I don't think delaying the gratification of our investments is the best method to determine the success of our investment. Your are right that keeping our money invested longer usually means we get a higher return. Both consumption or saving in a bank account gives no return at the moment. Together with the inflation the only alternative we have is to invest, but there can be bad investment. In case we pick a mediocre or bad investment it will not lead to good returns, even if we delay our gratification. That's why we need to keep monitoring our portfolio and reevaluate oir positions. Sometimes it's better to cut losses and move on, instead of waiting for something to turn around. Long term investing is still the most important tool to build wealth.

On more thing the casinos like to do is install air filters that keep the air clean and adds fresh oxygen to it. This helps to make the gamblers feel more awake and fresh. Together with the no window rule the time will pass more quickly. I remember my first few nights in Las Vegas leaving the casinos and realising that's it already 6am and the sun is up again. The whole concept of physical casinos is entertainment, free alcohol while gambling is a big part of it. For online casinos all these things are not an option, for them the casino games itself are the focus. I wasn't aware that casinos play thei music, my browser might have the sounds turned off and I mostly listen to my own music or have the TV running in the background. I think having a large variety of different casino games is the best for online casinos to stand out from others and keep the gambler engage the longest.

There can be multiple reasons why your profit order wasn't filled. The first question would be to check how long the bitcoin price stayed above 24.448. If it was only a short period of time than there might not have been enough buy orders to fill your sell order. It can also help to check the traded volume at that time period to see how many people actually managed to sell their positions. This week has been a bad weak for crypto markets, there were a lot of more sellers than buyers in market and the bitcoin price dropped a lot. It can be that there weren't enough buyers to take off all the bitcoins before prices falling. Also trade size might play a role, if only small or large orders have been prioritised. I would still recommend you contact the exchange directly and inquire about your trades, just to be sure that everything is legit.

Looks like I am part of the majority that uses bitcoins less than once per month. The crypto bear market this year is the main reason for me to not use any bitcoins anymore. With prices below 40,000 USD it feels to me that bitcoins are very cheap and I don't want to give mine away cheaply. Using bitcoins for purchases means to reduce crypto holdings while saving fiat money. And this year I want to do the exact opposite. With inflation around 8% it makes no sense to keep any fiat cash around. The only form of bitcoin transaction I am doing now is buying new each month and use bitcoin whenever I withdraw money from a casino.

I agree with you, OG looked really strong in the last few tournaments. Getting 4th place in the Arlington Major was a good performance, and their loss for 3rd place against Team Aster was very close. The final might between the two teams again in Malaysia and at the moment it feels like a coin toss. Before placing any bets on who wins the tournament I would wait for the first few games to see who performance better. As for Team Secret I am not so convinced if they will pull through, I am rather rooting for Nigma Galaxy.  Looking at the groups I think that OG will be first in Group B and Nigma Galaxy second, in Group A it will be Team Aster first and Team Secret second.

Obviously yes, why risk all the progress I made in 2 months fighting my addiction for a single night out? The risk of getting hooked again is too big in my opinion. I haven't experienced gambling addiction myself or among my close friends, all my information I got is from reading online. What I read is that the hardest step is to try and break the addiction by getting help. Taking treatment is the right way to recovery and requires hard work and determination. There can be relapse during the recovery, but good friends should help us rather than be a temptation. If he really is a long term friend than I would tell him of my problems and I am sure he wouldn't try to convince to still go with him. I think going for a nice dinner and some beers would be a good alternative to catch up and talk about old times.

This not really me you describe here, I am not doing any day trading anymore. Thinking about bitcoins is one thing, but being the first thing you think about in the morning and the last thing at night seems a bit too much for me. If you are a trading cryptos every day than it's your job and it's important, but are you really depending on it? Right now the market seems so volatile and it's mostly a sideways trend between 20-25k USD that trading every single day seems to much. After a 4-8% rise we see a similar drop the next day. Based on technical analysis you might find the intraday signals for each trend, for me this is too difficult and will likely result in over trading. In the past I tried day trading myself with mixed results. The amount of time I had to invest to achieve a profit was not worth it in the end, a more long term approach suits me better and it also lets me sleep more peacefully.

I agree with you that it's a good idea to watch the games we place our bets. It will help us to see if our predictions were accurate. Watching summaries of the game is fine but it will never show all important parts. And maybe our team lost due to a few unlucky situations. So far my experiences with live gambling wasn't really successful. I used live bets a few times in the past to close down bets I placed before. This always meant to take a save loss with no more upside chances. Too many times I have seen the game turn around in the last 10 minutes, which made me feel horrible for closing out the bets. Since then I kind of stopped betting in the opposite direction. If you are skilled sport bets gambler this is a good strategy, but for beginners it seems a bit too much. It's also good to make a prediction and stick with it to the end.

It's hard if you put all your money and trust into one bank and when the time comes that you need your money the bank won't give it to you. I haven't heard of a similar story before, the actions of the bank are not okay, but it's also not okay to take matters into your own hand and take a hostage. There are rules and laws we need to follow. Taking the bank to court probably takes a long time and he might not have that time in an emergency. I have similar fears myself with the big banks in my country. Even though the government guarantees bank deposits up to 100,000 Euros, I still don't trust the system. We should learn from this story to never put all our money into a bank. I use 1 bank that has branches in my city and 3 different online banks to spread my money. One bank to save, one to do my brokerage for stock trading, one bank where I have a loan and then my main bank for every days business.

I am not really an expert on the profitability of crypt casinos or sportbooks, but it's obvious that they are a really profitable and good investment for their owners. The boom in the online gambling industry over the last several years saw a rise in new casinos who are competing for market shares. Even with strong competition among the casinos and offering promotions like 200% deposit bonuses it' still a lucrative business to operate your own or be part of a casino. All of the games a casino runs has a house edge, this positive expected value means that the more people play their games the higher their profits. We know the winning percentages of the casino from the Roulette or BlackJack, here the casino usually has a 4-6% edge. In slots the number is even higher, the RTP is between 90-96% that means that on some slots the casino can make up to 10 cents for every $1 played. It's the same games a physical casino is running and they have to pay for rent, electricity, a lot of more employee, security, etc. When it's already profitable for a physical casino to operate with all these additional costs than it makes it so much more lucrative for a online casino to operate the same games. If you have the chance to invest in a crypto casino or sportbook you should look at it in great detail, it's important not to overpay for your share.

I used to like credit cards a lot for travelling, it was a guarantee to get money and pay bills even when other bank cards didn't work. I never used credit cards at home, only when abroad. As long as there is no monthly fee I have no problem with them. Charging a monthly fee for a card that is rarely used seems like a rip off to me. I remember the first time travelling abroad my grand parents gave me traveller cheques and told me I could use them anywhere, which was completely outdated nobody accepted them and I took them back home. After that I got a credit card as emergency from my parents. And now after using it for many years I am not sure anymore, during my last trip to Thailand I noticed that exchanging cash locally was getting much better exchange rates than the bank was giving me at ATMs or in restaurants. It seemed really wierd to pay a fee and get worse rates. I could have saved atleast 120 USD by using cash instead of a credit card. So at the moment credit cards seem the most convenient solution but not the cheapest.

I noticed this myself when travelling through South America a few years ago. In almost any country I went there was a state lottery where a lot of people played and talked about it. It was like a highlight of the week when the numbers came out. And then there were a lot of scratch card places where I saw often people wait in line to get new cards. It felt completely different to the lottery environment here in Europe. We do sometimes have hypes here as well, but they are rare and only happen for the Christmas lottery or big jackpots. And I rarely see people here doing scratch cards anymore. What surprised me was that there wasn't a lot of advertising for gambling, it must have spread through people talking to each other. It also seemed like the amount of money people used for gambling was higher as a percentage of their salary. This might be the case due to lacking opportunities to get out of poverty in those poor countries. Spending some money each week gives the small chance to become rich overnight, even if these small amounts each week add up to large sums over the years.

Great news, I think this is the best approach you can make when it comes to buying bitcoins. Take advantage of the cheap prices at the moment while still having some funds left to keep buying in the future when prices might drop lower. And even if prices are rising sharply again you are already invested. I am following the DCA method myself for several month now. Dividing assets into Real Estate / Gold / Bitcoins for retirement is a good idea, but I think you are missing one important thing, Stocks. All three assets you recommend don't provide any income when holding it. Real Estate might give you income when you rent it out, but the most likely scenario is that you live in the house or apartment yourself at an old age. And Bitcoins and Gold only gives us income when we sell it or use it to pay bills. One option that makes sense in my opinion is to invest in high dividend stocks, like that you always have some additional cash inflow every year in form of dividends.

While you are right that there are probably more people who lose in gambling than there are winners, it's important to look at the whole picture. I expect that the majority in gambling either wins small or loses small. From my friends I know that we all spend smaller amounts in the casino and try to keep our losses limited. Over the years I wouldn't say that gambling had a big impact on my financial situation, because I also look at the opportunity costs. If I don't spend one evening gambling than I would do something else, like go to the movies, or to bar drinking with friends, or to a restaurant. All of the alternatives would also cost money and should be compared to the losses in gambling. It's not like if I stop gambling I would sit at home and only watch TV. Gambling is much more interactive than to watch passively TV. It's good to focus on the benefits of gambling from time to time. This means reasonable and compulsory or addictive gambling.

Yes of course the bitcoin price will reach 40k USD again. The real question is when, not if. It might take 2 months or 2 years, but eventually the bitcoin price will recover again. Bitcoins has been around for many years now and tends to always move in cycles. After the current bear market will come the next bill market.  As a new trader I would recommend you buy some bitcoins and leave them as a long term investment. The market is very volatile right now, your position can easily go up or down 10% in a week. Making a quick profit or loss can motivate you to trade more often which will always cost transaction. Best to to hold out and wait for a new ATH.

What a final, that was very impressive by Team Spirit, after the first round I thought LGD PSG would win the major. They were the clear favourite before to win.  Luckily I had no bet for the finals, my last bets were on LGD for the upper bracket final when they won 2-0 and on OG to make it through the lower brackets. Somehow the potential winnings on LGD to win the major were already so low that it didn't seem worth the risk to me. Such a strong performance from Team Spirit in the final could also be the final for the International this year. Same like last year seems the most likely now LGD vs team spirit. During the commentary yesterday I think it was ceb from OG who says that teams play a little weaker during major to not show their full strength and best strategy before the international. Now I am wondering if team spirit already calculated to get into the finals via the loser bracket and held back till the very end.

The first step for me to get my personal finances in order was to track my expenses. Only after recording every time I spend money in a month I got a feeling for my situation. Before that I didn't keep an close eye and used to withdraw money every time I needed it. A simple excel sheet helped me a lot to see where I spend most of my money and which positions I could reduce. After removing unnecessary expenses I looked at the fixed cost like insurances and food and other supplies. Just by switching insurance companies I managed to save 50 Euros per month. And I started buying at a discounter supermarket which sells larger quantities at a cheaper price. Instead of planning for the next 2-3 weeks only I look at the next 6 months now and whenever there is a special deal I buy more and have more storage at home. There are a lot of things where we can save money, even if it's only a few cents it will add up over time.

I have been gambling regularly in the last few years and still enjoy it today. From my last 10 sessions I don't remember anything particular out of the ordinary. There are days where I am winning and days where I am losing. My gambling budget per week is pretty tight which limits my potential loss I can have. In the last two month I think I only hit my loss threshold twice. What I do remember from my last few gambling session is a nice poker hand where I won 9 USD with Q10 in hearts. For me gambling tends to have different phases, sometimes I play more blackjack and roulette and sometimes poker. Right now I am in a poker phase again. I don't have so much time in the evenings so I mainly play cash games. You can sit down or stop playing anytime you like, it's a good way to entertain myself after work.

Damn I didn't expect that already 25% of the users so far are owning 1 BTC, somehow I thought the ratio would be a little lower. Good for them, I am not jealous or anything. It was my own mistake that I don't own 1 BTC now anymore. Back in 2016 I managed to get my hands on quite a few BTC over the time, but didn't hold on to them. After stopping to trade in CSGO skins I also sold all my bitcoins. It still hurts to think about it  even if I can't change the past. Most important thing is now to not repeat the same mistake again. My current goal is to reach 1 BTC, before that I would never consider selling any bitcoins. The difference is also that I am now investing alt coins, where in 2016 I only focused on bitcoins. Would be nice to know how many of the people who don't own yet 1 BTC, are owning larger amounts in alt coins.

Poker is one of the few games where you play against other players and not the casinos. There is no house edge involved, and the casino is usually only paid in a fee based on the number of hands being played. That makes poker as not so lucrative for casinos because there is no upside potential. You are right that playing casino based on chance/luck professionally is very hard. There are other ways to remain profitable against the casino by using methods like card counting, or find flaws in the casino setup. These techniques are usually prohibited and will result in a ban from the casino. Cheating is of course another way to try and make money of the casino. Like the famous Phil Ivey case when he was playing baccarat and used edge sorting. In the end it is important on which games you like and enjoy. There is no point in trying to go for a poker career if you don’t enjoy the game. To become professional in gambling it takes hundreds of hours to get used to gambling, develop a good strategy and keep trying to optimise that strategy. It’s hard work and if we don’t enjoy the game it will be nearly impossible to keep a winning mindset.