That's not a problem on its own

The real problem is likely to arise when people start to interpret this as a sign of great success of the Lightning Network technology (which seems to be the case already). Well, technically, it would be so, but I still wouldn't call it a success as the real success will come when it actually starts being used for payments and wealth transfer on a grand scale, not for experimenting and testing or just for kicks ("dicking around")

It would be an exercise in stupidity and futility

Really, what's the purpose of recklessly moving money around? I'm not speaking that no one will be moving "mega-money" just for the sake of it, but even if some inquisitive and curious users actually engage in this activity for some time, what will it change in a major way? Okay, now everyone starts to open payment channels and shuffle their coins around, and to what end exactly? To prove that they can?

That has nothing to do with politics

Which seems to be your major point here. Actually, quite a few European companies are interested in conducting business with Iran and establishing their strong presence there:


China has been deepening its footprint in this country year after year despite any sanctions that Uncle Sam imposed on ayatollahs. All in all, it looks like you should be less biased and more aware of the real situation there. But I'm still curious where you are from

I report that withdrawals are working fine

Though your FAQ is misleading as the amounts you receive via surveys or puzzles don't actually count towards the $5 deposit required to withdraw. I successfully finished some surveys and earned like $0.5 via them, however, I still had to directly deposit $5 to be able to withdraw anything. With that said, I should admit that the withdrawal itself was instant and it went through without a hitch

Was it dooglus (or whatever his name is) who reported that he saw it only a couple of times with someone hitting a streak of 28 consecutive losses at 2x during the time he was running a casino? In this way, you don't need to set your initial bet amount at absolute minimum or you could just set lower (higher) odds so that the losing streaks would be longer while potential profits higher

But I agree, it is still either a waste of time or waste of money (you choose which)

I'm not sure if Bitcoin fundamentals look strong as what you call "fundamentals" is nowhere near being that. The number of addresses increasing? And so what? If this growth is not accompanied by the consistent rise in the number of transactions (a metric which could count as fundamental but this number is not rising much anyway). Lightning network use expanding? Are you sure? It is the number of nodes and payment channels that is rising (which is a good thing), but how do you know that these channels are actually used for transacting with Bitcoin?

The bottom line is that the metrics you describe as fundamental can only be used as circumstantial evidence at most

In fact, you can use it to your advantage

Obviously, no government will easily accept being heavy on money printing, and the official inflation rates are typically way lower than real, and still more so when they are high on their own. For example, if in the US the official inflation rate is reported to be 2% yearly, you can't actually expect it to be 20% as the discrepancy will be too obvious and apparent. On the other hand, in some third world country the reported inflation can be like 20% while the real inflation will be like 50% or even higher

And this has interesting repercussions and consequences. As taxes, duties, penalties, etc are calculated using the official rates, you can use this discrepancy against the government itself. For example, you may postpone payments of taxes even despite risking penalties as you would still have to pay less in real terms. And this is a real phenomenon commonly occurring in countries with high inflation rates. The same with debts. If you have arrears (like utilities or something similar), you will likely have to pay a penalty way below real inflation rate

That's one of the reasons why Dogecoin is so popular among gamblers

You see, it is very cheap with the price of 1 doge at around 55 satoshi at the moment, which is less than 1 cent. And most casinos allow the minimum bet amount of 1 doge (or even less than that). In this way, Dogecoin allows the longest sequences of bets for martingale, and that likely explains why it is used widely for gambling (apart from its transactions also being cheap and fast)


With 2x double on loss you can still use different bet odds

That's likely the major difference between Bitcoin and fiat money

Bitcoin can make up for the losses caused by crashes in due time, but it is never the case with fiat currencies. No one is going to return you the purchasing power that you may lose either due to an abrupt devaluation or gradual depreciation of a fiat currency over time. It is a one-way street with fiat money as there is no way in which it can "recover". The government (any government, for that matter) can only steal the purchasing power from you. It is called inflation tax and it is inevitable, so get used to it

Half truths are worse than outright lies

If the truth is in the middle, it pretty much means that whales are still controlling the market (maybe, to a somewhat lesser degree). And there is nothing wrong or surprising in it. If you have enough financial leverage, it would be plain stupid not to exploit it to your advantage. And this is equally applicable to any market, not just crypto. In 1980 the Hunt brothers tried to corner the silver market. Ultimately they failed, and that's likely the reason we heard about them at all. If they succeeded, they would likely have remained unknown to the wider public as silence is the sound of money talking

Well, I'm not sure everyone runs martingale this way (or just anyone)

I mean by simply offsetting the losses incurred in previous bets (i.e. if you win, you win only 1 satoshi no matter what the bet amount is). From my perspective, this will be the stupidest way of using martingale. When I used this technique myself, I always set the odds in such a way that at each roll with bet doubled (apart from the very first one, of course) I was covering the accumulated loss in full and won as much at that (provided I won, naturally)

Martingale can be a viable approach only in one case

That is, when your financial muscle is greater than a casino's and the casino doesn't have a limit on max bet that you can wager. But it is still rather a theoretical case because you just won't be able to bet when the stake becomes greater than the casino's bankroll. So even in this case you are set to lose in practice. Obviously, real-life casinos have max bet limits set in place, for example, FreeBitco.in has it at 20 BTC

Agree, that's a shaky argument

But before "appealing to low liquidity" counterargument, we should ask why would this villain want to cash out everything? Cashing out so much would definitely raise a lot of red flags as to the source of all this wealth. And Maduro may end up losing his bitcoins just as easily as he has already lost the "Aztec gold". In this manner, if we assume he was prudent enough to exchange the gold for crypto, we should as well assume that he wouldn't be that stupid to try selling all his bitcoins at once

And this is the key problem of the martingale system

As it assumes that you should play long enough to beat the house with it. But the longer you gamble the less room is there for luck (and more for the house edge to kick in). I remember some former online casino owner was saying that martingalers were not their main headache as they never left after a win and eventually lost everything. It was random dudes with deep pockets making a couple of bets that was their primary concern and worry

How is that there's no need for someone to approve our transaction?

Aren't we supposed to wait till our transaction gets confirmed by a miner? Isn't it essentially the same as "someone approving our transaction"? Besides, the point of "no fear of theft to our money" also doesn't look very credible. If someone steals your coins in case you are using a desktop wallet or an exchange gets hacked (openly steals your money) in case you are a trader and have to use them, you can safely kiss good-bye to your coins. With banks it is quite different, though. Indeed, someone can steal your money from a bank account too, but the chances of catching the thief are arguably better

Volatility is not an issue here

Merchants can accept crypto via payment gateways. Well, actually, it is not them who accepts crypto as merchants are in fact accepting fiat before. It is these gateways that actually accept cryptopayments and it is them who are dealing with the volatility issues, i.e. merchants are offered instant real-time exchange rates and there is virtually no slippage (read, volatility doesn't mean a thing to shops)

Big retailers, on the other hand, can directly accept crypto. In that case they should themselves hedge against volatility, but it is not a big deal either as there are enough liquidity providers which help solve this issue as easily and as cheap

Let's short it to death:



I don't have any Bitcoin Cash coins in my pockets so it may look like a naked short, and technically it is. But I have enough real bitcoins so that I can continue shorting Bitcoin Cash as much and as long as I want and I definitely will if the price of it continues to rise. But since it is highly unlikely that this shitcoin will ever outperform Bitcoin in the long term, it is a bullet-proof strategy to make money off short-term volatility. Let Ver, Jihan and their minions pay for it if they choose to artificially prop up its price. They are welcome, I don't mind

It is fully automatic in case of Bitcoin payment cards

But in this case you just pay with your Bitcoin card in the same way as with any other such card, and whoever you pay to may not even know that you paid with crypto. Obviously, this has nothing to do with merchants knowingly willing to accept cryptopayments. Regarding accepting Bitcoin payments online, there is simply no demand for such payments as explained in the OP. And that's the root of the problem

Really, given that you can easily integrate cryptopayments into your shop and the payment processor guarantees you real-time exchange rates (this is not a big deal), every merchant would readily add this option if there was massive demand for such payments. Further, you receive the bulk payment at the end of the week but the conversion rates are determined real-time, i.e. when a client actually pays (not at the end of the week, as you seem to assume)

Just letting everyone know that I was reimbursed fully by Bitfinex

The losses incurred were not great anyway (as I was quick to react to minimize possible negative consequences), but the exchange reimbursed everything, i.e. spread, trading fees plus interest I paid on additionally borrowed funds when they restored my position. Don't know how true their claim is but they also said that they found the bug in their system which caused wrongful liquidation of my short position. Okay, let's see how it goes now

We are going back to the roots, so to speak

Though you didn't make it clear in the OP what crash you refer to. If you mean the late November early December crash a couple months ago, it was likely triggered by the hash wars, but its causes lie in Bitcoin being overvalued back then. The price had been trading in 6-7k range but with no real support, so when someone started to sell in earnest, the price crashed until it found a new support at 3k. But we may not be done yet

You can think of it as an organic continuation of an overall downtrend which gets us closer to the equilibrium determined by real value of Bitcoin (with most altcoins likely kicking the bucket in the process). So for Bitcoin itself it may be a good thing as lower prices probably add to Bitcoin's real use. You can take Dogecoin as an example of that kind. It is cheap as dirt but almost all of its price is determined by its real use (as a coin for gambling)