Bitcoin as digital gold still seems to be a big part of the current narrative about Bitcoin. And many consider it a financial asset which can be traded, but rather than being an uncorrelated one, it indeed seems to be joining traditional assets and is also considered more seriously than ever by traditional traders. At the same time, there's been some recent progress in seeing Bitcoin as money (Tesla's going to accept Bitcoin as payment; PayPal supporting Bitcoin), but not as a cheap network for transactions. It's more like Bitcoin is getting prestigious (or supporting it is becoming a thing) or something like this.

Op is right that Bitcoin is not risk-free. But nothing is. Fiat has tons of risks, for instance. Since fiat is not backed up by anything but authority, it can be overprinted and that leads to hyperinflation. Even without hyperinflation there's steady devaluation of fiat which is sometimes referred to as a hidden tax. Apart from this, keeping your money in a bank means basically letting the bank do whatever they please with the actual money and hope that they'd allow you to use what you gave them when you need it (which is usually true if everything is fine, but if a crisis is underway or if you're a subject of a criminal investigation, you can suddenly and painfully be reminded that you're not in control of this money). If you're keeping money in cash, you might be robbed or the money might be destroyed by water or fire, for instance.
Bitcoin might keep going up, or it might eventually stabilize. These options don't prevent it from being used as money, I believe.
As for the concerns about the safety of BTC, I'm pretty sure that if there were any backdoors or something like that, the money would have already been stolen.

I don't think Bitcoin banks are a viable solution to scalability. After all, the real on-chain transactions would still take a lot of time, so it would be a weird off-chain solution only for those who are willing to let someone else control their money (and Bitcoin users don't tend to fall into this category).
I see a few interesting directions that can be explored to reduce the fees and make cryptos suitable for everyday life:
1) accepting zero-confirmation transactions for fewer than $100 sums and prosecuting those who abuse the system;
2) turning to DAG technology which solves the scalability issue in the long-term perspective due to its nature;
3) using various altcoins along with Bitcoin, so that there's lower traffic for Bitcoin blockchain.

It was pointed out that the data might not account for 2021, so the situation might have changed. In case there were movements in 2021 that make the article obsolete, we're still left with a problem that people hodl their BTC for a long time without using it at all until the new ATH gets established, and they can profit from it. If the money remains unmoved, the situation is even worse because if the new ATH doesn't motivate people to use their coins, it is likely that they're not going to use these coins within the next few years. It's not bad per se, but it's bad for Bitcoin's future as money because money needs liquidity. I wonder if there's still such a future for Bitcoin...

I've never heard of this app before, but it has 40 million active users which is not insignificant. Moreover, this app might actually become huge in the future, as its stable release happened only a month ago! It's consistent with the idea of an app focused on privacy to accept donations in BTC, so I'm not surprised by this choice. But of course, it was still a brave move to start accepting crypto donations because this move can be met with criticism and some troubles from various authorities because ensuring that money laundering isn't masked under donations is not easy when donations are anonymous.

I placed a tiny bet this time because I sort of forgot that it would most likely go void rather than be lost. With it indeed being void after yesterday's match, I'll try it again with a bigger bet amount, so that in case it hits 21, it actually means something to me 
It's a great promo, and the only thing that's a bit tricky for me is not to miss it because the match is announced very close to the time of it actually happening, and it's possible to place the bet only within two hours before the start of the game.

The numbers have changed so much over 10 years, it's really unbelievable that $10 per BTC used to be a question 
However, just like back then, there are always people making the same mistake and panic selling when things aren't as they used to be. There were times when $1k seemed too expensive, and then $10k and $20k... But Bitcoin always recovers and eventually sets the new ATH. Still, I wouldn't buy at ATH because it might require waiting for years to profit at least a little bit.

acener, the pandemic is indeed a hard time to be close to other people. However, there are always some online tournaments which can allow competing with one another even during these times.
Saint-loup, it's a prize pool competition, so there was an entry fee, and then all these fees are added to the prize pool. Back when it started, it was about $45 to enter, and top-10 (1/4 of all participants) are getting winnings from the prize pool (starting at double the initial stake and moving up).
danherbias07, yeah, it's very hard to keep track of everything without people signing up, but some competitions have very few restrictions and conditions.

Hello. I've seen that I'm also not on the main page, but now that I've made my first three bets, I'm guessing you'll add me 
I'm sorry I didn't share betslips and didn't write the odds separately in my post. I've noticed that some do that and others don't, so I wasn't sure. Is a screenshot enough, or should I share betslips from next time as well?
I was planning on betting largely on EPL matches, but the next round just seems so difficult for me that I threw in a couple of other games as well.

I don't see my name in the spreadsheet, but perhaps that's because I didn't make any bets yet. I'm joining the game now.
I'm making my bets on Sportsbet.io:

The price of Bitcoin is not set by any authority and cannot be regulated, so in this sense it's indeed dependent solely on demand and supply. However, a rapid increase of demand for Bitcoin, for instance, usually has its own reasons which may lie in events like stimulus checks or news on big investments of reputable companies in Bitcoin. Similarly, FUD and trigger a decrease in demand of Bitcoin, so the price goes down. For instance, a year ago, the price dropped after the announcement of the global pandemic by WHO. So some events can indeed affect the demand and thus can be helpful to understand why the price moved up or down significantly over a short period of time.

I thought that op would offer some arguments and analysis of the effects of global effort against Bitcoin instead of just assuming that the govs can't stop it. A conclusion can only be formed when there was some prior reasoning, I believe, and I don't see it here.
My thought on the matter is that Bitcoin would continue to exist in such a scenario, but the price would be extremely low, and the amount of users would also plummet. So Bitcoin would become a very underground kind of thing that is used only by small groups of people who are willing to go against the laws out of need or out of protest.

I used to avoid competitions and preferred to just place my own bets on sports to see how it goes. I was glad to win and sad to lose, and it was between me and sports. In autumn, however, I entered a Sportsbet EPL prediction competition, and after months of it going on, I must say that I do find it engaging when various people make predictions for the same games, and then I can see how other people are making their decisions and how they are performing as well. At first, I thought I had no chance there, but I'm currently lucky to be in top-10, so now I do care about remaining there

Do you prefer being on your own with your matches and bets or do you like to take part in various tournament to boost the competitive spirit of it all?

That's a sort of question that never came to my mind. I used to play dice and crash, but even though both require speedy decisions, I don't think I've ever had an Internet connection issue during the games. That being said, an Internet connection issue during a crash game could very much be decisive and largely responsible for a loss. Same goes for an autobet on dice which you might not be able to turn off at the precise moment when you wanted to.
These days I place bets on sports, and since I'm not into live betting, the Internet connection also doesn't play a role for me.

Bluffing is not for everyone, and if you do it a lot during a lengthy game with the same participants, they will notice and thus your bluffs will stop making sense. At the same time, your hand will often be pretty bad to play without bluffing, so it seems reasonable to just fold when this happens since the initial stake you're losing this way is pretty low. Nevertheless, if you always fold when you have a bad hand and play only with a good one, people will also notice, and you won't be able to profit from it. So I guess it must be a subtle combination of both.

How are you feeling about tomorrow's EPL matches? My picks for a multi bet are Leicester City (clearly in a better shape than Sheffield United, so I really hope there won't be any surprises here), draw or Tottenham Hotspur to minimize the risks of this tricky match, and Manchester United (I think it's an easy win against West Ham). What do you think? Do you have your own active multi bets on Premier League matches now?

Compare the current price with the ATH to assess whether it's worth a risk. If the current price is the ATH, I wouldn't invest (but you make your own choices, of course). If there was an ATH a long time ago, and then the price not just dropped significantly, but totally went down to miniscule numbers without major changes afterwards, I wouldn't risk investing because it's probably a shitcoin that will never rise again. The prices are generally quite high now, so I think it's best not to invest and to wait for the inevitable explosion when the prices decrease at least by 50%.

It's very impressive that some ATMs existed back in 2013, I didn't know they were a thing back then. I've searched a little about ATMs in Ukraine, and there's an article from 2014 which states that there is a Lamassu Bitcoin ATM in Ukraine and intentions to offer other options soon. That's also pretty early, especially since the vast majority of ATMs are still located in North America, and Ukraine is not the first country that comes to mind in terms of crypto adoption.
What was the fee of the ATM that you used, by the way? I avoid ATMs because of the fees, so I'm curious if they're becoming acceptable.

There are only two days left, I hope there'll be enough interested participants for the competitive part to be strong. I also have a question about the competition thread for predictions: do we have it already or not yet? And also another thing: is 15th of March the day we start making predictions or the day the games should start? Since these are pre-match bets, can bets for 15th be placed in advance tomorrow or something like this? I'm okay with waiting till 15th, it's just a technical question about our options.

Game 1:  7’  1-1
Game 2:  15'  1-1