I think these scammers do ultimately serve a noble goal.

Even if they do not realize it, they are teaching people the importance of not giving your Bitcoin away to third party holders, especially centralized ones. The lessons learned are quite expensive. They cost you everything. But in the end, you will learn to never let your Bitcoin out of your own wallet and you will learn to not give your wallet access to someone else. Each of these scams has one thing in common: The coins were not in the wallets of the people to whom they belong. They were in the hands of someone else.

But nobody should feel ashamed for having to learn these lessons the hard and expensive way. It is part of the journey to becoming a hodler.

 

Well that kind of luck seems to best be viewed subjectively, lest you fall under depression from not winning as much or more as before. As long as you win anything, I would consider that lucky one way or another.

Although winning $100 000 USD in one go is quite amazing. Not as amazing as a lottery win of millions or even hundred of millions but still very life changing, especially if the winner is living in a poorer country in which one could live a very comfortable life with 100k.

We may have luck or not have luck. But better to try than not to try. The people who do not try will definitely not win.

I am thinking about setting up a new type game for decentralized and non-custodial crypto gambling. One which combines investing in new (blockchain or non blockchain) start-ups. Eventually we will partner with start ups who will offer winning bonuses to the winners (and perhaps even the losers), in exchange the partnered start-up will be gaining marketing exposure and public audit data from the community.

You can join a bet AGAINST or FOR the success of start-up companies.

But before I start offering this idea of mine in the gambling section, I would very much like to hear feedback and I appreciate any tips or advice you  guys can give me.

Explaination:

Basically you profit twice, if you win:

- 1x from winning the bet and receiving the loser bet funds.
- 1x from the optional bonuses offered by partnered start-ups (for example: winners receive free extra BTC and the privilege of investing into company shares at discounted rates - Rules and Guidelines TBA.)

How the game works:

Obviously there are two groups for betting: either "Vest" or "No Vest". It will be based on a pot system with "No Vest" or "Vest" betting sides. "No Vest" pot is for betting that a certain startup-project's roadmap goal will not be reached in a fixed amount of time, (to be pre-bet specified by the start-up's officially given deadline). The "Vest" betting group will gamble on the roadmap's goals being met in time by putting their bets in their fund pot. The winning group will receive the other group's funds.

This goals of the roadmap must be defined within specified boundaries by the community and agreed upon by the start-up.

The distribution of winnings will follow a simple formula:

If your group loses the bet, the money you betted will be forfeited to the adversary group but you may receive bonuses for gambling, based on how much you bet.
If your group wins the bet, then you will receive: P*b/B of adversary pot's funds with P = all adversary pot funds, b = (your) individual bet amount and B = total fund amount in your group's pot.

Example:

You bet 100 USD in the "Vest group" of "Start-Up X" because you believe that the start-up can achieve their first working MVP withing 3 months. The entire "Vest Group Pot" is $1000 USD. The adversary group, "No Vest" loses their 3000 USD pot because the start up reached its goal of completing a working MVP with all the demanded specifications. So the winners are the "Vest Group" and you receive  1/10th of that 3000 USD. So 300 USD winnings. Yay.

In order to automate the process, I will need to learn the process and future requirements for developing an automated platform with voting mechanisms which regulate the process. I will escrow the Pot Funds until then, in the beginning of alpha phase.

The funds will be Bitcoin and at a later time, other altcoin options will be implemented, as well as a house coin/token (TBA) consolidated by underlying Bitcoin assets

Basically this new gambling will be based on helping new start-ups gain exposure and give the investors a community based audit system provided by the gambling community and gambling community. Thereby greatly outsourcing project research efforts and project audits to the community.


Business plan:

Winnings will be deducted by escrow service fee of 0.9% + transaction cost and sent to your specified Bech-32 Bitcoin address.  

Of course before I start this gambling service I will inform myself of the regulatory requirements. Although once it goes decentralized and non custodial, I am sure we will see the easing of government regulations.

I will be using this thread to keep everyone updated.

He insults everyone. He insulted me too so I just put him on my ignore list with all the other loud children.

I think that is quite correct and rightly so. The gambling service providers are being pressured into following rigid guidelines on how they conduct their business, whether online or offline, does not really matter. If anything, online can become a bigger legal mess due to the fact that some countries have different regulations and one cannot just offer them services that they are not allowed to buy.

Its the regulators and the governments which is to blame here. Just send an short message explaining the entire situation and wait for the reply. Bothering the team on Twitter or some other platform only slows down the work and confuses people.

Its a bit ironic that the actor warning everyone of financial fraud is using his current, outrageous PR, after having participated in said fraud, for selling a book that he wrote on said financial fraud. So basically he is using a scam to sell his book but is pretending like he is doing something heroic... Interesting.

He obviously only cares about selling his own book even if it means spreading home-brewed FUD. What an absolute tool.

I would recommend everyone not to listen to actors for advice on investments, economics or fintech.

I think that might be severely underestimating what it means to be at the very top of one's career, as Ronaldo is and has been for years now. Too many people are putting age over everything else. A younger football player does not automatically make him a better football player. Throughout the years Ronaldo has been gathering experience and training that the young Ronaldo did not have. So if a young Ronaldo played against the current Ronaldo, I think the older one would win.

Why are people throwing a 37 year old down into the trash just because he is a bit older but still young? Would a few years make a huge difference here?

Well then by the very same logic there is no point in gambling because most probably you will lose more money than you make. But that does sound a bit backwards, doesn't it? Even if gambling is not profitable, thats not why we gamble. Its putting an investment into a small hope. Personally, I try to see gambling as fun because otherwise it becomes frustrating and what is better: losing money and having fun or losing money and not having fun?

Well hold on now. Would it be possible, technically, if for example he lived in a small village with a computer and a landline but without internet, and he had a fax machine, could he not develop a method of connecting the reconfigured fax to a node (which has internet access) through that landline and the node would broadcast to the blockchain? Technically he would be sending Bitcoin payments without internet connection.

Well no, nobody has ever lost Bitcoins before. They may have had them stolen or they lost their key, but lost? Nope. Those coins are exactly where they were put last. And before you ask, yes, I have lost a key before but the amount of coin was very negligible. So suffice it to say, I have lost maybe... 200 USD worth in Bitcoin which would be worth around 2k or more at today's price.

Lesson learned: do not lose keys.

That is good advice for rich people. But not really something that 99% of us need to worry about in our life. Worst case scenario, you brag about being rich on the internet and the "bad people" dox you and break into your 3-room apartment because they believed you. Now once they find out you have no riches, they might do something bad to you out of revenge. There are enough scummy people in this world.

But I do agree with the KYC part. That is very sensitive information, which should be handled with care.

Well hold on, this might be a different matter of legality if he does not live in the USA but rather only wishes to play on winz while he is in the USA. But does that change the fact that he is from another country? If you go to study abroad, does your Netflix subscription become voided? No, I could watch Netflix no matter where I live as long as I have paid for it and have access to the internet. I think the same circumstances should be true for casino players who are visiting a different country.

Yeah, I would agree with that. The introduction of cryptocurrency and decentralization to online gambling really gave people a bit more breathing space. Gambling had way too many regulations and silly rules which made gambling not very fun at all. But with crypto as a payment system and a smart contract underneath, casinos can automate their business and throw many annoying, outdated regulations out of the window by force.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

I hope everyone got something nice, whether a gift for oneself or a gift from a treasured person. Hopefully everyone now has more Bitcoin than they had before!

We should perhaps think of a new traditional way for Bitcointalk to celebrate the oncoming new years in a way that only a true Bitcointalker could appreciate. If anyone has any ideas on that, feel free to mention anything!

 

It is sad to see how many people prefer comfort over security. Comfort, its the very reason why they keep giving their coin to third party members and give away their personal information/government documents to faceless entities. When will they learn the two most important lessons in the world of cryptocurrency and blockchain?

First: not your keys, not your coins. Second: be your own bank.

Those are the two only rules you need to never be tricked into giving up your money/anonymity/control.

And of course the affected people will find a way to blame Bitcoin/crypto for this, instead of improving themselves...

I would have to agree with the previous poster. Attempting to judge the price performance of the BFG token (or any crypto) during crypto winters is not a very smart way to Gauge the realistic future APY. You should instead be comparing how the price is doing on a more selective scale. For example, is the market cap corresponding to the drop in price the same way other similar tokens do?

If the only factor which is inducing a bear market of the token is the overall crypto bear market then that alone is not enough information to judge a token.

Well, not to be sounding like a bit of a prude but I doubt most gamblers use VPNs because they are afraid of the online gambling casino registering their personal information. The very fact that most casinos can demand a KYC at any time should make hiding your IP a bit of a unnecessary task for any person who is allowed to gamble in said casino. I think most VPN gamblers are either not allowed to gamble by the laws of their country or they are not allowed to gamble in a particular casino. So obviously a anonymous user secretly gambling can be construed by the rules as a suspicious enough reason to demand KYC. At which point they are in trouble.

Well OP answered that. A tight knit community is the answer.

But if that happened in a highly populated city/town, it would be a bit different.
It took me a while to think of what an answer to the question could be in such a case- in a more populated world (like the western world). But if I had to take a guess: I suppose to either flex ones cooking (kind of a rubbing salt in his face situation) or it would be to brown-nose the owner in hopes of getting special treatment when visiting the restaurant next time.

Although having said that, it does make me sound like I may be a bit of a downer with a pessimistic view of the world.

I am not sure why you have 2 different questions in your post and 1 random question in your topic header but I will try to answer, to your topic question of if I think buying BTC is worth more than mining hardware:

I think that your perspective on this is wrong. At some point, your investment in those ASICs will be covered by the mined Bitcoin profits. And once you have regained the money you invested, you will be mining for profit, having to cover only your mining bills (electricity, rent and so on...).

Now, if your mining bills >= Bitcoin profits then obviously mining Bitcoin with ASICs would be useless as you would earn no profit and there would be no point in buying ASICs in the first place.

So the question you should ask yourself must be: Is my government ripping me off when it comes to the electricity bill ?