But does it really?

As I'm inclined to think, typically people don't change much after they are adults, which is somewhere in their late 20's or early 30's. Time changes people but not necessarily for the better. When you are set in your ways, they are kinda set in stone. Otherwise, drug addiction could be easily cured by simple abstinence, but it doesn't work that way. If you are an addict (alcohol, drugs, gambles, whatever), it is more often than not for life. You can stand back but you may relapse into your addiction at any time, which basically means your addiction didn't go anywhere and is still with you

This is not the first time they pause the campaign

Last time they had paused it, they were making some major updates to the site, and I don't think this time is going to be different. Most likely, we should expect something entirely new, like new games added or something to that effect. Though I agree that pausing the signature campaign for a couple of weeks is probably not the best approach and marketing strategy, but it is not up to us to decide. Anyway, everyone should get paid today

На практике может быть всякое

Например, вы поставили стоп и полагаете, что он исполнится по этой цене. Но это далеко не всегда так, поскольку стоп работает немного по другому принципу. Как только текущий ценник становится равным вашему стопу или уходит ниже (как вариант, выше - в случае короткой продажи), биржа выставляет соответствующий ордер на закрытие позиции по рыночной цене, а не по цене стопа (иначе это не стоп)

На малоликвидных рынках это часто приводит к тому, что ваш стоп исполняется по цене намного меньшей от цены стопа (он может вообще полностью не исполниться). Ну и, соответственно, ваш баланс реально может оказаться в минусе в случае закрытия маржинальной позиции. С принудительной ликвидацией позиции абсолютно такая же история - позиция закрывается по рыночной цене, а не по выходу в ноль баланса

Let's call it a potential inconvenience (or even a pitfall, in a sense), though personally, I have no issues with that system. However, having been in crypto for so long (over 6 years already) I've seen some things (like transactions stuck for days and what not), and I know that these things can quickly turn from bad to worse, from a minor inconvenience into a major headache, into your personal hell of sorts. Technically, it is just a matter of time until they do

But overall I agree with you, it is not an urgency

Well, I can't actually say that I disagree with this part

Rather, I proceed from this further. The point is, in general you can feel that way (tired, exhausted, nervous, etc) even if there is no addiction involved. After all, you may easily get tired or nervous after some strenuous effort or troubling affair, and that's perfectly natural to feel that way. But since we are talking about gambling here, we should look into what happens next, i.e. after you come back to life, so to speak

In simple terms, if you are not of a gambling type (a would-be gambling addict), you are unlikely to continue with gambling (at least, not as much as before) as your mind wisely follows your body to prevent further damage to it that so much gambling causes. You can think of it as a kind of chopper switch which gets triggered to interrupt cold-turkey any self-destructive behaviors, and which addicts obviously lack

This may work, for some time

But it doesn't solve the main issue, i.e. someone being reckless with their money. Yes, we can take money from children, and they won't be able to spend it on something stupid. But we expect them to grow up in due course and be responsible for their actions on their own. In this way, setting up obstacles that would prevent you from reckless spending is more like fighting with symptoms rather than the disease itself (read, you will lose this fight in the end)

If caution was indeed the key, you would stay away from gambling altogether

Given that gambling (as in dice) is pure luck, and there is no chance to win other than by luck alone (pardon the pun), you have a paradoxical situation here. Put another way, when you start on your gambling journey, you are already being reckless enough (unless you are playing for fun only, but then it is a completely different attitude, outlook and perspective beyond the "being cautious" frame). Now you want to turn around and become cautious. Does it really work in real life? More often than not, it doesn't as you can change your mind but you can't easily change your attitude (which you clearly reveal when you start rolling)

In fact, I didn't mean it as a comparison (as in something being better than something else)

So if that gives you peace of mind, think of it as an analogy. In other words, if you are happy with your wife (and online casinos), go for it and don't look elsewhere (as they say, no accounting for tastes). On the other hand, if wifey (or hubby, for that matter) ain't your thing, and you honestly believe that the only true love you can get is from your dog, then there are hookers. And blackjack. As in land-based casino. This is meant as a reply to a question why one would go to a land-based casino (read, to get the whole package)

I mostly agree that the self-help techniques are useless in case of real addiction

As people who could help themselves wouldn't become addicts in the first place. With that said, though, I can't agree that greed is at the root of the gambling addiction. Addiction works on a physiological level (think a knee-jerk reaction here) while greed is an entirely conscious phenomenon

If greed were indeed the cause of this kind of addiction, then losing enough would suffice to understand that you can't win, and thus you would soon stop gambling in pretty much the same way people quit trading after being disappointed by recurrent losses. But since this is not the case, greed cannot possibly make you into a gambling addict

Could you please be more specific what you disagree with?

Just in case, I'm not defining a gambling addiction in terms of being tired or feeling exhausted. It is what happens after you recover that can be used as a telltale mark or sign whether you are in fact developing a gambling addiction or not. If you feel like gambling again, then you definitely are

Conversely, if you don't feel the intolerable and irresistible urge to play again, you just walk away without looking back. Indeed, you may play again in the future, but you will soon get bored and tired, a sure sign that you are not a gambling addict, for any possible definition of the term

Many thanks for your kind words! I truly appreciate it

Feel free to reach out to me if you need any further assistance and help

What's the purpose of gambling?

Right, to get excitement and personal enjoyment which are the emotions we are looking after. It makes sense to trade like an emotionless trading war machine since we are there for making profits (while emotions can lead to wrong or suboptimal decisions), but not in gambling. So the whole idea of gambling without emotions kinda beats its very purpose, i.e. to get some emotions when you feel bored and tired

That makes an interesting point

The moment you refer to (being constantly nervous, playing much more than you should, feeling exhausted afterwards, etc) is the one where you can judge whether you are in fact prone to this particular form of addiction. And the interesting part is that if some time "afterwards", i.e. after you have recuperated a little, you feel inclined to continue with your activity, that might be an addiction (and this is where you should stop and think). But if you don't, then it is not and you don't have to do anything

Maybe, high-class hookers as in blackjack and hookers?

Well, you can indeed ask why go to a land-based casino if you can just get along with hookers alone, but then I could ask you in turn why go to hookers if you can be as happy with your wife (or even without a wife)? This is the same with online casinos as they are more like your wife if you have one, or whatever. But if you are not quite content or happy with the package that your wife comes with, there are hookers, there are land-based casino as well to make up for the void you may feel

I'm not sure if this is really so

Cash gaining popularity necessarily means less use of payment cards and other forms of cashless payments, but is there any real evidence to that effect? More likely, it is just people's resistance to further expansion of these payment methods ("the rise of the unbanked") that we erroneously and prematurely interpret as banks losing their ground. In other words, we may in fact hear more voices against banks but it may simply mean some people are not quite happy with cash being steadily ousted from circulation

Personally, I wouldn't use this expression in the given context

And not because I love whales so much but for the simple reason it is not truly applicable to them. It is us, simple folks, who might have gotten rekt in the last two years. But if you had, say, 20M dollars' worth of bitcoins at the end of 2017 (which you had probably bought at substantially lower prices anyway), you would still have millions at the end of 2018. In other words, you don't take into account the effects of scale here

That's the reason why the Winklevii twins and the fellas of their caliber needn't necessarily feel like they have been massively rekt, if at all. If you are a multimillionaire you don't shit your pants when your investment loses half of its value as it is not the last money you have


I wouldn't call them whales as these funds are managing someone else's money (and someone else should be read and interpreted in plural here as in small fish)

Increasing the total amount of winning numbers would undermine the whole idea (effectively turning it into a giveaway)

И что же это может значит?

Каких-то полгода с небольшим назад Лайт падал почти до 20 долларов (хорошо, пусть будет почти год назад), и стоит полагать, что там вообще никаких майнеров не должно было остаться. Однако жив курилка! Опять же, выражение "все выходят" предполагает, что там через какое-то, весьма непродолжительное время никого не должно остаться, что очевидно не так. И если полуправда не является ложью (по Твену), то это не значит, что она не может быть хуже лжи (а именно это, как правило, в реальной жизни и происходит)

Well, in fact the damage that smoking incurs is quite predictable

In the worst case scenario you will wind up with some lethal disease like lung cancer or anything to that effect. But can we actually gauge the damage that the addictive gambling can cause? People are known to take their lives due to their losses (and in this respect gambling addiction is quite on par with compulsive smoking), but we have not yet started to consider how toxic such form of gambling is to society in general

Gambling addicts can easily ruin not just their own lives but also the lives of many other people, and not limited to their family. They can be engaged in all forms of destructive behavior like theft, robbery, or any other criminal activity. In this way, they are very much like drug addicts. Have you ever seen, or heard about, even one smoker doing that just because of their smoking? Highly unlikely, if not outright impossible, as smoking doesn't change one's personality

Me, I don't see a lot of connection here

Though I understand why you come to think so. You implicitly, and probably even without fully realizing it, assume that everyone entering the heat (i.e. aiming to get to the list and get some dough in return) goes for the first place. But that's not necessarily so

And if it is not so, there is no valid reason either to assume that anyone who is not specifically targeting the top position of the list would wager more just because the top player wagers big. Technically, if you wanted to make it into the top 10, you would be tracking the lower bounds of that range, not the wagered amount of the highest roller