I feel too asocial for p2p exchanges, and I don't trust people enough, especially when it comes to dealing with finances. That's why I prefer centralized services that do the job for me, and I don't have to worry about meeting an unfair merchant. What is a big part of the problem your friend faces is Bitcoin being illegal in your country (sorry to hear that). Otherwise, it would have been just the risk of losing some money, but now it's the risk of losing some freedom if I understand correctly. I hope it works out, and your friend it cleared off scamming charges, but what kind of punishment is he facing for using Bitcoin?

It's good that they're trying to protect users by banning malicious apps. It's probably a part of the policy that goes far beyond cryptocurrencies and mining, the one that bans any scamming or hugely misleading apps out there. This doesn't mean that Google is attacking Bitcoin, crypto mining or anything like that, it's just a reasonable step they're taking towards making their platform more trustworthy. And judging from the article that was linked by TalkStar, it's only a small part of dozens of similar fraudulent applications that are still available on Play Store.

I agree that regulating the crypto market and setting up AML legislation to prevent scammers from going unpunished is a good idea. However, SEC might not be the right authority to regulate the market, and I thought cryptos were actually already regulated in the US, at least in the taxation part. Cryptos like Bitcoin are not securities, as a wise SEC Chair once said, so why would the SEC have a say in how to regulate them? I'm also not sure how relevant the pipeline hack is to this discussion, to be honest, as it happened not because of the lack of regulations but because of people breaking the law.

For now, any way that allows spending Bitcoin is a good one. It can be a debit card, a payment system or anything else. I'm currently at the stage of converting to fiat in order to use the money, but I wouldn't be doing it if direct spending became an option. In my country, there is only a handful of places where one can spend Bitcoin, and these are not places selling what I usually buy, so it's not very helpful. If, however, supermarkets started accepting Bitcoin as payment (going directly from a BTC wallet), I would use it directly, especially at times when the fees are reasonable. I don't mind the volatility that much, but the fees can sometimes be a problem.

Oh, can you provide the sources that claim that the Pakistan's economy will suffer because of the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan? I just don't see why that would happen, to be honest. I've seen that the economy is expected to grow by 4% in 2022, but the forecast was made prior to the Taliban's takeover. And then there's the fact that Pakistan is supportive of the Taliban, and no wonder that's the case because Pakistan basically created it.
Taking this into account, I don't see why their economy would decline. Afghanistan's economy is about to collapse because it was heavily dependent (up to 80%) on foreign investments that aren't going to continue (unless the Taliban really shows significant improvements of their policies), but Pakistan has nothing to do with it.

I think that segwit addresses is what the op probably means by saying that Electrum offers low transaction fees, as Electrum allows segwit addresses, whereas blockchain wallets do not.

Op, is this an online or an offline store? If it's an online store, people can just set the fees which are lower than average and have their transactions confirmed within a few hours rather than within one hour, and that could save them money on the fees but also be okay because there's no rush with online purchases. If it's offline, tell us more about how the process works, as even paying a high fee still requires waiting for about 10 minutes or often more before a transaction is confirmed. Do they just wait in the shop till the first confirmation? What happens if a transaction gets stuck?

What's terrible about hyperinflation is that the people who suffer most are those who are already most vulnerable. The riches tend to remain rich even during the economic crises because the govs bail them out or because they lose a lot of money but still have more left than most can make in a lifetime. Then again, I agree with you that centralized control is required to manage everything efficiently, it's just that there should be less power in the hands of the authorities and more mechanisms of controlling what they're doing by the people.
With Bitcoin, I don't think that printing money would have been necessary, as it recovered quite quickly during the pandemic and then started growing a lot. So people could benefit simply from the increased purchasing power this way, but that's merely hypothetical because there are many things that could've gone wrong (extremely high fees the merchants raising the prices a lot, among other things).

I really think that the hunt for the best odds is overrated. The odds are very similar on various websites, so the difference is not that significant. Also, sometimes there are special offers which can make up for differences and make a website more attractive than others. For instance, Sportsbet.io offers odds boosts and sometimes super boosts, as well as some special deals for multi bets, which is why I don't care if nominally some website offers the odds which are slightly better for some games. What also matters is reputation, IMO, and it is worth to stick to a website you know and love, and the one that belongs to a highly reputable company, rather than risk with websites that claim to offer better deals but might scam you.

If a person is addicted to something, it's often best to let go of the whole thing to fight addiction. It's like alcohol addicts often don't drink a single drop of alcohol because it triggers their addiction, so not betting on sports at all might be a good choice. As for watching the sports, it's best not to do it if it creates the urge to bet, but perhaps a person could remain engaged by watching games only on repeat, for instance, or trying to play sports instead of watching them. Addiction is also often a reaction to something else, such as loneliness, personal life problems, etc., so looking into the root of the problem and solving it might be helpful to fight addiction. Also, since addiction is a compulsive repetitive behavior, one can try tackling it in the same way other compulsive behaviors are tackled: a good and realistic solution can be switching to another repetitive behavior, but the one that is less harmful, and forming a new habit to replace the old one.

Game 1:  25'  4-0 Man City
Game 2:  25'  0-2 Southampton

Do you mean zero-confirmation transactions when you say 'instant' transactions? They are indeed unsafe and can be manipulated, but I think they're also the future of true global adoption (we just need to set a reasonable max limit for a transaction like this, and prosecute the cheaters when possible). That's because you don't need to wait, and you don't have to pay crazy fees, and these two are essential if we're dreaming of a future where you can pay with BTC at a supermarket. That being said, I've never seen anyone accept such transactions so far (at least one confirmation is a requirement for local exchanges I use, for instance).

I'm not surprised it was the biggest, as it's a company that's already known to crypto users, so there's a minimum risk of getting scammed, and they have 56 million users, so a huge community of people behind them. These two things sound promising enough to invest it because reputation + a huge user base almost guarantee the price will skyrocket. But that's a public offering, so it's about selling shares to people. That's what might have gathered attention not only of the crypto community, but of big stock traders as well, since getting into something crypto-related and yet familiar is getting more attractive to them.

Firstly, there's no way that even a few major world govs would collaborate on a common cryptocurrency because their countries are competitors, and nobody wants to share control over something as important as a currency. That's why nation-wide centralized digital currencies are likely, but an international one (unless it's a crypto of EU or something similar) is not. Secondly, such currencies compete more with fiat than with cryptos like Bitcoin or Ethereum, IMO, because the latter offer decentralization and lack of control over the price and supply by any authority. And if you mean the govs will unite to create a currency they cannot control (a truly decentralized crypto), why would they do that?

Walmart is very popular, and if it considered Bitcoin as payment, that would be huge news. Looking for one person to explore cryptos, however, is far from that. "Identifying crypto-related investment and partnerships" could be about making their own digital currency or about investing some revenue in cryptos. It's also not looking very good that the link to Walmart's website that some publications provide is dead, so they either moved or (more likely) deleted that job offer altogether. That being said, I did find one job offer by Walmart (but I really don't think it's the one from the news) that requires being:

Judging from the image, it seems that the data about growth is not so straightforward. There was a spike somewhere around spring in transaction value (which seems to be one of the key factors of the ranking), but then it dropped well below what it was in July 2020. If it was a temporary spike due to Bitcoin reaching ATH, this progress can be rolled back and doesn't really signify major improvement of the adoption rate. As for 200 million users, it should be noted that estimates of this can be strikingly different. For instance, I've encountered 106 million users as of February 2021, and 300 million users as of June 2021, but these were made by different companies, so it's hard to compare them against one another. If the amount of users doubled or tripled in half a year, it's a great achievement, but I'm not sure that's the case.

The first thing I wanted to google when I read the op were the charges against Spagni, and I'm glad that The Pharmacist already mentioned that the charges aren't Monero-related. That's a very important point because, indeed, the charges aren't even vaguely related to cryptos, as it's about some fake invoices for a company that makes cookies (the pastry). This ruins the anonymity argument because this guy would've been arrested even if nobody knew he worked on Monero. That being said, I think that Satoshi's anonymity was a good choice (if it was a choice) because it's possible that some authority would press charges over the creation of Bitcoin at some point.

It's useful that you have geo-blocking, so that one knows immediately if one isn't allowed to play, but a list of countries from which you do accept players would be useful info to add to the original post, so that one doesn't spend time trying to learn about the website and all that, and then learn that players from one's country aren't accepted. It's also interesting how you have a no-ID policy, basically, but you do have restricted areas. Luckmcfly mentioned usually being on the restricted list but not here, and I'm actually facing the opposite.

I don't support cheating in any area, so trying to learn of the result a few seconds earlier and use that knowledge for profit doesn't sound good to me. It also doesn't make much sense, based on my experience with live bets. For one, if the game's almost over, the odds will be incredibly low already, so not much risk (and profit) is involved even without the satellite thing. Moreover, as the odds change quickly, it's very likely that it'll take one longer to place the bet and confirm it than the difference might be between the live announcement online and a satellite (that's because you need to confirm that you agree with the new odds, and even if odds haven't changed, it still takes seconds to place and confirm the bet).

I wrote previously on this forum that crypto insurance is IMO a great business. It's a clearly underexplored niche, and I'm, unfortunately, too unenthusiastic about business opportunities to work on it myself (and I definitely don't possess the required resources), but if I ever see a not shady-looking company doing it, I will probably buy some shares. I don't want my BTC insured, but I'm sure that there are enough people who do, and would indeed be willing to pay some fees for it. I'm a little surprised that it's still not a popular idea, and that there don't seem to be people around who are eager to fill this niche, but I think the demand will grow more and more, as people who aren't Bitcoin enthusiasts start using Bitcoin because it's popular.

I'm surprised with this decision, to be honest, as it seems a little too much to me. I've processed deposits and withdrawals on Binance with no KYC before, and I have 1 Polkadot on Binance right now. What's interesting is that the mandatory KYC applies to new users, but withdrawals will be allowed without verification for them, if I understand correctly. And they still have a daily limit of 0.06 BTC (which is $3k now) of verification-free withdrawals. So for now, it sounds okay to me. But if I want to sell my one DOT for BTC, does it mean that now I'll need to go through KYC for something worth $30? I think it's a little ridiculous if that's the case, and I don't understand why they need to make KYC mandatory for all new users, regardless of the sums of money involved. Money is laundered in big chunks, so it's not justified to violate the privacy of those who trade small amounts.