How do you know which bets to copy, or do you just copy all the big bets with huge multipliers? I think it's important to know which gambler we can copy and which we should stay away from. Without knowing much about the person placing the bets, it's hard to become profitable by following them blindly. In the past I liked to follow other people and try to copy their bets as well, but my results were poor and I never managed to break even when following other people. The only time where I was making money with it was in university, when a good friend of mine was placing a lot of bets for a few friends in lower regional football league. His trackrecord with betting on some of the regional championships was awesome and he managed to earn a free vacation for all of us after exams. All the other times when I followed other people with their bets I rarely made any profits. Now I am trying to only stick to my own bets and make up my mind when watching the games myself. I don't really believe in destiny, because then what is the point to make any decision at all, we could just randomly place bets without really thinking about it.

How exactly is that proof that crypto currencies are a pyramid scheme? Every time a new investor starts buying and selling bitcoins he is going to make a profit that he can take out of the crypto market. There is no requirement for you to reinvest your profits. There are even people selling a house or apartment for crypto currencies and you could completely disinvest from cryptos. Also many of the initial bitcoin investors still hold large amounts of coins, if it really was a pyramid scheme they would have sold everything near the last ATH above 60,000 USD. The bitcoin market became way too big with too many different type of investors for it to be controlled by a few people at the top. We all can decide for ourselves what a Bitcoin is worth to us and if we are willing to sell our coins at the current market price. It's not like we are looking for the next sucker to take the coins if our hand.

It makes a lot of sense to insure our basic needs, especially if we live in a country where there is no protection scheme to provide security for our family. Health insurance should be the first insurance we take out, because we never know what kind of illness we might face in life. Same goes for life insurance, if our family relies heavily on our income that we need to think of the worst case scenario. The problem in my country is that there is insurance for everything and the financial analyst earns a lot of commission for every new contract being signed. It's really hard to find the optimal level of insurance, because the sales people will always try to offer the premium package first. A lot of my friends are to,more than a 100% insured, which costs them a lot every month.

Not sure if I fully understand your question, do you mean that a trader that exits his position too early is a weak trader and that they are leaving potential higher profits on the table? I don’t think this is fair to say, because markets are always changing. Even the best possible strategy that has planned for all eventualities needs to be adapted if there are unforeseen events. Taking profits is part of the trading game and we shouldn’t be feeling bad about. Who really cares if we are a strong or weak trader, as long as we make decent returns there is no need to change. Selling a position early to take a profit can even be a good thing, if we reinvest that money in a better trading opportunity. The worst thing would be to take an early exist only to leave our money in cash and not earning any returns. That is why I always try to think ahead and where my money will be invested in once I sell a position.  Another approach is to only sell a part of the position and keep some coins until prices rise even further. Markets are so dynamic that we constantly need o adapt and reevaluate our positions, but we should never feel bad about making a profit.

The dangerous part about gambling is that people can spend unlimited amounts of money on it. When we go out for a night of drinks, or to have dinner in a restaurant or watch a movie, we already know roughly how much money the night is going to cost us and if we can afford it with our monthly budget. With my family we allocate some money for eating in our favourite restaurants 2 times per month, more than that is just too expensive. Now with gambling it's a completely different story, because we can be winning or losing money during a night and need to always keep our bankroll in mind. What has helped me a lot after learning all the basics in gambling is to remind myself that the same type of games will also be around the next day. There is no need to place all my money in a single night, because I will have the exact same chances of winning the next day as well. I had the problem in the past to feel like I need to reach a certain profit before stopping to gamble and it barely worked as I mostly lost money the longer, I played. In the end it took me a long-time to recover those losses again and avoid doing the same mistakes all over again. Having good friends can be really helpful in such a case, because they have a better feeling of what is going on when they see us gambling recklessly. That is why I am always trying to listen to my friends and value their opinion when they want to tell me something.

I don’t understand how a bailout of the traditional financial system with crypto currencies should work. The financial sector with out crypto currencies is much larger than the whole crypto sector combined. So, even if there would be a lot of capital inflow into cryptos the question would be where the money is coming from during a crisis. Sure, the FED could try and print new money for which they would create crypto currencies, but I doubt that any investors would find them interesting. The reasoning for many investors to start buying cryptos is to reduce their dependency on the traditional financial system, owning now government created NFTs or crypto currencies seems like the exact opposite of what we want to do. Even if there are real assets behind the NFTs like a bank, it would mean that the initial equity holder all get wiped out and there would be a lot of political pressure to rescue those initial equity investors. Who would be willing to give up all their crypto assets for partially owning a bank that is doomed to fail in the long run anyways? I would rather keep my cryptos.

It's really hard to feel the same kind of rush and happiness from other things than gambling. For me the excitment and entertainment from gambling is very close to the entertainment I get from gaming with friends. For many years I have been gaming all sorts of games, and especially strategy team games where you can make detailed plans and execute them together are awesome. Unfortunately, it's hard to find the time these days to sit down an evening with my friends and play our favourite games. With gambling it's much easier, I can do it on my own and just play for half an hour in the evening when I have the spare time. Life changes so fast and all my friends have their own families now, that most of my gaming these days is single player and the entertainment from it is not really that great.

That is a good question I haven't really thought about. For the amateur gambler I would expect the number to be somewhere around 50-100, but if you want to become a professional sports bettor than the number should be way higher. 500 bets seems like a solid number after which you know your edge in betting. One more thing to consider should be the time frame as well, if you place 500 bets over several years it could be a misleading as the leagues are changing and your edge could disappear. I would recommend to also split down your betting history over month, so you can that you have a consistent edge to make money in the future. Also, for a professional gambler it would be important to constantly reevaluate your bets and keep checking how profitable you are. Any winning percentage above 50% is important and reaching 55 to 60% is huge. With such a big edge it's more than enough to make a lot of money from sports betting.

The bitcoin market had a pretty good year so far recovering most of their losses from 2022, but why should be people selling now? It’s no really like the end of the bull run is around the corner. I would say that most HODL investors have been in the market for many years and if they didn’t sell their coins for 40,000 USD at the start of 2022, why should they be selling now? Also, we are still far away from the old ATH and with the halving coming up next year people are very optimistic about the next price jump. Just because many people hold Bitcoin these days, doesn’t mean all of them should be selling their coins as soon as the market moves up 30-40%. It also depends on if any of the investors actually need money at the moment, or if they have another investment opportunity where they could reinvest their profits. Selling your bitcoins without knowing where to put the money seems like a bad idea, because inflation is still high in many countries and will reduce the value of cash over time. Personally, I am not going to sell any of my coins this year and will keep holding them at least until the halving next year.

That's definitely a good point to consider, just because you are having a good strategy doesn't mean the AI is optimizing your poker play. However, I think that many of the good poker players have already great strategies and AI might not really get and advantage over them playing only on one table. For me the advantage of AI would be it's speed and the chance to increase the number of tables we can could be running at the time. I have trouble to play at more than 3-4 tables at the same time and still gather all the important information. A strong AI would have no problem to run 10 or 20 tables at the same time. This would of course make it obvious that we are using AI and the casino might limit our access in the future. Also, other players would notice on how many tables we are sitting simultaneous and might adapt their plays when facing us. I am curious too see how much impact AI really has on poker in the future.

I do think that we can be profitable in gambling over a long period of time. In case we want to make profit during every gambling session I don't think it's realistic. There are always winning and losing streaks and we can't force to change them. It's like in life, there will be good and there will be bad days. That is why when I notice I am having a bad day in gambling, I will just take a break for the night and try again the next day. Chasing losses is one of my earlier days mistakes that I am trying to avoid now. The best approach I have to longterm profitability is to try and limit losses as much as possible. Avoiding to go broke is very important, because only with capital we can recover our losses in the future again. Also, when I am running good and have a winning streak I try to increase my bets to get the most money out of it.

This is definitely not a good sign and I would consider it a red flag if there are issues with withdrawals. For me it's not a problem if withdrawals take a few days to be processed and if there is a limit on how often we can withdraw from the site, as long as all these limitations are communicated beforehand and I know about them. Sudden changes in the withdrawal policies would make me question how well the betting site is doing and maybe I should switch to another site. The most important things for me when it comes to gambling and betting sites are promotions and a good support staff.

The easiest way to build your crypto portfolio is to start buying cryptos. If you don't own any cryptos yet and you really want to become a crypto investor then you need to start investing. Don't wait for too long because you feel like the prices are too high at the moment and you want to get the cheapest possible price. My recommendation is to follow the DCA method, where you buy a constant number of crypto currencies over a longer period of time. Like this you can achieve a decent average price and don't need to worry about a short-term price fluctuation. Before that you need to decide which crypto currencies, you would like to add to your portfolio. As a complete beginner I would always start with Bitcoins, it's the OG crypto coin and should be part of any portfolio. My target for Bitcoin in my crypto portfolio is 60-80%, the rest are altcoins that I trade more fluently and change depending on the best outlooks. Trading only make sense when you have a basis to start from, I would always first try to accumulate a decent portfolio before start trading actively. The issue when you only start trading with a very small size is that you pay a lot in transaction fees and with the risk over trading your positions, it's going to be hard to generate high enough returns for your portfolio to actually grow.

It's been a few months since your thread and it seems that the world has changed since then. The USA is doing pretty well compared to other developed countries in the West. The stock market is looking solid, inflation is down, unemployment rate is low and the fear of a recession seems avoided for now. The main issue for the USA is their own politics and if they can avoid another crisis and shutdown of the government. At least in my country the news is talking positively about the USA and the only threat would be for Trump to win again in 2024 and ruin everything. This doomsday scenario seems a bit exaggerated and who knows how the pools will turn out next year. For me USA is still the economic superpower number one in the world and their quick reaction to the high inflation made things much better. We here in Europe have much slower politicians that take a long time to talk and react. Also comparing the stock markets from USA and Europe this year shows that the Americans are doing so much better and the US Dollar is a better investment than the Euro at the moment.   

No, I am not paying for any trading signals. The signals I use are either free and publicly available, or I calculate them myself. In the past I bought several books and even visited a seminar on technical analysis, which wasn't cheap. For me, this was enough investment in the subject and I don't want to spend anymore money at the moment. Also, I focus more on long term trading currently and don't need so many trading signals. Paying for trading signal should always be in relation to the profit we make mit them. Let's say a day trader relies heavily on these trading signals and earns 2,000 USD with them in a month, then paying 100-200 USD for those signals seems worth it. You can just test how much you would earn in a month with and without the signals and calculate their benefit.

Why not tell your older family members to only speak about gambling when the kids aren't around? I think within a family it should be possible to talk openly about issues and that there is the respect to not influence the upbringing of your kids. For me it all depends on the age of the kids, it's fine if the grand parents take their 14 year old grand children to play lottery or scratch cards. Also, isn't it possible to play fantasy league sports without betting real money on it? My experience with fantasy sport is very limited, but I think we can make a difference between the sport itself and the money being placed on their games. My grand dad gambled a lot and took me with him when he played the lottery every week and it didn't have a big impact on my own gambling. These days I rarely play the lottery and it's probably my least favorite game to play for money. Just be open with your family and tell them not to influence your underage children.

There can be many explanations for very old untouched crypto wallets. The easiest explanation is probably that the investors don't really need the money and believe in the long term growth of Bitcoin. The bitcoin price had a good recovery in the last few weeks and some people could be interested in taking profits now. But if you have been around since the beginning of crypto currencies, you have seen the bitcoin price close to 70,000 USD. When you didn't sell at the ATH, why should you be selling today? Also with the halving coming up next year it makes a lot of sense to wait longer before selling. Another explanation why the coins in these wallets are untouched could be that the investor lost access to them, or the investor died in the worse case and nobody from the family knows about it. There are quite a few stories about people losing their keys and all their bitcoin.

This weekend we can watch the Blast Premier Fall 2023 tournaments semi and grand finals. NaVi is already out after losing 2-1 against complexity, I thought they would go deeper in the tournament. In the two semi finals today Vitality is going to play against Cloud9. Vitality has been really strong this year, but so far I haven't seen them play many CS2 matches and I think they have some strong strategies ready for the games. Cloud9 has played more matches in CS2 as they have been part of already quite a few tournaments, but player wise I think Vitality is much stronger. I am going with Vitality to reach the finals tomorrow. In the second match will be FaZe vs Complexity, with FaZe being the clear favourite here. The two teams played in Sydney against each other and FaZe won 2-1. For me they are the strongest CS2 team right now and I am putting my money on them to reach the finals as well. Tomorrow we will likely see Vitality vs FaZ in the grand final, where FaZe is going to win in my opinion.

I am wondering how did you observe that the rich are winning more in gambling that the poor? When it comes to online gambling it's hard to tell if someone is rich or poor as we don't know anything about their financial situation. The same goes for visting physical casinos, just because someone has a lot of chips in front him or is dressed in fancy clothes doesn't necessarily mean he is rich. He could be just showing off and wants other people to believe that he his rich. In any case, I think that rich people have it easier in gambling because they can survive a losing streak for longer. Starting with a much larger bankroll means that we can afford to lose more games before going bankrupt. The worst thing that can happen in gambling is going bankrupt, because once you lose your whole bankroll there is no chance to recover again.

I think it's a good idea to regularly check on our seed phrase and to make sure that there is no issue with it. Personally, I like to have to save copy just to be on the safe side and not risk losing access to my wallet. One copy I keep in a bank vault in my home town, it's a bit hard to visit there during office hours as I usually just go home for the holidays. I used a piece of paper and a good pen, leaving everything in an envelope and there shouldn't be any issue for the seed phrase to disappear. My main copy of my seed phrase I keep closer to myself and I can check regularly on its condition. The good thing about having all the important files in one place at the bank is in the case that something happens to me, my family has no issue finding my crypto wallet and can get access to it. If I ever make a enough money with my investment portfolios, I would love to install a high end safe at home to store all important information their instead of the bank. But for that I need to make enough returns to make it a good decision, otherwise the bank deposit box is much cheaper.