A few months ago, BNB had reached a valuation of more than $100 billion. And as a result of correction, it has come down to $57 billion. Therefore on paper, you can say that BNB has bottomed out and now it looks like a good occasion to invest in this cryptocurrency. But BNB is not like other cryptos. It's valuation mostly comes from the Binance exchange, boosted by the Binance Smart Chain. And in the world of cryptocurrency, exchanges always carry a disproportionate amount of risk. At this point, it is difficult to give out a clear advisory about BNB.

A lot of eCommerce giants would like to accept Bitcoin, but the issue is that nowadays the authorities are becoming more and more hostile towards cryptocurrency. If anyone wants to make payment with BTC, then there will be a strict KYC requirement. Already the European Union is planning to introduce laws that would make anonymous transactions illegal. Details here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5350567.0

Two things - days of low tax regimen are over, and the governments are increasing their spending to appease the sections of public who are non-productive.

Agreed. Adoption by Amazon or Tesla is not much important for the long-term future of Bitcoin as an asset, or as a currency. But it matters a lot for people like us who are investing in cryptocurrency. At one point or the other, we need to sell some of our coins. And increasing adoption and acceptability of Bitcoin will make sure that we will end up with good profit when we do so. But overall, for Bitcoin it is immaterial. Irrespective of the adoption level, the future belongs to Bitcoin. Amazon will be forced to accept BTC at some point in the future, if they don't do now.

I can't agree with this statement. For the last two months, the monthly inflation rate in the United States stood at 0.9%, translating to an annual inflation of 10.8%. Even if we take a very conservative scenario and take 5% as the inflation for this year, Bitcoin looks much better. If you had invested in any point of time between 2009 and 2020, you will be in profit with your Bitcoin investment right now. And your argument that Bitcoin is an asset that regularly drops by 10% is completely baseless. Short-term fluctuations are there, but in the long term Bitcoin always give good returns (at least when compared to the USD, whose purchasing power goes down by 5% to 10% every year).

Source: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm

IMO, the next bull run won't be solely dependent on any one event. There will be multiple events, occurring near simultaneously. This can be recognition as legal tender by multiple countries, eCommerce giants like Amazon/Ebay accepting BTC or sovereign countries adding Bitcoin to their forex reserves. My medium-term (2-3 years) forecast is $250,000 per coin, and in order to reach there we need multiple triggers. The challenges remain at the same time, and one thing that bothers me is the increased hostility from the Biden administration after Democrats won the POTUS elections in 2020.

Apart from Dhawan, Kuldeep and Bhuvi, who was experienced in the Indian squad? Devdutt Padikkal was playing his second international match. You claim that Samson is experienced, but he has only 10 T20I matches to his name. Almost everyone else (Varun Chakravarthy, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Nitish Rana, Rahul Chahar, Chetan Sakariya and Sandeep Warrier) has played in less than 10 international matches. I am perplexed at how you can claim that the Indian team for the third match was more experienced than the Sri Lankan team.   

I am not in favor of including some bowler in the playing XI solely because his batting is good. In the test format, the top three pace bowlers for India have been - Jasprit Bumrah, Ishant Sharma and Mohammad Shami. All three are genuine tailenders and not known for their batting skills. There are pacers who have better batting skills like Mohammed Siraj and Shardul Thakur. But I don't think that these two can match the others in terms of maturity and bowling skills. And even Siraj/Shardul can't be considered as genuine all rounders. India never had a pace bowling all rounder, ever since Manoj Prabhakar retired in 1996.

The criticism is not directed at their scoring rate. Personally, I would have no issue, if someone try to score a run per ball in test cricket. A lot of people criticize the fact that players like Rishabh Pant try to attack each and every ball, which would be a stupid strategy even in the T20 format. Look at the way Pant, Ashwin and Gill got out during the WTC final and you will get my point. A good player would leave good deliveries and attack those which are of poor line and length. If you throw your bat at every ball, then the term to be used for such players is not "aggressive", but "stupid".

India went with an extremely inexperienced playing XI and it would have been humiliating for the Sri Lanka to lose against such a side. They won the match, but it was very close. 20 runs were needed from the last 2 overs and if Indians had bowled tightly, then it would have got very difficult for the Lankans. The captaincy was also not up to the mark. I know that there is almost zero chance that Virat Kohli would be replaced as the captain of the Indian team anytime soon (in any of the formats).  But in the unlikely scenario of that happening, Shikhar Dhawan doesn't seems to be a good replacement.

The title is slightly misleading IMO. What Amazon denied is the rumor that they will accept Bitcoin by the end of this year. They never said that Bitcoin will never be accepted by Amazon. Also, in the statement, they once again confirmed that they have an interest in cryptocurrency. More details can be found here:

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/7/27/amazons-denial-on-accepting-bitcoin-sends-it-tumbling


Now some are interpreting this as a sign that Amazon want to create their own cryptocurrency. But for me at least, that doesn't seems to be the case. Facebook tried this and failed. And I don't think that Amazon will repeat the same mistake.

The ATH stands at $64,000 (April 2021), so that should be our baseline scenario. Since the user base and acceptability is always increasing, theoretically at least there is no reason to believe that those levels won't be achieved again. Personally I am not worried about achieving a particular level within this cycle. I first invested in Bitcoin almost 5 years back (January 2017). And since then, I have witnessed several cycles. I am holding most of my coins ever since I made my first investment, and I don't have any issues in holding them for another 5 years (if that is required).

Same here. I need to pay for my rent in physical cash. So in case I receive the amount in cryptocurrency, then I need to convert it to fiat cash and then go to an ATM to withdraw it. But nowadays it is easy to use cryptocurrency to pay for utility bills and shopping. Even in supermarkets, it is possible to pay using cryptocurrency, although in an indirect manner. First you need to convert your coins to gift cards, and then use these gift cards to make payments for supermarkets, electricity bills, online food delivery.etc.

You get interest on your fiat deposits on banks, because fiat currency is susceptible to inflation. So the interest revenues partially offset the loss that you incur, while holding fiat currency. It is not applicable to currencies such as Bitcoin, which are protected against inflation. So you will never receive an interest on your Bitcoin holdings. There are websites such as Nexo and BlockFi which offer an interest, but I would warn you against moving your coins to these schemes. Their business model doesn't look viable for me.

And for loans, obviously you need to depend on banks. There is no other alternative. 

I wouldn't say this to all of the Indian bowlers. In yesterday's playing XI, Navdeep Saini was having an ODI batting average of 53.50. He didn't bowled, so I guess he was playing as a full-time batsman. 

Bhuvneshwar Kumar can be considered as an all rounder, but he needs to improve upon his batting. And from yesterday's squad, Rahul Chahar is someone who is also considered as a bowling all rounder. Kuldeep Yadav is also not that bad. But the truth is that all these players are being considered as "bowlers who can bat a bit", rather than as genuine all rounders. They are not up to the level of Ben Stokes or Mitchell Marsh. Washington Sundar was touted as one. But given his recent form, I don't have much hope.

Each and every medication has side effects. And the vaccines for COVID 19 are no exception to this. Even the most effective vaccines, such as Pfizer and Moderna have side effects, although in healthy people without comorbidities it never progress to serious complications. Pfizer has reported serious adverse effects at 0.002%-0.005%. The only serious complication I heave heard with the Pfizer vaccine is a study from Israel, which claimed that it causes an increase in cases of myocarditis, especially for those who are aged above 80.

We don't know the exact reason why Biles dropped out after the first rotation. And I am surprised that there was so much expectation on the US women's artistic gymnastics team. This discipline was considered as a monopoly of the Soviet/Russian teams for many decades and only recently teams such as the United States started making inroads. During the cold war era, Romania was the only country that could offer some competition to the USSR women's team. Anyway, by the time of the next Olympics Biles will be 27. I am not sure whether she'll be selected.

Well.. JSRAW already pointed out that India went with just 5 batsmen. Now watching the batting performance from Sri Lanka, it looks like the surface is really hard for batting. The spinners and medium pacers are getting a lot of support from the pitch. The match is now like 50/50. Both the teams have equal chances at the moment. Sri Lanka was cruising nicely, but then Minod Bhanuka got out in the bowling of Kuldeep Yadav. In case Sri Lanka loses this match, then it will be a big setback for them. Given the fact that India struggled to find enough players to get this match going, I expected something better from Sri Lanka this time.

The reply from Amazon was very vague. They denied the rumors, but at the same time they reiterated that they have an interest in cryptocurrency. The rumor first appeared in CityAM, which is a very unreliable source. So it was surprising to see many of the cryptocurrency users taking it seriously. But the plus point is that the denial from Amazon team was not very strong. And that is the reason why the prices recovered to ~40K levels shortly after the announcement/clarification from Amazon.

Against Australia, the West Indian batsmen really struggled. Both the pacers (Starc/Hazlewood) as well as the spinners (Zampa, Turner, Agar) put then in a lot of trouble. But then, it is T20 format and West Indies definitely have an advantage in this format. In fact, they are one of the best in T20 format. It needs to be seen whether rain will allow play today or not. Pakistan has sent a very experienced squad, and they will depend on Babar Azam/Fakhar Zaman for batting, and Shaheen Shah Afridi/Hasan Ali for bowling. BTW, who is this Mohammad Wasim Jnr? Hearing about him for the first time.

Bhuvneshwar Kumar at no.6. Can you believe it? Indian team is going in to this match with 5 batsmen and 6 bowlers. They are fortunate that Sanju Samson is not in isolation. Else who would have kept the wickets? Shikhar Dhawan? If I am not wrong, the playing XI for today's match is going to be the most inexperienced one India ever put up for an international match. And the fun fact is that even with such a squad, India is still the favorite to win. And that tells a lot about the condition of Sri Lankan cricket right now.