The answer to whether many teams can do or have done what Manchester City has now done can easily be found on Wikipedia.
The last time a club from the Premier League has won the treble is 25 years ago and was won by Manchester United. There is no other English club who has done that before and there are only two clubs who won the treble twice and those are Barcelona and Bayern Munich. That is why the achievement is so impressive because it is very rare and difficult to pull it off.

How do you know that the guy sitting there with his wagon doesn't accept local currency or dollars and whether he relies on Bitcoin? Maybe it is just an additional option to also draw some attention to his little business?


Btw I found a foto of Craig Wright's renovated bathroom after he launched BSV...

As you say the only guarantee we have is that Bitcoin will be volatile. But what can we conclude from that? The only ones who don't have to care as much about where Bitcoin is going are the exchanges as they make their money on volume. Wouldn't it be a reasonable approach hen as part of a diversification strategy to also own shares in the infrastructure in addition to Bitcoin itself?

I know that centralized exchanges are not the optimal investments as some of them are prone to collapse even when nobody saw it coming, but I am not only referring to centralized exchanges. When there are decentralized solutions that have some integrated DAO function where people can acquire shares by holding a token in the DAO, wouldn't that also have a diversifying effect against Bitcoin's volatility? Whether it goes up or down, the share and the total $ value in volume would count and as a shareholder you would benefit from volatility no matter which way it goes.

What do you think about that?

When Bitcoin goes down and trading volume goes up, an exchange like Binance might be suffering from devaluation of their Bitcoin reserves, but they probably have a diversification strategy and convert enough of their revenue into "stable" currencies like fiat or USDT. I often think that all these exchange owners care more about volatility than about Bitcoin's price going up. Owning a part of the more solid infrastructure has been like owning a gold mine over the last decade (if the exchange was managed well and didn't go bankrupt).

Unless the industry collapses disappears, in my opinion it could be a good hedge to own both Bitcoin and the infrastructure facilitating trade and transactions. I know that the options to own a share in the infrastructure are not as manyfold and sometimes carry their own risk, for example when you buy BNB hoping that the burning will go on forever, ignoring the risk that even Binance could collapse as FTX has proven that nothing is impossible.

Hi, maybe someone can explain to me how the halving schedule and block reward adds up to the 21 million coins total. At https://bgl.bitaps.com/ it says

Bitgesell circulating supply   18 410 656.97402363BGL
Burnt coins   921 818.88360024BGL

If we add those two numbers, it is about 19.33m coins issued with the block reward. With 25 coins per block we get an additional 3,600 coins per day. That number times 365 is 1.314m.

If you add 19.33m and maybe 1.2m because halving is a month ago, we get about 20.5m coins when the next halving happens. Then we get about another 0.65m per year with a block reward of 12.5 coins. That would already be more than 21m coins max.

Are the numbers at https://bgl.bitaps.com/ correct? If they are correct, how can it work out that the new coins coming into circulation due to the block reward will not exceed 21m in two years from now? The numbers must be wrong?

Ok I solved the issue myself. The circulating supply is correct while the amount of burnt coins is wrong.

I found the first part of your answer very important. Because what is any offer worth if you don't know whether all parties can live up to it in the long-term? Before the big players move to a country like El Salvador with their headquarters, a whole lot of lobbying and political influence will have to happen first. Up to a degree that these companies know they are in a safe and stable place for the decades to come. I doubt that this is possible right now in El Salvador because political whims still have too much influence on the daily business.

It would be different when the vast majority of the El Salvadorian population had fully adopted Bitcoin into their everyday lives and factually benefit from it. Then even if elections are around the corner and Bukele does not get re-elected, a newly elected president can't simply throw the Bitcoin economy over. For now it is Bukele who paves the way for Bitcoin to take its roots within the El Salvadorian society and economy, and in a second step I think bigger and bigger businesses will decide to take the risk and go to El Salvador, not the other way around.

Unless, as you mentioned lobbying, big businesses are the ones who essentially dictate the political direction through the power of money, whatever that could mean. Promising large scale investments or even corruption could be part of it.

Yes and the major currencies are the ones that people have an idea about in regards to purchasing power. In order for a new unit of account to establish itself, it takes a lot of time. I addition to that Bitcoin is a brand new technology, which means that people who are not familiar with it also will have issues trusting it as the new unit of account. Apart from the fact that many won't be able / like using it. It's more likely that Bitcoin will find its way into the global society with the younger generations from today. Using a phone, using wallets and so on, that is something many of the older people don't do unless it is something like Applepay where they have an idea what that is about and who is behind it. I am not saying it is better, I am only saying that a lot of people have less issues trusting it.

Whether the USD suffers from inflation or not, too many people still find it easier to judge a good in pennies or USD than in satoshis. It's also not even easy for those familiar with Bitcoin as nobody can tell for sure where its price is going, but that also has an impact because people would spend less if they know their satoshis will increase in purchasing power over time. While uncertainty is usually not a good thing, the certainly that the dollar will further be inflated gives people something to calculate with.

I am not sure whether I understand your post, but are you asking whether it is a problem that there is less Bitcoin in USD value than there is USD in total? The second part of your comment probably refers to maximum transaction throughput compared to global daily transaction demand (or for now USD transaction demand)?

You have actually detected a major problem of today's economy. There will always be more FIAT USD than there is real value justifying the amount of all the USD money printed. The result is inflation. Real value desperately appreciates, but not in value, only in numbers, following the pace of the money printing machines as much as possible. At some point the market realizes that no matter how much money is printed, an asset relative to other assets doesn't increase in real value because of that.

The question is not whether Bitcoin can cover all USD notes out there as of yet. The question is whether people want to switch from a money that can infinitely be manipulated and boated up to a money that can't be. If I pay you 100k USD for your apartment and bread costs 10 USD, you are in no different situation than when I pay you 200k USD for your apartment and bread costs 20 USD. With FIAT money you can play that game infinitely, and infinitely dangerously because it is prone to collapse and not all asset prices adjust according to some money printing logic, evening out dangerous economic effects.

That is why Bitcoin is interesting, it is a system outside the existing system. This means that if Bitcoin is globally appreciated by all people, no national currency could be printed to easily buy Bitcoin up because it would have its own value that could appreciate beyond M0, M1, M2 and M3 of a national currency.

I agree with everything you said here, but I have been following this thread for a long time and I feel that the discussion all too often deviates from the original subject, which is Bitcoin as legal tender in a sovereign state. I have often read explicitly or between the lines that this thread discusses more about El Salvador being an investor in Bitcoin than an economy being operated with Bitcoin as one legal tender.

I think that most of those who post here are not really interested in the deep implications that the term legal tender is holding. But that would actually be the much more interesting discussion. What does it mean if Bitcoin becomes legal tender? It is not only the obvious answer like "you can pay your debt with it" or "settle your tax with it" or "merchants have to accept it as a form of payment". All these obvious answers entail a plethora of implications from the perspective of both the national and international political and social economy.

But in order for people discuss deep implications, they would have to put a lot of effort into educating themselves first with lots of terms in their isolated form and the interdependencies between them.

Again, legal tender is a topic that gets me excited, but this topic has come off track before it really even got started. Or perhaps I am nit-picking and I take OP's headline too seriously.

Ethereum also doesn't have a CEO in the sense that there are people under him who have to follow him. That is not the case. Buterin may appear as the smartest brain and that is why the majority follows him. But he has arguments with lots of developers as well. Everything is open source and the things can be openly discussed and criticized. The typical CEO role that you are referring to is also non-existent in Ethereum in my opinion.

If Satoshi showed up tomorrow, verifying he still has the wallets' keys and proposes a change to the protocol, I wonder how much resistance there would be against proposed changes (depends on the change of course, but let's assume it's controversial).

Lukaku is having a hard time right now. When you change clubs and it doesn't work out, that's bad already. But when you return to the club where everything used to be perfect and you find yourself sitting on the bench again because you can't deliver, that is even worse. Not only for the moment, but also for future negotiations with other clubs. I doubt that he is able to work his way out at Inter. But will he find another great club that is now willing to sign him? It's precarious for him and Summer will show what's possible for the last years of his career.

Wouldn't that only apply if he showed his face sitting on a lambo? I mean the thing that he could want to be bragging about it. This way who cares, it is interesting to see the bet he published here to have worked out for him. I still can't believe it though because if you do the maths, like multiply the 19-1 probabilities with each other, it is insane that it worked out for him. The way he talks it comes across as if it wasn't that big of a deal. But the calculation for an appropriate average probability of X (X=win) to the power of 18 (-1 because one was voided) shows that it is not going to work out very often

Even if you say that his average winning probability for the 18 legs was 65:35, the probability to win that combination bet is 0.65^18 = 0.00042898333. This means such a bet would have to be played. Now you might say that the average probability was higher, but the bet on Kansas City with odds of 3.64, the bet on the dodgers with 2.39 and the bet on Seattle Storm with 2.12 drastically lower the average probability of X. Those three bets alone in a combination would be a high risk bet already.

Oh yes the probability is extremely low. I like how OP says that in "casinos and slots is almost impossible to win big amounts on", implying that in sports betting it is the opposite, like reasonably possible.

https://imgur.com/a/wEkVnkk

The picture on that link alone gives you odds of 53.04 in just 5 legs out of your 19. To just win that one, you have to be incredibly lucky. Winning 13 more legs and 1 that gets cancelled (essentially in your favor) is no less lucky than winning half a million on a slot machine.

I can't tell whether these stories are true, but I'd rather put 20 bucks into a slot machine than put 300 bucks on a 19 leg multibet.

Potter has tried a whole lot this season and sometimes I think that might have been more of a problem than a solution if you exchange players every week and try out a new formation. How should automatic combinations between the team start to happen when in fact they rarely play with each other in the same formation?

Keeping a core of the team that you build your squad around is the best approach in my opinion. If changes need to be made because of a loss in performance, then that is what it is, but just exchanging players because you want to show the world that you are a strategic genius can go too far as well.

I have a neutral position on that after all. It his choice and the choice of a professional Formula 1 team to actually sign him as a main driver. I can understand when a sportsman can't let go and perhaps they even shouldn't if that is what their heart feels like. But I also think from the perspective of health and safety it is a difference when Roger Federer keeps playing tennis for very long compared to someone risking his life in a racing car for another year, and another year. Especially when you have a family I guess there is a special motivation and incentive to perhaps not overstep the mark.

Vettel never seemed like the kind of guy who will take his word back and join the Formula 1 again. He is a racer at heart, but when I saw his goodbye message I thought that this is surely final. Alonso can't get enough and people thought he might stop driving years ago. Perhaps he is still driving when he is 45.

I think a decrease in salaries would not only be good for Barcelona, but for soccer in general. These players detach themselves from their fanbases. I know that some will now say as long as the industry produces that revenue, the players have all the right to earn those amounts. But in times of crisis all over the world the subscriptions for the important leagues go through the roof. Years ago the prices were ok, but now they to raise it on a regular basis and you are basically forced to either pay or you can't watch soccer at all. It happens in all areas. Haaland is probably going to sign a new sponsoring contract with Nike for 23 million per year. In turn these companies raise their prices as well.

That is right but I believe he still has room to improve his individual game, like his 1 on 1. Now he perfectly understands which position to seek with full speed when he expects an assist. But we can also see that his speed is so high that he can easily win 1 on 1 situations, and that makes an offensive player very valuable. He has everything to be at the very top within the next few years. It's a joy to see a player develop like that.

He is on the radar of many clubs. His performance against Frankfurt also showed how explosive he is and how he is able to find the perfect gap at full speed. Even the goal that was denied actually was deserved in the way they played it. Osimhen was one step too fast, unsurprisingly!
He is robust, very fast and precise when he finishes. He doesn't give up on balls that seem to be lost. I do like the guy a lot.

Hamilton will be eager to try to take the overall record in number of championships, but I think his time is over. I know that this guy is a beast mentally, but so is Verstappen. When I watched Hamilton giving interviews in the recent past, I felt as if something has changed. He wasn't on fire as much as he used to be. If I had to make my pick I think it comes down to the first couple of races whether Hamilton is a candidate or not. If he isn't relatively successful in the first three to four races, that could already mean the end. There have been seasons where he had great comebacks, but if he can do that again? Verstappen is also extremely aggressive and is risking accidents a few percentage points more than Hamilton. If Hamilton's car isn't dominant enough, he will be constantly exposed to those attacks.

This is hard to say but it is fun to observe how the kids of some GOAT players are actually doing. Just in terms of the sport, it must be hard to be the son of Messi, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and the like. Usually you can't win, but only lose. Life still isn't bad of course as you are rich like hell and do even get the chance to show your talent to reputable soccer clubs whereas unknown kids don't even get the chance.

A bit off-topic, but in Formula 1 the son of Michael Schumacher tried his luck and even though he was convincing in Formula 2 and 3 I believe, he still couldn't make it (yet).

Does anyone have a good example from the top of their head where the son of an outstanding soccer player had a similar or even more successful career?