Right now, a month-long series in England is just unthinkable. The last time I checked the stats, there were 36,793 deaths from COVID 19 in the United Kingdom (second highest in the world, after the United States) and the total number of infections stood at 259,559. There were 2,405 new cases and 118 deaths just yesterday. Under these circumstances, I don't see any sporting activity resuming in the UK for the next 2-3 months.

On the other hand, Australia is doing relatively well. Just 3 new cases were reported from there yesterday and the last death was two days ago. I just hope that both the Indian tour and the T20 World Cup would go ahead as planned.

Both the sides make as much noise as they want, but I have a feeling that none of them want a direct confrontation. The IPL needs the participation of overseas players, and ICC need revenues from India. If BCCI was in favor of an all out confrontation, then it would have happened a long time back, when the ICC reduced the fund allocation to India by around 40%.

Cricket is a gentleman's game and unfair means must be banned. If saliva is allowed, then players may ask why sandpaper and Vaseline is not allowed. Now ICC can't specifically ban one of them and allow the other. Either both should be allowed, or all these substances must be banned. And I would prefer the latter. Let these bowlers learn how to swing the ball naturally.

If the governments are cracking down on the usage of anonymous coins, then it doesn't surprise me. It was more or less expected. We can't deny the fact that vast majority of these coins are being used in dark markets. The exchanges are not allowing the users to trade with these coins, and the authorities are trying to track whomever holding them. IMO, the future outlook is bleak.

@akhjob and 7788bitcoin

I understand what you are saying. Still I don't agree. It's just like online drug trade. The authorities claim that Bitcoin is mostly used for illegal activities. But detailed research has shown that less than 1% of all the Bitcoin volumes are any way connected to illegal transactions. Similarly, I would say that even now fiat cash is being used in 99% of the instances of match fixing.

BTW, I am not going to counter the involvement of IPL team owners in match fixing, as posted by 7788bitcoin. It's a well known fact.

This was expected, right? Now we can't expect Coinmarketcap to report that the trade volumes claimed by Binance for various cryptocurrency pairs are inflated. After all, they are now completely owned by Binance. And this may be one of the reasons why Binance spent a huge fortune, to acquire Coinmarketcap. Probably, the Binance promoters were getting nervous about CMC reporting their real trade volumes.

^^^ There is no chance that Biden will fall short of the required number of primary delegates. Out of the 2,704 delegates declared so far he has got 1566. And only two candidates remain in the race - Biden and Tulsi Gabbard. If the outstanding primary elections go ahead as planned, then I expect Biden to win at least 99% of the remaining delegates. IMO, he'll end up at somewhere around 2,800.

How many cryptocurrency exchanges are there? Thousand? Or ten thousand? There are simply too many exchanges in existence, and it is not practical to keep a watch on each one of them. Obviously a few of them would be run by the scammers. And another thing to note is that, even if a token get listed in a good exchange, there is no guarantee that it's future potential would be good.

The Indian tour of Australia is going to be the most important bilateral series this year. Because that tour alone is worth somewhere between $200 million and $250 million. So if any of the bilateral series get going, this will be the first one. That said, the IPL and the T20 World Cup will be having higher priority for both the ICC and the BCCI. The England-West Indies series may be having a lower importance, unfortunately.

I don't think that the ICC will get a tax exemption from the government, especially with the authorities facing an acute shortage of funds due to the COVID situation. In the previous occasions also, the ICC failed to get tax exemption, when the tournaments were conducted in India. They can try hard and badmouth as much as they want, but in the end they will be paying the taxes.

It is actually very simple. In case the promoters want us to work on these long-term promotions, then they should make an advance payment, or make regular payments every two weeks or so. Anyway, I don't understand the logic in promoting a project non-stop for 6 months or even 12 months. Which project needs this much promotion? And I don't think that such elongated promotions can be effective.

I have been around here for sometime, and therefore I would agree with the OP. Binance became the largest cryptocurrency exchange relatively recently. Earlier, it was the Mt Gox, which folded in 2014. After that BTC-e got the crown. They reigned, until the FBI closed down their exchange and arrested Alexander Vinnik. Then it was Cryptopia, which survived for a couple of years. Now it is the turn of Binance and let's see for how long they will remain at the top.

I don't think that they'll increase the taxes beyond a certain limit. They can't, as the people will get angry. What they'll do is, they will print banknotes without any control. This will cause the devaluation of the national currency and increase the inflation rate. And naturally, ordinary people will flock to invest in stable assets, such as bullion and probably cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

If they claim that the token will get listed in Binance, then ask them to show the proof for the same. As far as I know, listing in Binance doesn't come cheap. For a single listing, they are asking anywhere between $1 million and $5 million. So in case the project team is making such a huge payment, then they'll be having documents ready, which can act as a proof. Even the BTC transaction hash will be enough, IMO (in case the proceedings go to a wallet that has been flagged as belonging to Binance). 

During my initial years, I used to sped a lot of time in convincing people, about the advantages of cryptocurrency. But despite my best efforts only one or two took my words seriously. Nowadays I don't even try. IMO, it is better for these people to hear about crypto from some other source, such as media or office. Bitcoin has reached such a level of acceptability, that individual additions are no longer important.

That's bad. But at the same time, I have a feeling that the American public is behaving in a very reckless manner. Trump has grouped churches in the category of "essential services", despite thousands getting infected during religious gatherings. And we all saw the out-of-control crowd, when the beaches in Miami opened recently for the public. It is sad that despite all these deaths, people are not taking it seriously.

I don't agree with these arguments. A lot of people claim that economic crisis would be good for Bitcoin. But then, why the exchange rates remained stable even after the pandemic killed hundreds of thousands of people? Also, I didn't noticed any spike in the Bitcoin exchange rates, during the Cyprus economic meltdown and the Greek financial crisis. BTC exchange rates actually declined back then.

There is a major difference between Bitcoin and the other cryptos. Bitcoin is a truly decentralized cryptocurrency, and there was no premine. Since there was no premine, we can say that the promoter never got any monetary benefit out of his invention. On the other hand, most of the altcoins do have huge premine ratios. For example, a massive 60% of the total supply of Ethereum was kept aside as premine.

What I was saying was that applying saliva is a relatively recent phenomenon. It started sometime during the 1970s. Before that the pace bowlers just used their own sweat and towel to get one side of the ball heavier. I am not condoning the use of sweat either, but this method needs to be banned simply because it is extremely unhygienic. Not just in East Asian nations, even the European nations also give a lot of importance to personal hygiene. Let's get rid of this disgusting practice.

There are a lot of rumors and conspiracy theories going on regarding the pandemic. None of these have been proven. A few days back, I was watching the TV series "Last Ship", which deals with a global virus outbreak. In that case, a rogue scientist implants a human gene in the virus, to make it more deadly and contagious. But personally, I believe that these are all just rumors and COVID 19 is a natural virus.