The cryptocurrency market has turned upside down during the last 12 hours or so and many of the coins are down by at least 20%. Some of the coins, such as BCH and BSV are down by more than 35%. Under these circumstances I am more skeptical about the altcoins, especially those outside the top-10 list. I would stick to Bitcoin and some of the most trusted altcoins.

Can't really do anything about the abandoned match. Rain interruptions have become more common nowadays. Anyway, we have two more ODI matches remaining in this series and the matches will be played at Lucknow and Kolkata. Let's hope that we'll get to see some live action on 15th, when the second ODI will be played at the Ekana Cricket Stadium, Lucknow.

You are right. CoinDesk has claimed that the drop was most probably caused by a mass dump of cryptocurrency assets by PlusToken scammers and they have published evidence for their claim. That said, I am not saying that the Coronavirus epidemic has no role in the current bloodbath situation in the cryptocurrency market. It has played its role and there is a lot of FUD going on in the market right now.

I am of the opinion that the Coronavirus pandemic will be contained in the next few months and as the summer season arrives in the Northern Hemisphere, we are going to witness less number of new cases with every passing day. So I guess it will be better for the BCCI to postpone the matches, rather than conducting the tournament without any spectators now. But then, the international cricket calendar is very crowded and a postponed schedule may not be welcomed by some of the cricket boards.

Those who are outside India may be unfamiliar with the situation in India right now. Let me explain a bit. In India, the Supreme Court and the government are having serious disagreements on a number of issues, and the legality of cryptocurrency is just one of these topics. And another thing that everyone should remember right now is that very few among the government ministers are having a good amount of knowledge about cryptocurrency. And therefore, the bureaucrats are the one who formulates laws and regulations regarding this subject.

A few months back, one of these bureaucrats (Subhash Chandra Garg, the then Finance Secretary of India) came up with a suggestion to impose a 10-year jail term on anyone holding cryptocurrency. He formulated a detailed regulation on the ownership of cryptocurrency, which included harsh punishments to anyone even remotely associated with crypto. Fortunately for us, this draft regulation never got approved by the government. Mr. Garg was fired from his position in 2019, after he entered in to a bitter duel with the leadership of the Hinduist RSS, over the subject of sovereign bond scheme.

As per CoinDesk, this dip was caused as a result of mass dumping of cryptocurrency by PlusToken scammers. They have dumped at least $120 million worth of cryptocurrency during the last few days. And that was the reason why the BTC exchange rates plummeted by more than $1,000 during the same period. And if you remember, the PlusToken scam involved cryptocurrency worth at least $3 billion. And this means that it will continue to have a major impact on the cryptocurrency exchange rates, in the foreseeable future.

There are decentralized exchanges (DEX sites) and some minor exchanges where KYC is not needed. But the problem is that there is not enough liquidity with these sites. I have tried using various DEX sites such as Forkdelta and Etherdelta in the past, to cash out some of my bounty rewards. But it was very tough trying to sell the tokens, as there were not enough users willing to purchase them. Even when I found a few buyers the prices were extremely low.

In my case, the situation is a bit complex. Here in India, gambling (both online and offline versions) is not legal. So I am showing the gambling profits in my income tax return as "gifts from abroad". That said, I normally gamble with small amounts, and cumulatively I have lost more than what I have won. I have a few low value transactions to take care of, and this helps me to stay under the radar of the tax authorities.

Even here in India, there have been a lot of campaigns lately urging the users to go for digital payment options rather than physical cash. Unfortunately, when they mean "digital cash", they are referring to digital versions of fiat currency (such as PayTM, Google Pay.etc). Bitcoin is not being heard in any of the campaigns. My biggest fear is that the government will try to eliminate the usage of physical cash, giving the excuse of COVID 19. They can do surveillance on individuals, if they are forced to use the digital versions of fiat currency.

I don't have anything against these altcoin campaigns. But I would consider these campaigns to be trustworthy, only if they keep the tokens in an escrow, and allow independent audit of the fund spending. I don't know how many of the campaigns posted by the OP would agree to that. On top of that, if a small part of the payment is done in ETH (can be as low as 5%), then I would give it a five star rating.

Coming back to the topic, the last test series for the year 2019-20 will get underway in Sri Lanka, as the Brits are visiting the island nation. England will be playing a series of two test matches against Sri Lanka. Given the good form of the England team right now, I don't fancy much chances for the Lankans. Sri Lanka has dropped Lahiru Thirimanne, and included Kusal Perera. The England squad is of full strength, and the only notable omissions are that of Jofra Archer (stress fracture) and Mark Wood (side strain). My prediction: 2-0 in favor of England.   

The best option is to look for signature campaigns that make the payment in Bitcoin. But the problem here is that such campaigns are very few and far between. And the payout rates are not that high either. There are many thousands of bounty hunters and at the most a few hundred slots are available in these signature campaigns. Given the circumstances, you need to make a difficult selection, from the altcoin bounties.

I made the post because as per my analysis, it will be best for India if Virat Kohli regains his form quickly. He is by far the best player in the squad right now (by some distance). He is someone who is capable of guiding his team to victory singlehandedly. Only a very few players have this capability in world cricket right now. He needs to play against quality opposition, so that he may regain his form soon.

And I don't agree with captaincy change right now. Kohli has done a wonderful job as the captain, across the formats. Check his record, and you can see that he is one of the best captains in the history of Indian cricket. 

I have been asking this question for quite sometime. How you are going to know whether a particular level is the rock bottom? How can you be certain that the prices will not dip any further? Many of the investment experts are saying that you should be making the purchase when the prices recover. They don't encourage us to make the purchase when the prices are at the bottom.

LOL... This time I never compared Ben Dunk with any of the legends. I never said that he was Bradman-sque. I didn't even said that he was of the same league as Steve Smith or Virat Kohli. This is the T20 format, and we may witness a relatively unknown player setting the stadium on fire all of a sudden. And within a few months, he may slip into oblivion, never to be heard again.

We've Multan Sultans vs Quetta Gladiators today, in a contest between the top ranked and the bottom ranked teams. Anyone courageous enough to make a bet in favor of the Quetta Gladiators? 

I have been saying this multiple times - there is hardly any impact of the COVID 19 outbreak on the cryptocurrency market. The recent price crash has more to do with the dumping of cryptocurrency on various exchanges by the PlusToken scammers. The dumping has created an over-supply, and that is the primary reason why the prices have gone down. That said, the initial dump was worth around $120 million. It will take many days, or even weeks for the market to recover (given that there are no fresh dumps from these scammers).

In Italy, initially they tried playing the matches in closed stadiums (i.e without any audience). But later, the authorities decided to postpone or cancel all the matches. It will definitely cause a lot of financial loss and may create economic burnout. But still, it is better than having thousands die from the virus, similar to what happened in China and Italy. This year is going to be very difficult for sports industry as a whole.

I am not a big fan of cryptocurrency exchanges, and the exchange tokens. In the past, I have lost good amounts of money to various exchange scams. That said, we need to differentiate between the good and bad exchanges. Some of the exchanges went down for no fault of theirs (Cryptopia, Wex.nz.etc). And at least some of the exchange tokens (such as BNB) have returned good amount of profits for those who invested in them.

^^^^ India wasn't affected much from the Coronavirus outbreak, at least during the initial phases. But that situation is changing very quickly. During the last week or so, more than 50 individuals have been diagnosed with COVID 19, and almost a dozen were diagnosed during the past-24 hours. Given the contagious nature of the outbreak, I have bleak predictions for the next few weeks and the IPL was scheduled to start in two weeks from now.

Bounty hunters are being demonized here for the past few years for no fault of theirs. Whenever the price of a token goes down, the promoters are quick to accuse the bounty hunters of dumping their tokens. But they never responded when I asked them how it is possible to crash the prices, if 0.5% or 1% of the tokens are being dumped in the exchanges. Bounty hunters make up a group of convenient scapegoats.