i'm not sure where you're located but if ftx.com isn't an option, there is also poloniex.


FTX is legit. it's all about the difficulty to arbitrage. the crypto markets are a bitch to access---jurisdiction issues or the need to buy BTC first and send to a secondary altcoin exchange. trump tokens are a pretty small market to want to jump through all those hoops.

i also wonder if the crypto market just favors trump a bit more than the rest of the betting market. not enough to make it worth arbitraging, but enough to skew the odds.

crypto transactions certainly fall under various tax laws, but exchanges are mostly flying blind regarding government reporting. so that's a big part of this IMO, yes. having uniform tax standards in place would do a lot to facilitate standardized and mandatory tax reporting, especially given the multinational nature of many exchanges. this is something governments uniformly want, so it makes perfect sense to take a multilateral approach. it's like establishing AML standards through the FATF rather than having a patchwork of wildly different national regulations. it gives exchanges a lot less excuses to keep dodging their responsibilities.

it's not a bill. it's not legislation being passed by congress. these would be unilateral regulations issued by trump's treasury department, and they're still just rumors at this point.


from the sound of things, that's as far as these regulations will go, yes.

that's just the centralized exchange angle though. this could affect other use cases like buying goods with bitcoin through a 3rd party like bitpay, or defi contracts supported by centralized parties, etc. it's possible that KYC requirements may become attached to things like that.

i follow a couple twitter bots that notify me of large movements, but i don't buy/sell based off them. sometimes the market moves afterwards, sometimes it doesn't. sometimes the blockchain analytics are straight up wrong and coins aren't really moving to an exchange at all.

margin trading also complicates things. whales don't just send coins to exchanges to sell them. they also use coins to back margin positions. so you might think they're about to sell thousands of coins when in fact the exact opposite is about to happen.

sit-and-gos are for grinding IMO. they aren't for fun.


i completely forgot last week. i'll set a reminder to play tomorrow. somebody's gotta represent bitcointalk!

not that i will necessarily be on my A game, lol. i've been feeling very splashy lately in these low stakes affairs---not willing to play super nitty and wait for the right spots.

i can't find any crypto books (with decent betting liquidity anyway) still offering odds. but like i mentioned earlier, FTX's trump tokens are still trading and buying/holding TRUMPGO is essentially the same thing as laying against trump. https://ftx.com/trade/TRUMPGO/USD

it last traded at $0.882, implying odds of 1.118 to bet against trump. that's fucking amazing at this point---never underestimate the delusion of trump supporters. take their money because it's laying on the table.

betfair's odds are down to 1.04. reality setting in?


okay, i guess that's a vague way of saying "it's extremely unlikely", sure.


i'm not gonna explain to you the difference between zero and non-zero (but low) chances again.

they occupy different niches. binance will always offer more shitcoins, more "cutting edge" projects, more scams. people chasing hype and looking to get rich quick are naturally drawn to altcoin exchanges. more mainstream people, especially those who have remained skeptical of bitcoin for all these years, are more likely to opt for a more trusted and ostensibly transparent brand, not to mention an american one. despite their push into altcoins, coinbase is still synonymous with bitcoin.

if i were a noob today, i wouldn't touch binance.us with a ten foot pole tbh---unless i were chasing shitcoin hype, that is. some jurisdiction hopping chinese company hiding behind a shell company and licensing agreements? on a .us domain? shitcoiners who believe in the cult of CZ and who wanna pump the value of their BNB can hype it all they want, but there's no way binance is taking over the american market. not like that.

betfair still has biden at 1.07. https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/politics/market/1.128151441

according to nate silver's tweet from 8 hours ago, betting markets are still giving trump a >10% chance, although i'm not sure what books he's talking about. https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1331966432335302658

as far as bitcoin sportsbooks go, i dunno where you can still make a bet. FTX trump tokens are still trading though. TRUMPGO (biden wins by february 1st) is trading at $0.889, implying 1.111 odds to back biden. https://ftx.com/en/trump-tokens

if i had a poloniex or FTX account (and weren't in a prohibited jurisdiction) i'd probably take that trade right now.

for iOS, i recommend AQUA by blockstream. it's great for casual users---very simple and straightforward, single sig only, wrapped segwit by default. it also offers liquid sidechain support, if you're interested in that.

for desktop, i recommend electrum. it has the best UI of any wallet IMO, hands down. it also makes it extremely easy to set up an offline signing mechanism so you don't need to keep your keys online.

i would probably avoid keeping many coins on any android wallet. there's just so many security pitfalls. but in a pinch, i would recommend electrum.

i reckon it will be a nothingburger. bitcoin investors and the general community have long since moved on from craigy's drama.


i've moved on from particularly caring what satoshi thought. he gave us bitcoin, but we can decide what to do with it. satoshi was prolific but i also don't think he was necessarily correct in all his views.


by "digital cash utility" do you mean cheap fees, for medium of exchange transactions? i think there is very little evidence to suggest that is the primary driver of bitcoin adoption.


what are you expecting to happen that would prove his claims?

these mini crashes tend to be brief. just hold on and enjoy the roller coaster.

if you're gonna panic, you should have panicked earlier in the $18000s. don't wait and wait and then sell because if you do that, you'll probably be selling near the bottom. i can tell you that from experience.

the market feels a lot like 2016 as we were meandering towards a new all-time high. we had some brutal pullbacks heading into 2017. i don't see this dip as a parallel to the 2018 bear at all. you're thinking too far ahead.

it wasn't the wrong version per se. the 1099-K wasn't designed for capital gain/loss reporting, but i'm almost positive it's the IRS pushing exchanges to issue them because all the regulated american exchanges are doing it. it's not just coinbase.

the 1099-K, in some ways, is good for us. if you can manage to stay below $20k or 200 transactions in gross activity, exchanges do no tax reporting at all. if they issued a more "appropriate" 1099, like the 1099-B that broker dealers normally issue, the IRS would be receiving a 1099 for you every time you sold a few bucks worth of bitcoin.

that's actually what cash app is doing. if you sell $4 worth of bitcoin on cash app, the IRS is gonna know about it:



so who is worse---coinbase/kraken/gemini/bittrex with their 1099-K or cash app with their 1099-B? the IRS clearly wants something.

no, common sense says that punters shouldn't place bets if they can't wait for official results. elections are not football games. they are a complex legal process.

bookies can't take bets for many months (which affect the odds they pay out) and then just issue refunds to whoever wants one. that's crazy. they would risk insolvency.


there are still multiple ongoing recounts and not all lawsuits have been thrown out.

i agree it's extremely unlikely, but if it's literally impossible, you should place a bet on biden at 1.07 right now. why are you complaining here instead of grabbing all that free money?

common sense says that until the election is certified, the results aren't official. i remember saying a couple months ago that any close election is gonna end up just like 2000, with weeks or even months of recounts, legal fights.

on that note, a pennsylvania judge just halted election certification proceedings amidst the legal fight over mail-in votes. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pennsylvania-judge-halts-election-certification-mail-in-vote-lawsuit

it would be one thing if the election were a landslide. since it wasn't......it ain't over until it's over. the silver lining here is that if you really believe biden is guaranteed to win, you can get all the free money you want at 1.05 odds.


that's because they have far less financial exposure than larger books. they can afford it.

betfair has to pay out $1.36 billion (and counting) in bets on this. what happens if they pay out and then the results are overturned?

i'd probably view things more in terms of administrations (ie trump vs biden) rather than treasury secretaries (mnuchin vs yellen). in that sense, biden and the democrats likely skew towards tighter regulation of financial institutions and money transmission than the republicans, which may have some implications in terms of regulation that will affect bitcoin and bitcoin businesses.

all in all, i don't see any huge differences though. the FATF is a puppet of the USA, and their extremely rigid new crypto guidelines were published under mnuchin. we're heading towards stiffer regulations (and accordingly, further consolidation of the industry) no matter what.

coindesk put together a summary of what yellen has said about bitcoin and associated regulation: https://www.coindesk.com/janet-yellen-bitcoin

nothing particularly interesting there---just the usual stuff about the need for compliance with the bank secrecy act (AML/KYC stuff), that bitcoin is highly speculative and associated with illegal activity, etc.

this looks more like IRS incompetence to me. they know perfectly well that 1099-Ks do not show gains/losses. sending CP2000s based on gross activity is just a lazy way for them scare taxpayers either into paying more money or hiring a tax attorney to sort it out.

i feel bad for anyone receiving these letters. i wonder what the odds of an audit are if you don't amend or agree to the IRS' changes. it's gotta increase your chances. i'm just glad i've managed to stay under the 1099-K threshold. what a headache.

it's not just coinbase. kraken, gemini, and probably others send them too.

they must be---very ominous. i've never seen binance scramble like this. reading between the lines, FINCEN (and for all we know, criminal enforcement agencies too) is obviously breathing down their neck. the feds coming after the biggest derivatives exchange and biggest altcoin exchange in the world, respectively, must be sending chills through the whole industry.

i've got my fingers crossed that binance, kucoin, etc keep allowing unverified accounts for a while, but the window is closing fast IMO.

but how does australia regulate non-custodial services?

i wouldn't believe any promises like that anyway. centralized services without KYC are never guaranteed to last. localcryptos can't freeze your funds in the meantime---that's what matters.


you're not sending funds to a centralized wallet operated by localcryptos. that is your own non-custodial wallet in the interface that you are funding. localcryptos is never a party to any transaction.

gemini does define these activities in their user agreement as "conduct violations":


they're smart enough never to tell customers why their accounts are being closed though, so there are no publicized cases of related account suspensions or terminations.

you're probably correct that explicit mention in the terms doesn't actually matter. some sites probably just lump it under stuff about general BSA compliance or risk mitigation. this clause probably applies in coinbase's case:



binance has gotten by for years by constantly jumping jurisdictions (china, japan, hong kong, malta, the seychelles, the caymans, etc) and operating very opaquely, but i do wonder how long the game of cat and mouse can continue. there are only so many tax and money laundering havens in the world.

doug pulled away a little bit in the last session, up ~$150k now. still close enough that daniel could easily turn it around, but his odds keep getting longer---edging towards 7:1 now.

this sounds fun:
https://twitter.com/TexDolly/status/1330971910243459072
https://twitter.com/DougPolkVids/status/1331282568285618179

with any luck, we'll see a heads up challenge in a couple months between doyle brunson and doug polk. live sounds much better than this online/no hole card format.