A tennis match between Wozniacki and Bellis was suspended today due to rain. I believe it is scheduled to be completed tomorrow. What happens to bets in this instance? Will they remain pending until resolved tomorrow are be canceled today for non-completion?

I would be baffled by dogecoin price increases if it weren't for the fact that just about every major alt is also rising. Crypto as a whole has seen a ton of growth recently, and it's actually hit other coins more than bitcoin, as bitcoin's dominance has fallen from the 80% range to under 50% now. That means money has been flowing into other coins faster than bitcoin. I still don't see the use for all these alts, and long term I think a lot of them still continue to depreciate over time. It's just that there's so much money coming into all crypto right now, it's a temporary bump before they resume their slow trog towards irrelevance.

Or they could have sold them at $800 and bought back in at $200, which is what bitcoin ended up dropping to. People who were selling at $800 in 2014 were ultimately right for a long time, and had plenty of time to buy in at far lower prices. The point is nobody knows the falling price is a temporary thing. Bitcoin is not guaranteed to go back up, not now and not ever.

There's never a guarantee that a drop in any asset price will recover. Thinking so is a fatally flawed way to approach any investment. Bitcoin is not a special exception to the laws of economics. Also, it's been a wild ride the past few days. Bitcoin has dropped about $700 in a 24 hour period now, which is now the largest dollar drop, but at the time represented a 25% decline. That's a crushing drop, but I'm not sure it's the largest. That's how volatile bitcoin has been over the years.

This is silly. Gold is far more liquid than bitcoin on a global scale, although at the present rate, I would expect bitcoin to eventually reach parity there.  For however easy you think it is to convert bitcoin into fiat, there are far more financial institutions who will do so for gold, so the idea that gold can't be converted into money anytime while bitcoin can is false.  Further, bitcoin needs the internet is a weakness, not a strength. Gold exists in electronic form (futures, synthetic financial instruments, etc.) but also can be withdrawn and take a physical form. Bitcoin only exists in the blockchain. One thing where you are probably right though is that at this point it may be easier to transact with bitcoin, although I say maybe because I'm not aware of, and have never looked into, a way to make regular commercial transactions with gold, although I know there used to be gold-based electronic wallets. I don't know if they're still around or were ever very viable.

That's borderline ridiculous. I don't believe for a second you plotted out a little breadcrumb trail you wanted people to follow, or that you better understand scarcity than anyone else on the boards. It appears you just got caught spouting non-sequitur nonsense and tried to retcon it into a "this was my master plan all along" scenario, especially since your response is still not on point and you're still differentiating about bitcoins vs. satoshis when that was never part of the original premise. That was an idea only you introduced, and which still isn't relevant. OP's original point was bitcoin is more rare because there is a limited amount that can come into existence. This is an incomplete thought, as it says nothing about gold, but I believe the implication is that while gold is also finite, we don't know how much of it there is, and can't speak to it's ultimate rarity. I believe that was OP's point, just poorly articulated. All the tangent about how you divide it up (bitcoins or satoshis, and relatedly pounds or ounces) is irrelevant, especially since OP didn't mention it. I think you inferred his meaning, and inferred wrong, then initiated an irrelevant tangent.

Anyone expecting a world-wide replacement and the upheaval that would require wasn't exactly grounded in reality to start. The world is too large and too complex to change that quickly. I do not believe Bitcoin will ever replace fiat, for technical and political reasons, but I also never believed Bitcoin would reach $2000, either, so I continue to be surprised by the heights it has reached. World-wide currency revolution- still ruling it out.

They have several funds that do different things, but the Public Investment Fund is believed to be the largest and have over $183 billion in assets. But contrary to your assertion, 90% of that is invested inside state-owned Saudi companies, not US Treasuries. And it has started to shift to foreign investments recently, notching a $4.5 investment in Uber and agreeing to a deal with Softbank for $45 billion. this fund will probably be the beneficiary of the Aramco IPO (another $100 billion), but bankers believe the fund could balloon to $500 billion even before that, so pretty close to the $600 number you said. Although they may have that spread across all the other funds, this one is just the most prominent. (https://www.ft.com/content/bd3d7c34-b877-11e6-961e-a1acd97f622d). Saudis are also using one of their funds (not sure if this one) to launch a domestic arms industry to reduce dependence on the US.

How do you figure it's not easy to cheat? There are no other reporting measures other than what countries choose to disclose, and no oversight as to what is produced, consumed, or sold to market. If Saudi Arabia noticeably selling twice what report, it would be obvious perhaps, but if they agree to a 1 million bpd cut and then end up not doing half of that, it wouldn't be clear it was them, and may not that oil ever disappeared, especially with all the other OPEC nations lying inside a black box as well.

It's the same for credit cards too, this isn't specific to PayPal. PayPal offers protections to buyers the same way credit cards do. The difference is you personally face clawback instead of a company. If you were conducting business and taking credit cards, a buyer could just the same challenge the transaction and you would face the same types of clawback. The laws are such that the seller has the burden of proof, because previously the sellers were always companies and the buyers were individuals, so the sellers have had more clout and the laws are designed to protect buyers. The laws have not kept up with the times as the economy has empowered individuals in conducting commerce. That's probably the real issue, it's not paypal-specific.

What questionable policies specifically? I've used them for years and everything seems perfectly reasonable given the nature of the business. The policies are well-defined and accessible, nobody has a reasonable basis to claim they aren't aware of them.

There you go again claiming someone who doesn't see something the same as you has a malinformed opinion. Just try sticking to your ideas and don't pretend you have a grand insight into other's minds, because some of your ideas are quite uninformed. Claiming that the USD is a speculative asset is ridiculous. A speculative asset is what you buy into to chase gains above what the base-denomination offers. That's what makes Bitcoin a worthy speculative asset, the chance for outsized returns vs holding fiat, which generally depreciates over time. It's why people sink money into penny stocks, or chase pyramid schemes: chasing outsized returns. I would almost venture that a base currency by defniniton cannot be a speculative asset because it's the default for what all commerce is based in on an economy. I would grant that the USD would be a speculative asset for foreigners who buy to get out of their own currency, but this inthibk would still be challenged by the fact that it's the most stable currency in the world. People in other-currency-based economies buy the USD to hedge or protect wealth, not to gamble on speculation.

I'd rather stick to discussing ideas and not pretending either of us has a magic insight into the other's mind or how they see the world.

Bitcoin isn't going to affect physical currency much. The ratio of people using Bitcoin to conduct commerce vs. using it to gamble, either by buying speculatively or using it to skirt casino or sport book restrictions, is extremely small. The thing that is going to diminish physical fiat's use is digital fiat. Most transactions are already digital, and easier than blockchain technology.

ICOs just seem like dumb luck as well. You don't know what's going to be a good one ahead of time. Most new coins are unnecessary, so they only amount to a pump and dump. Take a look at the coin market cap page and look at all the garbage old alts that people have previously bought into. Not good odds.

With the spam attack going on for a couple weeks now, I'm quite surprised Bitcoin continues to track upwards. At last check today, we are over 200,000 unconfirmed transactions in the mempool, and fees are shooting through the roof as people have to compete against these garbage transactions. The situation is not stable.

This second explanation was much more clear than your original, because that point definitely didn't come across the first time. Your first response didn't mention the comparison of bitcoins to gold, it only mentioned as a counter point to Bitcoin's "rarity" that 21 million coins can be divided into 21^14 satoshis, which logically doesn't make it any more or less rare than it was before.

Interesting. What's in it for the aggregator then? Are they taking a scrape of transactions as a fee? I don't see how they benefit. If they are taking a cut, doesn't that increase the cost to the faucet owner above what it would be if they were running the faucet themselves?

No, I agree with that. My comment was an expansion on what you were saying. Some people are of the opinion that leverage is the secret to multiplying gains. Anyone can employ leverage. Not everyone can earn a return on it, and leverage when it goes wrong compounds losses greater than the sum of its parts.

You take a small data point and try to extrapolate it to a macro-event and then claim your narrow view of things is proof of your point. In this case, you are trying to claim that one exchange with some technical issues should sink the value of Bitcoin under my theory, which either intentionally misunderstands my point or proves you're incapable of understanding it. See if you can spot the difference between your scenario, and the idea that a robust and stable economic system allows for speculative assets to have value. If you can't understand the difference, ask someone for help. When you understand the difference, maybe you won't post nonsense. Again, to recap, Bitfinex having issues is NOT a global financial crisis, which is the point you directly responded to by quoting it.

I take it based on this answer that it's a fixed conversion rate (variable based on the price of btc, but fixed vs usd)? In any event, wouldn't it still be possible for the rising price of Bitcoin to accommodate cheaper lottery tickets? A lottery ticket at 1 sat could be cheaper, for example buying 2 tickets for a satoshi, or 3 tickets for 2 sats, etc. This could also open the door for discounts on bulk purchases (buy 1,000, get 100 free!) or something like that. Bulk discounts might increase the amount of revenue generated from lotto ticket sales as people buy up to get a better deal.