Both Rahane and Kohli have been out of form for sometime. The difference is that Kohli can't be dropped even if he scores 0 runs in the next 5 matches, while Rahane may get dropped after this series if his form doesn't improve. But one thing we need to remember is that Rahane and Pujara are the two test-specific batsmen in the Indian squad currently. Everyone else is better in the shorter format compared to test.

Rahane averages 38.85 for 2020, and 21.05 so far in 2021. But he had a test average of 71.33 in 2019 (642 runs from 8 matches). Compared to him, Kohli's record is worse. Average of 19.33 in 2020, and 27.15 in 2021. But in 2019, he had scored @ 68.00 (612 runs from 8 matches).

Bitcoin looks attractive at current levels (i.e sub-50K), while ETH went up by a lot recently. Given the issues with high transaction fee and scalability, this increase is not justified IMO. For me, ETH doesn't look as attractive as BTC currently. The same argument goes for some of the other altcoins such as ADA, BNB and SOL. These coins have gone up quite a lot recently and the current valuation is not justified if we take the adoption and acceptability in to account. So compared to all these options, my pick would be Bitcoin.

Biden doesn't look fit to be the president of the United States. I don't believe that he has dementia, as the GOP House members would like to argue, but he is not looking to be in good state. So it is just a matter of time before Kamala replaces him as the POTUS. Actually it is like killing two birds with one stone. Kamala is so radical and she is almost unelectable. So it will be good for her if she becomes the POTUS without an election. And hopefully in the next two years, she can create a moderate image for herself and that may enable her to edge past the GOP candidate in 2024 (Ron DeSantis?).

OK with the first two. But I am not in favor of Shardul. He seems to be the worst performing bowler among the available options. And IMO, Shardul can't be considered as an allrounder yet, as he is very inconsistent with bat. Adding him in to the playing XI (by replacing either Ishant Sharma or Mohammed Siraj) would considerably weaken the bowling attack. India needs their best pace bowlers to trouble the England batsmen (especially if they are planning to go with three pacers and two spinners for the fourth test match).

The base price for the two new teams in IPL is just crazy. I still remember when Rajasthan Royals won the bid with $67 million in 2008. The current base price represents almost 6 times increase since then. Still I believe that the expansion was long due. I would like to have IPL with 10 teams, and then each of these teams having a second division league on their own, with 10 teams each. For example, the Chennai Superkings could set up a mini-league on their own with 10 teams from Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Similarly, Delhi Capitals can have a mini-league of 10 teams from Delhi and Western UP.

I am not sure whether lack of infrastructure can be taken as a negative for Bitcoin. Fiat currencies have existed for many thousands of years. The Mesopotamian shekel was first minted in BC 3000. On the other hand, the first cryptocurrency was mined only in 2009. So it is natural to assume that cryptocurrency infrastructure may take a few more years or even decades to get stabilized. But we are already moving at a brisk pace. With every passing year, cryptocurrency is becoming more accessible for ordinary people.

Your argument is very weak. Essentially you are saying that Bitcoin is going up, and therefore the alts also "need to" go up. In real life, things are not that simple. Have you ever compared the userbase and acceptability of altcoins to that of Bitcoin? Bitcoin is miles ahead of all of them. Take the case of XRP or Polkadot as example. The overall trade volume may be high, because day traders love these coins. But what about the actual usage? Very few people use them for any purpose other than trading. And that makes me believe that these coins are overpriced.

LOL.. such policies will make Bob a Libertarian. And Libertarian candidates usually receive around 2%-3% of the votes in the POTUS elections (back in 2020, Jo Jorgensen received 1.18%). So that gives you an idea how practical it is to make claims such as this one. Democrat and Republican parties are solidly behind the national currency (i.e the US Dollar). Trump is believed to be somewhat pro-Bitcoin, but even he won't approve what you have posted. So my prediction is that Bob would receive some 2% of the vote and zero electoral college votes.

I don't need to list out the benefits of Bitcoin, because many users have already done that. So let me focus on gold. There is a false perception that gold is an asset with limited supply. That is not the case in reality. High-grade gold deposits are in limited quantities and that is the reason why the annual gold production is limited to 3,000-4,000 tonnes per year. But hundreds of thousands of tons of gold are trapped in low-grade deposits. These deposits are not even in consideration now, because it doesn't make an economical sense to extract gold from them. But as technology progresses, it may be possible to do so in the near future.

Back then many of the altcoins had crazy bull runs and went up in value by 100 or even 1,000 times. Investors were blindly pouring their money in to altcoin projects, without doing the slightest bit of research. The thinking was that if they invest in 10 different projects, at least 2 or 3 would return profits. That worked in 2017, when the success rate was around 20%. But in 2018, the success rate dipped below 5%, and many of the projects were overpriced to start with. That meant that even if a project was successful, the profits were not large enough to cover losses from the failed projects.

They maybe using mixers, but it is impossible to find out. At some point they need to convert their BTC to fiat, and this step is going to be very tedious.

And it is funny that they don't want to be called as terrorists. I don't know what else should I label someone, who have done these atrocities in the past few days:

1. Massacred dozens of Hazara men, because they looked different from them (Hazara are mostly Mongoloid)
2. Cut off the hand of a young woman, for having nail polish
3. Young women shot dead, because their palm was "exposed"
4. Mentally challenged person executed and body thrown in nearby creek
5. Unmarried girls as young as 12-years forced to become third or fourth wives of Taliban terrorists

Do they have similar stuff in Saudi Arabia? Even if they do, I don't think that the mainstream media has the balls to label the Saudis as terrorists.

Uzbeks comprise around 8%-10% of the population of Afghanistan, and therefore you can naturally expect a few of them in the Taliban rank and file. But Taliban is dominated by various Pashtun tribes, with a large portion coming from the Kochi nomads. Dari (Afghan Persian) speaking groups are rare in Taliban, so are the ethnic minorities such as Uzbeks, Hazaras, Pashayis, Nuristanis and Pamiris. And countries such as Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are already concerned about the warfare spilling over to their territory. Tajikistan has already started providing arms and ammunition to the Northern Alliance (which is mostly comprised of Dari speaking Tajiks).

Correct. The central bank had a banking ban in place until very recently and even now Bitcoin is in the grey sector and not 100% legal in Nigeria. And I am not surprised by the hostility shown by the Nigerian central bank. In most of the third world countries, it is like that. In fact in countries such as Bangladesh, the situation is even worse. If the El Salvador experiment succeeds, then we can expect a profound change in the attitudes of the central banks in the next 1-2 years. But if it fails, then the future prospects will get more difficult for the users.

Younger players don't have any experience of playing alongside Kohli or Rohit. And the Indian domestic sector hasn't witnessed any 4-day competition since 2019. This has adversely impacted the skills of yonger Indian players in the longer format. As it is clearly noticeable, many of them fail to adjust themselves to test format. How many times we have seen these players getting out, trying to play test matches the same way as they do in T20 matches? It would help immensely if the BCCI could organize a few India A tours to SENA nations.

As far as I know, cash deposit in fantasy cricket (in India) can be done only through bank accounts or using debit/credit cards. So there is no need to do KYC. None of the sites allow deposits in the form of cryptocurrency. So the government may tolerate them up to a certain limit. Also, these brands (MPL, Dream XI.etc) are heavy donators to various political parties and therefore they have good relationship with the politicians. On top of that, the government badly needs the tax revenue from such activities.

Nowadays tens of millions of cricket fans are very active in Fantasy cricket (Dream XI, MPL.etc). All of a sudden, fantasy cricket has achieved a larger than life image in South Asian countries like India and Bangladesh. It is mostly these guys who are closely following these type of matches. Also, these matches are very attractive for the gamblers, because the sportsbooks have a higher chance of underestimating various teams. From my part, I am a big fan of smaller countries like Ireland, and so I am interested in their matches although I am not in to fantasy cricket.

I would still stick to my argument. Either they don't have enough cryptocurrency experts among them, or they don't think that Bitcoin is as convenient as the other methods for their purpose. Because there have been only isolated incidents linking groups such as Taliban and Islamic State with cryptocurrency, despite its anonymity and portability. And even in these cases, those who detained were not directly linked to these groups. As things stand now, they can easily accept funds or purchase weapons through the fiat route, as the Pakistan regime is friendly towards them. They may consider using other options such as cryptocurrency, if this situation changes.

I have always used P2P platforms to convert my crypto to fiat (and vice versa) and every now and then I face issues. Fortunately, so far I have avoided serious trouble, because I only sell my coins to the top buyers with good feedback. But this is not a 100% risk-free method. Recently a lot of accounts of inactive users are getting hacked and the criminals are using these accounts to do scams. So be careful when you deal with anyone new to you, even if he has good feedback and trust rating. Check his feedback score and see whether all of them are recent.

We have been to >$50K manytimes before (most recently on 23rd August), so it proves that $50K is not a hard resistance level. I have watched Bitcoin moving past 50K on multiple occasions, and I couldn't notice any considerable lag at that level. I would say that the next major resistance for Bitcoin may occur at $64,000 (the current ATH level). That is the level when short-term investors are likely to book their profit. And I am expecting six-digit figures (i.e >$100,000) before the end of this year.

What is the most bullish scenario we could ever imagine? For me, it is fiat currencies collapsing due to ballooning federal debt and hyperinflation. Under such a scenario, assets such as gold and bitcoin, which are protected against inflation will be in high demand. Now the question is whether the figure of $2 quadrillion USD is fair. For me, it is noway near reality, and even under the most bullish scenario, we won't be able to reach that figure. But I have to agree that 2035 is a long way away. Still 14 years to go... and Bitcoin has been in existence for only 12 years.