Are you just joking because it's fool's day?

For those of us who have some experience in the world of gambling and understand mathematics, with concepts such as EV, apart from having spent a long time in forums and having seen many scam attempts and incredible offers like this one, it is clear at first glance that what the OP offers, or is a scam or if he offers it sincerely is something like what you explain, based on martingale.

The only doubt I have is whether you have tested it in some way or are just joking.

After yesterday's vote of the European Parliament committee, I have become very pessimistic:

EU Parliament Passes Privacy-Busting Crypto Rules Despite Industry Criticism.

"Lawmakers are set to end even the smallest anonymous crypto transactions, and plan measures that could see unregulated exchanges cut off."

The law will affect exchanges and non-custodial wallets, such as metamask, ledger and trezor, as I explained.

But it must be said that this is only the first step of a law, which will take some time to be approved and can still be modified, but they have made a bad start:

"The plans must also be agreed on by both the parliament and national ministers, who meet as the EU Council, in order to pass into law."

In line with my pessimism, I came across an even more pessimistic article, Digital currency industry melts down ahead of key EU vote on non-custodial wallets, from which I will quote an excerpt:

(The article was written before the vote took place)

"If the vote goes through, this will radically alter how digital currency transfers work in the EU. It will undoubtedly place huge burdens on unhosted wallet providers, but then again, the EU doesn’t care about that. It only cares about its objectives as a political entity, and it’s notoriously tough on financial crimes, money laundering, and tax evasion. The EU was never going to let Bitcoin and other digital currencies run free, given the way they have been portrayed for the last several years and given the widespread anti-government and anti-law sentiment within the industry.

This was always coming, and it’s going to happen everywhere

Slowly but surely, people are beginning to realize that Bitcoin can not subvert governments and allow people to do whatever they like without consequences. That narrative led to disasters like the Silk Road and extremist anarchists like Cøbra touting Bitcoin as a tool to bring in the sort of chaos they wanted to see in the world. However, Bitcoin isn’t suitable for any of that, and its success entirely depends on being legally compliant.

As we see, powerful governments can use the law to force their will on the industry. We saw in Ottawa how lawmakers could freeze wallets with millions worth of BTC in them with the stroke of a pen. We’re seeing how even the idea that the EU could require unhosted wallets to be linked to identity is causing mass panic across the industry.

What happened to the narrative that Bitcoin could withstand all of this, and governments were rendered powerless when faced with it? This was a lie all along, and big companies like Coinbase, Binance, and others with teams of lawyers and advisors have always known it. They are profit-seeking entities, and they will always comply with whatever regulations they are required to, or they’ll be banned from large markets like the EU, U.S., and others.

Everything is changing before our eyes in the digital currency industry. With bans on anonymous transactions well underway, the U.S. SEC circling the likes of Ripple and Tether, and Satoshi’s Bitcoin slowly being understood as an electronic cash system designed for small casual payments that works within the law and which is always subject to it, things are ever so slowly changing for the better. If the EU votes to pass the new rules, it will be another nail in the coffin for the false narrative plaguing the industry."

And the problem with this is that it sets a precedent and entrenches a trend of increasing state control.

What do you think about it? Are you as pessimistic as me or this article?

Edit: go to page 2 for the key proposals of the draft.

Also: PLEASE REALIZE THAT franky's ARGUMENTS ARE GARBAGE. As they are based on a former draft on a slightly different subject, that didn't pass, as I've shown on page 2.

Well, actually, I think the proper thread to discuss this would be theymos' one:

IQ testing now required before posting.

I suggest to you OP to lock this thread. I could report it to be locked but I'll just leave it as it's fools' day.

What I wonder is, if apart from the IQ system being a joke, the questions are also fake.

It's April's fools joke. That's the point. You don't need preparation. Actually I am searching in google for the question I am asked now and I think none of the 4 is the correct real answer. I wouldn't be surprised. Theymos enjoys quite a lot these jokes.

Lol. Have seen our IQs. Theymos' april's fools again.

Yesterday I saw a comment on reddit saying that this is only a first legislative step and that a law as such coming into force may take up to 2 years to be finally approved and between now and then there may be amendments.

But we are off to a bad start. I think the global trend will be similar, if we take into account what has happened in Canada and other countries, for example, will be towards a KYC control of the maximum possible transactions by the public authorities, and there will always be some things you can do p2p (using vpn and who knows with what wallet), but the goods and services you can acquire will be very small, like the currency exchange. I think the next step will be to try to kill DEX.

In my post above, which I guess you didn't read, I explained that the problem with that tax is that it ends up affecting the middle class, and in cases like Argentina people so "rich" that they only have $32k of wealth. Also, that many countries had this tax and removed it, because it is counterproductive for the economy.

But I know that many times in politics people act like hooligans and get carried away by emotions, as in this case you seem to get carried away because Biden is supposedly going to play Robin Hood, so enjoy your joy.

It seems like a good idea to me, and I think it goes along the lines of decentralizing the system more, which might seem like a good idea to Theymos, but we can't be sure what he will think.

What I think is that it doesn't necessarily have to be like what you're proposing: double merit sources and cut the merits in half. That would be the simplest way to do it, of course. But you could add 20% more merit sources, for example, and lower the merit allocation but not exactly 20%. Maybe you could lower the allocation for those who don't use them up month after month, and keep the same allocation for those who do, according to what LoyceV says:


Anyway, if he thinks it's a good idea, I guess he will do it his way.

There are other articles about it:

Vatican bank transferred 10M Euros to buy Rubles from the Central Bank of Russia to pay for gas - media

The Vatican was the first in Europe to pay Russia for gas in rubles

but they don't seem very reliable, and actually, the first one that pops up on google when you search says:

No, The Vatican Is Not Paying For Russian Gas In Rubles.

The "source" of the fake news seems to be a tweet.

No, there's really only one person I know IRL who knows I have Bitcoin. It's not like I have a lot of Bitcoin achievements either, I don't trade, I'm just doing DCA, and little by little my Bitcoin holdings are going up.

I would recommend you to be a bit cautious talking about your achievements in crypto with people.


Same here. And your English is OK.

I'm not too keen on these systems.

In the same way that I don't spend a penny with credit cards to get air miles. The rewards are very low, and in most cases people end up spending more than if they were not offered rewards, so, using a mathematical simile, it's EV- for them.

For example in BlockFi you need to spend $1k to get $15 (plus possible bonus). For that I prefer to take the $15 (or $20) and buy Bitcoin directly.

Maybe not enough caffeine in my body yet, lol. I suppose that from the context I could have understood it that way, but the isolated phrase can be understood in both ways. All clear.

Probably. Let's see what he says.


Obviously, I am not talking about icopress or [banned mixer] scamming us.

I have seemed to understand his reasoning to be as follows: people write on forums for free. There are many forums where people do not wear paid signatures and write. Therefore, you could somehow make them wear the signatures without paying them or paying them less and that way the employer would get a higher return for the investment.

In my case, I have been a member of other forums and still am and have written a lot without being paid, as a hobby. But the quantity of posts and the quality of them, would be extremely reduced without being paid. I prefer to spend most of my time online on activities that are profitable for me.

Hi icopress. Do you mind explaining this here?


Translation (with deepl.com):

"I currently manage a Jambler campaign and really want to try to make a difference when it comes to the signature campaign mentality that has developed over the years. Because in 2017, when I asked one of the managers about marketing prospects and the return on investment of the subscription campaign, a thought came to mind that has stuck with me to this day. The idea is very simple... Bitcointalk ads are top-of-mind oriented, which means that companies rent users' personal signatures for their own purposes, resulting in users getting paid weekly for what they would have done for free."

Does this mean that the plan going forward is not to pay people to wear signatures? I was going to reply you on the thread in German, using a translator. But I'm not 100% sure if this is what you mean.

But what is the Opera wallet for? What can you do with it that you can't do with your usual wallet (which I assume is a HW wallet)?

The argument seems to me similar to that of wallets on your mobile. Don't carry a lot of money in it because it's not very secure. But if you carry a wallet on your mobile with a few funds in it, you can make transactions that you wouldn't be able to make normally, unless you carry a laptop and your HW wallet everywhere you go.

Hey guys,

A few days ago I opened a similar thread in Legal.

To me what seems important about this, which if approved has very important implications and will affect the market, is the following:


Not really, actually all transactions, no matter the amount:

"Under existing laws, payees need to be identified for any bank transfer over EUR 1,000 ($1,099). The bloc’s national governments have already said they want to scrap that lower limit when extending the rules to crypto assets – on the basis that large transactions could just be broken up into smaller ones, a practice known as "smurfing."

Urged by national laundering officials, who cite crypto’s use in funding terrorism and child abuse, lawmakers seem set to agree to require identity checks for any size of crypto payment. Even the right-wing lawmakers who oppose the move to de-anonymize transactions appear to acknowledge they won’t win the vote."

The other important point concerns custodial wallets:

"The European Union is considering a regulatory approach that will crack down on cryptocurrency’s “unhosted wallets”—wallets that are not held by a third-party intermediary also known as non-custodial.

Examples of a non-custodial wallet include MetaMask, WalletConnect, or hardware wallets like Ledger and Trezor.

The European Commission has proposed text that will oblige crypto service providers to obtain personal information from customers."

Source: European Union Proposes Crackdown on Non-Custodial Crypto Wallets.

This vote is very important and it actually will take place today. I hope it does not pass, because it will affect business, the price, and set a regulatory example to the rest of the world.

The fact is that if the regulation is approved, it will be a blow to people living in the EU. Although those who want privacy will be able to bypass these restrictions, it will be a blow to the market in the EU. Companies that accept Bitcoin payments will have to identify the buyer even for a payment of 10 euros.

Voting will take place today: Crypto Privacy Positions Harden Ahead of Crunch EU Vote.

This thread went unnoticed for the first few days. In fact, I posted it in Bitcoin Discussion and had to move it here because it was going to disappear due to lack of responses. Now there is a similar one in Economics.

I say this because it doesn't seem to have garnered much interest but if the bill is passed as is, then we won't be surprised if the price goes down. And the bad thing is that if this legislation is passed, other countries may look at it and think of passing similar legislation.

Of course, to those who are surprised that Putin wants to sell gas in rubles, saying that this means breaking the contract, I say: "and to freeze the assets that the Central Bank of Russia has in the Western Central Banks is not breaking the contract?"


Yes, well, the same thing happens in Cuba. One thing is the official exchange rate and the other is that since everyone wants dollars or euros, they give you much more than the official exchange rate in the street for those currencies. So I suppose that the news are perhaps taking for granted the information given by the Central Bank of Russia without contrasting it? That is why I added to the title of the thread "not anymore" but with a question mark, because I wasn't so sure about it.

I don't think so.


What you say is not entirely accurate.

If the rich make money on return on investment, there is no problem, they are currently taxed on capital gains.

The people Biden wants to tax are people like Musk:

Elon Musk, short on cash, keeps borrowing more and more money even as Tesla stock surges.


The problem with these measures is that they are initially sold to the public as being only against the rich and end up affecting everyone. Let's see the origin of the income tax in the US

"The original form exempted all income below $3,000 a year if you were single, $4,000 if married. Those were the standard exemptions.

In 2013, some critics of the tax code complain that nearly half of all Americans are exempt from paying any income taxes at all, and are therefore less connected to the rest of the polity. So what was the situation when the income tax was first introduced?

It would take more time and patience than you’ve got, I would imagine, to explain all the various ways to convert 1913 dollars into dollars a century later. The best I can offer, then, is a range.


At the very least, $3000 in 1913 is the equivalent of $52,100, using the lowest possible measure of inflation, something called the GDP deflator and relying on measuringworth.com for our numbers, as we typically do.

Using the GDP deflator, the $4000 floor for married couples filing jointly would be $69,500.

Okay, what percentage of Americans make less than these amounts? For starters, the median household income in this country is about $51,000. So half of us make less than that. I can’t find a quick number for those making $69,500, but a guess would be: no more than a third. (To locate yourself in the income distribution, you might try this “What Percent Are You?” interactive graphic from The New York Times.)

The bottom line: At least 60 percent or so of Americans were exempt from the income tax when it was first introduced. But that’s the most conservative possible estimate."

I, in principle, am also not very much against taxing billionaires like Musk more, the problem is when the threshold is lowered. Let's see the different countries that already have one:

"Argentina: ...the tax is progressive from 0.50% on assets above ARS 3,000,000 (approx. US$32,000 at April 2021 official exchange rate...

France: Until 2017, there was a solidarity tax on wealth on any net assets above €800,000 for those with total net worth of €1,300,000 or more.

Spain: "Spain: There is a tax called Patrimonio. The tax rate is progressive, from 0.2 to 3.75% of net assets above the threshold of €700,000 after €300,000 primary residence allowance"

Norway: "Norway: 0.7% (municipal) and 0.15% (national) a total of 0.85% levied on net assets exceeding 1,500,000 kr (approx. US$170,000) as of 2019.[16] For tax purposes, the value of the primary residence is valued to 25% of the market value."

Switzerland: "A progressive wealth tax that varies by residence location. Most cantons have no wealth tax for individual net worth less than CHF 100,000 (approx. US$101,000)"

Belgium: The Act of 7 February 2018, which is effectively a "wealth tax," imposes a 0.15% annual tax on financial instruments kept in securities accounts worth more than €500,000."

There are several countries in Europe that had the weath tax and removed it. According to the article: If a Wealth Tax is Such a Good Idea, Why Did Europe Kill Theirs?, there are only three remaining as of today "In 1990, twelve countries in Europe had a wealth tax. Today, there are only three: Norway, Spain, and Switzerland."

The problem with this tax when the threshold is lowered is that it prevents companies from prospering in many cases because they can appear on the balance sheet with a certain equity but if you force them to sell or go into debt to pay the tax you make them less competitive.


Well, I believe that a minimum of taxes is necessary, although I do agree that taxes, which are sold as being against the rich, in the end make the poor poor poorer.

Remember Biden saying recently that Putin is to blame for inflation? LMAO. As if inflation didn't start before the war, with him in charge. Inflation is just another tax.

What is clear is that the most favorable regulations to Bitcoin and to consider it as a legal tender will be established first in countries not as developed as the USA or the EU.

At first the states do not like the Bitcoin because it is something they can not control, nor print massively through central banks. In the face of these disadvantages, less developed countries find advantages, as in the case of El Salvador with the savings in remittance commissions and the benefits of foreign investment in the country.

Although in the case of Vietnam it does not seem that they will go that far and it will be a regulation as a financial asset with payment of taxes on capital gains.

I hope the analysis is correct, but after what happened last year, where all serious analysts were giving a minimum of $100k price for Bitcoin, and some much more, I am very skeptical of this type of analysis.

If we reach that price this year, so much the better. I think that might indicate that the cycles are getting longer.


In my case, I do DCA, so I don't care what the market does. The only thing is that if we are in a bullish phase and we are beating ATHs, I spend a little.