If they had included one more spinner, then things would have been a little bit better for England last time. Jack Leach bowled well, but he lacked support from the other end. Bess can be quite wayward at times, but I guess he could have made an impact in the third test. There was no point in going for 4 pace bowlers and just one full time spinner, as England did for the third test.

Once the entry fee is decided then we will be able to take a decision. I missed the opportunity last time because I was short of coins. But for the regulars here, it is a very nice opportunity to get hands on some big $$$. IPL 2020 pool was extremely beneficial for the participants, because almost 80% of the prize money came from the sponsors and only around 20% came from the entry fee.

Hyderabad deserved a place in the playoffs, but unfortunately they fell short by a few points. But I am sad about the poor performance by Bengaluru FC. The team which is captained by Sunil Chhetri deserved a better position in the points table. They ended up at 7th place with just 22 points. Being the most renowned Indian player, I was expecting more from Chhetri and Bengaluru FC.

If the players go out for shopping, then what is the point in setting up all these bio-secure bubbles? According to the protocol, the players can't meet anyone outside the bubble as long as the tournament is ongoing. If they disregard this protocol and meet outsiders, then they are not only putting themselves and the teammates in danger, but also causing millions of USD worth of potential damages to the TV broadcasters and the sponsors.

They can make 11 different pitches or 22. In the end, the pitch will behave the way Indian captain and coach want. And this time it is like life or death situation for Kohli. He hasn't won an ICC event for a very long time. He desperately want to play in the WTC finals and lift the trophy. So I don't expect much difference in ground conditions for the 4th test match.

As I mentioned earlier, I am OK with 1 pacer and 3/4 spinners. But I believe that 7788bitcoin wanted to go with an all-spin attack. I don't think that going to a test match without any pacer is a good idea, especially when there are no part-time pace bowlers in the Indian squad. I have seen many occasions when teams in SENA grounds went with an all-pace attack. But even in such occasions, they had at least 2-3 part timers who could bowl occasional spin.

Farmer protest was going on the right track until the Republic day. The public mood changed, after some of the protesters changed the national flag at Red Fort. Some say that supporters of the ruling party infiltrated the protests and did things like Red Fort raid and attack on policemen to devoid the farmers of public sympathy. Anyway, now it looks as if the support for the protests have waned.

Looking at the Indian political system, the ruling party is supported by how the system functions. They have their strongholds in a few states such as UP, Bihar, Gujarat, MP, Karnataka and Rajasthan. These 6 states account for almost 40% of the parliamentary seats and this means that they can ignore the other states and come to power solely by concentrating in this region.

The situation is quite fluid now. I hope that the finance minister has now realized her mistake. Legalization and regulation will be mutually beneficial for both the government and the Bitcoin community in India. Let's see how it goes from here.

Last time also when the tournament was progressing really well the final few matches had to be postponed due to the pandemic restrictions. And this time it is going to be worse if the players test positive. Because the tournament has just started. Both the PCB and the TV broadcasters will face huge losses if this spiral out of control. That said, a thorough investigation needs to be done on how Fawad got the virus. He was in the biosecure bubble for more than three weeks. It is impossible to catch the virus, if he was following the necessary safety protocols.

They can go with 2 pacers and 3 spinners as they did during the third test, or with just 1 pacer and 3 spinner. Going with 4 spinners, with no pace bowling support will be madness. I would have considered this scenario, if India had some pace bowling all rounders. The current Indian team have none. All of their batsmen bowl part-time spin and there is not a single player who could bowl medium pace. This is OK in India, but can be a big handicap in SENA nations. There are a few promising youngsters in the domestic circuit such as Manisankar Murasingh. The BCCI needs to give them an opportunity to play for the national team.

In third world countries, the biggest obstacle for legalizing alcohol, gambling, porn, weed, prostitution.etc comes from the religious bodies. Ideally religion should be kept out of politics, but in many of the developing nations that is not the case. Even if the government realize that there is benefit in legalizing and regulating these sectors, they can't do much about it due to the opposition from the religious bodies. A good example is that of the Philippines. The government can't even implement family planning measures, because the Roman Catholic church opposes it.

I haven't travelled to India ever since the pandemic broke out, and therefore I have to admit that I don't have ground updates. But some of my friends in India are saying that there are signs that the government may rethink on the proposed bill. As of now, it looks like the finance minister has decided to postpone presenting the bill in the parliament for "further consultations". I strongly suspect that the campaign against the ban carried out through social media platforms had an impact on this decision. The ban was essentially proposed by corrupt bureaucrats such as Subhash Chandra Garg, and the ruling party politicians simply went along as they don't have much of an idea about cryptocurrency. Now they realize that the bureaucrats were wrong.

I am still hopeful that the finance minister will reject the bill in its present form and go for a regulatory bill similar to what the Russian parliament approved a few days back. All that said, I don't think that mass unrest is a viable option. During the last two years, there have been several incidents of mass unrest against proposed legislations (such as Article 370, farmers bill, CAA.etc). But none of them were fruitful.

Big dip is theoretically possible, but it can't sustain for long. Because there is not enough supply in the market to keep the prices low for more than a week or two. Mining supply has dried up due to block reward halving. Supply from individual investors has been reduced to a trickle, because those who were holding for short-term and those who were susceptible for panic selling have already sold their stash. Supply from online shops is now a fraction of what was there a year ago, because of lower usage resulting from high fee levels. Now the remaining coins are being held by whales and institutions, and they are unlikely to sell their coins at this point.

Here are the latest stats from 1st March 2021.

Total market cap: $1,449,508,166,074 (-16.64%)

Bitcoin: $881,278,805,015 (60.798%)
Bitcoin forks: $13,002,873,230 (0.897%)
Stablecoins: $50,730,547,831 (3.500%)
Altcoins: $498,629,890,591 (34.400%)
WBTC: $5,866,049,407 (0.405%)

This is the change compared to my last post:

Bitcoin: -0.516%
Bitcoin forks: -0.133%
Stablecoins: +0.738%
Altcoins: -0.088%
WBTC: -0.001%

Agreed. In this aspect Tesla and Bitcoin are very similar. Tesla represents the future of automobile industry, while Bitcoin represents the future of payments industry. Tesla and Bitcoin in 2020s will be similar to what Apple and Amazon was in the 1990s. But still in case of Tesla, I believe that it's P/E of >1,000 is a bit high for my liking. Similarly, even Elon Musk is now saying that Bitcoin prices look high.

The country doesn't have enough forex reserves at hand to keep the national currency from falling. To make matters worse, their gold reserves (which were stored in London) got confiscated by the British government. So they lost whatever little gold reserves they were actually having. The government tried to pass the burden towards the citizens. They kept the exchange rates at artificially low levels, which is much different from the black market rates. Now the citizens don't have any option other than to use assets such as Bitcoin and gold to protect their wealth. Gold is also not preferred, because the chances of confiscation by the authorities is there.

It is due to COVID 19 restrictions. The BCCI thought that it will be easier to set up bio-secure bubbles, in case the matches are held in two venues instead of four. So we had Chennai hosting the first two matches and Ahmedabad getting selected for the last two. The other state associations may be unhappy about it. Because normally the hosting rights are decided on a rotational basis among the 38 member associations of the BCCI.

BTW, I don't think that the team winning the toss would elect to bowl first (unless the pitch is different from what we are expecting). That would mean that they need to bat on 4th innings. If the pitch behaves like a minefield, then it will be almost impossible to bat on 4th and 5th day (if the match actually last that long). So I guess the team winning the toss will decide to bat first, as have been the case so far.

I don't understand the point in excluding Jasprit Bumrah for the squad for 4th test match. He is not a part of the T20/ODI squads, so there is no excuse to rest him further. And India should not become complacent here, as their slot for the WTC final is not yet confirmed. At this point I would have preferred going with an unchanged squad, rather than replacing Bumrah with Umesh/Saini/Siraj. This is a big match, and the team needs to realize that they can't lose it.

Taking into account the results from previous matches, 187 is not a big target. But we can't forget the fact that at one point Karachi were struggling at 37/3 after 5 overs (Babar Azam was the first wicket to fall). They managed 149 runs from the next 15 overs, which is impressive. Both Mohammad Nabi and Sharjeel Khan scored runs at a good pace. Now Lahore is in a difficult position and two of their important batsmen are out. Advantage seems to be with Karachi.

Mohammad Ilyas is in for Karachi, while Zeeshan Ashraf is included for Lahore. Let's see how much impact these changes will have on the outcome. Personally I believe that the decision to drop Aamer Yamin was right. He was unimpressive in the tournament so far. So Karachi will be batting first, and everyone is waiting for fireworks from Babar Azam. On the other side, it is going to be Shaheen Shah Afridi & Co.

LOL.. this dude is really funny. Capitalism has failed us? I don't think so. Most of the capitalist countries have seen poverty levels drastically reduced during the last few decades. Unemployment and poverty is still there in capitalist countries, but compared to what they had a few decades back the improvement is quite noticeable. On the other hand, check the current status of Socialist utopias, such as Cuba, Venezuela and the former USSR. If you love socialism so much, then please migrate to one of these countries and leave us in peace.