ROFLMAO..... India in deep $hit right now.. Pant and Sundar gone and Kohli left high and dry at the crease. Now I don't know for how long Ashwin may be able to defend against Anderson and the spinners. But after him, it's a bunch of genuine tailenders - Ishant, Nadeem and Bumrah. Archer must be salivating at the prospect of bowling against them. 69 overs remain in this match, and India is left with 4 wickets. Anderson has got 3 wickets for 7 runs. The amount of reverse swing this guy generate is just insane..... the commentators were calling him as the "sultan of swing" and I'd say that they are absolutely spot on. 

Both the cases may be true. It may be true that the whales are dividing their holdings to smaller wallets. At the same time, there is no doubt that the user base has increased tremendously over the years. So the average holding per user can't be the same, because there is a limit on the circulating supply. Even if we assume that the old users are holding on to their coins, the overall proportion of such users will go down as more and more new users enter the market. And with the exchange rates about to touch the $50,000 mark, how many of them can afford 1 BTC?

What a prediction? Did you made a bet on this match? It actually ended up in draw, despite a total of 6 goals being scored. I would have never thought Mumbai City not winning the match, with them being in such terrific form. And at one point, they were leading by 2-0. When the injury time started, Mumbai City was leading 3-2, and the goal from Ishan Pandita levelled the score for FC Goa in the last minute of injury time.

You can disagree with me, but as far as I am concerned, Smith is one of the best captains out there. During the last tournament, although he didn't scored too many runs, Smith did a pretty decent job in captaining the Rajasthan Royals side. During the initial phases, Smith and Warner were the only non-Indians captaining IPL franchises (before Pollard was appointed as the Mumbai Indians captain during the later phases).

It has something to do with the logistics as well. The vaccine from Pfizer/BioNTech needs to be stored at minus 70 degrees and not too many facilities in India have the capability to do so. The vaccine from AstraZeneca/Oxford on the other hand can be stored using normal refrigeration. The same goes for the versions from Novavax and J&J. Apart from the vaccines approved internationally, India is also using one of the indigenously developed vaccines as well (Covaxin from Bharat Biotech). Currently around 80% to 90% of the shots being administered are Covishied (AstraZeneca/Oxford) and the remainder is of Covaxin. And till Saturday, the cumulative number of individuals who have received at least one dose of the vaccine stood at 5,803,617 (which is around 0.4% of the population).

Another factor to note here is that India hasn't yet signed a contract with Pfizer/BioNTech. They have a contract with AstraZeneca/Oxford to supply 1 billion doses of the vaccine, and another with NovaVax for the same amount. There is a smaller contract with the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology to supply 200 million doses. The Indian government hasn't signed an agreement with any of the vaccine providers other than these three.

Rather than burning the coins, why can't these people spend that amount for the global adoption of Bitcoin? If they give small handouts to students and freelancers, then it is going to help the global adoption of Bitcoin in a big way. And if I am not wrong, back in 2013-14, Coinbase had a similar giveaway program for its new users, which was then copied by many other Bitcoin-based startups.

Kohli has become too much egoistic, and as a result of that he is unable to make logical decisions. England is currently leading by 417 runs. It is a bit short for their liking, as they would have been comfortable with a total of 440-450. Considering the depth in the Indian batting lineup, anything below that may be extremely risky for England. But now they have to adjust with a score that is slightly below their aim, because Dom Bess and Jos Buttler got out at short intervals. However, England would be hoping for more blunders form Kohli, as he is sticking with Shahbaz Nadeem as if his life depends on him. In my opinion, if he gives a chance to either Bumrah or Ishant, while keeping Ashwin at the other end, they may be able to mop up the tail pretty quickly.

Does anyone know how many coins are owned by the Winklevii now? At one point, they were holding around 150,000 BTC. At current exchange rates, that would be close to $6 billion. For them to become the world's richest, Bitcoin prices need to rise by around 34x. Other large-scale individual holders include Garvin Andresen and Roger Ver. Both of them own more than $4 billion in BTC.

But the largest individual owner has to be Satoshi Nakamoto, and his stash is estimated at somewhere between BTC980,000 and BTC1,200,000. As per the current exchange rates, this stash would amount to $38 billion to $47 billion. Still a long way behind Jef Bezos ($195 billion).

I can literally smell an upset. The partnership between Aiden Markram and Temba Bavuma has made 101 runs till now. South Africa only need another 134 runs, and it should be achievable for them (with Quinton de Kock at no.6). Feels bad about Pakistan. Their bowlers worked so hard in the first innings, to restrict South Africa to just 201. But now the same bowlers look clueless on how to tackle Markram/Bavuma.

The Bitcoin dominance has actually gone down by close to 10% during the last 1-2 months (from 71% to 61%), and most of the gains went to altcoins. Some of the altcoins have shown a much higher ROI compared to Bitcoin during the last 6 months. For example, Cardano has gone up by 700%, and Ethereum has gone up by almost 500%. In general there is a feeling in the market that these coins went down by too much during the bearish phase of 2018. So the recovery is being seen as natural.

When I used to keep my coins in Blockchain.info wallet, I came very close to getting hacked. There were multiple logins from unknown IPs, but fortunately for me, these people couldn't steal my transaction password. So although they got hold of the login password, they could not move the coins. The same happened when I used to keep the coins in my BTC-e wallet. Login was made by the criminal, but for moving the coins email confirmation was needed. The hacker failed to access my email. I immediately notified BTC-e and changed by password. All this happened 5-6 years back.

Everyone needs to understand that exchanges can't go against the authorities. They need to comply with the government regulations, no matter how much absurd they may sound. BTC-e, one of the earliest cryptocurrency exchanges tried that against the American authorities. And everyone know what happened after that. Their domain was seized and all the coins were confiscated. One of the owners (Alexander Vinnik is now facing life imprisonment in the United States). Perhaps Changpeng Zhao doesn't want to end up like Alexander Vinnik, and that is intelligent thinking from his part.

It just means that the user base is increasing at a steady pace. 5-6 years back, the proportion of wallets holding 1 BTC would have been much higher. But many of the large-scale holders would have sold a part of their holdings and majority of the new users could not afford to purchase 1 BTC (the picture is a bit vague, because there are people who hold their coins in exchanges and third parties such as Grayscale). Even this 2% figure surprises me. In the coming years, it will definitely decrease.

It's more like personal choice. Those who want to keep their BTC with PayPal and Grayscale are fully aware of the dangers. The same goes for cryptocurrency users who want to keep their coins in exchange wallets. Even the experienced users are divided on how to store their coins. Some want to go for hardware wallets such as Trezor and Ledger, while some others prefer paper wallets. And there is another section that favors online wallets and lite wallets. In the end, the choice lies with the user.

I first lost my coins in 2013, when Instawallet shut down. The again I lost my coins in 2014, when Mt Gox went down after the robbery (I have filed for reimbursement to the bankruptcy trustee, but as far as I know, none of the former users have yet received any of their coins). Then once again, I lost some of my coins (mostly LTC and BCH) when BTC-e/Wex.nz was closed down. And then in 2019, I once again lost some of my coins when Cryptopia got hacked. The list is quite long and my case is a classical example of someone who never learnt a lesson from their mistakes. If you want to end up like me, then you are most welcome.

For me, all this resembles what happened in 2017. Back then, for the first 3-4 months of the year, the exchange rates were stable (after a 400% increase in 2016), and mostly remained at around $1,000 per coin. Then all of a sudden there was a rally and it took the exchange rate to $2,500-3,000 by June. Then again there was a brief lull, before the rally resuming in August-September 2017. For 2021 also, I am expecting the same pattern.

How are you supposed to live with $160,000 for lifetime? I am living in an Asian country, and the amount that you have mentioned is enough for only 2-3 years, for a family of 4-5 members. If you want to live in a rural area with extremely limited spending, then it may be enough for 1-2 decades, but still that sort of amount will fall short while facing any emergency situation.

Don't you think that Elon's role is overhyped? The prices are going up so fast because of fund inflows from the institutions. These institutional investors never make their decision based on a single tweet or news article. The possible trigger was the adoption by PayPal, which happened a few months back. Many of the institutions, who had adopted a "wait and watch" strategy have decided that time has arrived to make the moves.

There were rumors that Shakib was being made a scapegoat. A few weeks before the ban, he had some high-voltage fight with the BCB. And regarding the allegations, there is no indication that Shakib tried to fix matches. He was approached by a bookie during the IPL and there was a delay from his part in reporting this incident to the authorities. Now the question is how can the bookie approach him, without the knowledge of the franchise owners and other team members. I personally felt that the quantum of punishment handed over to him was excessive.

A number of new altcoins are appearing in CMC all of a sudden and they are reporting multi-billion USD market cap. I don't know who are pumping these coins. But most of them doesn't seems to be having a real life usage. I would be very careful before investing in these coins. BTW, I am not talking about coins such as Chainlink and Polkadot. I was referring to coins that were created in 2020 or 2021, such as Elrond, Synthetix, Compound, Solana and UMA.