in the sense of counterfeiting, yes. there are other considerations, however. for example, if quantum computers were to break ECDSA tomorrow, it would irreparably harm bitcoin. gold is not vulnerable to such cryptographic vulnerabilities nor power grid/internet failures. in those senses, gold is more secure.

in the end, bitcoin may have superior monetary properties and potential utility, but i believe both will stand side by side as store-of-value assets in the future.

good stuff! yeah, when approaching 1/3 equity for tourney life, it's probably not justifiable. if my equity were closer to 45% (like the simple QQ vs AKo vs 99 example) i might take the shot at tripling up. MTTs are a numbers game, and chipping up early is an important consideration. especially in that situation, where i had late regged and only had 1.5x the starting stack.


i was in the cyclone, yes. same here, two shots and out.

tbh ACR has been an adjustment for me. i haven't played much online poker in years so maybe it's just that i'm rusty, but i feel like their non-turbo tourney structures are still faster than ideal for my style. it's not so much the minutes/level but the structures themselves, although i do really miss 15+ minute blinds. and because of the lack of constant action, i find myself late regging more than i should. so there's a lot more shove fest action than i'd like.

i'm actually thinking of playing around with some more loose/aggressive, splashy ranges in the early/mid stages.

reaching the $6000s again looks unlikely to me. there was a weekly double bottom there, and also a monthly dragonfly doji---an indication of bullish reversal. https://commodity.com/technical-analysis/dragonfly-doji/

based on just about any metric, the uptrend since mid-december is also significantly stronger than the bull traps from last july, august, and october. everything suggests a new bull market IMO. it's just that price doesn't go up in a straight line---there will be plenty of pullbacks along the way.

dropping to the $8000s and testing important levels like the 200dma is probable. i could even see a quick flush to the upper $7000s. but the $6000s are completely off the table IMO.

it sounds like there is a rough consensus forming re time of day. make it 5pm UTC (or later) and i'll add 0.0025 BTC to the prize pool for fun.

how about the date for the next game? anybody up for the weekend after next---february 15th or 16th?

if we're calling w/ AKs or AKo then we should be calling with QQ. right?

i wonder if it really was a good fold. like you said---pretty much what you expected but in the wrong players hands. QQ is winning 45% of the time there 3-way. https://www.cardplayer.com/poker-tools/odds-calculator/texas-holdem

high variance for sure though. that's issue #1. issue #2 is the larger range question---the likelihood that AA or KK is in the mix.


i guess that's what i get for playing $6 and $11 tournaments lately?


i like a pre-flop shove there, it's a value shove against a splashy better. we're happy to steal but we have a strong showdown hand as well.

people should absolutely "vote with their money" and leave such exchanges, if that's a viable option for them.

that doesn't address the larger issue though. we need to consider what people actually do by default. think about why the maker/taker fee model is so prevalent: because the vast majority of market participants are liquidity takers. further, there is zero indication that privacy is a priority for most of them. they will continue seeking out the highest liquidity exchanges, who all seem to be ratcheting up their AML standards one by one.

so while i agree with you, i don't think that's a viable solution long term. privacy advocates will just have less and less services at their disposal, with worse and worse liquidity. what we need are better coinjoin solutions so that we can slip through unnoticed with the the rest of the masses---so we aren't at a constant disadvantage re liquidity. this will take some time.....probably years.

wasabi wallet was groundbreaking as a first step, but its coinjoin implementation obviously puts its users at a great disadvantage re existing blockchain analysis heuristics. that's a problem we can't afford to ignore.

indeed, there are layers upon layers of deniability baked in. there are other privacy pitfalls that could play a role, like browser/cookie analysis and IP address/bloom filter analysis by adversarial nodes. even then, the notion of getting a jury to convict based on this kind of chain of evidence is a tossup at best. blockchain analysis companies are generally working off a huge number of assumptions and that will become obvious to any jurors studying their protocols.
 

in theory (actually this is arguable since coinjoin transactions are always currently more expensive).

in practice, most coinjoins are very obvious on-chain, and some exchange customers are paying the price for it. taproot, cross-input aggregation, and less obvious coinjoin mechanisms will mitigate this in the future, but for now all i can say is, be careful of your proximity to exchanges and AML/KYC enforcing services when engaging in coinjoins.

interesting question. at first glance, it seems more like a payment processor (like bitpay in reverse) than an exchange. but it's actually a lot more versatile, since invoices can be effectively used as buys and sells:


i really don't understand how it works under the hood. where is the BTC to fulfill invoices being sourced from? it seems like there must be a centralized market making mechanism to be able to instantly fulfill the requests.

i had no reads on Villain 1, so yeah, i folded. if it weren't for the UTG call i would have snap called the oversized jam in order to chip up. what they both showed surprised me. this is how it played out:



great minds think alike, or fools never differ?

my c-bet sizing was intended to steal the pot, while also repping value on the flush draw. a semi-bluff, essentially.

i shoved on him. i figured that a fold was unlikely but possible, and that i had given myself the proper pot odds given the overcard and flush draw. i did not anticipate villain hitting bottom 2 pair on the flop however:


thanks for taking a look at these. i had a few more interesting hands today. i'm gonna glance through my history and see if they got saved....

either way, i'm extremely skeptical about the "lost private keys" explanation. cotten appeared to be running quadrigaCX in a very fraudulent manner---for example, storing quadrigaCX funds on other exchanges. as jesse powell points out in that thread, it's also just a theme we have seen all too many times in crypto:


assuming that quadrigaCX even had cold storage at all is almost like taking craig wright's claims about the tulip trust at face value. there is nothing i have found that supports the narrative that the cold storage keys died with cotten. it's just something his wife and the other executives are claiming. so if he really is dead, i hope his death doesn't lend credence to their narrative. his death wouldn't prove that a massive fraud was not occurring.

prepare yourself. it only takes $1500 in total trade volume or wallet activity to trigger mandatory KYC on paxful. the limit is even lower on localbitcoins (€1000/year).

avoid both of them and use localcryptos instead. the reasons why are simple:

i played a few low stakes MTTs today. here are a couple interesting spots that came up. i'm wondering if there are some leaks i can plug.


the table had been pretty damn aggressive, so i was tempted to RRAI as my first action, but it felt weird 3bet jamming with 30 BBs, ya know?

how would you have played it pre-flop? can we possibly have the odds to call here?

you and me both, but good luck actually finding discounts like that. the OTC markets (especially in china, russia, etc) can swallow up so much "tainted" supply and wash them back into the exchange economy, that you'll never find people who are that desperate to offload coins. as the OTC markets grow larger---and as actual p2p/b2b usage grows (removing the need for centralized exchanges at all)---fungibility will only further improve.

between this and protocol-level privacy improvements like taproot (and someday, cross-input aggregation), i see bright days ahead for bitcoin's fungibility.

paired boards are tough, especially when playing them OOP. i like a check-call on the river. we already built this pot up enough.


i like how you played it post-flop. i'm not sure how i feel about the pre-flop call for a 1/5 of our stack, since we're OOP and 88 is often tough to play post-flop. the flopped set made it easy, but that's not what will usually happen.


i'd be betting hard on the turn, maybe even just jamming depending on the villain. against a donk-ish player, you will run into KT or backdoor straight/flushes a non-zero amount of time but i still think this is the right move.


iffy spot. i don't really like value betting the river OOP with a weak ace after getting called down on the turn. i'm probably check-folding here, maybe calling a weak bet.

EDIT: this is villain-dependent. there are situations where i'd bet the river to get him to fold if he's the type to call down on A-high or K-high earlier in the pot. it's a shitty spot OOP though. he wasn't calling on flush draws, and if he was calling on straight draws, he could have hit or rivered top pair. then there's the possibility of A3 or slow playing A7 or maybe even X3s (though that calls for a pretty donk-ish UTG+1 RFI range).

i'm curious to see how this played out.....


i'm snap calling this. lots of villains will do this with garbage, thinking you're just c-betting a missed board. or he's got the flush draw/pair and we've got the right pot odds to call.

@OmegaStarScream i recommend adding a new heading (like "scam accusations") under changelly, changehero, and similar exchanges. most people probably won't scroll to the bottom to read the legend.


i still see lots of people who swear by changelly (some of whom posted in this thread). it reminds me of the situation with BTC-E a few years ago: the vast majority of people had no issues with them, but a few people got selectively scammed. that was enough to paint their bitcointalk account red, but nevertheless, BTC-E was still widely trusted across the entire ecosystem. i used (and trusted) BTC-E until the day they were taken down.

maybe there is some middle ground here?

^^ hits the nail on the head. this issue really boils down to human nature and gullibility.

get scammed a couple times, and you will develop an inherent skepticism towards con men and would be scammers. unfortunately, this sense can't be learned by reading a couple warnings. it's something most noobs will unfortunately need to learn through experience.

that's probably due to the frivolous tag against TECSHARE more than anything else. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5221450.msg53725442#msg53725442

who knows for sure, but my long term observation is that lesser known members (like Kalemder) are rarely given the same consideration in the face of unproven accusations. that's just the sad reality.


how would i be lending their point credence?

if anything i'm trying to rile myself up into leaving counter feedback, since i know it will lead to more unfounded accusations against me. i'm already called a "trust abuser" / "scam defender" / "malicious distractor" because i asked for actual real proof or consistency in DT feedback a couple times.


all day, everyday.....

nothing.

why is no one bothered by this whole attitude of "we have an active investigation into this perp, he's guilty, no need to provide evidence, trust us"....? police, judge, jury, and executioner all rolled into one, and with DT privileges too.

this is the default trust system on display, right here.

if you're using wasabi wallet for coinjoins, that's probably not good enough. in fact, the first example in the OP put multiple hops between his exchange withdrawal and the coinjoin. he still got flagged.

he never actually advocated for it. he just said bitcoin should have been implemented that way. he knows that it would never happen!