In India, today there was an announcement from the MHA (Ministry of home affairs). A number of relaxations were being declared regarding the lockdown. The ministry has permitted the opening of IT and ITES firms from April 20 onward, with up to 50% staff attendance. This is an encouraging sign from the government and it is clear that they are looking forward to lift the lockdown. I am still not very sure about the IPL, but BCCI is going to try really hard to start it as soon as possible.

I am not surprised at all. It happened to me a few times in 2018, and that was one of the reasons why I decided to quit participating in the bounty campaigns. And sadly, there will be no consequences for doing such scams. At the most, the bounty campaign manager will get a red trust and he will just purchase another Bitcointalk account and carry on with his trade.

Yup.
Adding to that, only a few of the cricketers have contributed to the COVID 19 relief. Individuals such as Ravi Shastri are yet to donate a penny, despite almost every single celebrity in other fields doing so. That said, the real danger to them would be a reduction in the advertisement revenue if the economy goes in to a recession. Since the contracts are already signed for this financial year, the impact will be felt from next year onward.

At this point, I would encourage participation in bounty campaigns, only if they satisfy one of these two conditions:

1. Bounty campaign from an already listed token, which is being traded in at least 2 well known exchanges
2. Bounty campaign from exchanges, operating for at least 3 months with good reputation and trade volumes.

I would skip all the other bounty campaigns, no matter how attractive they look.

OK... In that case, may be you are right. However, I have compared the medical expenses in various countries, and US always rank as the most expensive place to purchase a mediclaim policy. Drug prices in the US are also much higher when compared to the other nations. A medication which may cost $1 per pill in Canada may cost as much as $25 per pill in the US (same brand, same manufacturer), due to crazy regulations by the FDA. This makes medical care unaffordable to many people within the US.

Don't want to divert the topic. I have a set of recent opinion polls with me, and all of them sounds bad for Donald Trump. Take a look at these:

Arizona POTUS: Biden 52, Trump 43
Virginia POTUS: Biden 51, Trump 41
Florida POTUS: Biden 47, Trump 41

If it is proven that someone (or some organization, or even a government) had created this virus intentionally, then they should be given a death sentence without any leniency (even if it involves a large number of people). Because till now more than 100,000 people have lost their lives. Bioterrorism is no less evil, when compared to other forms of murder.

That said, there should be concrete evidence to prove the same. If evidence is not available, then everyone should refrain from making baseless allegations.

OK.. I read the replies to my post. I guess I was wrong in asking the employers to credit the salaries. After all, businessmen would be behaving like businessmen. If we look in a legal perspective, then they don't need to pay their employees. So we can't force them to do that. I feel bad about the employees. But there is hardly anything we can do at this point.

Whatever you say about China, the fact remains that they managed to control the pandemic, despite thousands of their citizens dying from it. They managed to achieve it by making a lot of sacrifices. Other countries which are suffering from this pandemic, especially countries such as Spain, Italy and the United States can study how China made it possible to contain the virus.

You are forgetting the most important risk factor. By the first week of June, Monsoon season will start in Southern and Eastern parts of India. By the end of that month, all of India except the far West will be having frequent rains. I don't know how the BCCI is planning to conduct IPL under such conditions. Are they panning to conduct the matches in indoor stadiums?

OK.. We have lockdown in India till May 3rd. But what will happen after that? I don't think that they'll extend the lockdown any further, because if they do that then the economy will collapse. I guess the lockdown will be removed after that, and the government will urge the citizens to follow social distancing. BCCI will make use of this opportunity to schedule the IPL sometime in June/July.

First of all, I never give much importance to these Nobel prize winners. It lost all the credibility, when the prizes were awarded to people such as Barack Obama. Nowadays, Nobel awards are being decided through a lot of political interference. And secondly, the Nobel prize for economics is not being given by the Nobel Committee. It is awarded by Sweden's central bank (Sveriges Riksbank).

LOL.. the United States does not have the best healthcare system in the world. On the other hand, I would claim that they have one of the worst systems in any of the developed nations. The healthcare system in the US is ultra-expensive, inefficient and biased against those with pre-existing conditions. Actually it was not surprising to see them coping with the pandemic so badly (when compared to Japan or Germany).

There is a lot of propaganda going on against China in various social media channels right now, and this "second wave" is just another one of those propaganda products. China has been free of community spread for more than a month now, and the new cases are being reported almost exclusively among those who arrive in China from foreign nations.

I guess you are residing in a developed nation such as Switzerland or Japan. Here in India, we don't have such luxuries. A lot of people are out of job, and the government is not doing much about it. Those who are without any savings are facing a lot of challenges. And even people like me are afraid that our jobs will be lost if this situation continues for another 2-3 months.

Let the market dynamics do the trick. IMO, we don't need to do anything as Bitcoin is already more than a decade old. I guess the majority of the world population has heard about Bitcoin, and the majority of them are capable of taking a decision regarding its usage and suitability as a mode of payment. At the most, we can take out awareness campaigns to neutralize the negative propaganda that is directed against Bitcoin. Apart from that, my opinion is that we should stay out from all this.

LOL.. I am working in the IT sector and it is very difficult for me to stay away from the laptop. It is especially tough now, with the lockdown in full force. What else I can do, while sitting at home? On weekdays, I have to work from 9:30 am to 6:00 pm and it is not possible to stay away from laptop for extended period during this time. Even after 6 pm, I spend 3-4 hours on my laptop for personal purposes.

Anyway... the news from BCCI is that they have deferred the decision on IPL 2020. We were expecting an announcement from Sourav Ganguly today, but he is likely to do that tomorrow after the address by the Prime Minister (scheduled for 10:00 am Indian time).

Last time, they had postponed the tournament to the day after the end of lockdown (15th April). So my guess is that they will do the same tomorrow as well. If the lockdown gets extended by two weeks (up to 28th April), then we can expect the new starting date as 29th April.

Would like to point out a few things:

First of all, for the domestic players the majority of their annual earnings come in the form of match fees (I heard that it amounts to somewhere between ₹150,000 and ₹250,000 per Ranji Trophy match, and it is very uniform across the teams). The good news here is that the domestic season was complete before the pandemic struck. The Indian domestic season starts on August and ends by mid March.

April-May is usually blocked for the IPL. The pandemic struck during this window and that means that the IPL stars will be facing a huge cut in their earnings (I verified with some experts and they told me that in case the tournament is called off, these players won't be getting any compensation).

Now coming to the second point, the national players receive most of their earnings in the form of endorsements. So even if BCCI deduct 100% of the contract fee, I guess they are going to be fine.

You are right about the history. It happened in both 2013 and 2017 (approximately one year after the block reward halving on both the occasions). So if we go by this precedent, then we can expect another ATH by 2021. I just hope that I may not regret too much in case something like that happens. But I have made my decision to offload some of my coins this year.

Well... I would agree with you when you say that the future of Bitcoin looks bright. But with any investment, there is a need to reduce the risk by doing profit/loss booking. I made my investments more than three years ago, and I believe that time has come to do a partial disinvestment. But still, I am very optimistic about crypto and therefore I will be holding on to more than 80% of my coins.

I am not sure whether I have the answer. I guess it is the same case as what happened with the other scams. The scammers probably withdrew the funds (USDT or BTC) as soon as they were able to trade them, while the exchange admins found out later that these funds came from the scam. I don't think that they would allow the scammers to launder the funds, if the origin was known earlier. 

The point I am making here is that, it is not correct to blame the DEX sites for laundering the funds from hacks and scams.