Well, not to be a victim blamer or anything, but you have to take some of these accusations with a grain of salt.  I'm aware of at least one active member of this community, who is in the default trust network that lies about these sorts of accusations to try and extort money from projects here.  Of course the casinos seem to be the easiest targets because some of them may be willing to pay off troublemakers.  At least the smaller ones trying to establish reputations.  So if you come across someone frequently complaining about casinos, take a moment to consider if all the casinos are the problem, or if it's the user...

It was a great 2022 for Stake.  I was shocked by their signing of Drake as a brand ambassador.  Surprised to see Stake all over YouTube on videos for the Nelk Boys, Stevewilldoit, Bradley Martin, and others.  Stake was all over the UFC on one of their most popular fighters, and opened up gambling in the United States with Stake.us.  On top of it all, they gave raises to their signature campaign participants here, and have kept a steady stream of bonuses for their uses.  Great all around year for Stake.  I'm curiously watching to see what unexpected things come in 2023.

I don't know about the "looks" of Ethereum, but knowing what I know about it's founding, holders, and coins waiting to be dumped onto the market, I wouldn't feel good buying it now.  So many coins are locked up with huge gains in the ETH2 contract, waiting for their opportunity to be withdrawn and dumped, it is going to certainly have a negative effect on the price.  The longer it takes to allow this withdrawal, the more customers will be looking to cash out, not to mention the more ETH they'll have from interest to cash out.  So for me, regardless of how it looks, I wouldn't come near ETH until after the ETH2 coins are dumped onto the market.  Bitcoin seems a much better option, although I can understand sitting on the sidelines until the mtgox coins are dumped as well.

I'm sure their lawyers are the ones who come up with the explanations of why they do things, but I'm not certain if that's the actual reason.  I don't think it has to be so complicated or have to do with security.  Mining is pretty hardware intensive so for something like online services it has to be the worst thing a client could be doing to your resources.  I imagine if they were to allow this sort of use of their systems, they'd have to raise the price to compensate, so rather than do that and hurt their customer base, they are just excluding the problem.  Seems perfectly reasonable to me.

I'm starting to see more and more people talking about large doses of vitamin C, but I admittedly haven't taken the time to read about it at all.  It seems like there is definitely some discussion around vitamin C playing a large role in the recovery and protection from Covid.  I guess it makes sense because I've always heard that taking vitamin C will help keep the flu away, but it sounds like it's having a larger impact than most would anticipate.  Maybe I'll get myself some vitamin C pills, as I can't remember the last time I took anything like that.  Probably good for your general health.  6 grams a day seems a bit excessive though.  I think after a certain point it would just be wasteful.

I think the next hurdle to jump over is going to be trying to fix the GBTC discount to NAV.  That is currently a cloud hanging over the Bitcoin market.  Once that's resolved (which it seems to be in the works now) then I think it will be all eyes on mtgox distributions (again) for the summer.  After that, I think we'll see a runup in price to the halving, a correction, and then a blast off to new highs.  As for January's price...  Who cares.  Trading Bitcoin month to month has never been the smart move.  Just stack the dips and wait for the highs.  We're clearly at a multiyear bottom here, load up and hang on.  If you sell at $20K you'll regret it.

A lot of people on this forum seemingly gamble with the main objective being to get these sorts of bonuses, so I imagine the more frequent the bonuses, the more members will be trying to earn them.  So long as it's profitable and you have the free development time to continue offering special events, it seems like a win-win for everyone.  I think people must actually enjoy chasing the bonuses, like a sort of game, otherwise they wouldn't be so popular.  So if it's making people money and everyone is having fun, why not toss as many out there as you have time to?

The Sacramento Kings have been surprising this year, at least to me.  I didn't expect them to be on top of their division but there is one secret weapon that I was unaware of and hadn't considered...  The beam.  People in Sacramento, including the players, are going nuts over lighting the beam when they win games.  I've honestly never heard anything like it.  I think all teams should adopt something similar.  The sense of pride folks are feeling when seeing that light after a win I truly believe is a motivational factor.  Trading for Sabonis wasn't such a bad move either. 

One of Bitcoin's goals was originally to be a self-bank for the unbanked.  In poorer countries people are subjected to all sorts of financial transaction fees that people in richer countries would feel are outrageous, but due to their lack of options are forced to adhere to.  The way they have embraced Bitcoin's use on their cellular phones through text messaging has been surprising and took a lot of work from someone to develop and market.  When you think that cellular phone minutes are one of the most common currencies in some places, it becomes clear how much Bitcoin is needed.

Maybe don’t spend all the money you would have spent on food on Bitcoin, but I like your spirit. Before you know it you will have holes in your underwear, nothing in your cabinets, but a wallet with a whole coin in it.

Joking of course, but you can see how such a thing can start happening if you go hard on the stacking. Just don’t forget to have yourself some fun along the way too.

Great moment between Kevin Durant and a 12 year old fan during today’s Nets game, which they won. She was holding a sign that said, “KD is my GOAT pick, sorry MJ, I’m only 12.” When Durant spotted the sign he smiled and nodded to the fan, probably making her night. You can take a look at the interaction in the clip in the below tweet (link).

https://twitter.com/bleacherreport/status/1609359118988632065

I don't mean so sound rude, but what did you expect?  Did you think that Intel would enter the GPU market and suddenly x10 everyone else?  I'm sure it'll take them a few generations of products to really cement a lead, which I assume they will given their ability to buy the best talent in the world.  Right now though it's expecting a lot for them to just blow past Nvidia or AMD.  I'll be waiting and watching, but Intel will have to offer a pretty amazing product for me to think they can really compete with AMD, who I much prefer to Nvidia already.

It makes sense that countries would like to make sure they get tax from gambling winnings.  I wonder if it will be as good as a source of revenue as they think.  I've never really won or lost big enough to matter, but I assume that gambling losses are tax deductible in at least some regions, maybe that's not right...  In any event, if that were the case I would think a solution like this would be a double edged sword.  Sure, you'll get taxes from the winners (which if it was a big win they would have gotten it anyway), but you'll also then see a ton more tax deductions from losers, who would for sure outweigh the winners.  Again, no idea if that's even a thing, but surely there are more losers than winners, and who deducts gambling losses from their taxes?  Not me.

The problem is that not everybody has a stable family and it isn't their fault.  You can be born into all sorts of situation through no fault of your own.  In our society, you aren't allowed to have "good luck" because it makes other people feel bad who weren't given the same opportunities.  This is why we're seeing attacks against family and religion by the political left.  Instead of being happy for people with great families and nice lives, they hate them and think they're the reason that not everybody has such things.  These types of people who think things are a zero sum game are dangerous and will be the downfall of society. 

Congratulations.  Accepting BTC is a great step in getting more involved.  Accept it, mine it (or mine shitcoins and trade for BTC immediately with a GPU), spread the word, and keep stacking!  Physical shops accepting Bitcoin is what this community has needed for a long time.  The only Bitcoin accepting shop I've ever seen was on a trip to Vegas, and even that implementation was questionable and not functioning most of the time.  I hope someday I'll be able to use real BTC on chain to make actual purchases in person.  So far those opportunities are few and far between.

rasengan - When you contacted me to make this 40 BTC escrow deal and I told you that you would be scammed if you tried to do it over telegram, why did you ignore my advice?  I told you that I was willing to help you to avoid this scenario and you decided to do the exact opposite of what I told you.

My $0.02 on this is that your account was likely compromised if you received the screenshot.  Even if minerjones was a scammer I don't think he would be so sloppy as to provide a screenshot as evidence of his involvement.  I'm guessing the screenshot is from your sent folder, or was a fabrication created by getting the message from your sent folder.  That or this is some sort of attempt at getting sympathy so people will make donations.  Anyway, you literally did what I told you not to do and you allegedly lost your funds as a result.  You can't be too surprised by this.

I think a time machine wouldn't be as fun as people probably think.  Most people would say they'd go back in time and make this investment or bet on this sporting event...  I think that's a slippery slope though.  One thing a time machine doesn't give you is more time.  I could see someone becoming obsessed with money and spending the rest of their lives using their time machine to make incredible wealth, only to find they have missed their lives doing so.  Maybe if your goal was to have children and give them the world, that would be cool, but I think most people if given a time machine would regret it when they were in their final days as it consumed more of their time than they would have liked.

I can't imagine this change ever happening, but I'll keep suggesting it. 

I think the forum should take over signature campaigns and distribute the funds more widely to members here.  Rather than a handful of members making thousands of dollars a month on advertisements, I think it would be cool if everyone had the opportunity to make a couple dollars a week.  It would be a nightmare to implement and I'm sure people would call for removal of signatures by bad actors which would take a lot of manpower and cause drama, etc.  Not to mention there would be abuse, but I would love to see more members here getting an opportunity to snatch a piece of the pie.

I think his weight and his likelihood of injury are part of the same issue.  He moves so fast and has so much weight to throw around, it's not like he has superhuman bones or anything.  He can break things or tear tendons extremely easily when he's up around 300lbs and jumping from the free throw line.  So while he may be more dominant with a bigger size while he's on the floor, I think maximizing his time on the floor will require him to slim down, even if it's not what is best for his game.  Otherwise he'll be out of the league much faster than I'd like to see. 

I’m starting to see all kinds of new NFTs and utilities for them recently. I think most of the “artists” selling pictures have gone the way of the dodo bird leaving those who are actually building functionality for their collections. I just came across an application that lets you be your NFTs on video chats or streams. That seemed like a pretty cool thing to do with NFTs you own if you were into that sort of thing. People are still building…