It's important to question everything, and not take received truths for granted. But at the same time you do have to place trust in people. You can't research absolutely everything yourself. If for example you buy a car, you don't take it apart first and check every single component, and then personally validate all of the laws of physics to ensure that they all work as they should. No, there is a degree of trust implicit in the transaction. Similarly for health issues or anything else. Experts are experts because they have expertise in their area of specialisation.

If I have toothache, I will go to a dentist. If I have a burst pipe, I will call a plumber. If I want to follow the best path for myself and for others during a global pandemic, then I will trust the medical professionals a hell of a lot more than I'll trust the weird orange-skinned maniac who is telling people to drink bleach and somehow apply UV light to the inside of their bodies. Trump is an expert only as a demagogue, only in the area of inflaming passions by exploiting social divisions. He seems to know close to zero about anything else.

For CV19, if you want to know who to trust, then just look at the facts, and see whose opinions and recommendations align with the data.

I would agree that Ethereum is better, and the move to 2.0 should cause an uplift in price.
... But I like NEO as well, and the China factor must be taken into account, this is a huge market and perhaps the Chinese government will be more open to accepting 'the Chinese Ethereum'. Also as ETH moves to 2.0, NEO is also advancing to NEO 3.0.

I hold both coins, I think they both have a strong future in store.

Very tough, yes. I do get the feeling that politicians shouldn't really be the ones in charge of the response to the pandemic. We have the R₀ safely below 1 at present across the UK. Now they might think that a small increase from say 0.8 to 1.2 isn't a big deal... but this would be a misunderstanding of how exponential progression works. Keeping it below 1 is absolutely crucial.

A quick calculation below, based on an initial 1,000 cases, shows that after 15 rounds of new infection, an R₀ of 0.8 results in 35 new infections, whereas an R₀ of 1.2 results in over 15,000...

Countries (such as the UK) that are easing lockdowns without implementing track-and-trace procedures are actively encouraging people to catch the virus. Widespread testing and contact-tracing for anyone who exhibits symptoms is the only way to prevent a return to exponential growth of case numbers.

Why is the UK encouraging people to catch the virus? Because for the Conservative government, the people who will catch it are the poor, the expendable people. Those who can't work from home. Those who have to travel into a city centre and don't have private transport.

The aim is get the economy running again, with the added bonus of getting some expendable people infected and so boosting the herd immunity. Win-win for the rich. They couldn't care less if some poor people die. Here are some pictures of London transport yesterday:




_{https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52645366}

And there is a third point, too. The UK government were deliberately vague about getting people back to work. They told people to return and to use social distancing and "common sense"... even though any idiot knows that it is impossible to return to say London rush-hour with 2 metres between each person. There was no guidance really on the specifics, on how this would work in practice. Why? Because this is about blame. When the outbreak accelerates again, the government can point to these people crammed onto buses and trains and say it was their fault, they didn't follow guidelines, they didn't social-distance.

There's a very revealing interactive visualisation here that clearly demonstrates the absurdities of rush-hour social-distancing on the London underground.

What does Halving actually mean for Beginners?

For beginners, just that:
1. New bitcoins are "created" (enter circulation) when they are mined.
2. The halving event means that each time someone mines some bitcoins, the quantity of bitcoins they receive is now only half what it was previously.
3. This reduces the supply of new bitcoins into the market, and makes new bitcoins more expensive to mine, and so in theory should push bitcoin price upwards.

In practice there are additional complexities, but the above should suffice for a beginners overview.

No, social distancing is based on science, not religion. That's why it works.
https://www.lcdhd.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf

It's dependent on how much you think the coin is worth, and if you have other distribution methods in mind.

A - People will decide to take part in an airdrop based on the expected dollar value, rather than on the number of coins of indeterminate value.
B - You need to consider what proportion of your coins you want to distribute as an airdrop. Are you planning on having an ICO-type event in future? Are you planning on bounty rewards? Do you want to airdrop 1% of your coins? 10%? 50%? Then decide how many people you would ideally airdrop the coins to. This number, and the percentage of your overall supply, and the expected dollar value per coin should help you decide what would be reasonable.

or... Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh as Anti-Muslim?
Difficult to see revocation of 370 as anything other than Anti-Muslim.


Yes, that was in my post, in bold.


Nope, not Indian. Just an impartial observer who thinks that, whatever the problems of Pakistan, you can't separate the Modi-factor from India/Pakistan interactions.
And also behind everything as the guilty party sits the UK, with the horrendous history of colonialism and the botched partition in 1947.

Some altcoins rise more than bitcoin, but most rise less.
In general, the lower you go down the market cap list on CMC, the more risk there is in buying the coin.
Some alts can get you 1000% returns in a matter of days, Bitcoin won't do that.
But Bitcoin has a solid use case, and is the best bet for increasing your money. Some alts, thinking of ETH in particular, have a rock-solid use case, great development etc, but many do not. There are a lot of low cap alts out there where investing is little more than gambling.

Thanks - and for the merit. I know that in theory we are supposed to merit 'good' posts, even if we disagree with the content. However in practice this is a rare occurrence, and I for one definitely find it a challenge to give merit when I disagree... so thanks, appreciated, this is what we should all be doing more often.


For me this is the crux of it. Yes China tried to suppress the outbreak initially, but I would argue that's not the reason for the huge number of deaths across the world.
If we look at the timeline, even back in January, the WHO was giving a risk assessment of 'high' at the global level (and 'very high' for China).

Here in the UK, our government didn't implement lockdown until 23 March... nearly two months later. Whose fault is it that the UK has thousands of deaths? Whose fault that the US has thousands of deaths? Why didn't the UK lockdown as soon as it became apparent what was happening in China? Why didn't the US lockdown as soon as it became apparent what was happening in Europe? These countries gambled the lives of their citizens against the chance of the virus not reaching them, all in order to prevent a bit of economic damage that would ensue from quarantining new entrants. And it would only have been small economic damage compared to what we have now, due to their failures to act.

Many governments around the world have managed this crisis very badly. Now they are trying the old political trick of trying to pin the blame on someone else. It's absurd.
Also look at the fact that the South China Sea stuff is suddenly back in the news... weird coincidence how this suddenly becomes a major issue at this time.

I'm not sure we should consider this to be unprovoked. Whilst Kashmir has been contested ever since the partition, recent escalations can't really be separated from the behaviour of Modi. In his view, muslims are second-class citizens - indeed, aren't really citizens at all - and his actions to enforce this have increased in recent years.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/20/hindu-supremacists-nationalism-tearing-india-apart-modi-bjp-rss-jnu-attacks
Indeed, he removed Kashmir's historic autonomy last year, with his revocation of article 370.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-49234708
I think it's a bit of a stretch to consider PoK to be the belligerent party here. The inclusion of PoK in Indian weather reports isn't trivial against the backdrop of what Modi is doing to Kashmir and to India in general. It's pretty clear that he sees all of Kashmir as Indian.

_{https://www.jagranjosh.com/general-knowledge/15-interesting-facts-and-history-about-pakistan-occupied-kashmir-pok-1499324721-1}

I don't know. The demand for instant profit is what forces at least 1-3 above, and probably 4, too. And the possibility of instant profit has no bearing really on the overall quality and potential of a project. The reason I pulled 4 in there too is that a lot of demand is driven by seekers of instant profit.

It is possible to have a fantastic idea with a fantastic use case that is truly game-changing, and yet not have any of 1-3 above, which in turn lessens 4 as well. I read that it costs $500k to get listed on Binance. Really if a young project has a lot of potential, they should put that money into development rather than placate the demands of traders.

Agreed on the endless-money-printing machine and the inadequacies and corruption of the existing system.
Agreed that the power of nature is woefully underestimated; humans like to think they have conquered nature when that is clearly not the case.

Disagree on this, though. Whilst there is inevitably a degree of virtue-signalling in the altruistic schemes of billionaire tax-dodgers (Jeff Bezos saves the world!), it's difficult to conclude that the Gates foundation is running scams by ploughing huge sums of money into disease prevention. If for example they can eradicate malaria and the price for that is that everyone has to say that it was the mighty Bill Gates who freed the world of this disease, then that is a price worth paying. Similarly with CV19. Also vaccination is not a scam, it is proven science, with a mountain of data confirming its efficacy.

Totally agree, very suspicious. But even without the username as a giveaway, it would still be suspicious. If you say "I made 100% profit from this, is it legit?", then you're not really asking the question, you are just encouraging other people to get involved by suggesting they can double their money.

I would stay well away from that site.

Everything you need should be in the first post in this thread:
We are now on the 10th, the spreadsheet has been updated, so payments can be any time up to and including the 15th. I've been in this campaign for a while now, and payments are always on time. It's very well run.

But then China has a bigger army. I think the main thing the numbers tell us are that neither country can simply obliterate the other (excepting the mutually-assured nuclear option). It is difficult to determine who would "win" in a physical war. Inverted commas because obviously any victory would be pyrrhic.

The big wars of history occurred in a different economic and technological climate. War between developed nations is now largely (entirely?) economic. Globalisation has its problems, but one thing it has done is to ensure that the economies of rich countries are so intertwined as to be inextricable. The US and China can't attack each other without damaging themselves hugely. So yes, I'm sure that any conflict will be economic rather than physical, but even then there are limits to what each country will do as they would still suffer huge economic damage (which would quickly become global). Much of it I'm sure is just macho posturing. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the USA has become used to being the only major player on the world stage. China has risen to superpower status now, and these two will have to learn to share that stage.

Technical skills, particularly those in a growing area, will always be in demand. If you are interested in developing skills in order to pursue a career in cryptocurrencies, then it might be worth you looking into learning Solidity - the language used by Ethereum. There are plenty of resources available, not least on the ETH website: https://ethereum.org/developers/

Not a meme yet, but you can see one coming. Presumably he's trying to assess whether or not it's a vote winner. Actually forget that, he doesn't assess things, he just opens his mouth and stuff comes out.
What are the chances of a pardon here? 50/50?


_{https://www.tmz.com/2020/05/05/joe-exotic-to-ask-president-donald-trump-prison-pardon/}

I understand what you're saying, but I'd still disagree on this point.

Firstly, China crushes dissent, it's hardly a bastion of free speech.
Secondly, this is not the first time China has been threatened by a coronavirus. China has history here. The SARS outbreak - another coronavirus, very similar to CV19 - erupted in 2003 in China, and there was a huge cover-up.


I would contend that after their experience with SARS, China wanted to avoid another PR disaster and tried initially to silence whistleblowers such as Li Wenliang. He did explicitly refer to SARS in his warning:


Quite possibly what happened was that China's security decided to silence him and others in order to avoid another PR disaster, but when it came to the attention of authority figures who had a bit of medical knowledge that's when they implemented the lockdown.

China was much much better than the West in the way they brought in the swift severe lockdown, based partly on the political system in the country, and partly on their experience of SARS. But I would argue that they were already paranoid about anyone mentioning SARS happening again, and that is why they suppressed the whistleblowers.

Either way, the overall point is still that the West is to blame for its own failings and shouldn't point the finger of blame at a country that overall (despite the initial suppression of whistleblowers) responded much better to the threat.

It seems like every CV-19 thread I come across where I want to make a post, franky1 has got there ahead of me and posted pretty much exactly what I was going to say

I would add though that China was at fault for the initial suppression of the whistleblowers. But after that they acted swiftly and responsibly and used the powers that their system of government grants them to enforce rigid lockdown. There is a lot wrong with China, the human rights situation for example, but it's undeniable that their system is better than that of the west for dealing with a pandemic. We've had to temporarily renationalise half the economy just to enable it to function...

Anyway. The rest of the world knew exactly what was coming. Everyone knows that new viruses spread exponentially, this is basic maths. Every country knew that with no intervention, just a handful of cases can become thousands in no time at all. Every country knew that if they immediately implemented say 14 day quarantine on new arrivals, they could keep the virus out. And yet they didn't act. They looked at what the immediate economic damage of quarantining incomers would be, and gambled this against the chance that the virus would remain confined to China. The gamble failed, the virus spread, and even then, with cases confirmed in the UK, the US and elsewhere, they still did nothing. They waited and waited until the situation became severe and then they finally implemented lockdowns. Much too late. Economic damage in the UK/US and elsewhere is huge, avoidable deaths are huge - and yes they were avoidable based on government action or inaction - and this damage is entirely the responsibility of these governments and their failure to govern effectively. Not China's fault that the west is run by short-sighted fools with no grasp of maths.

The west should admit to their own failings instead of trying to point the finger at someone else and say "not our fault. they started it".