Some of the media sources are claiming that the motive was robbery. It is highly suspect, given that the village was located in a high-security zone. Also, even the relatives of the victims were kept in the dark by the cops, who refused to divulge much details about the attack. And talking about Srinivasan, he has the right to criticize the players. But not at a time when they are mourning the death of their loved ones. I would regard that as inhuman behaviour.

Binance usually charge a huge listing fees (upto $3 million) and they do a careful screening of the token/coin before it is allowed on the Binance platform. So obviously the risks are far lower, when compared to the other exchanges. But then, there is no guarantee that a particular project will be a success, even if it is listed on major exchanges such as Binance and Huobi. That depends on a number of additional factors. 

Yes. Very few of the bounties are paying. But instead of complaining about it, the bounty hunters need to take steps to protect themselves from scamming. For example, stay away from those bounties, where the terms and conditions are very vague. A lot of them mention that the campaign manager has the right to change the terms of payment at a later point. This is very unfair towards the bounty hunters and I would request everyone to boycott such campaigns no matter how much attractive they may sound.

The mortality rate was very low in most of the African nations. The same can't be said about the European and American countries. I am not sure about the exact reason, but I guess having a younger population and previous exposure to various flu pandemics helped to reduce the mortality in Africa. The same can be said about Pakistan, where the infection rates have fallen by almost 90%.

For those who invest in new projects, the most important thing to remember is not to put all of your eggs in one basket. From what I have seen, the success rate for the recent projects have been quite low, in the order of 4%-5%. So if you invest in 20-25 projects, you can expect one of them to give you good returns. So diversify your investment, and don't put a disproportionate share of your capital in to any one project.

Agreed with everything else, but not with the "fast and cheap transactions part". Let's be realistic. There are various advantages with making Bitcoin payments, but being fast and cheap are not among these qualities. A confirmation takes anywhere between 5 to 60 minutes (compared to 1-2 seconds with Visa/Paypal) and the average fee is around $5 now (credit card payments usually charge a fee of around $0.30 for small transactions).

The problem with these pump and dump coins is that you need to sell them right at the peak. If you delay your decision by a few days, then you will end up with a loss. This happened to me in 2018, when I was trading with DeepOnion. At one point, the exchange rates shot up to as much as BTC0.0011. But I was greedy and waited for more. The prices crashed very heavily (by more than 99%) and I ended up with a loss. I still have some of this coin in my wallets.

The less talked about Srinivasan, that much better. He was a disgrace. Fellow Indian Jagmohan Dalmiya was the one who did the most for globalizing the sport, when he was the ICC president. The global reach of cricket increased by a great deal during his time. But everything was reversed when people such as Sharad Pawar and David Morgan captured that post. All the good work that was done by Dalmiya was thwarted. People like Pawar and Srinivasan pushed cricket back by at least two decades, for their own selfish and greedy motives.

I am a regular visitor to India and I have my relatives there. On average I spend 1-2 months in India every year. I don't mean to disrespect the Indians, but the government attitude towards cryptocurrency and other domains are outdated. The last time someone tried to setup a Bitcoin ATM in India, he was arrested and the ATM machine was confiscated. There are millions of cryptocurrency users in India, but doing so is not strictly legal. Cryptocurrency in India exists in the grey zone. Since there are no laws or regulations regarding cryptocurrency, it is open to interpretation by the law enforcement officials. And this can cause issues for foreigners like me.

Other things that I mentioned in my post are true. India is a country which has banned porn and gambling. Do you think that these are very progressive steps? From what I have seen, the people tend to be very hypocrite. India is one of the top consumers of porn and still they don't want to admit that. The same goes for other domains, such as prostitution, gambling and alcohol.

BTW, this topic was about the "Indian progressiveness".

Various studies have shown that antibodies for COVID 19 are present in a large portion of the population. It can range from 20% to 80%, depending on the geography. If someone is having the antibody, the chances are that he will not get infected again from the Coronavirus. The governments should do mass testing of the general population and if someone is found to be having the antibody in his body, then he/she should be allowed to excuse himself from the lockdown regulations.

I don't expect all the governments to do that, especially of they don't have enough reserves. However, a large number of developing nations have started giving out handouts. An example is India. Till now, the government is reported to have sanctioned almost $100 billion worth of funds to those who lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic. Obviously, the developed nations are a step ahead of the rest. 

What about those who are employed by the casinos? They are not billionaires and they need their salaries as well. If you close down all the casinos, where they would go? Gambling is just like drinking alcohol. You are expected to be responsible while gambling. If someone is unable to do that, then it is his problem and it is not right to blame the entire gambling sector for that.

That is not the right way of looking at it, I am afraid. The billionaires are getting rich, and there is no doubt about it. But what about ordinary investors? Some 40% of my portfolio is made up of stocks and mutual funds (second only to cryptocurrency), and I am benefitting from the market rally. Like me, there are hundreds of millions out there, who have seen an increase in the valuation of their investments.

What has gone wrong with the Australian team? They were in such great form before the start of this series and I don't understand what went wrong all of a sudden. Now they have additional headaches, on top of the already existing ones. The middle order is looking third class for sometime, but on top of that their bowling is also looking very ordinary. Luckily for me, I refrained from placing a bet in their favor at the last minute.

Here in Singapore, almost everyone who works in the IT sector is working from home. It has proven to be beneficial for everyone. Daily commute was always a big headache for me, because I used to take the public transport. The employees are as productive as they were earlier and now everyone is left with additional savings. And at least in my sector, the revenues are stable and not impacted in a big way by the COVID 19 pandemic.

Raina's uncle and other family members were asleep at the terrace of the house, when they were attacked by an infamous criminal gang (locally known as the "kala kachha gang"). Raina's uncle Ashok Kumar (58 y.o) and his son Kaushal Kumar (30 y.o) reportedly died in the attack, while the other family members are still hospitalized. The criminals behind the attack are yet to be arrested, as they are rumored to be close to the politicians.

Earlier there were rumors of terrorists attacking the family (since Raina was the Kashmiri to represent India), but these were later proven to be false.

All that said, N Srinivasan's reaction was appalling. He should understand that cricketers are human beings and they too have families. This guy is blinded due to his greed for money.

I joined this forum about 8 years ago, and I have seen the ups and downs of cryptocurrency. Nowadays the main reason for holding cryptocurrency is to make profits out of it. When I joined in 2012, none of us expected that Bitcoin prices would go up by 1,000x. Most of us supported cryptocurrency for ideological reasons. Anyway, there are a few simple things to keep in mind if you want to get rich from cryptocurrency:

1. Hold your coins safely and securely. Just follow the basic safety precautions, such as 2FA and email confirmation
2. Never ever listen to FUD
3. Never do panic selling
4. Always remember that Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency and give it a higher priority when compared to the other altcoins
5. Stay away from all the pyramid schemes and ponzis, no matter how attractive they sound

I don't think that they are considering this as a retaliatory measure. Perhaps they are afraid that the Americans will impose some form of sanction or embargo, which will make these bonds completely worthless. IMO, rather than retaliating against the Americans, this is the main intention for getting rid of the treasury bonds. They may be moving their reserves to gold or other safe assets (which are not impacted by the sanctions).

OK.. here are the latest stats, after a very long interval..

Total market cap: $328,539,469,372 (+20.87%)

Bitcoin: $189,707,833,945 (57.743%)
Bitcoin forks: $7,508,477,333 (2.285%)
Stablecoins: $16,882,517,913 (5.035%)
Altcoins: $114,440,640,181 (34.937%)

This is the change compared to my last post:

Bitcoin: -4.445%
Bitcoin forks: -0.522%
Stablecoins: +1.104%
Altcoins: +3.862%

I don't understand all the fuss. Bitcoin ATMs operate all around the world. What is so special about this ATM in Venezuela? To be honest, I am not very happy with the Venezuelan regime's soft stand on Bitcoin. As you may be aware of, Venezuela is currently under United States sanctions. If the US government suspect that the regime is using Bitcoin to circumvent the sanctions, then they will adopt measures which can have a negative impact for the cryptocurrency market.