In reality, depending on your specific location, Bitcoin is indeed hardly used as a form of currency or payment. But that does not mean that Bitcoin can only be used if exchanged to fiat first. At the very least, you can buy a Tesla with Bitcoin or a Lamborghini somewhere if you hate electric cars.

As to Bitcoin's decentralization, it is not created to solve social issues such as social differences. You tell your friend that Bitcoin is not here as a sort of a redeemer. Tell your friend, or perhaps including yourself, that Bitcoin is a mere payment system alternative. It does not address each and every problem there is in the world.

Anyway, sometimes we don't have to counter all kinds of arguments against Bitcoin. Some of them are actually true.

People gambled long before COVID-19 came into this world. People will gamble long after COVID-19 is gone out of this world.

The graph shows consistent annual increase in online gambling through the years. COVID-19 is only present within a small time frame of that.

There may be an increase in online gambling during COVID-19 due to certain reasons such as most governments' order for people to stay at home, less social life, closure of land-based casinos, and so on but there must have been also a decrease due to people losing their jobs, livelihood, or businesses, and so on.

You are not obliged to create trends, or thread if that's what you really meant.


I'm referring you to the simplest set of guidelines by sirius:


In other words, avoid posting if you think your post is not contributing anything new or relevant to the discussion. You may ask related questions, though. That's encouraged. But take note that more often questions are repeatedly asked simply because people are lazy to read.


Again, you don't need to create a thread. As a beginner, the best and most productive thing to do is to explore the forum. You will know from it if this is worth your precious time.


Sooner or later, you will find something that interests you more than the rest.

Welcome to the forum, Alisha-k!

There's huge money circulating around thanks to the stimulus. That's almost a couple trillion USD. So there's now stronger spending. But all this is very temporary. This is hollow money, after all. How much does each US citizen receive from the stimulus? A mere $1,400 more or less? This cannot sustain the high spending. Not to mention the negative effect it brings to the inflation rate in the long run. So this rise in USD does not mean confidence in the currency, or increase in investment, and so on. This simply means people have something to spend, but very temporarily.

The way I understood it, and based on a lot of informative responses above, is that Bitcoin is hard-coded in such a way that tampering with the original code wouldn't change anything but would merely create another one, which is of course different from the original one.

Who knows, in the near future, the fork might appeal more to the huge majority of the population and would become the main currency? But it doesn't mean that Bitcoin was successfully changed from its original design.

So, as to your concern, Bitcoin is indeed ruled by no other but mathematics. You change the math, you are creating another one; you're not effecting any change to that which you supposed to change.

In the broad sense of the word, both are gambling. There's not much difference between the two. It's just that there are various interpretations of the word, various contexts on which gambling could be construed differently.

Gambling could refer to placing bets on a game of chance or on a sports team as much as it could refer to taking a risk making a bid order in a stock market or on a crypto exchange platform. However, most of the time gambling in the sense of the former is more on merely having fun and taking blind chances while the latter is oftentimes understood as a serious undertaking which involves a lot of informed analysis.

At the end of the day, I don't think one should be made illegal while the other legal. But both should be highly regulated.

That's better now. At least you have your money back with you. End of discussion about it.

But I am suddenly curious. I am a little interested of your rejected withdrawal. Was there any reason indicated for the bank's refusal to accept your money from Binance? Or was it Binance which rejected your withdrawal transaction?

Always. That's always the case. Businesses giving money to charitable institutions, creating foundations, shelling out significant amounts for donations, and so on and so forth are always a part of a much bigger plan. Hardly will a business give out money solely for the sake of helping.

But that's not a lie either. That's just part of their overall business arrangement. That's simply how business works. It's just on our end if we get carried away by these acts of generosity and gamble on their platforms because they are doing charitable deeds.

It is not just about the revenue. As a matter of fact, the revenue should be the last consideration. Otherwise, the government better be selling meth and cocaine for a larger income.

The point is that corporations, companies, and businesses of all sizes may do charitable acts. It is their decision, and perhaps part of their wider responsibility to their poor fellowmen. Those are appreciated, of course. They're probably even incentivized for doing so. But those are not reasons for laws to be subjective toward them.

The article is fun to read.

Social media is indeed a great equalizer. It is where a daily wage earner, for example, could directly insult a sitting president or a CEO or a billionaire. And this is indeed the one being exploited by the so-called bitcoiners. However, the social media is also a topsy-turvy, almost anarchic, world where right and wrong, truth and lie, fact and fiction, scam and legit, and so on are getting so mixed together that you can hardly tell anymore which is which.

So, in a way, while bitcoiners may consider this as their stronghold or turf, it could also be the very place where Bitcoin is utterly desecrated, made so cheap, abused, and humiliated by its very own rowdy and ignorant diehard and blind supporters.

Personally, I would discourage anybody seriously interested enough to get to know Bitcoin to learn about it on social media or even exclusive crypto or Bitcoin publications. A newbie trying to objectively understand Bitcoin with the use of social media might end up concluding that Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme.

I don't know who are the bitcoiners on social media. Perhaps they're the likes of @APompliano, @adam3us, @100trillionUSD, @DocumentingBTC, @lopp, @michael_saylor, and so on. But they're definitely not the only ones who could make Bitcoin posts out there. There are a million others. So I don't I think I'd agree with this:

Since what is asked is how to explain an NFT to a 5-year old, I wouldn't even care to explain what a non-fungible token is. I would just tell the child that an NFT is just a proof that you are the owner of something. For example, he/she owns the drawing that he/she submitted to his/her favorite teacher. In order to prove that he/she owns it, there is a sort of a certificate or a title of ownership attached to it which says the drawing belongs to him/her.

I guess that's good enough explanation for a 5-year old to understand what an NFT is. Never mind how NFTs benefit the economy. A 5-year old doesn't care about it.

It seems I can't see anything very special in your article. AML/CTF laws are already present in countries around the world, although some are probably not yet as comprehensive as others in that they have yet to incorporate certain provisions pertaining to cryptocurrency.

Perhaps the best thing about Luxembourg's version is that it is treating cryptocurrency in a more friendly manner. That's just my own way of interpreting the country's cryptocurrency definition as a currency that could be bought, sold, and transferred or even used as payment or investment. That's indeed a broad acknowledgement of crypto's different uses.

This is one opinion among thousands of different opinions. Bobby Lee may not be so stupid to just blabber without any basis, but so are the rest of early Bitcoin enthusiasts who may have opposite views.

Crypto winter is no rare occurrence. It's nothing but a bearish season, sometimes it's worse, sometimes it's not. But we need to remind ourselves that bear prices of Bitcoin are getting higher. Gone are the days when we see Bitcoin price bearish at $4,000 or $5,000. We are already at a certain phase where a bear price is still so high at $35,000 or even $50,000.

I also don't agree that a 90% drop of Bitcoin's price is happening.

This is more of a technological challenge. Future innovations in communication and technology would most likely address worst forms of outages caused by large-scale disasters both man-made and natural.

As for Bitcoin, it is not really a frontliner in terms of technological innovation. It makes use of existing technologies more than it creates one. It exploits the existence of electricity, internet, smart phones, PCs, and so on. However, I don't think Bitcoin itself can defy a crazy junta which could do all forms of evil for the sake of control.

Another one bites the dust. While there are also business reasons for this to happen, the closure is largely brought about by regulatory strangulation. As such, OKex's decision to just give up on its crypto business interest in South Korea is bittersweet. While I am not a huge fan of centralized exchanges, that's still a crypto business that is shutting down. Well, I guess that's the price they have to pay for being a centralized exchange in a strict country.

Whether there is actually match fixing or throwing in those games is beyond our knowledge. What is certain is that actual game results do not always agree with our predictions. Even a huge favorite with as low as 1.01 odds could lose. Sports bettors are always aware of that.

If OP is this onion-skinned as far as game results vis-à-vis his/her analysis, prediction, or bet are concerned, he/she might end up blacklisting each and every team in his/her chosen sports. After all, every team and player have their disappointing moments.

If not zero, then perhaps replaced or abandoned. Such is probably the fate not just of all fiat money but all forms of money. However, it seems fiat money is the weakest form. It is built upon very unstable, untrustworthy, and shaky a foundation. Backed with nothing, fiat money is meant to die sooner or later. It may be a truly amazing creation, but one which is not expected to last, especially because it is susceptible to human manipulation and abuse. And as we all know, with massive power, which is what control over fiat is, humans can't be trusted.

I don't quite get the rationale behind blacklisting a team. In sport betting, you just analyze the odds and each player and team's statistics, performance, and so on. It seems to me personally blacklisting a team is not an objective way to do betting. After all, a team is just a name or a franchise or company. The players, coaches, staff, managers, and even owners could change anytime. Some leave, some enter, some switch to other teams, and so forth.

As regards your personal experiences, perhaps you're just disappointed that you lost your bets on them on such terms. Get over them.

Sometimes, newbies are too excited that they are disregarding a lot of risks. I understand because I used to be in their shoes. It may be good that somebody is eager to get into Bitcoin, but there are actually basics to get familiar with before actually committing all in into it or they might end up learning the lessons the hard way.

Just remind your friend that Bitcoin is no get-rich scheme; the price could fall hard anytime and although it will surely recover, the recovery may take years. Secondly, and this is a must, your friend should buy it from a trusted seller and then keep it in a trusted open-source non-custodial wallet. Also, please remind him/her to keep all information pertaining to his/her wallet such as seed phrase, password, PIN, private keys, and so on private. He/she alone should have access to it. Finally, of course, tell him/her to buy only Bitcoin. He/she could experiment on altcoins later on when he's got enough knowledge.

I'm not doing any research but I guess there's a handful in the past, or even now, although not as large-scale as Bitcoin. Even in my country, I heard of a community which uses its own money which is not in any way acknowledged, much less sanctioned, by the state.


I am truly curious, did Satoshi ever mention, even in passing, of creating Bitcoin for financial inclusion of everyone anywhere in the world?

Anyway, with Bitcoin comes a number of prerequisites. With fiat's cash there is none. So in this respect, fiat is better than Bitcoin.


As already mentioned above, Bitcoin is better than fiat in certain aspects. So that's mutual. Fiat is also better than Bitcoin in certain aspects.