Bengals @ Titans Yes, Under
49ers @ Packers No, Under
Rams @ Buccaneers Yes, Over
Bills @ Chiefs  Yes, Over

Game 1:  38' 2-0 Liverpool
Game 2:  38' 3-1 Man City

a)  14   b)  1:46

I don't think NFTs deserve hate, just like no technology deserves it, unless it's a weapon or is designed to be harmful in a meaningful way. NFTs can lead to issues, but they are not dangerous on its own and weren't meant to be a bad thing, so hate should not be applicable to them as a whole. I know that some use NFTs for good reasons. For example, creative people can use them to sell their digital art, and this is one of the ways of supporting creators. But they can also be used for milking customers (like when NFTs are introduces into a game like FIFA) or even for crimes (when someone sells somebody else's digital art and makes money this way). So I'm not into NFTs, and I do believe they are overhyped, but being overly negative about them is also unnecessary.

If you don't find anything that isn't about Bitcoin interesting, I think it's a little too much. It's close to an obsession than a healthy admiration of Bitcoin. But loving privacy is okay and natural. Of course, anything that we do for a long enough time affects our behavior. For me, Bitcoin made me more aware of problems with banks and governments, with power of the few over the many. I also became more cautious about online privacy than I used to be. Moreover, I read way more economics-related content. And Bitcoin's volatility taught me to be a calmer person about financial changes. I no longer care about the exchange rate of my local fiat to USD, which is something people monitor closely because these fluctuations are very minor in comparison with what's happening on the crypto market.

This, to be honest, reminds me of the times of the boom of altcoins in 2017, and how there were ICOs for everything. Lots of use cases in any area one can think of, including the usage of blockchain for non-financial purposes (storing medical records, validating real products of a brand, and I even remember something as bizarre as using blockchain to help track infected bees and recognize their infections). But in the end, all this stuff didn't really happen. There were experiments here and there, but no area was truly disrupted by blockchain. Maybe this still lays in the future, of course, but for now, trying to find ways of using NFTs for real estate sounds like an attempt to stay relevant and catch the trend, but not as something that truly makes sense enough to be widely implemented.

Gold's time as money is long gone, so in that regard Bitcoin has already won. I think it's also an easy guess that, unless we count CBDCs, Bitcoin is and will continue to be used money as money than other cryptocurrencies. But as for fiat, its grip is still very firm. While inflation is slowly getting out of control, it's still stable enough and trusted enough for people to fear cryptos, including Bitcoin, which are way more volatile.
As for the podcast, I don't think the struggle is that Bitcoin is intangible; it's still that it's too volatile. Even those who are into Bitcoin are usually into it because of its potential as a form of investment, not as a form of money. Also, he says that Bitcoin's limited supply makes people think whether they need to buy this or that because Bitcoin is likely to grow in value which makes it the best form of money. But that's precisely why many argue that Bitcoin cannot properly function as money: people are not motivated to spend it, and spending is essential for money. I think that we should abandon consumerism, so I like this point about Bitcoin making us think about purchases, but I'm not sure how an economy can flourish like this.

People with shady reputation making and then unlisting their marketing video, and claiming they'll build a crypto utopia on an island that is still listed for sale? That looks like a scam to me, not like a tendency of investors turning to private islands. Moreover, since Satoshi Island barely has info available about it, I wouldn't have high hopes for it either. I acknowledge that there are crypto island projects, but I don't expect them to be successful. I think that small countries adopting Bitcoin can mean much more for adoption and this model is also more likely to succeed because there are governments, institutions and at least some basic infrastructure that is already available.

Just because cryptos are so overhyped it doesn't mean that it's easy to find investors. Just like with any other business, it requires a lot of effort, connections and/or personal funds available. You should be able to prove that not only your idea is legit but that you're the one who can truly implement it or hire the right team for the task. Honestly, there are so many projects that it's hard not to drown in them and catch anyone's attention. You can try websites like KickICO, I think, if that's the kind of project you are interested in, but I don't think it's possible to find investors if you don't have any prototypes or if you are not already known for something. It's a tough field, and perhaps making your own website or at least a social network page with key information can be a good start. Good luck!

The op's terminology is confusing to me. If we take into account early adopters that have been hodling for 5+ years without any movement of funds, I think it's safe to say they don't affect the market. But investors, according to the op, are also early adopters but those who sold BTC (at that time I'd say they contributed to declining prices) and then bought it again (contributing to the growth of prices). Both categories clearly miss traders, panic sellers and short-term investors who all, IMO, affect the price much more of a daily basis. If someone like Musk announces investment into Bitcoin, it causes a temporary increase of value, but daily changes soon create a correction, so it's people (or entities) who sell and buy fairly often that create the most impact, I believe.

It sounds great, and I'd be happy if my city's mayor tried doing something like that, but given that it's basically taxpayers' money we're talking about, I'm pretty sure that one person cannot legally make that decision and someone will have to vote on that. Not to mention that it's a city, so the country's administration probably needs to give green light as well. I tried to find out how much 1% of Rio's city reserves is, but failed. I can see that people are trying to guess it as well, but I haven't seen official estimates. Moreover, if it's for cryptos in general and not Bitcoin specifically, it's less exciting and the article's name is very misleading, as was pointed out earlier in the thread.

While a former MP doesn't sound like a credible enough source, it's still intriguing to explore the possibility of Tonga adopting Bitcoin. I decided to compare some info about El Salvador and Tonga in dedication to this.
El Salvador:
- population of 6.8 million people
- 23% live in poverty
- 50% Internet penetration
- hybrid regime based on democracy index, but a young president who is aspiring to become a dictator
Tonga:
- population of 100 thousand people
- 16% live in poverty
- 41% Internet penetration
- not on the democracy index, but I'd say a hybrid regime with significant executive power of the king

I'd say that these countries seem pretty similar. They have weak economies and significant poverty issues, are not full democracies but not autocracies either, have similar rates of Internet penetration (lower than global average of 59% but manageable for crypto adoption, apparently).
The biggest difference is the population, but I think it's easier to change things on a smaller scale, so Tonga is not at a disadvantage here. But also, since it's tiny, I think its progress won't be followed as closely as that of El Salvador in the event of Bitcoin adoption.

The inflation rate is well above the goal of 5% per year, but there are still things that make people choose the USD. One of them is pride that they have such an old currency that, while loses value, is still perceived as an oasis of stability. Then there's also trust in the US government, and the trust of other countries in the USD as a stable reference point from which they measure how their own currencies are doing. And while Bitcoin can be a savior in the long-term prospect, it's not doing well nowadays, so people are reasonably more afraid of it than of a manageable decline of fiat. Maybe times will change, but for now, I don't think this news of unseen inflation is going to change many minds about the fiat vs crypto preferences.

It's true that some people cannot afford to invest any money in anything, and they won't be able to invest in Bitcoin. However, if we consider Bitcoin's prospect of functioning as money, they might be able to switch to getting paid in Bitcoin in the future and to use it directly as payment. It's possible already in some places, but not in most. For now, if you have any money to spare, you're better off than the majority of the world (by population). But it's the problem of our world economy and inequality people live in. I don't believe everyone should have the exact same amount of money, but I do think that it's a crime that many live in poverty and can't meet their basic needs for food and shelter, while others own multiple mansions and throw away tons of food.

11) Giga Chikadze
10) Katlyn Chookagian
9) Brandon Royval
Jake Collier
7) Bill Algeo
6) Joseph Holmes
5) Court McGee
4) Charles Rosa
3) Dakota Bush
2) Brian Kelleher
1) Silvana Gomez Juare

Game 1:  28' 0-1 Southampton
Game 2:  28' 2-1 Tottenham

a)  12 b)  1:48
a)  9   b)  1:12

In my country when you don't have enough money on your account, you usually just get your payment declined and try to figure out what to leave out, so that you can cover your purchase (the vast majority use debit cards with no overdraft allowed). I take it that in the US it's common to use credit money, but you are charged extra for doing that? I'm happy that very rich companies will now be a little less rich, but is it a big change for people? Is the fee fixed, or are there additional things like an interest rate one has to pay, for example? So if there's no overdraft fee, does the bank cover the transaction and then charge this amount of money with 0% interest rate once there's money on the card again?
As for cryptos, if you don't have enough BTC in your wallet, nobody's going to pay up and cover your purchase for you, so I don't think that banks feel at a disadvantage to cryptos in this regard.

While its potential might be overhyped and it did not become dominant in any area that isn't cryptos, there were some use cases explored. There have been experiments with Blockchain voting (here's an example of an experiment in Virginia), ticket validation for events and similar things. Ukraine also plans to transfer various state registers onto Blockchain in a few years, according to its roadmap of adoption of cryptos and digitalization.
I think that even if it's centralized, we can call it blockchain as long as it functions as such (storing data with it being impossible to fake or modify it). If that does not count, why is this word used often when use cases of blockchain are explored?

I do agree that it's unlikely that the market will return to -70% to -80% losses (at least, when we consider Bitcoin). But that just seems evident based on how Bitcoin behaved in 2020 and 2021, with the biggest drop being from $63.5k to a little less than $30k. But a loss around -50% from the ATH is still very real and it's a big one. I think we should get used to it, and what's also different lately is that Bitcoin doesn't tend to stand down for as long as it did before.
As for the IMF, it seems that franky1 was right because I also didn't see the phrase the article is referring to in the report or a short summary of it.
Bitcoin is becoming stronger and more trusted, and I don't think that it'll fall as low or remain low for as long as it used to anymore, but I'm not sure that Jack's support or whatever IMF is up to will make a big difference.