Without the COVID 19 pandemic, Trump would have easily won the elections. The economy was doing exceptionally well, and unemployment rate was at all time low. But the pandemic changed everything and the mainstream media pounced on the opportunity. For the last 5-6 months, the network news channels of US acted like the mouthpiece of Democrat party. Various biased opinion polls predicted a Biden blowout. And despite all this, Trump lose by a razor thin margin.

First of all, congratulations for Suchmoon. But then I have a lot of respect for eddie13 as well. He went for a bet in favor of Trump, when most of the election sites gave him less than a 1 in 10 chance. And despite all this, Trump came very close to a win. 


LOL.. this is very unlikely. Even before the elections, there were rumors that Trump would say goodbye to the United States, if he loses the election. But still, I expect him to campaign for the Georgia senate election runoffs, as these two seats are very crucial for the GOP. If they win both the seats, then they will be having 52-48 advantage over Democrats. As per the current leads, Democrat majority has been decimated in the senate. Earlier the Democrats had a 232-197 advantage and this time it will be around 220-215. GOP gained a number of suburban seats which they lost in 2018, thanks to the Democrats fielding ultra-leftist and hyperliberal candidates.

If Pakistan is legalizing and regulating cryptocurrency, then it is big news for Bitcoin users in that region. Because South Asia is perhaps the toughest region for crypto users right now. Recently someone who tried to install a Bitcoin ATM in India was arrested and his laptops and mobile phones, along with the equipment was confiscated. And last year, dozens of individuals were arrested in Nepal and Bangladesh, just for trading cryptocurrency.

Even e-wallets and digital wallets needs to be backed up by bank accounts, right? Even with some of the stablecoins such as Tether (USDT) and USDC, the backup funds are being held in various bank accounts. You can reduce the interaction or interlinking with the banks, but in the end it is impossible to completely remove them. The only other option is to use physical cash. But it is neither safe, nor practical.

Now we are having another issue. The Mempool size is down to minimal levels (0-2 MB). But users continue to pay large amounts as transaction fee. When I checked earn.com, it was showing median transaction fee at 300 Sat/Byte. But the same website was showing that it is possible for transactions with a fee as low as 2 Sat/Byte to get confirmation within 1 hour. I think, first we need to educate the users on how to set the transaction fee.

There is nothing surprising with this news. Facebook has always acted against cryptocurrency in its platform. A few months back, they banned advertisements for ICOs. And before that, they were regularly taking down pages related to cryptocurrency exchanges and peer-to-peer platforms. Facebook still considers Bitcoin as a competitor. They were forced to abandon the Libra project, but their hostility towards Bitcoin hasn't changed. 

The exchange deals that you get in Localbitcoins are not legal. If PayPal comes to know about this, then your PP account will be nuked, as already happened to thousands of users (you can search here, and may come across multiple threads related to this topic). As of now, PayPal doesn't have partnership with any of the cryptocurrency exchanges and it is not possible to do any transactions on them with PP.

Users doesn't need to pay any transaction fee, and that is a big positive with Bitcoins in PayPal platform. But obviously, the merchants needs to pay the fee, just like any other payment option in PayPal (I guess it is around 1.8% to 2%, depending on the geography). And secondly, their services are limited to American users right now. Once they expand their operations to global users, you may be able to directly pay with IDR.

First you need to understand with the skyrocketing transaction fee and huge delays in getting the confirmations, Bitcoin will never get acceptance as a currency. It will be used mainly as a speculative investment asset. I can't guarantee you anything, but what if it ends up like the Apple stock (which went up from $0.30 in 2003, to $120 now)?

Although I would agree with your observations partially, I have to say that the situation is changing. Bitcoin liquidity is getting better with every passing month, and unless you are dealing with a huge stash of coins (tens of thousands or more), then it is possible for you to liquidate them within a few weeks without attracting unwanted attention from the law enforcement authorities.

Bitlicense was deemed as anti-Bitcoin by most of the users. There may be some clauses present in it that are beneficial for the Bitcoin users, but overall it made trading of Bitcoins very complicated. Anyway, it is good that PayPal is forced to purchase cryptocurrency at one-to-one ratio. Since the users can't withdraw their coins as of now, this means only one thing - the prices are going to go up in the near future.

I can't completely agree with this argument. Nowadays, Bitcoin is being used as an investment asset. At this point, it would not be fair to claim that it will replace traditional investments, but I have seen enough evidence to state that there is a small net outflow from traditional assets to Bitcoin. And this may accelerate considerably in the coming years, as Bitcoin gains more acceptability.

Biden's lead in Arizona has been further reduced to 11,034. Only 16,040 ballots remain to be counted and therefore we can safely assume that it will be impossible for Trump to win Arizona. And I am not sure whether there will be a recount. Because in Arizona the recount rules are very tough, and the losing candidate can request one only in case the margin is less than 200 votes.

First of all, we need to agree that Bitcoin is now mostly being used as a speculative investment asset, rather than as a currency. And in developing countries, there is a lot of scope because most of the available assets are overpriced. For example, the real estate is priced at upto 5 times its fair valuation and P/E ratio for most of the listed stocks is above 20. Bitcoin gives an option for the citizens, to invest in an asset that is currently under-priced.

A lot of these transactions are being made by the inexperienced users and they are just afraid of their transactions getting stuck. They don't mind paying $5 or $10 extra to get a quick confirmation. I doubt whether a lot of them even know about the Mempool and its impact on the transaction fees. And the worst thing is that, these guys push up the median transaction fee, forcing other users to pay high amounts.

Well.. I read somewhere that PayPal is looking forward to acquire a number of cryptocurrency firms. BitGo acquisition is almost complete. Now they may be looking forward to acquire some of the exchanges and marketplaces. PayPal is having huge amounts of reserve funds and they can just create a shopping list and get whatever they want. Once they complete these acquisitions, they no longer need to be dependent on Paxos.

Unless Lancet or some of the other renowned medical journals confirm this, I am not going to give it much importance. All sort of rumors are circulating around related to the pandemic. The biggest problem has been the incompetent leadership of the World Health Organization (WHO), which is to be blamed for the rapid spread of the virus around the globe. Antibodies may, or may not remain after 6 months. But as of now, these are just rumors.

I guess you may need to wait for many weeks before the results are finalized. The Trump campaign has filed lawsuits in a number of states and they have come up with substantial evidence on vote rigging and other malpractices. Until these lawsuits are settled, I don't think that the gambling sites will process the winnings for the gamblers. So it is going to be a long wait, for those who won the bet.

The "push" should be voluntary, and not forced. Some of my friends in India told me about students who committed suicide, because they couldn't afford to purchase smartphones or tablets that are needed to take part in online classes. In developed nations, most of the people will be able to afford these appliances. But that is not the case in the vast majority of the developing nations.

Have to agree with at least some of the points here. There is no doubt that MI was the strongest team in this IPL. They had world class bowlers such as Jasprit Bumrah and Trent Boult, and promising batsmen such as Ishan Kishan. I don't think that they could have fared worse, if Virat was the captain. On the other hand, RCB was a relatively weak and inexperienced team if you remove the 2-3 world class players such as Virat and AB de Villiers.