling it, not sure if it does any longer.

Yeah, kind of fun to be in my first true downturn, having only owned my first coins in mid 2016. Two years now, but what a ride. Got to say was prepared to see people jump ship but still taken aback by even how seemingly staunch people were already worried back in February, saying the end was near.

In the months since, though, happy to see people I regularly transact with still faithfully stick to Bitcoin. Not easy to be swayed by alts with promises of cheaper and faster txs. So far paying off.

Bear in mind that most companies, exchanges, and even ICOs at the moment, actually do not have the right to request for your personal details, or do not yet provide sufficient requirements to protect your data. I'm talking about GDPR now, which likely affects all these companies, since they operate with EU markets. These requirements extend to you, and you should be aware of your own rights (particularly, the right to opt out or request removal of your data, once the purposes of KYC have been met).

How safe they are? You actually have no real way of finding out until enforcement gets to see their audits or you request information on how it is stored and secured. They must legally produce this to their monitoring authority anyway.

Well I had it at 3-1. More than half of the games so far have had injury-time goals so it must be a problem of focus for defences. Can't recall now how many games I've "lost" to last-minute goals, but then I should be grateful for winning 2 bets (Iran being my memorable first win) on the final minute.

I actually managed to gain almost a couple of hundred points in the last 3 days from Bonus Challenge (worth 30 each), so remember to put them in, guys. Problem is some only appear a minute before the game.

Lost all but one of my bets yesterday (Uruguay-Russia goals over 2.5) so puts me almost at 20% bankroll loss... so trying a fancy risky parlay on Australia winning (they have to for a chance at second place) and Argentina to go through (need to win and hope Iceland at least draws for their chance at second): https://www.bitcoinrush.io/sportsbook/ShareBet?id=puEi4w%2BuLIue7LpuWyWj1Jt6LJI6jSGLiFvBSZsdP%2Fc%3D

Solid ideas, and you asked the right questions to identify the problems of portfolio sharing - if there were a way for people/services to share their performance, their signals, their calls, their trades, without actually revealing the details they'd want to keep private. Not sure what that solution could look like though, since the need for anonymity seems at odds with full transparency of those details.

To take it further, potential for a reputation standard that links the portfolio to known/verified users. Like you said, there are always Persons A B and C making X Y and Z calls, but they disappear after making bad calls, or leave you no way to verify their calls.

Not that I'm eager to find Person A who can do all this, but I'd like a way to show newcomers that all these people actually can't make good calls consistently. No one, no strategy can.

I actually don't think blockchain is suitable for every organization's information governance, particularly when most will be subject to GDPR requirements and are still groping in the dark regarding this. In fact, GDPR is something really, really important your consultancy completely sidesteps (I checked yr site and blog)... simply can't do this any longer if you're in the information/data business and seek to be "regulatory compliant" as you say.

Just to repeat, though, blockchain doesn't have to be the answer for everything...

Because I'm pretty sure entire books, lyrics and other popular text would also probably form part of future brute-force methods, I'd suggest you also apply some simple randomisation of sequence if you choose this method, or mix up the languages for custom mnemonic phrase. Probably quite natural for my Southeast Asian context where people are at least bilingual.

The temptation to use popular favourite texts or poetry is too great to risk I think.

Some above suggested encrypted archived files. Can be further obfuscated by renaming any files to .bat or similar file types people wouldn't look for.

Lost my bets AND prediction on Senegal, was really hopeful when they led 2-1 at 72nd minute, but it was not to be. Japan deserved the draw for sure, they were really harried at every ball by a team taller and stronger than them, had my doubts but they actually had much better finishing than Senegal. Still my underdog favourite like you, Welsh, and I know they won't be favourites to beat Colombia to qualify, but all the better if the odds are good.

Falling farther down the table, but we still got a whole range of games today. Taking riskier bets on the favourites today to try recover losses, I'll share if I win.

Instead of blocking off times, an accurate delivery system displaying estimated times to different stages of delivery/purchase is much better. So any item can be bought at any time, but they should be informed of estimated time to payment settlement, product fulfilment, etc.

Good call on SFR for full verification or KYC at the process of onboarding first, and then higher level verification necessary, but always triggering when attempting activity requiring it, never, ever after. Users should only be able to access features after passing required verification.

Oh and full crypto, please. No 3rd party bitcoin processor like Bitpay. You'll appreciate it, your customers will too.

I think Bitcoin's already broken the seasonal pattern this year (recall the supposed January rebounds and then a failure to repeat the overall Spring gains), but in this case, I also sense yet another period of pre-year end downturn, following a brief rally in coming months. Not that my senses have been helping me in any way this particular year.

As Herbert above points out, though, patterns aren't helpful since we all see what we want to. That's the strength of charting - they illustrate a point, rather than help us arrive at one.

Another game from OP, another opportune moment, let us hope.

My bottom call is 5,489. Confidence? Not really. It's just that I've been seeing bottoms called every so often in the past two months, from doubles to triples and I think the sense is that we're very near the floor for the year. Most sustained bearish period for as long as anyone can remember and I'm with Loyce on saying that we could be in for a period of multi-year languishing below ATH.

BUT, there's a lot of psychology involved as well and volumes are still nowhere the highs of 6 months ago so there is still a lot of holding, contrary to the accusations of panic.

I gain some confidence also from RSI hovering near 20. 16 is of course possible still but sentiment won't wait.

Prices should touch just below 5500. Temporarily, before we resume some confidence building back up to 7000 in a month, before more sideways movement up to Christmas.

Listing used to be a sure way to see price spikes but these days, it's also the association or reputation of the exchange. Listing on one of the small players doesn't necessarily give a boost, though of course simply being able to put up sell orders and triggering some will give the price stat, but without volume, that price swings wildly with every order wall eaten up.

The market is now wisening up and use potential is a lot more natural, a lot more organic. Bitcoin itself is too big to be affected anymore by merchant accepting unless perhaps a LN network the span of Visa happens.

Monero had its boosts when niche markets started taking them. But Verge I recall actually slipped when their big porb partnership was announced!

He's asking for pooling groups, where people pool together their funds to either qualify for pre sale stages or to buy in bulk, both to take advantage of bonuses given to investors who contribute big. Or to access private funding rounds. Private rounds and pre-sales have usually quite high minimum entry levels, hence pooling to qualify.

Highly risky since it requires trust of the rep, and with kyc processes normally in place for these rounds, could present legal complications.

Here's a clue to find really local crypto-websites... social media. And I don't mean Facebook Ads or Google ads anymore since these are all banned. Talking about the local social media, VK and Weibo are what you should be listening to, for example.

If you don't have to local expertise (language), you can spend the time trawling the Facebook pages of crypto communities and you'll see what sites are shared the most and you'll get an idea of where to look. Some major crypto news sites also have localised versions in Spanish for LatAm, Malay for Indonesia, Korea is growing.

Need more specifics though if you really want targeting but I think my first suggestion is valid.

Scalability is not a problem, at least not one to be solved or fixed, and definitely a problem all alts wish they had. Look at the blockchains that face scaling issues. Bitcoin, foremost. The very fact it has a scaling issue (which, by the way, actually already has its fix at least for the foreseeable future) points to the fact that it has non-speculative use, which is why scaling is the envy of all alts.

The internet has always been catching up in the scaling issue, and has had far more than its share of ppl saying it would break because it can never scale. But look, here we are. Using Bitcoin over the internet. And both are far from being broken.

Thank you, Trofo, and SyGambler. I really appreciate your sentiments. This was my first competition and I guess I hugely overestimated the interest from this forum. I see plenty of gamblers talk and discuss, so not sure what would have attracted them to join... disappointed that there was so little interest in a competition that doesn't cost anyone anything, yet people participate in free giveaways for much smaller prizes. I know the prizes maybe wasn't so great especially with BTC price right now but I really thought we'd have a lot of gamblers sharing their bets for a huge global tournament.

I'll just close out the contest now and lock the thread... but please both send me a Bitcoin address in PM, I'd like to tip you both BTC 0.005 for your contributions.

Perhaps I'll open another one now to see if there's any interest for an English Premier League contest, with perhaps 4 stages (with 1 winner every 9 games?). Similar format, no payment to enter, highest cumulative odds to win. And we'll see if we can get participants for that? Maybe people will also tell me how to make the competition more interesting.