This question has been discussed before and with no definitive solution in sight

For example, I maintain that the concept of "sound money" is not a very good one, especially if we talk about a currency aspect of money (as opposed to its store of value one). But that's kinda obvious, provided you have a half-functioning brain and do not obsess with the idea of fiat being inherently evil. But I don't know how you are going to replicate in a cryptocurrency the capacity of fiat money to adjust its supply according to the needs of the economy (see the concept of endogenous money to better understand what I'm talking about)

Actually, the majority of referrals came even before the introduction of the share system and likely even before the casino part of the site appeared (i.e. when it was only a faucet). I think it was around 2014 and back then you could just place a link with your referral code somewhere and have a bunch of users becoming your referrals in an hour or so. Times are different now, and these days you can't lure anyone even by paying them back everything


I'm also interested in finding that out

Yes, ICO is another good path to "success"

In this case, it is more like an IPO when a privately-owned company turns into a public one by offering shares in the open market. The difference between direct investing in the bankroll and an ICO is that in the former case (i.e. with direct investing) casinos have more leeway in their operation. For example, they can close this possibility any day they see fit or even return the money invested if they choose so (i.e. make investors disinvest). This is not the case with ICO as I understand it


The sad truth is when the casino will be a success, it won't need outside money

Most fiat monies are already digital these days

I'm almost 100% sure that what you refer to here has nothing to do with government cryptocurrencies based on the blockchain technologies. Most likely, the "digital" something is a payment system which allows people to make payment bypassing banks or already existing payment channels like Visa or MasterCard. If it is in fact something different, let me know and I'll happily admit being wrong. But not till then

But the same question may be asked why they are buying gold then

Russia has been actively buying gold for over a decade by now, since 2006 to be exact:



And given that the gold market is not every elastic overall, i.e. you can't sell industrial-scale amounts of gold without crashing the prices (as something like that had probably happened in 2008), so it is not something that Russia should care about in the short term. Personally, I'm inclined to think that it is just a waste of money anyway as gold won't help the Russian government even in the long-term either. But from this perspective, Bitcoin is not much different from gold (likely just as useless)

But that's not because of shorts specifically, which was his point exactly

You (and him) seem to forget that it is not just about USD and Bitcoin. Bitcoin to other currencies is the same as the dollar to Bitcoin. For example, people can be buying Litecoin (or any other coin, for that matter) with bitcoins borrowed and in this case no shorts are involved but bitcoins are still get borrowed, right?


When nothing else bodes well, obviously

I think it shouldn't be a lot of overhead if any

Technically, you don't even have to first credit the referral commission to the referred user account and then debit it with the share paid back to the referral. You can just credit the referral account balance directly without all this chit-chat between balances. As you can see, it can in fact diminish the load on the servers if implemented properly. And I think it is definitely worth the job as it will allow referrals to see if they are actually paid back as promised. But it is up to you, of course, as I'm not the one who is being paid back here

If you were here a couple years ago you could feel that with your skin

I had been ridiculed, laughed at or otherwise made fun of when I was telling people that blockchain has very specific use cases (with one of these being cryptocurrencies), that it doesn't offer anything that other technologies wouldn't offer too but without its overhead. It is not so much the ignorance that was astonishing (you kinda get used to it) but impenetrable obstinacy that typically goes along with it

That's how the market fools the majority of traders

That is, at first the price starts to move in a rather narrow range, then people start complaining about the market being boring. In order to squeeze more profits they reduce their spreads and increase the size of their orders. And when there is enough liquidity on both sides of the price (as well as shorts), there comes a breakout, either way. People see that they either lost profit opportunities by selling too early or just lost money by setting their buy orders too high. It happens all the time as people can't override their psychology

Actually, interest rates just show interest in asset

As the name itself kinda suggests. Whether it is a positive interest or a negative one is another question as people don't necessarily borrow money to open shorts. They can just easily borrow to open longs. In fact, the highest rates in USD that I ever saw at Bitfinex were exactly when Bitcoin had been skyrocketing. It was obvious that people were buying bitcoins on margin to sell them later when the price rise gave them enough profits. As soon as Bitcoin started to go down, USD interest rates went down too


Nothing bodes well for price presently, and interest rates should be your least concern

Look here for more info


This is the conclusion that I finally arrived at myself (by excluding everything else)

Somehow I thought that the payouts are made as soon as the referral commission gets credited to your account, so it shouldn't lead to a visible decrease in the account balance, but obviously this was not the case. I don't particularly care but why not add this option by paying back instantly? In this way people who sign up for this "initiative" will be able to see that they are really paid back without having to wait for half a week (on average)

Sorry for formatting your text into a somewhat readable form

I agree that running a signature campaign may be too expensive unless you already have really wealthy investors. On the other hand, instead of spending money on advertising, why not go the route of allowing outside investments in the casino bankroll? A couple years ago it was a hot topic, and a few casinos allowed this kind of investment. One of them (forgot its name, though) after acquiring enough publicity and bankroll, returned the money invested and ran on its own since then (don't know what's become of it, either)

I am curious who was that "gentry" guy

Someone registers with the forum at 09:49:59 AM, writes a wall of text at 10:03:40 AM to claim that it's nothing of the ordinary, and then disappears to never be seen again. As to me, it looks extremely fishy. And when no one takes him seriously (well, me at least), we see the site owner himself coming to apologize here. I guess it should have been done in reverse order if the point was to fix things, not to break them further

Well, if the recent rally was not good enough for you, then which is?

Just in case, after the December crash (I refer to 2018, obviously) we started from $3200 and rose to almost $4400 (Bitfinex prices) which is like (4400-3200)/3200x100=37%. If you consider this as not very profitable for just a month, then I don't know, you turn out to be an extremely greedy guy, possibly beyond reasonable limits (given the current market, at least)

And yes, I think that this time it is different. You see, if I'm proved wrong, I'm okay with that as I will only lose part of my future profits. But if, on the other hand, I'm proved right after all, I will preserve my capital mostly intact (by massive hedging) and may even earn something (via shorts). I think this is a good trade-off, any way you look at it

I don't necessarily disagree with you

But in this case it doesn't make any real difference. For example, if only 0.001% (or let it be 1%, if you disagree with my number) of all bitcoins is actually used for anything other than speculation, while Bitcoin Cash is not used at all, technically you could say that Bitcoin has 1M times more utility than Bitcoin Cash. But Bitcoin's use would still remain negligible, no matter how negligible the use of other cryptocurrencies is. Just being more useful than the rest of the pack doesn't make Bitcoin more useful on its own

The real headache is that the risk is not actually decreasing with time

If you had carefully read theymos' report, you would have noticed that the bug was introduced in Bitcoin Core 0.14.0, i.e. not so long ago. But how long ago is actually irrelevant here as this irrefutably proves that there can be new bugs not just to be found but introduced as well (the point on which theymos also focuses our attention). As you can easily guess, the possibility of these bugs doesn't decrease over time. In fact, it can actually rise as Bitcoin becomes more complex and harder to understand (read, efficiently and effectively test it)

This doesn't count

Because merchants may not even know that you paid them with a cryptocurrency (in this case with Bitcoin), let alone accepting it as a legit means of payment. And I'm afraid LN won't mend matters in this department as it is not merchants who are a limiting factor here. And while you (and me too, for that matter) are ready to pay for small things with cryptocurrencies (though, personally, I would prefer to pay with lites, not bitcoins), this is not what most cryptocurrency users are inclined to do at large


The problem is not with Bitcoin and its decimal places, the problem is with the majority of people not willing to use it as a means of payment

Your question is totally legit, so thanks for asking it

First of all, the interests rates at Bitfinex are negligible. Right now I have shorts in Litecoin, Bitcoin, ZCash, and it is only Litecoin interest rates that I can't just discard for fuck's sake. Interest rates on the other coins are below 1% yearly. As you can see, it is not really something you should care about as long as the market doesn't go against you. But if it does, then they will be your least concern anyway

Further, we shouldn't forget that prices are in a long-term downtrend, whether you like it or not. So the stagnating prices are actually a temporary stop before crashing lower. As you might remember, in October and early November prices had also been stagnating in the 6-7k range. But it was definitely worth keeping shorts open as in late November the price crashed two times. Hope this answers your question

That was years ago

And I was one of the first users of this facet (my ID is in the second thousand). Back then it was only a faucet and nothing else. Interestingly, when I was leaving the site, I set my share percentage to 100%, i.e. all my referral commissions were paid back to my referrals, and let the forum know. And what d'ya think, some dude managed to earn 0.0026 BTC through his referral payments to me paid back to him (good for him, I don't mind)



So if anyone is interested in this "one-time offer", i.e. in getting their referral payments back, let me know

And I'm talking about the same

If it was a true "bottom", it wouldn't look like a bottom at all (e.g. like a seabed). It would be like a "big red dildo" with an almost instant and powerful rebound. But what we saw in late November and early December looked more like a hydraulic press crushing the prices without any genuine rebound. So while it definitely looks like a bottom, it may not be the one in the trading sense of the word (read, we have yet to see that "big red dildo")


I'm skeptical about any ATH's in the foreseeable future (other than local ones, of course)