I'm all for discussions, and try to maintain some semblance of objectivity, but as you can see, am myself wearing the signature, so that's my disclaimer out of the way.

Among all the entities likely to put up a honeypot, US government's ineptitude seems to take them out of the list of would-bes. The fact they waste millions (other governments do the same too) of public dollars to pay for semi-expert companies (Chainalysis, several years back, had an ex-employee whistleblow on their extremely poor understanding of blockchain and near-complete ineptitude at blockchain forensices, despite claiming they could and accepting huge contracts for saying they could) tells me they really aren't as sophisticated as we like to give them credit for.

I do agree with one point: don't rely on one service, especially because it itsn't trustless. CM's a great service, but use any and all available privacy tools to protect yourself.

A theme from X-files fascinated me as a teen: deceive, inveigle and obfuscate. That was what the US government supposedly was all about, and it had negative connotations, but I saw it positively. In the way we should all conduct ourselves: to deceive would-be attackers, to obfuscate our footprint, to flatter our rulers to accept us.

Elon's tweet seems to ignore that Fed has said it will raise rates, just that they will dampen the rate, though the months ahead will still see hikes. So it's not so much a question of if rates will rise, but for how long and how hard -- Fed seems to suggest it will relent, if inflation does.

Bitcoin's just below 17k, which surprised me, thought the suits would be against shorting when inflation should be slowing down.


I had a suspicion of this as well, that they want to see a recession. The middle class especially, and not just in US, looking at my own spending. They're not exactly hurting enough by inflation. I'm cutting back on a lot of things, even watching the energy meter more than normal, but still able to maintain most of the family lifestyle. I think they need more people -- the middle class especially -- to really hurt.

Sadly, it's always the majority who will bear the brunt of that but a move towards universal income could be worth it (to me).

Might also remember while hard cash is needed, China is also sitting on a huge and growing pile of foreign reserves (1/3 of the world's foreign reserves, which it of course needs to continue sitting on in the short term to continue their export policy).

I wouldn't say it's critical. They may be forced to finally show their hand and that would actually be a bone-cruncher on the rest of the world.

Tech not in the east? Not sure that's going to be the truth for much longer, if at all now. Japan, SK, Spore, even China itself, at least on a more distributed level.

Haha @LFC_Bitcoin now this made me smile. The magnificence, the audacity, the mesmeric awesomeness... of Diego Maradona. May it carry Messi, because for some reason, I've never felt more behind Messi than ever (it's strange isn't it).

More Liverpool players returning to training anyway, and from the way we lost to Lyon (Salah missed a pen, ouch), it does seem like we'll need this week to scrape off the rust!

Have to say, though, we always seem to perform better after losing friendlies...

That's pretty cool then, for word-of-mouth to get that kind of results is, as I said before, something more than amazing. I know I asked, and I can't see if you answered, but where is this? Mentioning the rough region is fine if you want to be private.

It's really curious for me that there are so many Bitcoin users, suggesting a high level of fintech literacy, and yet against a backdrop where fiat fintech is as shitty as you mentioned. It boggles my mind, and just keen to find out where =)

1. 16, 31'
2. 16, 24'

- Awesome contest, I finally nicked something out of Morocco/Portugal, thank you!

Penalty curse. Pity as Kane was just getting back to his best... and I thought this was a standout tournament showing for Saka and Bellingham (the former long a favourite of mine). Hendo also made his mark, it wasn't to be. At least they didn't make themselves look bad, just a better French team in the end.

Logic's given me a bad outing in WC so far so I might be tempted to watch the semis without money riding -- but you never know what kind of specials show up on the game itself.

My only tip, as soon as one team scores, bet on the other one double chance. Should be super odds!

Nah, come on. You can share $1 bets and still be proud of showing that you put money down and won something big. I do it regularly on my thread with 20/1 odd wins on just a few dollars. That's the fun and entertainment. Nothing to do with amount.

And if you're really not keen on showing your amount, you can always leave it out. I do that sometimes, lots of others do.

The plain truth in this gambling subsection is most people are just talking out of their ass to rack up posts. Threads like this are the perfect example. Majority of posters just talking and posting and I know they're not gamblers.

The sooner we admit and acknowledge that, the better. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but this is the gambling/gambling discussion subforum.

Oh, and no, this World Cup's been bad for me. Nett loss right from Matchday 2. I have actually been making up for it plenty, but Brazil gone means I'll have to take huge risks to break even, and I'm probably just going to sit in on the whole thing and wait for club football again.

Didn't really want to reply to feed this thread but to clarify, I only made threads for UEFA club competitions (Europa, Conference, UCL). I made them all self-moderated in response to some discussions in meta about significant activity from spam posters esp in Gambling Discussion, a lot of them from the 3 threads I made earlier (not self-moderated).

Lucius, Rikafip, others, made very valid points just above my post.

It made me feel really guilty actually tbh!

So I locked my old threads. Made new ones, self-moderated, actively deleted the spam on my new threads... obviously post farmers didn't like this and so they post on the non-self-moderated ones. Some users complained (haha) but you know what? I actually wrote to all the posters whose posts I deleted and offered explanations and support. Want to guess how many even responded? Spoiler: almost none. So, you know what, I don't lose sleep over them anymore.

Anyone can be the judge, but I am pretty confident the self-moderated ones are of better quality than the non-moderated ones, and I'm absolutely okay if the ones I created seem less active, they no longer are a source for megaspam. 2 or 3 contributive, constructive, thoughtful posts from genuine users are better than 10 rehash posts from post farmers.

And of course, everyone who does know Bounou will know his team is one of the biggest bedshitters in La Liga (and that's after luring everyone into thinking they were title contenders last season). And so far this season his team is in the relegation zone, so man, he cannot possibly be considered for the prize outside international football.

Strange he wasn't in the poll, he won golden gloves in Spain 2 seasons ago...

I don't disagree he's a great performer in this tournament, but let us remember they have only played 5 games in this world cup. A league's 38 seasonal games, plus Europe and cup ties is a better estimate of prowess (though it should be added he has 1 goal and 2 assists in the last couple of seasons).

My Boro pick went as expected, but I really should have added the Blades to my ticket, instead of some Asian friendly I was so confident of winning (Thai U23s, who beat Malaysia and were facing a very very poor Lao team).

At HT that didn't look good, so I cashed out on my ticket -- good decision as they did go on to lose.

Burnley's now 2 -- edit:3 -- goals ahead on QPR. Itching to go in on Watford now, so I'll do that just before the game starts, and then add on their next game as well along with the Baggies to complete my France/Argentina acca.

Hey well, done, I did get the slaman-Harko semi correct, but missed on the other 2. Harko my pick for the winner takes all, pressure?

Nice questions, Messi all the way for me, whether or not he actually scores or assists will be tough against Cro. Battle of Lusail is now the most carded game in World Cup history, but before that, it was actually another Dutch game (who can forget the boot-to-chest on Alonso?) so I have a feeling it's actually the Dutch who instigates all these cards haha, I wouldn't be surprised if Argentina-Croatia ends with very few cards and goals.

What do you say, Trofo, another big money down on Croatia to qualify? I got a fantastic 55/10 odds last time around, it's "only" 33/10 this time around, so not tempting enough for me, honestly. Maybe a pre-match on Argentina and then hedge it with fantastic live odds if/when they get ahead?

Yeah, the "worry" is that both numbers are expected to confirm that inflation is slowing down and interest rate hikes also to dampen -- and markets have clearly priced that in. If the numbers throw up trends against that, we might release this weak hold on 17k as it is.

The trend lines do suggest we're way above the major support, so still some room to go down, but bears do appear to be running out of time as inflation rate increase does seem to be relenting.

Yeah, have to agree with what Lucius says about cycles. They're there and I believe at least some form of a cycle has to take place -- whether or not it will be as predictable in timeframe or in amplitudes (highs and lows) is another thing entirely.

And then we have the so-called Black Swan events -- March 2020 stood out in the last cycle, but I see now people are quick to call Terra and FTX black swans (to me, completely rendering the term useless as Black Swans shouldn't happen so often and their impacts should be extremely severe!).

Just DCA furiously, people. And with money you can afford to lose, and you expect to lose. There really isn't a simpler way to go about it.


Seeing as that bear cycles generally last longer than 2 years, why only wait until then? And what if cycle's invalidated and we see a new ATH next year? Will you hold in the year after that when it all comes down again?

2 years isn't long-term if you think about it. That's probably the bare minimum for a fund deposit in a regular bank, and considered short-term

Damn, just saw my betslip was voided, thought the match got cancelled but turns out the match just ended as a draw -- apparently, Ankalaev wasn't really cool, saying he wasn't sure he'd want to fight again, while Blachowitz himself actually thought his opponent deserved the win.

So I should have lost my bet, but judges made sure I got a refund instead.

Adding on to the very suitable suggestions above of using hash of future block, I even think simpler outcomes like tx count or input count are easier and plan to use it for a future lottery I'll be doing (hash is simple for me but it does seem to confuse others).

A lot easier to collude than hash, but as pointed out above as well, absolutely doesn't make financial sense for such a small prize, if anyone would think a miner might collude to win it might as well pursue flat earth theories.

Congratulations to the 5 of us who picked Morocco in the pool. First time QFs, now first-time SFs. El Maroc bloody deserve this. I was leaning all the way for 1-0, but I thought extra time was too tempting for both teams to not 1-1 it out in reg time.

Still not enough to climb out to sit in Top 20, which just shows how tough it is to collect points now. 1 more game to go, another tight upset maybe? Or High scoring emphatic French victory? Or 0-0 draw?

Yeah I don't really get those waiting to buy at 12? 13? 14k? It's not like they're buying an entire Bitcoin either. Save a few thousand dollars at the risk of missing out when Bitcoin does actually recover and not look back until the next cycle in a few years.

Not looking down on anyone but it was probably the same with me putting away $100 or so every now and then, and thinking I was smart to time, completely overlooking that at my small amount, the numbers really stop making logical sense in terms of time invested trying to time the market when you're DCA-ing long term.

Allez, Morocco! Man, if I knew my luck would be better just keeping my money on underdogs, I'd have done it all tournament long.

1 goal up, and they should honestly have had a second (well okay they should have let in a couple too haha) if only Sofiane wasn't selfish with their final attempt.

If the first half is anything to go by, they're showing that they're not just an absorption team waiting for penalties. What a game!