421,200,216
Coyster1

The economy was shut earlier this year to accommodate efforts in tracing cases of corona virus and to stop the rapid spread, but from the news I'm about to share, I do not think any sort of wave or spread of the virus can shut down the economy again. Costa Rica as a country is a tourist attraction to people from different parts of the world, but majorly from the U.S., and that's to say the U.S. dollars plays a very important role in the Costa Rican economy.
Despite the United States of America having more than five million confirmed Corona virus cases, Costa Rica is opening it's borders to American tourists and to make things sound good, only Americans from six states:
Mind you this five states combined have had a total of about 694,765 confirmed cases of covid-19, which is about 20 times higher than the number of cases in Costa Rica. So it's obvious this is a move made to stimulate the Costa Rican economy, and can be said to be at the expense of health. This is very risky from the Costa Rican government and it'll cause huge backlash if it leads to a wide spread of covid-19 in their territory, as of course they will put the blame on this decision.

Another thing to note is how important a role they (Costa Rica) are playing in trying to revive their economy, do you think other nations will also follow suit and take risky measures like this one to generate funds needed for the fast recovery of the economy. Some people, in my country for example have been calling for fresh total lockdowns to be imposed as the only option to defeat the virus completely, I don't think any government can take that step again, what do you think?
Read the full news, it's a good read: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/25/costa-rica-is-allowing-american-tourists-from-six-us-states.html

The article also highlights this:
That is to say, it's not only about knowing the technicalities, but how large a chunk of Bitcoin users are ready to use, implement and manage it, I agree with the "privacy loves company" quote, imo, for the importance of privacy to be chiseled in the minds of a lot of Bitcoin users, there has to be quite a large number of users taking the responsibility of not losing their privacy. But atm, the larger number seems to be okay with the "red herring" that it's fine if their identities are linked through KYC and their banks, as they aren't scammers per se.

I would not trust the random walk theory with my money, nor with a risky investment like Bitcoin (you need to know when it's good time to invest). I'd give a good example, the pattern Bitcoin price usual takes after a halving is a prediction with a premise somewhat, a shrewd investor will rather follow that path, accumulating before the halving and waiting for the next 6-12 months to see if the pattern repeats itself, it very well could/could not, but what I know is it's an Investment that's based on a pattern that has been experienced before, chances are higher of it pulling through.

Random theories are just more or less lucky guesses, I'd rather be researching into an asset I want to invest in, be it stocks or cryptocurrency, to get an understanding of the market and even if not for the immediate profits, but so I'll be productive in that field in the long term. That being said, true random guesses could give you profits some time, but if you learn all there is about an investment market, you can always make profits for a lifetime.

Bounties don't prevent users from using the serach function. I agree with you that it may be impossible to create a completely novel topic, but adding novel ideas and including new things you've learned or experienced is welcomed. If for example I'm just going to make a thread on a topic that has been discussed before without putting in anything new, it's better I just bump the best thread on that topic, I'd not be accused of any redundancy or spam doing so, but if there is a new development on that subject that I will want to add, then I can create a new topic.

Thanks for the links on this treatise on Bitcoin and privacy, I've spent the last hour reading the two parts (1&2), and it's really educative to say the least; there's a particular excerpt I love in the part 1, that underscores how important privacy is:
After reading the articles, I couldn't agree with you more, there are quite a lot of forms and "red herrings" introduced to eliminate our privacy when we spend or buy Bitcoin, but users need to know how possible it is to still maintain their privacy notwithstanding and how important it is to do so. This treatise provides such knowledge in a form that is very easy to understand and implement.

I believe since David Damesceno runs a YouTube channel, the scammers allured him using a fake video editor, he prolly wanted to make better videos for his subscribers, why I'm including this is because if you're popular for something on social media, Telegram for example, scammers may attack with a different method, using something they know you'll probably need, for your business, channel or group, just like in this case. Always verify and do not download anything from just anybody or Google playstore, always download through the official website.

New exchanges aren't the best. Binance was founded in 2017, so it's not a new exchange, I wouldn't advice newbies to use new exchanges, except if you want to play around with worthless coins, with no value.

Google searches have a lot of vulnerabilities in filtering scam from original, when downloading or seeking recommendation, I'd not advice you go through Google search, you could get directed to fake websites or download sites with malware stored in them, you can search using DuckDuckGo search engine or you ask users on the forum to recommend exchanges to you, either centralized or dex.
I don't think this is also correct, I think what should be written down and kept safe is your 12-24 word recovery/mnemonic phrase, the private keys are to be stored in the wallet, then you use your recovery seed to recover/import/export the wallet at anytime you desire.

Of course the world isn't, and I'm not arguing that it is, the West have gone far ahead of Africa by every means possible, and I'm not expecting Africa to do that good between their time of independence and now; but obviously closing the gap is something they should have achieved somewhat. Colonialism doesn't end outrightly and the former colonial powers still have some form of authority in their former colonies only because the greedy African leaders let it be so, they most times need their support so their dictatorial powers in their country won't be checkmated and their corruption charges would only be stifled within their territories.

We've seen what happened to leaders like Ghadafi who stood up to the powers in the Western world, if African leaders want their territories to be truly Independent, then they must abstain from excessive corruption, how can their territories be free from the authority of the former colonial masters when they send their looted funds over there to be kept in foreign banks, these Western countries know those funds are looted, but it's accepted and put into their economy, after recycling it for years, they expose and return it back, we've seen this happen countless times, that being said, the culmination of it all is that Africa's current state is cause of the high level of nepotism and corruption within.

If Navalny survives this ordeal, I'm sure it's going to leave him in a very bad physical condition, he could lose proper functioning of vital parts of his body and that will one way or another end his criticism against Putin and his government, and that is exactly why this attack was perpetrated, It's either to kill him or render him handicap. It's sad how modern day politics has resulted into silencing strong oppositions to dictatorial rule. There's no point in asking what the world is going to do, this sort of attack comes from the top and it's done with utmost shrewdness, there can be absolutely no trace.

AFAIK there is no territory in Africa still under colonial rule, many African countries gained independence some 50+ years ago and that's more than enough time for them to have developed their territories. Of course I know development comes with time, but half of a century is more than enough time to be on the path to achieving something good as a nation and in the larger picture, a continent, at the least providing a life worth living for their citizens.

After 'outside' colonialism ended in Africa, a situation of "Africans colonizing Africans" began, and it is the product of failed/greedy leaders, After their hero's of the past struggled to attain freedom for them and they were then free, they should have taken the opportunity to make Africa great since they now ruled themselves. I wouldn't blame colonialism for Africas woes, but rather lack of good leadership and since this leaders still save their looted funds in foreign banks, pumping the economy of the Western world, whilst impoverishing their citizens back home, the light at the end of the tunnel is dimmer than ever for Africa.

And in this mornings news of few minutes ago, the stock market in Europe as a whole is looking good and recovering well, with FTSE, DAX, CAC 40 and the rest all starting the week on a higher note; here's an excerpt:
The pandemic doesn't seem to be stopping the U.S. stock, still an upward movement after last weeks record from S&P 500.

Source of the info: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/24/european-markets-watch-coronavirus-and-geopolitics.html

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Coyster1

That's what I hope to see too, what will be disappointing is if one or both of them allows the pressure of the final get to them and they start to play without the kind of freedom and attacking flow we know them for, IIRC, the last UCL final was played under that tempo and it wasn't interesting. As for who will win, there are no favorites in this one imo, I see everyone making their call in Bayerns favor and the reason is obvious, but in a final, with the attacking quality PSG possesses, absolutely anything is possible and I wouldn't be surprised if the side from France lifts the trophy tonight.

That was back in May (during total lockdown). After the lockdown, the U.S. added millions of jobs back and people could return to their jobs, even in my country, people who were initially layed off were called back when businesses opened and their employers started generating income from the company. You cannot compare the unemployment rate of March, April and May with that of now, things aren't too good now, but they aren't as bad as back then either, the economy is active now, it was shut then.

I'm not surprised the numbers filing for unemployment benefits in the U.S. is going above 1 million, we're not out of the pandemic just yet, and the economy is bound to suffer from the effects of the total lockdowns earlier this year, it's inevitable, but with time more jobs will be created/reopened and the curve will continue to go down. But then there's prolly an Inflation approaching after all the money printed this year alone.

Bill gates is rich enough to fund his foundation himself, but there are still people out there who would not mind to donate to a good course and his foundation is that, and those are the individuals he is reaching out to for donations. It is not like he's robbing people of their money or something (mind you, it's voluntary). And if you consider how large the foundation is, as well as it's assets, it's obvious majority of the funds is coming from the wealthy and that's not a problem for them.

I can't really see a reason to blame the rich people for anything, you look at their assets and ask why they haven't paid their workers or why they ask for donations for their employees, but in business, what matters is what the company or organization is making at that time, if the company is struggling to make any income, obviously paying workers will be a problem, the billionaire wouldn't pay from his personal funds. That being said, this rich individuals are also donors to other foundations, sectors, groups etc.

Before China and countries in Asia shut down their borders, the virus had already spread to many parts of the world, including America, Europe and Africa, imo why it took some countries quite a while to get their first case and subsequent cases was because they had insufficient testing facilities (Africa for example). It's not so easy to shut down your borders as a country, that is indirectly shutting down your economy, mind you that it took quite a while before countries had to succumb to closing their territories to outsiders, while returnees were quarantined, it was more or less the only option then.

All these makes it impossible to prevent a disease like Corona virus from spreading to many parts of the world. To mention a few; tourism and sports connects people to different parts of the world, for example when the virus hadn't become full blown, thousands of people still traveled to watch football matches (sports) in other countries, especially in England, Italy and Spain and months later they had a real issue on their hands. These and many more made the spread inevitable, and I don't think anyone is to blame for it.
Natural immunity.

406,651,003
Coyster1

I know users can offer their services as they please, but offering a free BM service in my opinion is absurd, if a company wants to advertise in btt, they should have a budget for that, to pay the participants in the campaign as well as the manager who has quite a lot of work to do, ranging from selecting good posters, to counting posts and preventing spam every week. It would be wrong imo if users start offering free BM services, though that won't still get them campaigns, these companies usually choose the reliable BM's and they are not much.
It's the same as accepting payments, why not do that. Goodluck btw.

I don't see any reason why Pirlo would not want him, Kareem Benzema is one of the best strikers/most prolific in the world atm, the thing is if Madrid will ever be willing to sell and for how much. Forget about the ball carrying a Juventus badge, but since Ronaldo left Real Madrid, Benzema has matured into their main man, playing with more freedom and confidence, I don't think he'll want to come to juve to return to Ronaldo's shadow again.