Your point is very much valid, and this is one of the reasons why many of the merchants have removed Bitcoin as a payment method. Under current circumstances, it doesn't make any economic sense to use Bitcoin for medium-sized payments. I would rather treat it as an investment asset, rather than as a currency. You can use it for payments, in special circumstances (such as making cross-border transactions, or to make anonymous payments).

Well.. it is impossible to find out how many of these individual investors are HNWs and how many of them are middle-class. Grayscale Investments claim that around one-sixth of their customers are retirement investors. I would assume that the vast majority of this figure is comprised of upper middle-class individuals. And regarding the remainder of individual investors, it is difficult to make assumptions (unless more data is disclosed by Grayscale).

It is very unpredictable. And the result can depend a lot on who wins the toss. SRH is having one of the best top-order batting lineup in this edition. Their top 4 looks really solid (Warner/Bairstow/Pandey/Williamson). On the other hand, CSK is facing issues in top-order, as well as in the middle order. But as far as bowling is concerned, I would rate CSK higher than SRH. Hazlewood/Curran/Chahar have performed better than Rashid/Bhuvneshwar/Khaleel.

It is better than the shitcoins, which usually have a premine of anywhere from 25% to 75%. Bitcoin never had a pre-mine and it's inventor (Satoshi Nakamoto) never benefited from it. The decreasing mining reward was introduced, in order to encourage Bitcoin mining in the early period. Without it, the hash rate would have gone below sustainable levels.

The absence of Suresh Raina is being felt in middle order batting, especially since Dhoni's strike rate has gone down. But they got such a good start in the first match, before going down in the next two. They need to move Sam Curran and Ravindra Jadeja up the order. Also, they need to drop Kedar Jadhav and need to include Imran Tahir in the place of Piyush Chawla. I don't understand why Tahir is not being selected. He's one of the best T20 bowlers.

The match between McGregor and Floyd generated more than $800 million in revenue. If this fight also generates a similar figure, and if the majority of it goes for charitable causes, then it will be a very significant help for a small country like Philippines. Manny would agree, and I hope that McGregor would be fine in donating a part of his paycheck to the charitable cause.

It depends on how you calculate the figure for market capitalization. In case of Bitcoin, the actual market capitalization is closer to what is given in websites such as coinmarketcap. But in case of some of the cryptocurrencies such as Ripple (XRP), there is a large difference between these two. For example, close to 80% of XRP is being held in cold storage and therefore not in free-float. But for calculating market cap, this 80% is also included. And this inflates the market capitalization of Ripple.

War started 4 days ago, when Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ordered his puppet Aliev to attack Armenia. The Azeri army with the help of Turkey and Syrian National Army militants launched an unprovoked attack on the Republic of Artsakh (which is historically regarded as a part of Armenia since 7th century BC).

The population of Armenia is just 3 million, compared to 100 million plus for Azerbaijan and Turkey. Israel is providing the latest weapons to Azerbaijan, who purchase them using petro-dollars. Armenia doesn't have any petroleum resources and most of its budget is comprised of remittance from its large diaspora. Armenia is surrounded on all sides by hostile neighbors.


The reason for the war:

The modern Armenia comprises of only around 10% of the historic Armenian homeland. The remainder is currently controlled by Turkey, who committed one of the most brutal genocides in the history of mankind, when they exterminated 2 million Armenians, along with 2 million other Christian minorities (Greeks, Assyrians.etc) during 1915-18. Now Erdogan want to cleanse the remaining 10% and completely exterminate the Armenian nation.

Now this is just a start. Erdogan wants to be the Caliph of his dream Turkic empire, which comprises of Anatolia, Caucasus, Balkans, Siberia, Levant, Central Asia and the Middle East.

Current situation:

The Armenian soldiers are more battle-hardened, but Azerbaijan is having the latest weapons. So far Armenia have lost large swathes of territory, but during the last couple of days they have managed to stall the Turkish/Azeri advance.

US-made weapons are also being used in this war. Yesterday, a Turkish F16 fighter jet shot down an Armenian fighter jet inside Armenian borders. The pilot was killed.

Till yesterday, the Armenians have admitted that their confirmed casualties include 104 soldiers and 7 civilians who are dead. Azerbaijan hasn't released the details of military deaths.

I don't agree with your statement. I am not witnessing much growth after mid-2018. The growth in the user base and acceptability seems to have stagnated. Also, a number of stores that used to accept Bitcoin payments earlier are no longer doing that (such as Stripe and Steam). High transaction fee, as well as volatile exchange rates are to blame for this situation.

In some countries, going out without a mask or a facial shield is a punishable offense. But in the US, it depends on the state government. The restrictions vary from state to state. The federal government hasn't imposed any nation-wide restriction upon now. So in a sense, what these people are doing is not an offense. In my country, it is mandatory to wear a mask while going out and I think that is the correct approach.

The only instance when I heard about politicians holding Bitcoin was around three years ago, and that was from Ukraine. Check this:

https://www.coindesk.com/45-million-ukrainian-lawmakers-reveal-big-bitcoin-holdings

Apart from that I have never heard about any of the politicians (at least the mainstream ones) holding cryptocurrency or at least talking about it in a positive manner. 

This is the case with most of the countries. Even in my country (which imports more than 90% of the food), the prices have remained stable. The pandemic didn't had any impact at all on the food production. Obviously there were some obstacles in the movement of goods, but that was resolved in quick time. Also, the governments around the world this time made sure that the food availability remains stable.

Back in 2016, the pollsters faced a lot of issues because the Trump supporters (especially in the rust-belt states) would not reveal their voting intention. They now claim that their new methodology takes this factor in to account. But now they have to deal with additional X factors. First of all, no one really knows whether the low turnout (due to COVID 19) is going to hurt any one candidate more than the other. And secondly, the society has got polarized as a result of the BLM movement and the associated rioting.

It was expected. RR do have a very strong top order. They have international-class players such as Steve Smith, Jos Buttler and Sanju Samson. But the middle order is very weak as it comprises of Robin Uthappa, Riyan Parag, Rahul Tewatia and Tom Curran. This is why KKR persisted with their best bowlers during the powerplay. Cummins bowled half of the initial six overs.

It means that in the near future Fee Reward will constitute for the majority of the mining output. For the 2020-24 period, Block Reward is 6.25 BTC and right now Free Reward is only around 10-15% of the mining output. For the 2024-28 period, this may increase to 20-30%. I am taking a conservative estimate here, because as the user base increases, we can expect the Free Reward to go up. 

Controlling the prices and availability goes against the principle of free market and in the long term it can do more harm than good. For example, last year Russia introduced limits on wheat exports, in order to keep the prices under control. As a result, the farmers incurred huge losses and the forex revenue also went down. Even after all this, the bread prices remained quite high.

Out of all these, I have heard only about Bitcore. But I am not sure whether it was 0.5x. I remember taking part in the Bitcore airdrop many years ago. If I am not wrong, I received 1x coins (i.e one BTX for every BTC in my wallet). 2-3 years ago, they had a popular signature campaign here in Bitcointalk as well. But the value went down steeply after 2018. At one point, BTX had an exchange rate of BTC0.002. Now it is BTC0.000019, which represents a decline of more than 99%.

Finding a reliable cryptocurrency mixer is getting difficult nowadays. A number of them have been closed down by the authorities in the recent times. The most well known example is that of Bestmixer.io. It was taken down in 2018, by a combined team led by the Europol. Some of the other mixing services proved to be exit scams, while some others were having phishing links.

I did a bit of research about Grayscale Investments. One thing I liked about them is that 44% of their funding comes from non-institutional investors. This include individual investors, as well as retirement investors. However, I heard that their fees is quite high. From what I have heard, they charge 2% per year in fees. For comparison, most of the mutual funds have an annual fund maintenance fee of 0.25% to 0.50%.

Hmm... "somewhere in the internet", right?

I don't know why anyone should take such unsubstantiated rumors seriously. Match fixing don't happen at this level, and we have to remember that Manny Pacquiao is also a politician. If he do something like this (which is impossible), then his political career will be ruined. These rumors were circulated by someone who wanted to tarnish his reputation. And I would say that most probably, his political rivals are behind this.

All that said, odds are heavily in favor of Pacquiao. Pacquiao at -450, and McGregor at +325.