It's amazing... You have this guy who throws out good points and gives proof that what he's saying is true,  that it's not just some random temper tantrum, and you guys still are name calling him and not showing him respect.

This is the main thing that I took away from this, is that he is undoubtedly being publicly ridiculed to want the Bitcoin network to grow in network ability and usage.

Regardless if you don't agree with what I'm saying, you have to admit that it's amazing how unorganized and hostile the community has gotten over the years. The amount of censorship and dictatorship like moderation of not allowing voting to take place is stupid as hell...

Yeah we'll be seeing some major mood swings in price and usage happen, especially considering you have halving speculations on top of all the problems core is having. It's going to be a shit show.

No, actually I'm pretty sure that people who aren't citizens of the U.S. can in fact cash out... I think I remember reading that somewhere on a website and they pointed out that fact. I mean, there are places in the U.S. that don't support the power ball, and there are people traveling out of their state to go to the nearest place that sells powerball tickets.. So that's essentially bringing up the same issues of legibility that a non US resident has.

You know, it's funny... I remember talking to my uncle who is a broker for JP Morgan about Bitcoin and how he should look into it. I also remember him telling me that it will never work and that the people who control the central banks are too powerful to be overtaken by "a bunch of geeks with digital money"... I should note that I talked to him about it back in 2012, and he kept saying it was going to come back down when it shot up in 2013.

Obviously he saw the bubble, but I digress...

Even though I don't agree with him about Bitcoin never going to survive and replace the dollar, I don't necessarily disagree with him about the amount of power the people in the Central Banks have. If there was a legit movement of millions of people in every country to start using bitcoins at major stores, then I'm sure there will be a major resistance the government will show to try and keep their power. Their will have to be another major revolution before central banks will let go and allow bitcoins to be traded for goods in services.

It really shouldn't be said that going through with buying tickets through this website in a "group buy" format is going to help your odds at winning something like the powerball. You would have to have the group buy an incredibly insane amount of tickets to even have a remote chance of winning.

The odds are something like 1/296 million... There's nothing someone or some group could do to "increase their odds" unless they bought like $500 K worth of tickets... Then you would probably have like a 1/2 million chance to win (didn't do math, just making a point.)

Well, I mean in a sense from what OP was talking about, is that it's through faucets which cost you time. Time is a pretty valuable thing, atleast in my eyes, so it's not like it's "free" by any way of thinking about it. You are essentially gambling your time in a way.

So you could be doing miscellaneous stuff to siphon the faucets for a couple of hours and make a bet that risks your whole stash you accumulated during that time. Honestly, I think I would be more pissed in that scenario, rather than losing funds you actually purchased and deposited on the site.

The thing is, is that you won't be getting the full 1.3 billion in a lump sum payment form. You have taxes to deal with and the local state tax if their is any (only certain areas have no state tax). You have the option to get pretty close to the full amount if you take the annuity option and get paid a certain amount of the total prize over the course of 30 years... But if you think like me, that's a risk, because who knows what the inflation/economy will be like in 30 years time.

Another problem you would have is actually purchasing that much in a big buy like that. Sure you could maybe wire some money to an exchange, but their would be laws to deal with when buying that much crypto.

Yeah, I'm not saying that OP is a scammer either... but I'm saying with that much ungodly wealth going to one person, greed is going to kick in regardless of who that person is...

Even with the most trust worthy escrow on the forum, I'm sure there could be a price tag to buy out the escrow to just "forget" about the situation after the unlikely scenario that he had the winning ticket. 

I like the idea playing the lottery using bitcoins, but trusting a third party with that much money is not something that I, nor do I think anyone else, is willing to do.

The thing about this though... and the reason that you probably won't be getting any participants in this (or at least I would hope not), is because you have to trust a third party to collect the money and then send that money to you.  You can't be serious in thinking that we should essentially trust you to cash out the winning ticket (if by a miracle you do win) and then send the split jackpot to us.  How are you going to transfer our cut of the funds then?  Bank transfer?  Bitcoin? Meet in person?

I don't think you realize that people who are on here are probably good enough financially to spend $10 or so on their own ticket at their local grocery store/gas station.  To trust someone with ~$400 million (which would be the persons cut in this situation) is ridiculous.

I mean, you've brought up a pretty good point here.  It will be one thing to find a place (probably would have to be in Las Vegas) to set up a casino and be able to fund it and employees... but it would be another thing to try and get that approved by the government.  Even at somewhere like Las Vegas, or any other city that approves gambling for that matter; you have to take into account that at this moment, the government won't be able to tax any of those winnings... which is a big "NO-NO" for them.  I mean hell, letting someone have fun and earn money without them taking a cut?? Yeah right.

So in order to get something like this approved, you would probably have to jump through hoops for a couple of years, just trying to get the Fed to hear you out, let alone trying to actually get it approved and having a license to open up shop.

lol, if you ever buy a cell phone through Bitcoin faucets, I feel bad for you because you've probably wasted a year of your life with something you could've afforded easily with a job. Bitcoin isn't magic free money... It's amazing how many times you have to explain this to people, and I explain that when I'm talking about Bitcoin with people who don't know how it works.

Honestly there are a lot of people who are concerned about me paying for my bitcoins, because it's nothing that you can have that's tangible... When in all reality, it's no more tangible than the money they have in their checking accounts and they can monitor them on their bank statements.

Yeah, that's how I read the OP as well... but I think he means for cryptocurrencies in general.  I truly believe though when it comes down to a point where fiat no longer is a viable option and everyone is buying into assets and other commodities, then it will come down to a point where bitcoin will be used for purchasing goods, that is not backed by the USD or any other fiat any more; but rather it would be priced in gold.

Fiat was always intended to represent something else other than "trust" in government.  It was originally designed to carry a specific amount of value in gold.  After this was dropped some time back, the only thing that keeps fiat like the USD around is trust in the government to control inflationary rates and so forth.  So when this system collapses, the only reasonable thing to do is to have bitcoin priced in gold like fiat was before hand.

Jesus christ... I didn't even think of the chance with having some inhumane person such as your self winning it, and the horrible things that would happen as a result of you winning.  I can only hope that this will never ever happen. 

It's amazing though that we are now up to 1.3 Billion now though.  I won't be shocked to read that whoever does end up winning will go into cardiac arrest.  That is the kind of money that is so stupid and outrageous, that I can just hope it goes to a nice person that has nice intentions with it.  I can't imagine how sick in the stomach I'll feel if someone like you wins it.

The reality is that Boomers aren't really subject to change or take a chance that much.  I'm sure if you presented the same person that Phinnaeus Gage presented this too (if he actually did), then the person will probably feel discouraged to go into bitcoin, because that $880 that a boomer could have invested will only get the person less than 2 BTC, rather than getting the 183 BTC they could have gotten.

I don't think Boomers are going to look at Bitcoin as currency, just merely a speculative stock that they can't or won't want to learn about.  When you present them with gold, they can at least wrap their minds around why it would be beneficial to them to invest there, because it's way less volatile/risky.

I've tried to influence my parents and other family that are on the older side to buy into bitcoin around this time, and they just merely laughed and scoffed at me.  They are just looking forward to collecting their social security checks and living happily ever after.  So I just kind of stopped trying to attempt to explain my view point, and just worry about my self now.

It's not so much for holding cash for children and family, it's more about getting everyone out of debt and have enough cash stored away in case you were to get in debt again.  Like the OP said, if you were to to only win 1 million dollars, not 100 million, there's a lot more wiggle room to be had with 100 million.

So if I had to give a direct answer to the question, I would like to say that I would:

1) Buy $10,000 worth of Bitcoin (roughly around 21 BTC)
2) Buy $80,000 worth of Gold
3) Buy $10,000 worth of silver
4) Get out of debt (roughly around $100,000 which includes mortgages, credit cards, student loans, etc.)
5) Keep the rest of the $800,000 on hand and use it wisely.  This includes keeping the same house, car, etc.

I feel like this is the most logical way to make sure you have some wealth in assets as well as being able to pay off debt and being able to pay bills for a while in the future.  Definitely wouldn't enable me to retire with only 1 million.

So, most people on here understand that gambling on something like a lottery will never give you the real chance of winning anything; especially the Powerball... which I think I've read before that the chances of you winning is something to the equivalent of you getting struck by lightning twice[/i] in the same day.  But, I've decided to give it a go because it's a record high jackpot and got a couple tickets for giggles.  Just wondering who else on here (from the U.S.) has decided to give it a go as well.

• What would you do with the money?
• Would you take the immediate cash payout? Or would you take the 30 year annuity payment system to avoid taxes?
• Would you/how much would you invest into bitcoin?
• Would you/how much would you invest into other assets such as gold/silver, real estate, etc?
• Would you use that money to operate a business you've always wanted to have? Or would you simply retire for the rest of your life?

Honestly, you do have a good point... If people just hold Bitcoins, those people aren't really treating Bitcoins as a currency... rather than they are treating Bitcoins as an asset like gold and lock it up in some vault (or in this case cold storage). 

I think we are OK right now though.  Businesses like Overstock.com and others are starting to accept Bitcoin which will help with this problem so now we can spend bitcoins for actual goods.  Once the price of Bitcoin goes up drastically, however, I think you'll see a halt in the economy because that's the time everyone wants to hold until it reaches a tipping point to get as much purchasing power out of their coins.

Well, honestly, that does not promote bitcoin in any aspect whatsoever to be honest... if you were to promote bitcoin, you would have to be in a bar that accepts some format of bitcoin. 

What you are doing is promoting bitcoin in the form of some kind of stock or asset, not a currency in itself.  You can say to someone, "Oh yeah, I made $100 by buying one bitcoin at $350 and now it's $450 and the beers are on me tonight".  But what good does that do?  What promotion is that, when the sole purpose is to eventually sell bitcoins and to buy beers for USD, euros, or whatever? 

Well even with that, you can bet in "gambling" with binary options that allow you to "bet" against the market.  There's always a way to make money in the stock trade if you feel like something is going down and you want to bet against it.  People always think that when dealing with stocks that you have to invest in something for it to go "up"... which is not the case, because you can bet against something and profit when the value in a stock goes down.

I'm not trying to discredit you by any means, but I seriously doubt banks have new strict standards against lending... sure they might try to make it a tiny bit more difficult, but I have yet to read anywhere were that is the case; plus I haven't read anywhere that banks are sitting on "record levels of cash".  Banks are continually ordering and dealing with the Feds.

Now, the reason that they might have records numbers of cash though, is that they have successfully made digitally usable fiat currency more appealing to the masses.  So there is no need for cash anymore really... I mean the other day I saw someone pay for a $.20 water cup with a fucking debit card for crying out loud.  So, I think you might be right on the cash part, but I still haven't seen anything or any CEO of a bank strictly regulate lending.

One of my family members works as a teller at a bank, and he is required to meet a quota of referring people for checking accounts, savings accounts, loans, etc. ... You really think they are going to be strict with the customer once people, or in this case, a teller refers them to the bankers to do business with them? Hell no... they are going to try to get them as much money as possible, so they can own their ass.

So let's say that you live in one of those states and go outside of the territory and go to, let's say, Florida.  Would you be able to use your bitcoin debit card there?  If so, is the only thing holding people back to getting these cards is that it will automatically turn into fiat on your card once you deposit bitcoins on your account?  Or does it keep the actual bitcoins on there and convert it once you make a purchase at a store?