Late Wednesday night, Pornhub announced that PayPal is no longer supporting payments for Pornhub—a decision that will impact thousands of performers using the site as a source of income. Most visitors to Pornhub likely think of it as a website that simply provides access to an endless supply of free porn, but Pornhub also allows performers to upload, sell, and otherwise monetize videos they make themselves. Performers who used PayPal to get paid for this work now have to switch to a different payment method. "We are all devastated by PayPal's decision to stop payouts to over a hundred thousand performers who rely on them for their livelihoods," the company said on its blog. It then directed models to set up a new payment method, with instructions on how PayPal users can transfer pending payments. "We sincerely apologize if this causes any delays and we will have staff working around the clock to make sure all payouts are processed as fast as possible on the new payment methods," the statement said. A PayPal spokesperson told Motherboard: “Following a review, we have discovered that Pornhub has made certain business payments through PayPal without seeking our permission. We have taken action to stop these transactions from occurring.” A spokesperson for Pornhub told Motherboard: "Decisions like that of PayPal and other major companies do nothing but harm efforts to end discrimination and stigma towards sex workers. While we still have several payment methods for our models available, we will continue to add more sex worker friendly ones and explore cryptocurrency options in the near future."PayPal is one of many payment processors that have discriminated against sex workers for years. Its acceptable use policy states that "certain sexually oriented materials or services" are forbidden—phrasing that's intentionally vague enough to allow circumstances like this to happen whenever the company wants. Are you a sex worker who has been impacted by this situation, or by any payment processors discriminating against your work? We'd love to hear from you. Contact Samantha Cole securely on Signal at +16469261726, direct message on Twitter, or by email. The list of payment platforms, payment apps, and banks that forbid sexual services in their terms of use is very, very long, and includes everything from Venmo to Visa. Many of these terms have been in place for nearly a decade—and payment processors have been hostile toward sex work long before harmful legislation like the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act came into law last year. But those laws only help to embolden companies to kick sex workers off their platforms, and make the situation even more confusing and frustrating for performers.https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d3abgv/paypal-pulls-out-of-pornhub-payments.... Bitcoin HODLers might find this interesting. A spokesperson for Pornhub told Motherboard: "Decisions like that of PayPal and other major companies do nothing but harm efforts to end discrimination and stigma towards sex workers. While we still have several payment methods for our models available, we will continue to add more sex worker friendly ones and explore cryptocurrency options in the near future." Which coin would fit pornhub's business model the best? Is it interesting how in this world where feminism and raging against "the patriarchy" is often encouraged. None of that rage is ever directed at payment processors like paypal who engage in what might be described as sexist and oppressive practices against women? Female rage is typically directed at stereotypical "nice guys". Never at those who are doing the actual oppressing. |
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I think this is not manipulation If crypto whales bought $1 billion in bitcoin to stabilize or boost prices, the media would label it market manipulation. You can see them do it all the time. They claim tether being used to buy bitcoin is "market manipulation" and that the 2017 run up of bitcoin was "market manipulation" by a single anonymous, unnamed, bitcoin whale. The federal reserve loans $120 billion dollars a day to banks. Essentially the same thing that tether and bitcoin whales are accused of doing under market manipulation by the media. But somehow its not market manipulation? Its interesting how financial terminology is prone towards being a double standard. |
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This is not really a "bailout". It's overnight lending of collateralised loans. AFAIK these loans are virtually identical to bailouts to troubled banks post 2008 under the TARP bill. The bailouts never truly ended. They simply became normalized to a point where people believed they were standard policy. banks are in measurably better shape than they were after the 2008 debacle. Interesting. If you're looking for a counterpoint. Bloomberg published an article claiming more than 50% of the world's banks may be too weak to survive a recession, last month. I made a thread about it here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5195846.msg52871571#msg52871571One might say, part of the reason Satoshi invented bitcoin was due to the realization that none of the real issues in the banking industry which led to the 2008 crisis had ever truly been addressed, much less fixed. That's my take on it, anyway. |
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By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 24, 2019 ~ Yesterday the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (New York Fed) announced that the giant money spigot it turned on for Wall Street on September 17 would be growing exponentially beginning today. The New York Fed will now be lavishing up to $120 billion a day in cheap overnight loans to Wall Street securities trading firms, a daily increase of $45 billion from its previously announced $75 billion a day. In addition, it is increasing its 14-day term loans to Wall Street, a program which also came out of the blue in September, to $45 billion. Those term loans since September have been occurring twice a week, meaning another $90 billion a week will be offered, bringing the total weekly offering to an astounding $690 billion. It should be noted that if the same Wall Street firms are getting these loans continuously rolled over, they are effectively permanent loans. (That’s exactly what happened during the 2007-2010 Wall Street collapse: some teetering Wall Street casinos received, individually, $2 trillion in cumulative loans that were rolled over for two and one-half years – without the authorization or even awareness of Congress or the American people. One bank, Citigroup, received over $2.5 trillion in Fed loans, much of them at an interest rate below 1 percent, at a time when it was insolvent and couldn’t have obtained loans in the open market at even high double-digit interest rates.)This latest announcement from the Fed comes on the heels of an October 11 announcement that it is launching a program to buy up $60 billion a month in Treasury bills and that program will last into “at least” the second quarter of next year. What the New York Fed is doing is unprecedented in U.S. history and yet you will find no mention of it on any front page of a newspaper today. This is just a partial list of what makes this action unprecedented or highly questionable: No Wall Street crisis has been announced to the public to explain these massive loans and Treasury buybacks;
Not one hearing has been held by Congress on the matter;
Not one official elected by the American people has authorized these loans;
The loans are not being made to commercial banks (which could re-loan the money to stimulate the U.S. economy). The loans are going to the New York Fed’s primary dealers, which are stock and bond trading houses on Wall Street who count hedge funds among their largest borrowers; (See list below. There is only one bank among the 24 primary dealers.)
Many of the primary dealers are units of foreign banks whose share prices have been in freefall. The Fed is making these loans at approximately 2 percent interest – an interest rate these firms could not come anywhere close to obtaining in the open market;
These same foreign banks are counterparties to mega U.S. banks’ derivative trades – raising the suggestion that this is another bailout of Wall Street’s derivatives mess as occurred in 2008;
The Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010 was supposed to rein in this exact type of abuse by the New York Fed and, in fact, it states that Congress must be informed as to which banks are receiving the money to be sure it’s not going, once again, to failing financial institutions as happened in the last crisis;
The Government Accountability Office (GAO), when it released its audit of the Fed’s bailout programs of 2007 to 2010 chastised the Fed for failing to document the reasons it was flinging trillions of dollars to Wall Street and foreign banks. Notwithstanding the GAO’s report, the New York Fed is back to its old tricks again;
The New York Fed is owned by its members banks in its region. Representatives of these banks sit on its Board of Directors. It is thus too conflicted to be in charge of this bailout money spigot which is ultimately backstopped by the U.S. taxpayer if the New York Fed fails;
The New York Fed is the regulator of the largest bank holding companies in the U.S. But its failure as a regulator is why these same banks needed to be massively bailed out in 2008 and, apparently, again now. This system lacks any semblance of checks and balances;
The parent organizations of five of its primary dealers have admitted to criminal felony counts brought by the U.S. Department of Justice for frauds against the investing public. Bailing out felons and Wall Street firms with serial histories of wrongdoing perpetuates moral hazard and, thus, more wrongdoing and bailouts. Just this morning the New York Fed pumped out $134.15 billion to Wall Street under its new loan programs. The $45 billion in 14-day loans was oversubscribed by $17.15 billion, meaning the demand for liquidity on Wall Street is growing, not subsiding. Congress and mainstream media failed to do their job in the leadup to the epic Wall Street crisis of 2008 and they are failing the American people again. https://wallstreetonparade.com/2019/10/fed-ups-its-wall-street-bailout-to-690-billion-a-week-as-media-snoozes/.... Witnessing US stock markets recent gains, some might feel tempted to sell off their crypto holdings and buy stocks instead, under the expectation traditional equities investments are more regulated, safe and stable in contrast to cryptocurrencies. I hope anyone with those feelings reads the above article. It could shift their perspective on things. The recent uptick in US stocks could represent market manipulation on the part of federal reserve, bailing out banks and wallstreet who are then throwing bailout capital at stocks to artificially inflate market value. If Satoshi were alive and active today, I think he might take interest in the dealings of financial regulators and central banks who are continuing to adopt many identical practices today, which initially led to the economic crisis of 2008. |
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The reason negative trends like recession, low economic growth, wage and wealth inequality exist in the civilized world involves banks and governments having monopolies over currency markets. There's no real incentive or competition compelling stated issued fiat to manage money responsibly or intelligently. I support libra as it would introduce badly needed competition into currency markets and break up poorly managed and organized state monopolies over money.
There is a need for the existence of alternative currencies in this era where the USA, EU and many nations hold large deficits which could trigger high inflation/hyperinflation in the future. Consumers need an exit strategy for that worst case scenario and for circumstances where recession and inflation could threaten their hard earned money.
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Think of all the economists and media personalities predicting catastrohic recession atm. Then look at the following chart detailing stock performance before, during and after recessions.  My conclusion is the official narrative being hijacked for political, profiteering or assorted motives, as has become common in this era. History suggests real recessions lasting longer than 12 months, and stock market growth, usually do not occur simultaneously. The recession prediction or the stock growth prediction may be inaccurate. I think they want investors to buy US stocks to suit their own agenda. The prediction is wholly unrelated to actual projected future stock market performance. |
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I think brave doesn't reward per click, the way other ad services do.
I only click on ads I'm interested in & rewards for november 2019 were 35.8 BAT.
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Far worse shape, based on what? By all appearances, China has replaced the US as the locomotive of the global economy.China's economic growth was probably hurt more by recent tariff increases but that doesn't tell the full story at all. China has been fleecing the US for decades through currency devaluation, wage suppression, government subsidies, etc. to boost their own exports and make US imports uneconomical. Hence the whole platform of ending the US-China trade imbalance Trump campaigned on. It's like Peter Navarro said:White House National Trade Council director Peter Navarro, however, said that there was no "trade war," but that it was a "trade dispute, fair and simple. We lost the trade war long ago." John Kemp says: "China has replaced the US as the locomotive of the global economy". What he's referring to there is china replacing the united states as a major manufacturing hub. In the united states glory day, "made in america" was a common theme, many things were manufactured in the USA. Today most things are made in china. There's no disputing that. What we can dispute is the idea china is surpassing the united states as the world's superpower. That description fits Trump to a T.  The recent trade war was wholly initiated by the US, who was lashing out over China's "unfair" economic protectionism and de-liberalization. The united states has spent trillions of dollars developing satellite, missile, stealth, defense and other assorted technology. China actively infiltrated and stole every intellectual property of value owned by the united states. The timeline looks like this. US unveiled its F-35 stealth fighter. Months later, china announces their own stealth fighter based on stealth data stolen from the US. The united states unveiled ships armed with railguns and lasers. Months later, china announces their own destroyer equipped with a railgun/laser. How did they get this technology? They stole it from the USA. China's satellite, defense, dotcom, internet and missile technology -- are all stolen from the US and countries around the world. China counterfeits and pirates everything from video games to movies and music track media. China is like the pirate bay, except they never get shut down for infringing on copyright and IP violations. China is by far the biggest polluter in the world. Recently they announced plans to build 700 new coal power plants. While the US shut down 50 coal plants in the country, since 2016 when Trump took office. The "fake news" media publishes contrived angles, where they fool people into believing any trade war against china is unjustified and a personal vendetta on the part of Trump or whoever. In reality, a trade war or punitive measures against china for their violations have been long overdue imo. |
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That attitude may change if we enter an era of weakening or collapsing USD.
China's economy is in far worse shape than america's. They're being hurt far worse by tariffs and trade disputes. Systemic failures of their socialist system are also a major barrier to economic prosperity for them. Its part of the reason why they're lashing out publicly to project the false impression of strength. If Trump wins 2020, usd will be in good shape for 4 more years. If a democrat somehow wins, you'll witness the biggest US stock market crash in history. I still don't think China is backing any currency with gold though. That sounds preposterous to me.
China has announced plans to back their native currency, the yuan, with gold for years. Ever since they began their de-dollarization push around 5 years ago, was it? Another of those issues where the mainstream media says gold standards are bad for x, y, z reasons. Then we see china push for gold standards and tax cuts to stimulate their economy, as if china is too smart to follow the horrible financial and economic advice, the united states and other nations of the world typically follow. Donald Trump triggered his record job creation numbers and economic growth with tax cuts identical to Ronald Reagan's. So perhaps we do have some people in the united states who recognize the value of legit policy. |
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Its possible china secretly stepped up their gold mining sector. They are the number #1 gold producer in the world. I do not believe china will be successful issuing currencies: no one trusts them. China has made and broken too many promises. Hong kong is a prime example. China promised hong kong would retain its autonomy. Now we see china going back on that promise. China promised Trump they would buy soybeans from the US under the last trade agreement, then reneged and never followed through. There are many other examples to draw from which showcase a lack of trust towards china being a rational policy for dealing with them. I don't think anyone trusts china and this lack of trust will extend to any currency china unveils, gold backed or not. |
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#1 This basically reduces the risk associated with parlays to a small degree, but does not nullify it completely like arbing which is why this is not the best method. It is only effective during the final round of a parlay where you can hedge to acquire guaranteed profits.
#2 You need to be one of the best punters in the world to be able to guess 20-25 even odds correctly without any errors in order to turn 1 cent into a million. Unrealistic. This is why parlays always favor the house though I enjoy placing them for fun.
#1 Keep in mind this isn't theoretical vaporware strategy I'm discussing. Its something I actively utilize that has been effective. Arbitrage is a very protectionist strategy in algorithmic trading. Its effective mainly under a predefined set of circumstances, which one is not likely to find outside of HFT/dark pools. The most reliable ARB strategy for crypto was cross platform ARB where bitcoin would be bought on exchanges and sold on african exchanges where its price was 20% or higher. For sports betting, props are another common method of attempting ARB. Its easy to get greater than +100 odds on both sides of a match utilizing props. #2 In the latter half of 2018, I had a winning stretch where I went something like 25-3. Difficulty level is much higher in 2019. Its not that hard to hit 20 or more consistent wins. What's difficult is scaling back the frequency of bets, to a point where you're betting exclusively on plays you're 99.9% certain will win. This could mean making only 1 bet per month or less, having to restrain yourself, which not everyone has the self control or discipline to do. |
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Will it be profitable if we bet on both the side of a sport but in different gambling house with different odds. Books never post flipped lines unless a typo or error is made. Bets made under those circumstances are null and void. The best method to arbitrage sports betting imo is via utilizing multi team parlays.  The 8.465 parlay on the top needed Demetrious Johnson to finish. The 38.168 parlay on the bottom needed Henry Cejudo. Demetrious Johnson's opponent. Its not necessarily feasible to hit these long odds consistently but the 38x parlay on the bottom did hit. Hedging with parlays can also be successful in terms of ARB. Chasing odds across different sportsbooks isn't a cost effective use of time, in my opinion. It takes less than 30 consecutive winning bets at even odds to compound interest $0.01 into more than a million dollars. Profit potential of sports betting is extremely high. Odds will usually not be the biggest bottleneck in regards to earning potential. Accuracy and consistency are the biggest obstacles and the area where most will see the biggest benefits in terms of time and effort based investment. |
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I cannot trust some browser with my data who pays me few bucks...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVqiS5vXC-wBTW The developers of Brave browser recently gave a presentation and Q&A on its anonymity and crypto functions in the youtube clip above. If anyone's interested.  |
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The SEC has habitually repressed Winklevoss twins ETF proposals. They ruled coin ICOs can only be made available to accredited investors aka the wealthy. Many crypto exchanges and services are denied to US markets on behalf of regulatory bodies like the fed and SEC.
I think these negative trends represent the official stance of the federal reserve. They'll discuss plans for digital currencies. It'll never go anywhere. They're not interested in developing technology. They never have and never will. Their official mandate is repressing innovation and value to guarantee the rest of the world reaps benefits of crypto currencies, while US markets remain crippled and dead in comparison.
The best thing that can happen is for facebook to go ahead with libra to put pressure on the SEC and federal reserve to do the right thing.
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The reason inflationary currencies have bad reputations involves the expansion of the money supply being distributed primarily to the wealthy. This results in economic and social imbalance over time, as the wages of poor to middle class earners fail to maintain pace with the growth of true inflation.
I'll give you an example.
Normally if inflation is 7% per year. The wages of the wealthy might inflate at 25% per year. While the wages of everyone else inflates at 1% per year or some rate that is far below what it should be in a fair and equal society.
This negative precedent underlies social trends such as the rise of homelessness, the affordability of college education, real estate and buying your own home. All of those negative trends can be traced back to the cost of goods and services growing at the rate of inflation, while wages fail to keep pace for many consecutive years on end.
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putting everything on public blockchains can make things transparent, but is transparency all that's required to solve the world's problems? i don't think so. wealth inequality goes much deeper than that---maldistribution of land and capital, rent and interest extraction, and so on.
your idea above sounds nice, but at the end of the day, shareholders won't give up any more profits than they absolutely need do. putting workers under slightly better conditions or executives under slightly worse ones doesn't fundamentally address the deeper problems IMO.
I think these fundamental observations do a decent job, highlighting core issues relating to topics like wealth and wage inequality.  Productivity and wealth have skyrocketed, if not doubling, since the 1950s. Benefits have not trickled down. Lack of transparency is a critical issue. There's no real information or discussion on whether high taxes is a better policy than low taxes. The basic fundamentals of business and economics are beyond the comprehension and knowledge base of most. Analytical frameworks commonly utilized such as MMT - modern monetary theory can be questionable in their approach. Standard statistics like unemployment and inflation have been redefined from their traditional definitions. I think if issues like wealth or wage inequality will ever be addressed, the average person must become informed and educated on the basic fundamentals. And there's no real incentive or push being made for that to occur aside from cryptocurrencies like bitcoin utilizing different systemic features like deflationary supply to challenge the way people think about money. |
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Is it open to americans? Everytime I see a competition like this, USA is usually banned from participating.  |
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States have protectionist mentalities towards fiat currency monopolies they own & operate. They last thing a government wants is free market competition from tech giants like facebook forcing them to be more innovative, professional and proactive in their approach.
I still think facebook introducing libra would provide consumers with more options and force the US government to do a better job addressing the deficit and regulating inflation. Its a step in the right direction.
If our goal is to encourage governments around the world to take deficits and hyperinflation seriously, there may be no better option to achieve this than to set facebook's libra loose on the world, and hope the self correcting nature of free markets takes hold.
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Modern finance requires a lot of trust, and its digital future will demand still more. If, for example, electronic payments are to replace cash, people must be willing to believe that the bits of data traveling among phones, cards, terminals and blockchains actually represent something of value. So, will people believe? Judging from their growing predilection for physical currency, maybe not. At first glance, cash would appear to be on its way out. Sweden has almost eliminated its use for payments. In America, home of the almighty dollar, almost a third of the population gets through a typical week without using a single banknote. Businesses are experimenting with going cashless, hoping to speed up transactions, combat theft and create a safer environment for their employees. Actually, though, physical currency is experiencing a resurgence. People in many of the world’s most advanced nations — including the United States, the euro area and Japan — are holding more of it than ever. In the U.S., for example, currency in circulation stood at an estimated $1.76 trillion as of late September, according to the Federal Reserve. That’s about 8.2% of gross domestic product, up from just 5.6% before the 2008 financial crisis and close to the highest level in at least 36 years. If people need less cash to pay for stuff, why do they want to hold so much of it? The answer, it seems, is that they’re turning to currency as a store of value. Consider the kind of cash they favor: Increasingly, it’s large denominations such as $100 bills, which are the most convenient for stashing away big sums. Benjamin Franklin’s share of total U.S. currency in circulation reached 80% in 2018, up from 73% a decade earlier, Federal Reserve data show. Since 2017, the $100 bill has surpassed the $1 note as the most widely circulated U.S. currency. The trend in the developed world contrasts sharply with emerging economies such as China, Russia and India, where currency in circulation has been declining as a percent of GDP, according to the Bank for International Settlements. Why are people in rich nations hoarding cash? No doubt, it has a lot to do with central banks’ efforts to keep interest rates low. When safe investments such as deposits or government bonds yield little or less than nothing, people aren’t missing out by holding paper money. This illustrates why central banks can’t push rates too far below zero: Instead of spending the money or watching their savings shrink while sitting in the bank, people will just withdraw their cash and put it in the mattress. That said, the surge in demand for currency has been too large for interest rates alone to explain. This presents something of a mystery. Criminals, of course, are avid users of cash, but there’s no particular reason to think that their demand for it would have increased so much in the last decade. On the contrary, the advent of cryptocurrencies has provided them with a viable alternative. One recent study, by a pair of economists in Asia, found a link to aging populations. It seems that older folks — perhaps because they’re less inclined to trust numbers on a screen — have a greater affinity for cash. So when they make up a larger share of the population, overall currency holdings also go up. This might also help explain the contrast with emerging economies, where population aging is less of an issue (and where interest rates haven’t been as low as in the developed world). The most troubling possibility is that people are losing faith in financial institutions more broadly. The surge in cash began immediately after one of the worst financial crises ever — and has been concentrated in the affected countries. Granted, one wouldn’t expect the effect to keep growing over time. But perhaps persistent scandals — such as those involving fake accounts, manipulative fees and the theft of personal data — have compounded the problem. Trust might also have something to do with the opposite trend in emerging economies. To be willing to hoard cash, people must have a certain amount of confidence in a government’s ability to manage its legal tender. In developing countries, this confidence is often lacking. Consider India’s 2016 “demonetization,” in which the government pulled large-denomination banknotes out of circulation and replaced them with new bills. The move didn’t disrupt the shadow economy as intended, but it did undermine the currency: Cash holdings have yet to recover to their pre-reform level. Cash accumulation can go only so far as a sign of trust in government. After all, governments in the developed world would typically like to see more electronic payments. Getting rid of cash can have a lot of benefits: It can help deter crime, reduce tax evasion and give central banks more power to stimulate the economy. But people have to believe that electronic money will be safe from mismanagement, man-made disasters, hackers and even confiscation. So far, neither the denizens nor the overseers of the financial system have done a great job of earning that trust. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-10-27/cash-is-more-popular-than-ever.... The question of what the best store of value is, has gained in popularity lately. It appears the solution some have adopted is: paper money is the best store of value! The trend of holding paper money has traditionally been more common in nations like japan but appears to be spreading to the united states. It won't be long before the media publishes news stories about unfortunates storing paper bills under their mattresses only for their cash to be devoured by termites, ants or assorted insects. To "nudge" consumers away from that horrible, nasty, evil paper currency, towards a digital cash future. All of which highlights a dire need for: paper cryptocurrency. |
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There is one key thing I think some of you are missing. It goes like this.
Imagine you held $150 million in bitcoin. There's a news story published about google achieving quantum supremacy. You know that this is BS that shouldn't directly affect crypto. Even though this is true, the most likely scenario is you could dump part of your BTC holdings to be on the safe side. Markets and investments have notorious reputations for irrational and unexpected behavior, not unlike natural disasters. People don't expect logical behavior from them and always try to be the first to sell, rather than the last.
Market trends have a tendency to be defined by worst case scenarios, rather than best case scenarios.
This holds true not only for stock markets, FOREX and traditional investments. But for emerging crypto and digital currencies as well.
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