While there is The House of Nakamoto in Vienna, Austria, somewhere in Zurich in Switzerland, there is also the House of Satoshi. And then in Brisbane in Queensland, Australia there is the Living Room of Satoshi. Interesting how Satoshi's living room is located continents away from his house. LOL!

Anyway, I particularly like the idea of real life support for Bitcoin clients and newbies. More often than not, newcomers are having a hard time teaching themselves about Bitcoin with all the available resources online.

MicroStrategy is not a long time Bitcoin HODLer. It is somehow a late-comer, as a matter of fact. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but the first time MicroStrategy bought Bitcoin was only in August of 2020, which means to say that it owns Bitcoin for only 1 year and several months. We will see how long it will keep its Bitcoin stash.

I don't agree that common people can't HODL that long. I think the owner of this wallet is an ordinary person and not a company. But, again, this is most probably a case of recovery rather than HODLing.

Well, not really. Every newbie's plan is to own Bitcoin. Of course, it means they already know about the basics of Bitcoin. But depending on their amount of investment, they could do away with a hardware wallet at the start. After all, there are open-source non-custodial wallets out there that could give them enough security. Not all newbies have more than $100 to buy their first Bitcoin. If that's the starting amount, I don't think it is worth keeping in a $40-wallet.

And what's the point of this tweet? Not only is it most probably not true, it also seems irrelevant and pointless. If Su Zhu is saying that Binance is actually bigger than all the European banks combined, well, the numbers don't agree. If Su Zhu is saying that Binance is actually worth much more than its declaration, I'm more than sure these European banks are, too. And if Su Zhu is simply promoting Binance, well, it might not be effective at all. Binance is on the road going down.

Well, in the first place, what are the other options? It's either the western countries will impose economic sanctions like what they are doing right now or get involved militarily or attack Russia directly or not do anything at all. I guess those are the only options on the table. And the best one I suppose is to impose economic sanctions. That's not good, of course, as innocent Russian civilians are the ones who will bear the brunt. However, that must be the most peaceful thing to do and the one option that would pressure Russia at the same time not push it to use its nuclear arsenal.

Well, if there is a way to take out Putin and his inner circle, that must be the best option with the least collateral damage.

Well, it's not gonna make them evade the current sanctions but I think it's worth it. Russia should explore Bitcoin mining considering that they have abundant supply of oil and gas. They have the resources to build the largest Bitcoin mining farm in the world. In effect, they will also be earning huge in a currency that cannot be bullied nor censored.

But I wonder how western countries would begin to treat Bitcoin if Russia is fully into it.


I completely agree, although, again, there might be grave repercussions as to Bitcoin's perception once the enemy is making the most out of it. Western countries and the western media might once again paint Bitcoin in a bad light. Moreover, Bitcoin regulations would definitely be at its tightest.

The issue of regulation is not a black and white issue. It's not as if regulation is either bad or good, or either we implement it strictly or remove it altogether. It's all about the right regulations. I think not a few regulatory policies on crypto are bad simply because they are founded on the assumption that crypto is a currency of choice of criminals and money-launderers and terrorist funders, which, of course, crypto isn't. Crypto regulations are crafted and implemented with lack of understanding. That's the issue.

The use of Bitcoin to evade sanctions is limited primarily because of the nature of the sanctions themselves. Currently, the strongest sanctions are directed at Russia's oil and gas, the country's lifeblood. The US has banned all of Russia's oil and gas. EU countries have also greatly reduced their dependence on Russian oil and gas imports. Germany has also halted the Nord Stream 2 gas project.

Financial sanctions include freezing the Russian central bank's hundreds of billions of dollar reserves, freezing the assets of Russian oligarchs, among others.

Huge international companies like Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Pepsi, Starbucks, Heineken, Shell, ExxonMobil, Levi's, Nestle, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, and many others have also implemented their own version of sanctions.

In all of these, Bitcoin couldn't be used as a tool of evasion.

Have you been reading your news lately? I don't know if the news I've been reading are all fake news but it seems they're not. It's all over the media.

From CNBC: "Binance said Monday it will block the accounts of Russian individuals who have been sanctioned..."

From Business Insider: "Binance is blocking access to Russian account holders targeted by international sanctions..."

From Reuters: "Crypto exchange Binance blocks Russian users targeted by sanctions"

Also, CZ has been saying that it is unethical to block all Russian users because they don't necessarily support the invasion. I agree. But those Russian individuals who are sanctioned, do they all support the invasion?

The details of the dormant Bitcoin wallet was traced back to October of 2010 and since Satoshi Nakamoto was last active on bitcointalk.org in December of 2010, there is reason to believe that the Bitcoin wallet could be Satoshi's. Can you see how absurd is that reasoning? It is devoid of any logic. Where is the connection?

Anyway, I don't even believe this is a case of HODLing. I think this is simply a case of an old Bitcoin wallet finally recovered after many years.

As to Russia itself or its banks and huge companies, I think it's hard for them to evade sanctions through cryptocurrencies. But to the Russians who are now deprived of ways to transmit money from their country to the other parts of the world and vice versa, crypto could help. Crypto could also help those who are keeping cash savings as the value of the ruble is spiraling down. And we also know that a lot of Russians are leaving the country. They are limited as to the amount of cash they could carry. Bitcoin is a great option.

How can CZ be neutral when he is imposing sanctions to individual Russians? He is not in any way neutral. A neutral company would be in the middle and wouldn't take orders from whichever side. CZ, on the other hand, is blocking individual Russian accounts in favor of western sanctions. Just because he stopped short from blocking all Russian users doesn't mean he is neutral. He simply doesn't want to lose revenue from the Russians, or lose license from his western bosses.

If crypto is your source of income, why should you forget about it? But you made it appear in your OP that you've had bad experiences with crypto investment and trading. This, after falling to an illness and losing your job. That must have been too much to bear. So I thought you need some time to think about and focus on yourself before anything else. After all, as you've rightly said, "fiat and all things tangible would still be around and sticking with them could be winning too." After all, at the end of the day, in all practicality, it doesn't matter if your wealth is in fiat or crypto.

But if you want to build yourself in crypto then stick to crypto. But you need to recover from yourself first.

Inflation is now made worse by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, particularly among oil and oil products. But even before this war, inflation has already been going full speed because of the pandemic. And not only in the US but all over the world. Other countries like Brazil, Argentina, Turkey, and some more are even facing double-figure inflation rates. Even the UK which has a milder inflation rate than the US has hit a 30-year high. From here in my developing country, a liter in gasoline is almost hitting $2 already.

There is no denying that an amount that is planned to be invested in crypto might not be fully converted into Bitcoin because there are also ETH, XRP, LTC, ADA, SOL, and thousands of other coins and tokens. And since I don't believe that those who invested in altcoins would rather keep their fiat had there only been Bitcoin in the crypto market, I think Bitcoin's price is way higher than it is now if there were no altcoins. In other words, altcoins are obviously competing against Bitcoin in the overall crypto market cap.

The truth is that many fell to crypto and Bitcoin scams because they lack knowledge. More than anything, they are convinced by these scammers and their offers because they are not aware of what Bitcoin is, its basic dos and don'ts, its market, the movements of its price, and so on. Some may not even be greedy. Take, for example, those who are scammed by somebody who introduces himself/herself to be a staff and offers support assistance. Take, for example, those who are reading how-to guides or watching tutorial videos who were clueless of the wrong details provided.

Stake has got a good partner in the very popular and influential Drake. This will definitely push Stake's popularity up the ladder.

On the other hand, this made me remember a controversial question raised here weeks ago whether the huge money he used to bet on the Los Angeles Rams and Odell Beckham Jr. was personally his or was Stake's. Now that Stake has already made the announcement that it has sealed a partnership with Drake, I am more inclined to think that it was more a promotional bet rather than a personal one.

That is true, that Bitcoin is somehow designed to counter inflation. However, the bottom line of inflation is that the prices of goods and services are increasing. That the value of fiat is decreasing more or less 2% annually doesn't speak much about anything outside the rising prices. So Bitcoin not rising in price will not be able to counter inflation. It will still suffer from the effects of inflation.

This is primarily because right now, whether we like it or not, Bitcoin is not independent from fiat, or from the fiat economy in general. As a matter of fact, Bitcoin's price is in fiat. We do not provide goods and services prices in Bitcoin. We only convert their fiat prices to Bitcoin such that whenever their prices increase in fiat, and Bitcoin's price doesn't increase, their prices will also increase in Bitcoin.

I feel sorry for what you're going through right now. I hope and pray that whatever happens in the future, whether your enthusiasm for crypto returns or not, you'll really be happy.

Having said that, happiness in life is not found in crypto. I think I've seen truly happy people and they've got no inkling about crypto and Bitcoin and blockchain and whatnot. You've gone through a lot. I think you need to take a good rest or vacation. As a matter of fact, forget about crypto for now. You've got an illness and lost your job. Now that you're hopefully in good shape and has found a way to have income, give yourself a break. Travel once in a while perhaps, go on dates and picnics and movies, indulge in good food and a few bottles of beer, whatever.

My apologies if I'm reading it all wrong, but it seems to me you need to regain that enthusiasm for life first. I wish you all the best!

A big thanks for clarification!

The problem with these Bitcoin-centered online publications is that they tend to exaggerate and sensationalize so much so that accuracy is completely gone from their articles. They are supposed to be part of the media, whose sole function is simply to report facts. However, it's not the case anymore with these crypto publications. It seems their business is crypto or Bitcoin marketing and promotion. They're now behaving like the traditional media which has become a tool for mind conditioning, although these crypto publications are on the other side of the fence.