So pretty much what you are saying is that it is also a gamble to be able to reap the positive effects of gambling. I agree with that and I think there are different ways to get these positive effects without having to indulge into gambling at all. Gambling does not offer anything unique that we cannot get from other experiences so there is literally no reason to gamble and no excuse to be addicted to it. People just don't have this initial idea so they indulge in gambling.

In terms of making new friends, I have observed that all you can get from this environment is nothing but shallow friendship. It can easily break as it was never deep to start with. I wouldn't even consider those people as 'friends', I would consider them as 'playmates'. I started labeling people correctly so I know where they belong in my life. Friends that you picked up from some bad habit are pretty much just your mates in that part of life and nothing else. They are not able to support you in any other life aspect and they can't give you emotional support as well. Friends (as in actual friends) are quite rare and that's what makes them special. The rest of what you consider "friends" aren't really your friends and will drift off right when you stop doing what you usually do together, in this case, gambling.

I never really believed in the idea of "controlling your emotions". There's only Stoicism (which is displaying no emotion/feelings during misfortunes) and the oppression of your emotions. You can never control your emotions as they come to you naturally (and that's what makes humans superior to other animals).

I completely disagree.

Underdeveloped countries suffer from Digital Divide, meaning parts of the country has no Internet connection and a huge part of the nation are not computer literate. That alone proves that the people are going to be using fiat even with the introduction of the new system (which is crypto). By the time that developed countries are already using mainly crypto, these underdeveloped countries will still be using fiat as they are.. underdeveloped.

Inflation comes from the excessive printing of a country's money. Those money are mostly used to pay for the debts from other countries. It's pretty much the basic "more supply, less price" concept. And assuming that crypto will indeed shut down the fiat system, there will be nothing to "inflate" as there will be no sense of printing more fiat money since they will be valued as 0.

Cryptocurrency is a new field that people are going to be studying. If anything, this opens up more job opportunities for people albeit not all people as this requires a different field of knowledge. Quite nothing like the traditional ones. The only "unemployment" that might arise that I can see is people leaving their job to earn online instead especially those underpaid tech people.

But those are rather big companies. I think the "media" that we're talking about in here are the ones that we see on the TV. Local channels, not international channels. International channels will be called out by so many people, since they have so much audience, and would hurt their reputation if they release biased news. Local channels, on the other hand, can't be called out at all. People often do, but to no avail. They don't really care even when a post on social media regarding them being biased gets viral. There would be people lucky enough to know the truth but most only have the TV as a source of news. It's been 3 times already when a local channel has announced and warned the people in my country about bitcoin. They say it's a scam yet here we are, enjoying profits.

And I bet they, themselves, have bitcoin investments too. They just don't want people to be so involved in something so revolutionary.

Same here, I have stopped watching TV for as long as I can remember. It's just full of misleading information. Plus, it really is true that they are selling FUD. More FUD, more people are going to listen to them. Whatever that will sell to the people, they are going to be airing. The news doesn't really care about regular murders or whatnot. They care about news that are about a mother who was killed by her own child, because it brings more people in. Also, the news aren't really allowed to say bad things to the government since the government can shut down their channel right away.

The currency that we have to be able to live life easily is money. But the only real currency that we have is time. It's so strange to see people living their lives. Just thinking about how limited our life truly is in this world, people seem to just take their lives and their money for granted. What makes this strange is the fact that there are tons of other things that you can do for your free time. They are mostly free, more enjoyable, increases your social circle, and is more extreme than betting a $100 and then losing it.

Let's say the gambler is an introvert and socializing and being out there really is not their thing. There's still tons of things you can do. Introverts are mostly smart people and reading a book for them is a magical thing. Some plays DnD every Thursday nights with other introverts. Or you can just isolate yourself from the world and play online games. The adventures in online games these days are so good. It takes you in a whole new world. I often wish I can just stay at home and play 24/7 but we need to fend for ourselves. Online games are very rewarding in scenarios like being able to defeat a boss or being able to craft a precious item in the game. If you really can't help but gamble, you can gamble with your in-game currency and your equipments as well.

I received payment as well. Quick as usual. Thanks!

I wonder what would happen to a nation if they were well-educated about the matter instead. If everyone knew about the Nixon Shock, would we be treating fiat money the same? Fiat money is nothing but paper. The only "work" that was done to make such is just the printing itself which is, obviously, quite easy that others managed to print fake paper money themselves.

Would people be storing their wealth in the form of money? Or would it be in other (and better) form such as gold, or bitcoin? With the current situation with the inflation these days, it's even better to take a chance and risk your fiat in investing in something as volatile as bitcoin.

The feedback that they have received are from the people who are in this market before the pump. That means those are the people that were able to ride that massive pump and made some fortune from it. Apparently, others thought that they are going to be experiencing the same thing when in reality, it only happens once in a while. Now that we're down from the peak, the newcomers are panicking as this is not what they thought things would turn out. They are all thinking that the person introduced bitcoin to them is making money while they aren't. We'd be lucky to experience another massive pump soon although there's no sign of that happening at all especially now that crypto's image (in general) is going down because of the surge in scam ICOs.

Is it really supposed to be that easy? Let's say I'm going for 20k$ but the only amount of money I can save per week is 50$. That's going to take me decades. The act of saving money is easy as you simply have to know your needs and wants and only spend money on your needs. But always remember to keep a realistic goal and hopefully the money will be used for an investment which will help you financially and that you're not just saving to buy something that you want like a new phone, new tablet, etc.

The problem with this is that there are things that you think you need, but you really don't. Years and years of research has been done to make humans think that they are in need of materialistic things. People, mostly those who can't afford it (ironically), have been participating in the Pop culture so much. They buy the most expensive phone. They wear branded and trendy clothes. They even eat food that aren't really that good but since it's trendy and they get recognized for eating on that certain restaurant, they spend their money there.

Marketing has gone a little too far. Minimum wage people have iPhone X. You would think that they aren't able to afford that (and they really can't afford it) but because they were able to use a credit card to pay for it in smaller chunks, it seemed to them that they can afford it afterall. So many unnecessary purchases, we have. Even in our daily lives, there's the pop culture going on. You see everyone drinking an expensive coffee, but you're not. As a human being, you need to belong to this group. You tell yourself, "Wait a minute, if they can afford it, and we have the same salary, then I can afford it too!" And just like that, you got an expensive coffee yourself. Plot twist, none of you can afford it.

So the real 'technique' to save money is to live a life where you spend bare minimum. By bare minimum I meant doing thrift shop for clothes, buying second hand goods, looking for cheap but good restaurants, dining in instead of going out, etc. Only when you change your lifestyle will you be able to save money.

But since ultimately we're going to exchange the bitcoin into fiat in order to buy something, we're going to be taxed. Whenever you cash out from the exchange, there's already a tax that you're paying. When you're receiving money from the remittance center, there's another fee (which is also taxed). And when you're buying something, there's also the VAT which is another tax. They shouldn't worry about tax as long as we can't buy things directly with bitcoins.

Bitcoin can surely be used for illegal transaction. But so is fiat money, and far before bitcoin was invented, people are already using fiat money for illegal activities. They probably are still using it these days. Those that are in the syndicate will probably not use crypto as they transact quite large amount of money and the market of crypto moves a lot, even with PotCoin, a coin that was made for the purpose of buying and selling legal weed.

But at the same time they are limiting their citizens. There's still the possibility of making tons of money from it. I'd say people should have the freewill to do whatever with their money. It's just an investment, at the end of the day, which may or may not go right.

Then that particular government should hire a better information gatherer as they are clearly misinformed about this whole thing.

You really don't have to if you keep your an offline wallet instead. It's not connected to the Internet, so it will be impossible for hackers to steal it. Only one who will be able to steal it is someone who was able to find your wallet seed. You have to physically protect it then like put it in a vault. Put very little amount of coin on the Internet, just the amount you're okay to lose potentially.

Let me give a scenario where that might fail. Someone borrows your phone saying they're just going to text somebody or do something real quick. He goes to your wallet, finds that there's 2FA, goes to Authy, then accesses your wallet. Now the tricky part would be entering their wallet address as it is a combination of random letters and numbers. They get their phones out of their pocket and scan their QR code. Done. That's less than 2 minutes. That's why I never let people borrow my phone. They might find something in there that they might want to get. After all, I wouldn't immediately think it was them plus I would have no way of proving the wallet is belongs to them.

Here we like saying "With bitcoins, you are your own bank", correct? As your own bank, you're going to be the one responsible for keeping your coins safe. No one's going to make a safe market because a crypto person's world is just as safe as they made it to be.

Mine is quite the opposite, it's the sudden increase of price. I put my coins on sale because they were in my wallet for months and the coin seemed to be a shitcoin. Pretty much the market is not moving that much and there's not much updates about the coin. So I put almost all of it there. The next day, they were sold! But when I looked at the price, I could have sold it 4x the price by then. That was a lot of potential money because I hold quite a lot of the coin and the coin was priced hundreds of thousand satoshis. I still made profit, though, so it's still okay.

That's actually quite hard to do since we have no way of knowing if it's the peak price or not. You simply took the risk but failed. You still earned profit, though, right? That's what's important. You're going to have another chance to sell at a high price, just gonna have to wait.

Same as me, Most altcoins have turned into shitcoins. They looked so promising and they have good concepts but I guess when the coin is not hyped enough, it really is not going to pump no matter how better it is than other coins. I honestly regret buying some of the coins as I could have made more money if I just kept my bitcoins instead. I stopped trading altogether now, I'm just waiting for my old coins to 'ripe'. There's just so many coins now and they mostly fail. It's hard to battle that kind of market.

Same as me, which is weird since what I do half of my day is read about crypto and economics.

I think there's this point that you just become grumpy about bitcoin instead of being so enthusiastic about it. I don't have a tab for coinmarketcap as I have the Blockfolio app on my phone which tracks the value of my coins and it's linked to different trading sites.

In conversations, I really dislike talking about bitcoin to people because they mainly have no idea what is it or they have the wrong idea. I've spent enough time educating people, I think, about the subject and I'm just done. I just let them be because I know eventually they're going to know that they are wrong once they start reading again.

About the "moon" word, hmm, not really. I never had that even before.

And I don't really check the price that often. I only check the price when I'm in need of funds just so I know if I should wait or it's okay to cash out some money on that day. Plus, I'm quite surrounded by people who knows about bitcoin so I pretty much have myself price dump/pump update notifiers.

What's funny is that a lot of addicts go to jail but not because their addictions are illegal. They go to jail for the acts that they do because of their addiction instead and the most common is stealing other people's stuff. First they take loans which they can easily get as they still have a good name in the eyes of the lenders. Then they sell their stuff either to repay the loan or to feed their addiction until they are left with nothing. I've always wondered how do adults end up in the streets when they were once professionals who can easily get a job. Turns out, it was because of their addiction. Even if they choose to fix their lives, it's already too late as they have so much loans to repay, have nowhere to go, and own nothing. And it snowballs at some point. A gambling addict can start having other addictions when introduced by a friend who's addicted in both gambling and drugs/drinks/cigarettes/sex.

Honestly these days I just see people, who are in constant state of blaming the government for their very own shameful acts, as dumb people. They are just looking for someone else to blame and the government can easily be that entity as others (other whiners) are agreeing with you. I see the government differently. I see them as something that keeps the world from things that you can't stop by your own such as crimes. I never rely to them as they are already doing enough in my opinion. You have to do your part as an individual and clearly those who got their lives ruined because of an addiction (gambling or any other form) then that's nothing but your fault. No matter what government they had, they would still do the same mistake as the government had nothing to do with it in the first place.

People have different reasons for doing things. Some smokers are only smoking for the smoke. They literally just like seeing themselves exhaling smoke, and so vape has become a thing. Others are substituting vape as well but their vape juice contains nicotine (main component of tobacco). Other are smoking for the taste. There are tons of delicious vape juices out there. And candy surely is a good substitute as well. I hear some choose the type of candy that has menthol and has a strong taste. The same thing in gambling, people have different reasons why they are gambling.

People are gambling for the following possible reasons:

a. the thrill; Those who are in it for the thrill can substitute gambling with something extreme like sports.
b. to bury their sadness/feelings (or whatever negative emotion) that they don't wanna face; Online games will not really do the trick as it's not really thrilling, per se. It's good to consult a friend or a psychiatrist if you are too afraid to face your own feelings.
c. their upbringing; You really can't change your upbringing as that already happened, but those are in the past and that doesn't necessarily have to define who you become.
d. their social life; The single best thing about your friends is that you can choose them, you can easily cut off those who are bringing you down as well as those that keeps you gambling.
e. just having nothing better to do. When you have nothing better to do than gambling, that means it can be replaced by any other behavior! You can just pick whatever that keeps you entertained.

And how is there a relation to each other? I can be very confident in my bets but I don't see gambling sites changing the odds to a different number. I don't see an increase in my winnings as well. Why is that? It's because they have no relation. The shiest gambler has the same chances of winning as the most confident ones.

But maybe you are talking about a game like poker where how you appear to your opponents actually do matter. You can bluff in poker and be able to make it seem like you're holding a good pair of cards because of your confidence but superficial confidence can only take you so far. Eventually, your confident act will be noticed by your opponents and they will know that you're using such act to cover up the fact that you aren't holding good cards and nor your are a good gambler. Confidence should come from a place of mastery before it can have any use at all. I personally would rather be shy but know my thing than be confident and don't have an idea of what's going on. You will just end up appearing as dumb to people and to yourself, if you're not blinded by the fake confidence that you put on.

Overall, shyness shouldn't really affect your bets as gambling is only about numbers and luck, who you are has nothing to do with it.

In my country, you can actually witness people not being able to eat because their father decided to gamble their money. I live in a third world country and people seem to be stuck in the idea that they can eventually win big from gambling. My neighborhood is full of gamblers as it's the traditional source of entertainment of most adults. Yes, they are able to win big from gambling sometimes. But that big win is nothing compared to how much they have lost from it in the past. They are mostly fishermen and whenever their earnings are good, they spend it all on booze and gambling. It's hard to not portray gambling is something not negative when you can see it, with your own eyes, affecting the people around you.

Yes, it is indeed possible to be a pro in gambling but it takes high intelligence, connections, and money. All of which most people do not have. Gambling is not like other tasks that if done repetitively, you slowly become good at it. The outcome of your bets do not rely on how much have you been playing or how much experience you have. In order to become a pro in gambling, you actually have to do your research. Gambling over and over again doesn't eventually make you a pro.

There's a line that separates the amount of how much beer intake (or gambling bets/amount) is okay and what's not considered 'too much'. The problem is, that line is rather very blurry and is very dynamic. A person, who is drinking one beer a day (or gambling for 30 minutes a day), can easily tell other people that they have more beer than they used to (or gambled more or longer than they used to) and still look acceptable and 'normal' to the society. People think that the person probably had a good time and was just trying to have fun. As time goes by, our brain gets used to that certain amount and so it seeks more just as you would seek more of it as it is enjoyable or fun. The numbers increase a bit, no one cares. It bits even more, no one bats an eye. You start to notice it, that it's okay to go higher and still be 'A-okay' to the people around you and so you increase it even more. Now you're at the number far from what you used to. At some point you would realize that no one really cares about your habits and that no matter how much you go higher, no one really cares until it starts to affect you or the people around you negatively. But at that point you're already dependent on the habit and it's too late to go back.

Now, now.. Is this how addiction is formed?

Apparently people can still have fun even when they are losing. Do you ever wonder why people love going YOLO (as in betting their whole bankroll) before they end their day in the casino? It's because betting high in a high multiplier is fun. They imagine how would it be if they get to actually hit the win on that particular bet. It's definitely going to be amazing. High bets where you "almost" won gives you just as much dopamine rush as winning, maybe even more. In poker, when there's only 1 card left to be revealed and you're almost on Flush, you bet high. Even when the last card did not turn out to be what you needed, you still have had a great time on that moment. During crash games, when it crashed in front of your eyes just right before it hit the multiplier that you needed, it's fun as well.

One might think that a losing streak will encourage a gambler to stop betting and try his luck another day, but no. It actually encourages the gambler to bet even more because the gambler is thinking, "If the couple of rounds was a loss, then the next one should be a win!" and so keeps on betting until the next win. Add to that the fact that we 'prepare' ourselves for that next win and so we increase and increase our bet amount (which gives you more excitement as I have explained). Gamblers all know that they are meant to lose more than they are winning and so they let go of the losses pretty easily.

It can be a good thing to do since crypto earnings are not always going to be good as the price is very volatile. If you're doing trading, there are days when the earnings are no good at all. If you're doing signature campaign, there are times when you have no campaign to join to. There's a lot of things to consider but I disagree with your "no matter how much you have earned from crypto, it's still smarter to keep your job" because the time you're spending in your day job can possibly be used to earn more money in the crypto world instead. There's a point where your day job simply becomes a waste of time because you're earning so much from crypto. Or perhaps you're afraid that you're not going to be able to come back to a job once you left it? It's quite easy to apply somewhere else now that you have experience and it's possible that you might even end up having higher position with a better salary.

It depends on you, really and the situation that you are in. It's good to have a stable income from a day job but maybe it's time to give it up or at least have a small break from it.

I recommend using a different device for that. One device (preferably a clean Windows with a good antivirus) for your bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. This will serve as your wallet and this has to be extra secure and clean. You shouldn't install anything but Electrum. Another device for work stuff. It will be connected to the Internet a lot and will have access to your secondary wallets. Third is just a cheap netbook for downloading, torrenting, and pretty much just surfing the net that might potentially be unsafe. But all of this can be squeezed in one device when you have are running Linux. I personally recommend Ubuntu as they have a good community, lots of tutorials, plus there's an IRC for Ubuntu where some experts hang out to help others.

There's only 2% of Linux users in the whole world so it's quite unlikely that hackers will be focusing on making a virus dedicated for Linux users. It's believed to be the most secure operating system. It's not just about the wallet. It's also about the Operating System that you are running, the data that you get from the Internet (from downloading), and how cautious you are overall. If you're interested in installing Ubuntu, I recommend checking the following links:
*/r/Ubuntu
*Ubuntu: A Beginner’s Guide (MakeUseOf)
*Installing Ubuntu (from Ubuntu website)

There's also a book of Ubuntu Linux for Dummies available on Amazon. You can use purse.io to pay directly with Bitcoins or Bitcoin Cash and even receive a 15%+ discount.

As far as making money and meeting new friends is concerned, I would go for online games. There's TONS of money in online games. In fact, the video games industry is one of those with the most revenue.

In online games, there's the leveling up, crafting, grinding, and making money. MMORPG usually requires a lot of crafting in order for people to have the best items. Not everyone has the time and the will to grind so they just buy the items from another person. Same goes with the in-game currency, they just buy it from people. So, becoming really powerful and rich in an online game can also make you rich in real life as you are able to sell these items. In CS:Go (Counter Strike Global Offensive), lot of the skins costs more than when you buy the actual gun in real life. It's really crazy how much people spend in games. You can also easily find insane tip amount in a Twitch stream.

Meeting up new friends is quite easy as well as online games usually require you to play multiplayer. A lot of games are played with a team. There are Steam and Discord group chats where you can easily meet new people with the same interest as you, which is gaming and they are likely to stick with you if you're a good player. I used to play a lot of online games and I must say, I mostly stayed just to hang out with my in-game friends.

In gambling, we enjoy the game whenever we are winning and most of the time that is not what's happening. This is why online games is better in terms of enjoyability, income, and meeting new friends. That's just my opinion but I have included proofs to back them up.