I think that nobody in Europe actually believed that Putin would go into a full war with Ukraine. Maybe people now say they knew it was happening and expected it, that seems wrong to me. If the West would have known about the war than it would have been possible to prepare for the sanctions. Russia is the aggressor, they planned everything even if the plans where not accurate they could atleast prepare for the impact of the sanctions. The main problem for Europe they need the gas from Russia. Sure USA would love to sell more liquid gas to Europe, but its more expensive. We can't just ruin the economies in Europe to hurt Russia. Every sanction not only hurts the targeted country but also the country imposing the sanctions. If economy is affected too much, the people will just vote for another party that will loosen the sanctions again.

You shouldn't worry about these things, there is no point feeling bad about the past. You can't turn back time and change everything. It's also not healthy losing sleep over this. Most of us here on the forum started to get involved after bitcoins where more valuable 1$. We all could feel bad about being go late to the party. But I do think that bitcoins will keep rising long term. There is no way the sideways trend will be forever. The world changed a lot from last year, Russia Ukraine war, rising inflation, worse economic outlook. There are so many problems we face right now and still bitcoins are holding strong. Don't worry so much and try to forget everything for a couple of months. When you come back prices will be higher.

BLAST Premier Spring Showdowns in Europe and North America are starting on Wednesday 27th. Semi Finals will then be on the weekend. There will be some really exciting games coming up, looking forward to it. Liquid vs paiN is probably the most one sided game this season, who is looking for a small profit could bet on Liquid here, this seems like sure a sure win for Liquid. The payout with below 1.1 seems almost a waste of the funds. In my opinion much better games are Astralis vs Movistar Riders, should be a good win for Astralis. And also NiP vs Bad News Eagles should be an easy win for NiP. They played already last week against each other and NiP won that one.

West Ham United has good chances of winning against Frankfurt and going to the finals. But after the Barcelona loss I am really afraid to bet against Frankfurt, maybe we will see another miracle. So far I haven't put down any bet yet for the semi finals, maybe I will just skip this round and only put down a small bet on RB Leipzig vs Rangers. The payout for Leipzig winning is so low that there isn't much profit to be made and better to wait for the finals. If there won't be any surprises than we are going to see West Ham United playing against RB Leipzig in the finals. In the finals I will definitely put my money on Leipzig again. Will be close match though.

I wouldn't really say that capitalism defeated socialism, rather socialism together with communism defeated itself. Looking at the political systems today we all agree that capitalism was the better system. USA grew so much stronger in the last 80 years than Soviet Union or China. Socialism is strongly connected to communism and share a lot of the same principals. On paper it is a good system, it focuses on the common good of a country and helping everybody to have a better life. Things like central plannings makes that everybody should have enough and nobody is missing out. The problem is that people at the top are changing with power. Even if they were very good people before coming in office, once they taste all the power and money they will change. Instead of focusing on the common good eventually the politicians start to focusing on their own good, accumulating wealth and being open to corruption.

I am not aware of such an exchange these days. It became the norm for exchanges to request a lot of information from their customers to avoid the problem of money laundering and tax evasion. Crypto currencies became so mainstream in the last 18 month that exchange companies need to protect themselves. Being labeled as supporting criminal activities can be the end of an exchange.
If you want real privacy, have you thought about finding similar minded people in your area? You could either look for gettogethers of a crypto community, or maybe maybe some local adds that you want to buy crypto currencies. Doing transactions directly with each other - like paying cash for cryptos would give you the highest level of anonymity. Just make sure you meet somewhere in a public place and verify that the funds are real before bringing large sums of cash with you.  

Welcome to the forum, it's a good place to find out information about gambling. There were already a lot of posts here that recommend you casinos with good referral programs. But depending on the size of your telegram channels you might have much better options that the ones publicly stated by the casinos. In case you already have a casino where you gamble regular, I would recommend you to contact them directly about a special referral system for you. If you have channels on telegram with several thousand followers who are all into gambling, than you could bring a lot of new customers to the casino. For all the traffic you generate there should be a special program just for you. It' similar to the youtubers who have their own collaboration with casinos and make a lot of money of it.

Both CSGO and Dota2 I know very well, in both games I probably have 1k hours each. Initially CSGO was not free to play, and even today if you want to play competitively you need to pay. This is mostly to make it more expensive for cheaters to have alt accounts. Personally I prefer free to play games because it let's you try out game for free and see if you like them. Not like the battlefield where you pay 60 USD just to find out the older ones are more fun to play. I also like the monetization of free to play games where they add different cosmetics. So if you reallg enjoy a game and play it more regularly, you can spend some money. And there is no pay to win approach. But free to play games also have some issues, they mix players who only play for fun with competitive players together, that can lead to a toxic environment.

In my country saving money in a bank account is still very common even though it's not profitable. My grandmother and even my father have almost all his savings in a bank account that is paying 0.1% interest rate for the last 5 years. With inflation rates of above 2% they are losing money every year. I keep telling them that there are better alternatives to at least protect the money against the inflation, but they are not listening to me. The strange than is than they are complaining every month how much more expensive food and other things become. I don't see that interest rates will rise a lot any time soon. The higher inflation is a very good situation for all the indebted countries and helps them to reduce their refinancing costs. That is why I would expect to see a constant higher inflation in the future with only moderate interest. It just doesn't make sense to bring anymore money to the bank. I would recommend anybody to look into staking rather than saving to get at least some return after inflation.

But why would you look at the currency market as a validation for sanctions. There is almost no more trading going on. European and American banks have stopped to accept rubles or convert them. Russia has no real access to Dollars and Euros anymore. They have a lot of reserves in foreign banks, but can't access them anymore. There is no buy or selling going. That's why the currency markets don't give a real price for the Ruble. This is also why Russia is getting downgraded to partial default by the rating agency. They need to make interest payments of their bonds in dollars, but they have no access to it. They try to pay them in ruble, but not getting accepted. It's also why Russia wants gas payments in ruble and not euros or dollars. As long as sanctions hit people close to Putin and reduce the military spending its good, but if the sanctions only hit the average citizen it's not helpful I think.

The Phoenix Suns are still on top for the 2022 championship at the moment. It seems like another derby against the Milwaukee Bucks. Hopefully things will change up this year and it's going to be more exciting. The odds for the next few contestants are much lower and closely together. My favourite tram is still golden state Warriors, even though they don't have the strongest team anymore. Just going for the most likely winner has usually the lowest payout. Going with the underdogs is where the real profit is.

I am not very familiar about the Lightning Network. Only read about it a little from time to time, but never saw how the implementation in a casino would actually work. Could you maybe explain a little here in the thread what the advantages are over the usual casino design, and what the draw backs are? As far as I understand it the Lightning Network is a second layer over blockchain networks that helps in making smaller transaction between 2 parties without need to actually transfer funds. On paper that sounds very good, because many people trying out a new casino will not do so with large funds, but rather smaller amounts. If it is a cheap and easy way to reduce transaction cost I am wondering why it is not being implemented.

First time i hear about that website. Always nice to see new gaming platforms offering services. I am wondering what is the average return a decent CSGO player makes on your website? Over the last 4-5 years I tried out many different gaming platforms, with very mixed results. Most of them offered rewards in their own loot boxes which advertised dropping chances for valuable skins between 1-10% for the cheaper boxes. But even though I played there for months I never managed to get any decent skin. Most of the them where 1 cent skins, some 5-10 cents, but nothing more valuable. Only one of my friends managed one time to get a 20 USD skin. The dropping chances felt a bit rigged.

I would argue that it's never to late to buy. The first rule of investing should be always to determine what is the budget we can work with and how much are we comfortable to lose. Investing all our money today just to be forced to sell it again in 2 month because we need it for important things is not smart. But it's also not smart to leave all our money in fiat cash, where we don't get any interest and will lose money over time due to the high inflation at the moment. Another factor is, what is already our current exposure. In case we hold mostly bitcoins right now, it would make much more sense to buy some Alt coins. Diversification is very important in investing and can protect us from losses during bigger down turns. The best way to not get hurt by short term volatility is to spread out your purchases over time. Instead of buying everything at once it's better to buy every month, or every 2 weeks a fraction. Like that the average purchase price will be less affected by short term volatility.

The only way for these killings to stop is a ceasefire or making peace. Russia hasn't achieved their objectives yet, so I don't see any possibility of a csasfire right now. Same goes for peace, Russia wants to fight for the east of Ukraine and the Ukrainians will not give up any land. At the moment an end of the war seems very unlikely to me.

Western countries have already done a lot for Ukraine, there are large weapon deliveries for Ukraine from all around the world. It seems now that Ukraine is fighting with much more modern weapons than Russia. And without these weapons Ukraine probably wouldn't be able to hold against Russia. So the only option the West has is to increase sanctions and increase weapon deliveries.

The longer the war the harder it will be for Putin, if he can't show any victories. Taking more land in the east would give him a stronger hand in the negotiations. I don't see any quick ending of the war. This could likely go on for the next months.

Looking at the odds today it looks like RB Leipzig is the clear favourite to win the Europa League this year. Not sure if I would place my money on only 2.1 for RB Leipzig to be the champion. Don't get me wrong, they have a strong team and played well this season, but both West Ham United and Eintrach Frankfurt are playing really well this season too. The both faced some hard opponents to reach semi finals and should be strongly motivated to reach the finalls. RB Leipzig definitely has the weaker opponent with Rangers, it seems almost guaranteed that they will reach the finals. As for the second match it will be very interesting. West Ham United seems to be clear the favourite, and so was Barcelona. I wouldn't bet on that match either way. My first bet will be RB Leipzig reaching the finals, and then I will use that money to bet on the winner of Eintrach Frankfurt - West Ham United to win against Leipzig in the finals. 

Are you sure this is such a good idea? I thought that crypto currencies were designed to be independent from governments. If governments now step in and start buying bitcoins they would take over all the control again. First of all, what does the government gain from stabilising the bitcoin market? I don't think it's their place to make investment there. They would need to acquire large amounts of Bitcoins to be able to sell some as soon the price starts rising. A stable Bitcoin price means no more falling prices, but also no more rising prices. I rather have a volatile bitcoin market if it rises long term. Still hoping to reach new ATH this year.



You mean we don't need any traders anymore? Only the government is trading cryptos now? But why would the government than pay us 2-5k USD per month? That sees a bit in my opinion. Some countries started to have a minimum allowance for people who are not working, but that is usually in the 700-1000 USD range.

I haven't relied on any sport betting channel in ages. Sometimes I check out their videos, but every time I trust them it seems to not go in my favour. I wouldn't rely on free betting tips from the internet blindly, it can be helpful to get an idea of what other people think and what they bet on. But in my opinion it is better to make up my own mind and only place bets on games and teams which I watch regularly. Maybe paid subscription based betting tips are better, I don't have much experience with them either. If you are already watching many football and NBA games, why not pick your favourite team and follow them more closely? Make sure you know when good players are injured or when they are playing exceptional well. I would use that information and bet on the next match. Usually a team that a has a strong victory in a game will play very good in the next few games. The same goes for a losing team, it can be demoralising  and make them play worse the next few games too. We tend to see a lot of trends in sport games that can be helpful when placing bets.

To be honest I haven't played on a new casinos for weeks now. There so many different online casinos and I already have some favourites where I have my bankroll. Withdrawing all the money now just to switch to a new casinos seems like a big step, especially if the casinos is completely new and doesn't have any reviews yet. For new casinos I like to check out the website, if it's a good layout, looking professional and what kind of games they offer. If there are no red flags and everything looks good than I take a look at the current promotions, how much deposit bonuses are they offering and what are they conditions. Sometimes casinos are running very lucrative deals but you need gamble so many times with that money before being allowed to withdraw it that just not worth it. The times where I see a casino website and deposit money instantly are over for me. I am a little bit more concerned these days.

It's hard to imagine new revolutionary ideas that will come in the future. In my opinion crypto currencies was already a big step into the future and it could the final step towards a fair monetary system for all people. If something is good and working for all people, no need to find something new again. Thinking within borders and small countries is wrong for the 21 century, we should be focusing on the world itself and stop with the dividing and exclusion of people. It might take a few more hundred years, but eventually the world will unify. The question is than what kind of currency will be used that is valid all around the world. Crypto currencies would be the best option. Already now we see that many people prefer a financial system that is build on an independent currency, a monetary system where the government can't just freely print new money. For such a new system cryptos would be the perfect solution.