Posting in the bitcoin forum expecting people to answer anything else other than online casinos?  I don't really get this post.

I wish we had reached a point where physical casinos would accept crypto, but we're just not there yet. So really it's just another nobrainer. People using crypto have to play online as there aren't many alternatives. The other issue is that there aren't that  many physical casinos to begin with. So for the majority of the world options are very limited for physical casinos. No only is the legislation usually crazy, also the barrier of entry to start a physical casino business is huge and many have gone bankrupt in the past.

Surely there's some advantages to physical casinos but for me I'd rather sit and play at the comfort of my own home. Many people of older generations would rather have a physical casino but oftentimes they don't live close to one, so it's not even possible. Most of us end up resorting to online play for these reasons.

Friend, if ever your peoples get genocided, I wish nobody protesting against the genocide killing your family gets called a terrorist.

And with that, I guess it's time to lock this thread.
Eurovision was a grand shit show this year. Hopefully the Swiss organizing it will do better.

If you look into the news, Trump has been doing many things to prop up his crypto stance recently. It's a fact that he's making many such statements. Other times as an attack against Biden and more often saying that he's going to make positive legislative changes for crypto.

Does this mean anything though? Will Trump just repeal AML regulations and fire everyone from the relevant authorities? I think not. Trump in the end is a systemic politician. So much for him being anti establishment, but he's just with the establishment although just a different set of establishment people.

I don't think Trump will do anything to prop up crypto over traditional financial markets, banks etc. It's easy to attack Biden given the vast amount of SEC actions. But what was trump going to do? Let every crypto Ponzi scheme like FTX run amock without making US law stricter? Dunno but it sounds like a whole lot of nothing to me.

It's so weird to hear someone lose so much in a casino.

It's pretty frequent to hear someone losing all their money but very few people have millions and millions in cash. So really this story just makes me wonder what kind of casino allows such large wagering for someone to go through millions. The fact is that if a casino allows you to wager any amount they should also pay out the full winnings.

The case of this specific individual would probably mean that he was going back to the casino many many times and kept losing. He should have had a wake up call, someone from his family intervening or something. The casino just did its job in this case. Turning over money generating volume and in the end winning as it always does. It's not that complicated. So to sue the casino is an option to pursue something but probably will amount to nothing. If there was a law that would allow those suing a casino to get something back then there would be no casinos probably.

Much of what Samourai devs and the whole team did was very problematic.
From the rampant sockpuppeting and personal attacks on social media to the blunt responses they would give to criticism like the one you had made above.
If the mobile wallet was a compromise in privacy it shouldn't have ever been released. And yet they made it a very central point of their marketing.

But there's only so much we can say about the project while its main proponents are probably looking forward to at least a dozen years in prison and/or a lengthy extradition process. So to the claim that Samourai was a honeypot, I'd say that the dev team was probably just  naive thinking the feds wouldn't go after them. The sad truth is having user data seized also puts user privacy in jeopardy based on how Samourai's infastracture was developed. Whether or not that makes the devs assholes given all the aforementioned is up to anyone's own judgment to make.

46 - alani123

@BlackHatCoiner
The way authorities will be able to de anonymize Samourai past users is by way of accessing their xpub data. Essentially this data was on Samourai servers which authorities claim to have seized. Now, this allows for all past transactions made by mobile users (which were a sizeable portion of the network and therefore acting as a sibil attacker) to be traced. Deducting this data from all coinjoins makes it easy to decode each one. But also associate coinjoins together to deduct who is who even if they were using a node. Samourai's volume being smaller than their competing privacy wallet makes this task easier too.

Here's a thread about this:
https://twitter.com/oomahq/status/1789253579213004937

Anyone here made any money from betting on the Eurovision song contest?

Post them please  we could use a highlight before I have to lock this year's thread in a few days.
Personally I was very disappointed by the very narrow selection of bet options on Eurovision crypto sports books had so I didn't end up betting on anything but now that I think about it, shame on me for liking Switzerland's entry and not putting a single dollar towards it 😅

Samourai wallet recently was seized and two leading members of the project were arrested and charged.

The issue with this is that samourai developers aside of providing the software to participate in coinjoin mixing transactions, were also hosting a node for everyone seeking to access this service from mobile. Essentially every mobile user was relying on their node.

It was possible for someone to rely on his own full node but not everyone did it. Now after the seizure of data possesed by Samourai developers though, authorities can essentially perform analysis equal to performing a Sybil attack and de-anonymize even those that had their own node.

Simply by knowing where the transactions of those using the node-service where going, it's easy to figure out the rest by picking up the pieces left and right. Especially given that the transactions going through Samourai's hosted service where a very seizable portion of the total. So all in all, anyone who had even used Samourai wallet should consider their past transaction privacy compromised and potentially act accordingly. I wish all these people best of luck and hope with all my heart that authorities leave them the fuck alone. Understandably it has to be very stressful having to go through this when you were promised top notch privacy... But what can you do, we learn from our mistakes.

Hopefully the next privacy solution that comes around is better and more robust.

Tomorrow the most important match for Olympiakos and PAOK takes place. If PAOK wants a chance to compete in Europe it will highly depend on them getting a win here so they can secure a high spot in the league.

The following matches will be as follows and we're done with the super league for this season 



AEK is currently first and the only way they could fall from the first spot is if they fail to win any of their upcoming matches. And one of these is with Lamia, which should not be that hard unless something goes very wrong.

Ι use a spreadsheet for my sportsbets because I'd rather be able to know what I'm losing and not to overdo it. No other reason to be honest. I think holding a spreadsheet is like holding yourself accountable, which is good.

So I really don't understand OP's sentiment. Keeping track of your transactions and yourself accountable LEADS to addiction instead of preventing it? I think OP should reconsider because quite the opposite happens. It's not realistic to consider otherwise as keeping track is literally a barrier against addiction other than anything else. Maybe not the most effective one, and you can't rely only on this, but it surely has a good effect that one shouldn't just disregard like this.

Of course knowing something about a sport is better than knowing nothing, because this way you can have a better understanding if the odds are ok or if they suck. But honestly don't expect anything over the top.
There is a very tangible edge against the punter on sports bets as well, just as there would be if you were playing slots or roulette. It's just not something people associate with gambling as often because it's considered a sport game or something. In reality it's more of a fun game like other casino games and skill is just secondary.

Don't expect to realistically beat the odds. You'd be lucky to be breaking even. So all these people claiming to be experts in sports betting and earning crazy amounts from it are likely lying. Don't believe them. By statistics alone it's not easy to achieve the feats they claim. And even if they make more than 50% of their predictions right, the odds are still getting in the way of breaking even most of the time.

If a country is having a struggling economy, the government should be doing enough to support it and create new sectors, rather than destroy the ones they deem "unsafe". Yes indeed gambling may indeed have some harmful effects in part of the population but a government should prioritize to crush corruption, create infrastructure, lasting jobs, a viable public services sector etc. Countries like Indonesia for instance have introduced very draconian measures against gambling but people still want to do it.

Instead, what are governments doing to combat their ailing public sectors, unemployment, crumbling infrastructure etc? To be perfectly honest I care more if my country has functioning hospitals, food guaranteed for everyone to eat, free universities etc. rather than forbidding gambling. So long as my country is not prioritizing these, I'd be very against my government focusing its resources in fighting online gambling.

So, anyone here have any takes in this?


I get that many people here have been calculating potential profitability based on block templates but that's the minimum amount of data you can have to make such projections. It's a sample of 1 assuming perfect conditions.

Since the beginning Ocean founders made a big point on how shares are calculated in a more fair manner in Ocean pool. With all the added entropy of how other pools estimate shares, it's not too unlikely that the ultra big miners steal from everyone else. So even with the supposed most profitable block template, hash on other pools is still less profitable? Potentially true. At least Bob Burnett who runs a lot of hash in Ocean and other places claims so.

It'd be interesting to get more insight in this but it sounds very plausible to me. Especially looking at how scummy other pools have been in the past.

Good point. But the reason I didn't specify is because Mr. Snowden said protocol level, so layer two solutions are ruled out.
As of "optional"... Aren't privacy transactions on Monero also optional? Why would anyone use them though? Notorious markets pick monero specifically for its privacy. So if this feature was enabled on bitcoin, even optionally, all of that kind of usage would naturally be attracted to the bigger network. So if by enabling such feature on the bitcoin blockchain a sizable part of the user base starts using it, all the disadvantages it could bring will come really fast optional or not.

Free spins are often unfair and minuscule. They are just there to lure players in while giving them nothing in return. Sign up bonuses are often like that in casinos. A good casino would want you to make an account for good content and games, not with misleading promos.

As of deposit bonuses, these are often outright scams. The requirements to earn back the bonus are so crazy that you most often would lose your initial as well. That's why well reputable casinos will not include any deposit bonuses in their marketing.

Playing at stake I've realized that a casino can actually offer very generous rewards to their players. There's rakeback to everyone and also if you reach any VIP level there's also a monthly bonus based on how much you play (not just lose). Overall it's very satisfying to play at a place that gives you so much back. Other casinos have tried to copy but I still think Stake sits among the top of its league if not the best.

I recently saw that Edward Snowden publicly called for Bitcoin to implement privacy features.


Source: https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1786170805728039127

In a recent thread here many senior bitcointalk members actually agreed to this sentiment.
We've all come to know bitcoin as a blockchain where inputs and outputs, all of them, are displayed on the public ledger for everyone to go through.

Transactions are pseudonymous but nevertheless traceable. While it's not necessary that a transaction has to be connected to a person, actions of governments against privacy tools and no-KYC services make it very hard to conduct bitcoin transactions without having them attached to your real life identity.

Many would view this as an attack to the freedoms bitcoin has been associated to. But it's also understandable if some bitcoin users are against such a radical change to the protocol.
So I'm making this poll thread to start a debate. Feel free to vote and respond with your thoughts.

Hold your horses. There's a very high chance Trump doesn't get elected. And let alone that, even if we see him elected again, he has a history of taking back promises.
So I don't think there's all that much that he could do to pump cryptocurrency. Already crypto companies have fought attempts at sweeping regulation back and won like with the ETFs and the XRP cases. But some regulations are also reasonable. For example ponzi-like lending programs like Celsius, and exchanges like FTX that end up imploding need to be stopped right on their tracks else the U.S. will lose all its credibility. Accounting needs to apply to crypto also. And for example, USDT is not excluded. So Trump would have to implement some regulation also, not shy away from it.

He is currently over promising without seemingly knowing anything about what he's talking about. Once he's faced with the same issues I'm sure he'll realize policies can't be that different.

If a casino locks your account without having received a notice from authorities, but just out of precaution... Then there's two possible outcomes if you can't provide sufficient proof that your funds origin is clean:

1. They might deny your winnings or part of it, give back your initial deposit and prevent you from playing further.

2. They might retroactively contact the authorities and keep the funds until they can get a green light to do something specific.

In my experience, the most common outcome is #1, and a certain few casinos will even be more generous in paying out winnings as well, so long as you weren't also involved in match fixing etc. Others will deny every single cent you won and never mind the hit their reputation can have. That's why I like to search in this forum for accusations before I deposit anything significant in a casino.

I've never heard anyone making over the withdraw limit on my country's legally licensed casinos. They give free spins literally every day to any user that is willing to go to one of their social media pages and click a link, and yet nobody wins. Free spins have started having a really bad reputation because of this. If it were truly random people would be hitting a win every now and then. But no... Instead nobody ever wins over 10 EUR... Just how stupid can that be? Some online services pay like 30€ per user sign up... Casinos offering free spins only sometimes pretend to pay and then give you an amount you will never be able to withdraw unless you win it over 5x or something.

It's just a trick in some cases and really hard to distinguish the actual deals. I've started to prefer competitions and promotions that give you real tangible chances to win. For example football or political race predictions. But I'm never trusting free spins after seeing how scummy that practice can be. It just discredits the whole slot experience for me.