I don't think that vaccine will have any impact. Yesterday I was watching the statement from Dr. Robert Redfield, who is the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He was saying that a vaccine won't be available to the general population before the third quarter of next year. So what are we going to do for the next 12 months? I believe that most of the countries and territories will be able to achieve herd immunity, long before any of the vaccines become available at the market.

I don't agree. Even in ODI format, the absence of Steve Smith can be a major handicap for Australia. He is their most consistent batsman, by some distance. Marnus Labuschagne can be considered as the second best, but even he is not as good as Smith. None of the remaining batsmen are consistent enough, including Warner, Finch, Maxwell and Stoinis.

These measures were implemented when N Srinivasan was controlling the BCCI, and I believe that they should remove this ban. It is very unfair from the part of BCCI to ban the Indian players from the other leagues, when all the other boards allow their players to take part in the IPL. Also, two months every year from the international calendar is devoted to the IPL. None of the other boards get such preferential treatment for their leagues. On top of that, despite the revenue redistribution, the BCCI still receives almost 4 times funds from the ICC when compared to some of the smaller boards such as CSA and NZC. The BCCI should not get too greedy and arrogant. If they do that, then the other boards may gang up against them.

A lot of studies have been done on this aspect, and it was found that legalization may cause an increase in demand for a very short period. However, after the initial euphoria is gone, the demand nosedives. And within a few months, the demand will decline to a level, that is lower than what they had earlier. You are right in saying that when something is no longer illegal, it loses its charm. 

By the time the match ended, it was 4:15 am here. I was too tired, else I would have posted immediately. Never expected Australia to recover from 73/5. The target was more than 300, and in the previous matches the Australian lower-middle order had failed. The England captain made some crucial mistakes yesterday. He allowed the pressure to be released, by continuing with Rashid and Curran. Had he used Wood/Woakes, then there was a good chance that Australia could have lost another couple of wickets. Archer, as usual was unimpressive.

There are dozens of threads about Yobit here in Bitcointalk, some of them dating back to 2015. They had started a popular signature campaign a few years back, but that campaign was nuked by the moderators. And it surprises me that people continue to use that exchange, despite numerous complaints about their services. You can check the trust ratings for the Yobit account here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=406594

I don't think that anyone is going to forcefully inject you the vaccine. It is purely voluntary. And as per some of the opinion polls, almost 50% of the population in various countries are saying that they will refuse to take the vaccine. So in any case, you will get plenty of company. And there is no need to go ballistic over this virus. The mortality rate is extremely low, if you are below 30 years of age and doesn't have any comorbidities such as obesity, hypertension and diabetes.

I don't have a readymade answer for this. My father is 78-years old and I have been teaching him how to use a smartphone for the last 4-5 years. And even after all these years, he can only do the most basic tasks on his own. I have given up teaching and I guess he will be OK with whatever knowledge he is having. When it is so difficult for the old people to learn even the basic technology, I don't know how you guys are expecting them to understand complex technology such as cryptocurrency and Blockchain.

Your points are valid. But then the topic is on how the legalization of weed can help in the recovery of the American economy. No one is claiming that this sector alone can rescue the economy, which looks to be in a very bad state right now. The COVID 19 pandemic was like the last nail in the coffin for the economy. The government was doing all that it could, to keep the federal debt under $20 trillion levels. But with the stimulus measures that were necessitated by the pandemic, it can easily go to 23-24 trillion USD by the time of the POTUS elections.

Before anyone want to post here, please go through this link:

https://www.coindesk.com/india-said-to-be-preparing-to-ban-cryptocurrency-trading-bloomberg



Anyone still want to talk about progressiveness? Banning cryptocurrency is now taken as a sign of progressiveness?

As I said earlier, for a foreigner it is extremely difficult to do business in India. The laws and regulations are still stuck in the stone age and a lot of power lies with the bureaucrats. Corruption is everywhere and it is almost impossible to get past red tape and bureaucracy. There have been some progress since Modi became the Prime Minister in 2014, but it will take ages for India to become a business friendly nation.

I think that this question has been already answered. Online gambling is entirely different from physical gambling. Even the clientele is radically different. If the physical casinos set up online sites, their customers would mostly avoid those. I am someone who have been to physical casinos and I have spent a lot of time in online gambling. For me, these two domains are polar opposites.

To be fair, Africa had its share of good leaders. Examples are Nelson Mandela, Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba and Thomas Sankara. Apart from Mandela, most of them were assassinated by the Western powers, when they attempted to free the natural resources of their country from the foreign corporations. Sankara in particular was targeted by France, after he had a fight with the French president François Mitterand. Lumumba on the other hand was finished off by the Belgians, after he tried to nationalize some of the mining assets in Congo. These leaders were replaced with puppet-leaders who are loyal to the Western powers. In case of Sankara, he was succeeded by the pro-French dictator Blaise Compaoré. Lumumba was replaced with the corrupt US-puppet Mobutu Sese Seko.

Pakistan do have a cricket crazy population of more than 200 million, and more importantly there are large expat communities in the UK, US and the middle east. But then, the franchise T20 calendar is already saturated. Almost all of the test nations (perhaps with the exception of New Zealand) have come up with such leagues. Obviously this will mean less viewership, and thereby less revenue for each of them.

Nice to see international cricket matches being hosted in Pakistan, after the successful tours by Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. For more than a decade, the cricket fans in Pakistan were devoid of such entertainment. But still, I would like Australia or England touring this country. It can bring in the hype and revenues for the PCB, who badly needs funds now. A tour by India would be too much to expect and I can't imagine it realizing anytime within the next 10-15 years. 

These rumors have been going around for the last 2-3 years and no concrete step has been taken by the government in this regard. Recently the supreme court of India ruled that the banking ban on the cryptocurrency trade was illegal and struck it down. As of now, there are around 1.7 million active cryptocurrency traders in India and it looks very unlikely that the government would do something drastic.

Everyone is ignoring the fact that mined output consist of two parts - 1. Block Reward and 2. Fee Reward

The block reward will decline everytime when the halving occurs. But the fee reward is likely to increase in the future, as the adoption and acceptability increases. I would assume that the mining pools would continue to flourish as the user base increases. Let's assume that the exchange rate of BTC would be $100,000 by 2100 (very conservative estimate). Then the fee reward per block would be in the range of $50-150K.

We are facing this since March, and now almost 6 months have passed. It is no longer viable for everyone to stay at home. The economy needs to be restarted, else a lot more people are going to lose their jobs. A large fraction of the population has seen their savings vanish. They can no longer afford to stay at home. Finally, it is up to the individual to protect himself. The risk can be quite low, if proper precautions are taken.

This DeFi bubble is going to burst sometime soon. And last time also, we saw what happened to the Ethereum exchange rates once the IEO bubble burst. There is going to be a very significant correction (anywhere from 30% to 50%) and prices are going to remain at low levels until the next hype appears at the horizon. Any delay from the ETH 2.0 rollout will make matters even worse.

You can't even compare IPL with any of the other franchise T20 leagues. In terms of revenue and audience, IPL is miles ahead. PSL is relatively new and has not yet reached the maturity. I would still rank BBL as the second most popular league, followed by the CPL. Others, such as the PSL of Pakistan, BPL of Bangladesh, MSL of South Africa.etc would rank much below these three.

Technology stocks are surging right now. Anyone who had stocks such as AAPL, GOOGL and FB would be in profit by at least 60% on a YoY basis. I am not that excited about the medical sector. Their revenues have gone up. But at the same time, a lot of the healthcare workers have got infected and some of them have died from the disease. In the long run, there is going to be hardly any positive impact for the healthcare sector.