As a poker player, you know yourself that it's always X% and Y% of skill. I personally think that luck plays huge part in poker, maybe 60%, but, on the other hand, it's not like in slots or dice, which are 100% luck based. That's why I would call poker a skill based game, where luck still plays a big part. re the short run, i would agree. in the long run---unless you happen to be extremely lucky or unlucky statistically---i truly believe it boils down to skill much more than that. this is especially true IMO because skilled players know how to read hand ranges, employ pot odds, prevent tilt, control pot size, etc to give themselves an additional edge so it's not purely based on the chance of hand A winning vs hand B. If you mean experienced vs inexperienced player, I totally agree with you. But there are thousands of pretty good poker players in the world, and when, say, a 100 of them meet in a tournament with 20 paid places, it depends 90% on luck, who of them will end up ITM. in that one tournament, yes, luck will be a big determining factor. a single suckout can knock the best player out of the game. however, if you run that same tournament 1000 times, i am confident the best players will cash statistically more often. that's what i'm getting at. |
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In 2019, the IRS sent the famous three letters to US tax payers. It's unclear how they got the data, but they did issue a summons to Coinbase for customers with transactions past a threshold (200tx, $20k total... tho that's still vague, $20k / tx? $20k withdrawn? $20k transacted total is very very little) Well now in 2020 IRS sent another set of similar letters yesterday, and it's still unclear how they got the data, but given that they signed a deal with Coinbase Analytics in July, it's not hard to guess. i assume the coinbase summons was one source of the taxpayer data in the earlier rounds of letters. another obvious source would be the ongoing 1099-Ks exchanges like coinbase, gemini, and kraken have been sending since 2017 or 2018. the article mentions subpoenas of non-USA exchanges like bitstamp---yikes! i wonder if that extends to the shiftier exchanges like binance, bitmex, kucoin, etc and to what extent they are complying. i really wonder what kind of volume/activity would warrant an IRS subpoena, american exchange or otherwise. any idea? i assume exchanges are not obligated to tell you when it happens. this type of stuff sends shivers down my spine! |
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What's preventing me from using Bitcoin is that none of the services that I use accept Bitcoin payments, and since most of them are big companies, there's no point in asking them, cause my voice won't change anything. that's unfortunately what drives me towards using huge companies like amazon, walmart, whole foods---they're big enough that i can at least buy gift cards with bitcoin. i do like spending bitcoin, particularly after it has significantly appreciated in value, and while i love supporting local shops, mom and pops etc that is the reality of it. And the second problem is fees, when there's a lot of market activity, the fees tend to get to a few dollars on average - no way I'm paying that for my consumer transactions, unless the deal is so good that it covers the fee.
i wouldn't mind paying lower fees and waiting several hours for the order to be fulfilled. that can unfortunately cause errors on the merchant side, as i have experienced, so it's true that i usually pay higher fees than i'd like to ensure timely confirmation. in truth though, it doesn't have a major effect on someone like me, who really only spends/sells after significant capital gains. the fees are pretty negligible compared to the gains, so it's an afterthought. |
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i'm registered and should be there tomorrow, although i expect to be bleary-eyed.  Good news - password problem was fixed! I have sent the passwords to all you regulars (well, I might have missed one), so plz let me know if I did!
You missed me I guess 🤪 Matter of fact that I am still not ready to join this series. I did not bother to contact SwC to change my email yet. Hopefully I will do that soon when I have time and once everything is fixed I will update here. just make a new account and load it up, dude! that's the beauty of SwC. there's no KYC and you're not married to any one account. (i guess the downside is you won't be able to immediately chat) On a different note - tyKiwanuka won't participate in this series for good reasons and so I am kindly asking if anyone here would like to help me out by taking care of the spreadsheet? Would help a lot!
say it ain't so, ty! you know no one else has the same passion for stat crunching.  |
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Would the US Justice Department be doing the same to try and recover stolen bitcoins if the alleged perpetrators weren't North Korean state-funded hackers?
probably not, although the DOJ did go after BTC-E and alexander vinnik pretty damn hard. they just didn't manage to seize any of the money until years later. this bank seizure a couple months ago shows they are still trying, 3-4 years after BTC-E was indicted! NZ police seize $140m from Russian 'computer genius' Alexander Vinnik |
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that's anyone who wants to participate in the offering.if anyone really wants exposure to INX tokens, i'm sure there will be aftermarkets for them---just like every other ERC-20 token. they can be traded p2p or through decentralized exchanges, and possibly also through centralized exchanges who allow unverified trading. i certainly wouldn't buy at the ICO price (especially because we have no idea what the realistic prospects for this exchange even are) nor would i ever give up my KYC for a coin offering.  |
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Also: The opportunity cost of spending bitcoin rather than fiat.
Of course one can always spend and refill, but that can be (1) relatively cumbersome and (2) come with unwanted tax implications. not to mention it costs money---fees to wire money to an exchange, trading fees, or the premium you pay over spot price on LBC. and while you're waiting or going through the process to rebuy, the price could edge even higher. this is why we see what bitpay likes to call a "wealth effect" with bitcoin usage. after a significant rise in price, people love to spend their bitcoin as a way to lock in those capital gains. this was in 2017: The more valuable bitcoin has become, the more people are using it to buy stuff. ”We have definitely seen a ‘wealth effect’ pattern when the bitcoin price increases,” says James Walpole, BitPay’s marketing manager. In other words, if you already owned bitcoin and it rose in value, selling some bitcoin would give you more dollars to spend. The bitcoin “wealth effect” is also evident in the buying patterns of customers at CheapAir, which sells plane tickets, hotel reservations and car rentals online. CheapAir was one of the earliest merchants to accept bitcoin payments in November 2013, and founder Jeff Klee says his bitcoin customers are now feeling flush. “With bitcoin we tend to generate more sales in premium cabins like business class or first class,” he says. “Certainly the average spend for the bitcoin customer is higher than a non-bitcoin customer.” https://qz.com/931810/cheapair-and-bitpay-data-show-rising-bitcoin-btc-payment-volumes/i 100% agree with the points about tax implications and credit card incentives too. you could get 2-3% cash back using a credit card, whereas using bitcoin might just incur costs (to replace it) and unwanted taxable transactions. |
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i'm not surprised. hashpower has been quietly moving from china to north america for the last couple years, and mining industry insiders have been speculating this would continue post-halving---especially if prices remain high, as they have. https://decrypt.co/27777/bitcoin-halving-could-bring-way-more-mining-back-to-north-america“Chinese miners are generally more leveraged than North American,” Ethan Vera, a pool operator at North American Luxor Mining Pool, told Decrypt. “It's clear that they are highly levered because during the fall in crypto prices in March, almost all of them margin called.”
Matrix Port, the newest venture from Bitmain co-founder Jihan Wu, also makes loans to many of China’s biggest miners, Vera confirmed. These miners may have access to the cheapest electricity in the world, but that won’t matter if all of their revenue goes toward paying off their debt.
As these operations implode, mining firms in North America (especially when they finally rig up new machines) will fill the gaps in hashrate.
Denis Rusinovich, who operates an 80-megawatt mining operation in Kazakhstan, expects that, once many more new generation ASICs come on line, this “will [have a] major impact [on] hashrate redistribution for the next 12 months.” He elaborated that, if the Bitcoin price is high after the halving (around or above $8,000), then inefficient miners will have a reprieve, but if Bitcoin is trending towards $4,000, then he expects we could see “price wars” wherein larger farms come out on top over smaller ones, something that could risk centralizing mining in China further.
Even with Bitcoin at $9,000, it’s likely that this halving will hurt North America “pretty bad in the near-term,” Vera told Decrypt, “but it will be good in the mid-term.”
Samson Mow, the Chief Strategy Officer of Blockstream, agreed, adding that “[w]e’re already seeing a large segment of Bitcoin mining move to North America.” These include Blockstream’s operations, a 300 MW joint-operation between its Quebec and Georgia facilities. Munich-based Data AG (formerly, Northern Bitcoin AG) has established its own 300MW facility in Rockdale, Texas. With 300 MW total capacity, these are some of the largest Bitcoin mining facilities in the world.
Other examples of North America’s burgeoning mining sector are not too hard to find. One firm, Upstream Data, is selling mining rigs to oil drillers to help them make better use of flare or vented gas. Another company, VBit, is establishing a 200 MW facility in Alberta, Canada.
Mow expects this wealth to run over into the ASIC’s chip manufacturing business, as well, saying “it’s inevitable” that “major ASIC companies setup manufacturing facilities in North America in the coming years.” An interesting article, not only because of the mining farm itself, but also because of the context in which the article was written. Silbert looks at this endeavor not only from a profit perspective, but from a geopolitical and economic perspective that goes in the direction of relocating mining power and creating new jobs in the US
That struck me too. No one lasted very long pursuing anything other than ruthless profit so I dunno how he's framed this with his board or whatever. relocating mining power away from china is good for DGC's and frankly all of our interests. still, i view those comments (particularly about creating american jobs) as more of an effort to market the venture, especially to local officials who can offer them tax incentives and grease the permitting/licensing process. profit is still the driving motivation, no doubt. |
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In many instances, the actor converted the cryptocurrency into BTC, Tether, or other forms of cryptocurrency – a process known as “chain hopping” – in order to obfuscate the transaction path. As detailed in the pleadings, law enforcement was nonetheless able to trace the funds, despite the sophisticated laundering techniques used. this is a perfect example of why we need schnorr signatures. without schnorr signatures, we won't have adaptor signatures, which are needed for trustless and properly obfuscated cross-chain swaps. http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/layer2-summit/2018/scriptless-scripts/The hacker stole nearly $2.5 million and laundered it through over 100 accounts at another virtual currency exchange. they probably ran it through binance, with their 2 BTC withdrawal limit on unverified accounts. All in all, the Justice department is looking to forfeit 280 accounts but how do they know those accounts belongs to the NK hackers or the Chinese launderers? it's probably due to a distinct, repeating pattern involving the same actors. chainalysis has blogged before about a niche in the chinese OTC markets for brokers that specifically cater to money launderers. the justice department still technically needs to prove their case: The claims made in this complaint are only allegations and do not constitute a determination of liability. The burden to prove forfeitability in a civil forfeiture proceeding is upon the government. |
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I haven't sent out the passwords out to everybody yet because it turns out, the password for this Sunday's game is not working... waiting to hear back from SwC...
hmmm, it's already friday evening. i have a nagging feeling this weekend's game will get scrapped. maybe that's just as well---i'm not sure how many players we'll get on short notice. we can just add a replacement qualifier in october, or do 7 qualifiers in total. if it runs, i'll try to be there though. i just shipped over my 3200 chips to @efi. |
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Lol I almost missed this thread! Maybe it's not a bad idea to ping everyone in the old one (series #3). +1. i was browsing the SwC tournament lobby and just happened to notice 8 weeks of bitcointalk tourneys listed. and here i thought i had a weekend off! thanks for setting this up, @efi! it's gonna be a rocky few weeks ahead for me but i'll try to make it as usual. i need to load up my SwC account, but i'll be sending chips for the whole series your way soon. i assume there's been no word on lifting the chat restrictions? i haven't had any time to play lately and grind up the required krill. |
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As a poker player, you know yourself that it's always X% and Y% of skill. I personally think that luck plays huge part in poker, maybe 60%, but, on the other hand, it's not like in slots or dice, which are 100% luck based. That's why I would call poker a skill based game, where luck still plays a big part. re the short run, i would agree. in the long run---unless you happen to be extremely lucky or unlucky statistically---i truly believe it boils down to skill much more than that. this is especially true IMO because skilled players know how to read hand ranges, employ pot odds, prevent tilt, control pot size, etc to give themselves an additional edge so it's not purely based on the chance of hand A winning vs hand B. |
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Larsen cities an article on how China has more than 65% of the global bitcoin hashrate, although the University of Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) that conducted the report explained the overall hashrate in the study “may not be fully representative”.
Still, Larsen argues in his opinion piece to policymakers the dangers that exist were China to take over the Bitcoin protocol. “It's not hard to imagine a dystopian future. A U.S. defense payment to an ally could be blocked or reversed”, says Larsen.
ripple executives have been repeating this old tired line for years. it's just one of their selling points for having a much more centralized (reversible) consensus system. their CEO (brad garlinghouse) said something similar in a CNN interview earlier this year: https://cryptoslate.com/ripple-ceo-blasts-concentration-of-bitcoin-miners-in-china-but-his-critique-misses-the-mark/Ripple CEO bashes Bitcoin, claims China controls BTC blockchain
In a recent interview, Garlinghouse echoed a fairly widespread critique of Bitcoin, claiming that China controls the BTC blockchain due to the heavy concentration of miners within the country.
“China controls the Bitcoin blockchain. There are four miners in China that represent the 60%+ of mining capacity and 80% of mining capacity is based in China for Bitcoin and Ether.” to them i say, show me the 51% attack! |
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All the IRS have done here is move it up to be front and center. any idea if statistics are available on the number of schedule 1 filers vs the total taxpaying population? this probably expands who sees/answers the question by tens of millions. Given that you don't have to file a Schedule 1 unless you have additional income or adjustments to declare, I wonder if the IRS thought that people were lying by omission by simply not filing a Schedule 1 if they didn't need to for other reasons, and therefore avoiding the question on "virtual currencies"? Can't see any other good reason to single out "virtual currency" and place it on the base 1040, when they don't do so for any other currency.
i think they are having a real problem with legitimate ignorance on the part of retail investors. crypto exchanges aren't subject to the same 1099-B reporting requirements that have traditionally kept investors compliant, and it takes a lot of volume ($20k + 200 transactions) to hit 1099-k thresholds on exchanges that send them---coinbase, kraken, etc. offshore exchanges ignore all this stuff. in comparison, your stock broker must send you a 1099-B regardless of the amounts in question. i reckon their next move will be to bring 1099 reporting requirements in line with traditional investments. |
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Similar events occurred post 2008 economic crisis. Bank CEO's who may or may not have been responsible for causing the economic crisis, received "golden parachute" bonuses. it smells quite a lot like that. i wonder how many of these companies took coronavirus bailout funds (PPP loans etc) while paying out these bonuses. that was the jaw-dropping contrast to see in 2008:Citigroup Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co. and seven other U.S. banks paid $32.6 billion in bonuses in 2008 while receiving $175 billion in taxpayer funds, according to a report by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. |
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Is there much call for this?
I was under the impression that even the world's hottest super computer is pathetically outgunned by any dedicated mining machine. I presume hijacking even a handful of fancy GPUs doing AI type stuff would give you more grunt and more options.
it depends on the supercomputer and the coin you're trying to mine. re bitcoin, i suspect you're right. but take an ASIC-resistant coin like monero and that all changes. just imagine pointing this at the monero network: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(supercomputer) 18,688 AMD Opteron 6274 16-core CPUs
18,688 Nvidia Tesla K20X GPUs |
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~
if the game is good (profitable) and i'm playing well, then i stay in, period. a deeper stack in a fishy game should only make things more profitable.
This is not about me, definitely. I can never say whether the game is profitable or not. well, did you win those pots based on skill or luck? or to put it more bluntly, is there a maniac at the table giving his money away? if so, you should probably stick around and take some of it. classic quote from my favorite poker movie, rounders: "if you can't spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker."  |
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Would this make Kamala Harris the automatic replacement or would they give Hillary another chance? It could be anyone then: If a candidate dies before the general election but after they've secured their party's nomination, it's a relatively simple fix: The deceased candidate's party picks a replacement (who may or may not be the vice presidential candidate from the ticket), and that replacement is on the ballot on Election Day. Both the Republican and the Democratic parties have rules about how their parties would fill the vacancy. Source: https://people.howstuffworks.com/what-happens-presidential-candidate-dies.htmit could technically be anybody, but hillary has zero chance for the same reason she didn't even run in 2020. her political prospects are dead. like i said earlier, kamala is being groomed for the 2024 candidacy IMO. and the longer she stays in the spotlight---in the unlikely event biden is forced to step down prior to november---the more likely she'll be the candidate in 2020 too. that's why her odds for president jumped so much when she was picked as VP. back at 160 now......that seems a bit more reasonable. i see biden sticking this out. |
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It sounds like new rake increases put in place without notifying players. Is that in fact the case or are these rake changes not effective yet?
i can see hands getting raked at 3% on the 25/50 BBJ tables, so apparently the rake hikes have already gone into effect. i'm sure this will do wonders for traffic..... |
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my first thought was "oh shit, what if they got tax IDs, physical addresses, and other filer info"? fortunately the breach doesn't actually look that bad. customers’ names, email addresses, payment processor profiles and messages sometimes containing cryptocurrency incomes. To pay for subscriptions, premium users also enter billing information into Stripe, a payment processor. Stripe is connected to CryptoTrader.Tax’s support center platform and shows customers’ email addresses and general locations, but it does not expose physical addresses or credit, debit and banking information, according to the Stripe website.
The hacker also accessed marketing communications, referral numbers, commission earnings and revenues from affiliates who promote the CryptoTrader.Tax service on websites and social media, according to the materials reviewed by CoinDesk and Kemmerer. this is yet another reminder to use a different email address for every service though---if it gets leaked, no big deal. One thing that also struck me: The co-founder of the platform, David Kemmerer, also confirmed the breach and detailed that the data were compromised on April 7. I suppose they weren't planning on telling anyone about it. i noticed that and thought "thanks for waiting 4.5 months until the dump was found on the dark web to mention it"! but maybe they at least informed affected customers at the time. it's not 100% clear when they disclosed it: CryptoTrader.Tax’s security team investigated the breach and found tax filing account passwords and CryptoTrader.Tax’s website were not compromised, Kemmerer said. The team then alerted parties affected by the breach and took steps to improve security measures and monitoring systems across internal and third-party applications, Kemmerer said. |
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