Dollarization and similar practices are methods of pinning an economy to a specific currency for valuation or stability purposes.

If a country thought Donald Trump being elected President would increase the value of the dollar over the next 4 years, they could adopt dollarization in the hope of leveraging those gains if their economic policies called for increasing currency valuation.

Historically the united states economy has shown good stability, it has the most powerful military, is located in a relatively stable area geographically & has the largest gold reserves backing its currency.

These are other reasons dollarization could make sense over the long term.

Iceland and aurora coin could be something like pegging a local alt coin currency to an existing currency.

Sad to say aurora coin's day was too long ago fro me to remember details.

In the united states, if the BTC value were greater than $5.45 million, the "death tax" / estate tax would kick in, 40% of the total value would be taxed away.

Example if the deceased had $20 million in bitcoin, the death tax/estate tax would collect $8 million in btc, leaving only $12 million btc for inheritors.

Of course, this assumes the IRS is effectively taxing btc and keeping track of btc whales. Whether or not this is true, I cannot say.

Also Hillary Clinton wanted to increase the tax rate from 40% to 60% and lower the minimum taxable value to $3.5 million.

Donald Trump supports abolishing the death tax/estate tax.

I think this and similar their stance on similar issues has much more to do with winning/losing the election than russia.

Supporting lower taxes, fairer regulation over small businesses and finding ways to reduce living expenses could all rank amongst neglected methods of boosting earnings.

Between income taxes, alcohol excise tax, sales tax, road tax, gas tax, telecom tax, property tax and all the miscellaneous taxes people pay directly or indirectly. Taxes in a collective sense deplete a substantial fraction of a person's income.

Food and rent costs may also be unnecessarily bloated in terms of cost effectiveness. Property tax hikes could be passed on to renters. Food subsidies and transport could be designed to make food as expensive as possible, rather than the polar opposite.

Global deforestation causing worldwide drought and climate change may also be a neglected issue as the price of water for farming and irrigation increases.

In short, the best ways to make more money are likely issues the media ignores with topics that are swept under a rug and neglected.

I see Thompson winning the fight.

Chris Weidman is Stephen Thompson's brother in law. Thompson's brother is married to Weidman's sister. Weidman and Thompson are close and train together in the same gym.

I think Thompson seeing Chris Weidman be stopped by Yoel Romero earlier in the night, put him off his game.

Woodley seems unfocused on the fight. He's talking about being discriminated against and being treated unfairly, his focus seems everywhere except on Thompson and the fight.

Internet marketing is a sketchy area. There are people who claim to make $5,000 a month through IM. I suspect they must spend a lot on internet traffic to reach those numbers. Otherwise, its hard to explain why they offer paid mentorship programs to teach others IM. Those who have a good niche in internet marketing or elsewhere might be concerned with their market becoming oversaturated. I don't know if many IM gurus seeming extremely motivated to share their secrets, for a price, makes sense in the grand scheme of things.

Probably something like this dogecoin browser mining game.

https://dogeminer.se/

Except for btc and more complex.

To teach cryptographic functions and educate on how bitcoin works.

Also to provide amusement and entertainment.

Bitcoin's uptick is impressive.

Many wish they bought bitcoins when they were cheap.

Sometimes its good to remember there are other currencies and opportunities out there which offer similar success to early adopters of btc.

Example -- the zimbabwe dollar had a good run awhile ago.

 

When there are concerns over currency devaluation, people seek alternatives.

An example of this is venezuelans buying electronics and tv's after Chavez announced he would devalue the bolivar(venezuelan currency) by 32%.

One of the reasons people buy electronics during currency devaluation involves fear of currency devaluing at a faster rate than flat screen tv's and electronics.

Buying electronics is a way of escaping currency devaluation. When the euro devalues, the price of gold always shoots up as people buy more gold to maintain the value of their wealth.

If the us dollar crashed, people would buy gold and bitcoin, and the price of both would increase.

Intelligence agencies like the FBI, CIA, NSA et al oppose encryption being utilized in everything from cell phones to PC's.

There would be irony present in them supporting encryption in currency, when they have expressed a wholesale condemnation of encryption everywhere else.

I think if the CIA was behind a digital currency, it would be exactly like bitcoin except there would be as little encryption involved as possible and zero anonymity.

3d printers are ok for mass producing small objects. Pendants, earrings, figurines, keychains. Anything small might work ok. One problem with 3d printers is the larger the object printed the more wasteful and expensive production costs & inefficiencies rise. Most mass produced objects are hollow and use as small an amount of material as necessary. 3d printers are the opposite in terms of using as much material as possible to build a solid structure, which inflates costs. This makes 3d printed objects much more expensive than the same item created in a mold. But that issue can be mitigated to a degree if only small objects are printed to reduce overhead costs.

Most small businesses don't do massive amounts of sale volume to where better methods of mass production would be necessary. a 3d printer could conceivably be used to start a small business. But for it to work, they might need to focus on producing only items that are small to keep production costs down. Also others owning 3d printers in the same neighborhood doesn't necessarily count as competition. The natural markets for 3d printed items could be ebay, etsy stores -- internet based markets rather than localized ones.

That said, I've never tried running a business based on 3d printers. There could be many pros and cons I'm not aware of. It just seemed like an idea that might be worth pursuing so I threw it out there. It nothing else I hope it makes for interesting talks.

Reminds me of this.


Defending an area of land seems more a job description for mercenaries and ex military personnel. Is there good documentation available for specifics regarding some of the claims made in OP? It sounds like a story Alex Jones would be interested in covering. You should contact him.

Both of those sites appear dead. It surprises me that there aren't more btc fantasy sports sites. Their business model doesn't depend on house advantage or players losing consistently. One might think that would be preferable to setting up a gambling site that relies on the house winning to turn a profit. I wonder what the issue is.

Fanduel and draftkings appear to be doing ok. Is there an intrinsic reason btc based fantasy sports couldn't emulate their success?

Centuries ago, people hammered rocks into circles with holes in them.



Like bitcoin's energy intensive cryptographic functions, these rocks were energy intensive to produce using primitive hand tools.

Why did people do this you ask? These circular rocks with holes in them were a form of currency.

If a donut rock can be currency, based on the idea that their energy intensiveness to produce can control inflation and prohibit counterfeiting.

I'm not certain bitcoin cannot also be a form of currency for similar reasons.

One basic method to predict BTC price movements could be to calculate the number and value of buy orders on an exchange in proportion to the number and value of sell orders.

When there is a higher quantity of buy orders than sell orders, one might expect the price of btc to rise based on simply supply & demand.

The opposite might also be true, when the quantity of sell orders is greater than the quantity of buy orders, the price of btc will probably decrease.

But, like most things in economics, these are general rules of thumb & valuation is often based on outside variables such as news stories and events which cannot be predicted well in advance.

I still have questions on initial btc ETF offerings.

Whether its leveraged or not could be key.

Bitcoin could benefit from more professional investors being involved with it.

In the past it has shook my confidence in btc seeing people in the talkbox on btc-e exchange conspiring to find ways to devalue bitcoin, as they think if they kill the price it will immediately shoot back up.

Somehow I don't think "dead cat bounce" is the go-to tactic professional investors look for as a signature way to profit from investments. In a way it can be demoralizing and depressing to see so many less experienced btc traders favor that approach.

On the flip side, if there is big money invested in a btc etf, there could be negatives in terms of increased politics and attempts to manipulate the price of bitcoin for better or worse.

I hope overall the price of bitcoin will go up and there will be more professionals involved with long term stakes, who will try to advance bitcoin as an alt currency & take advantage of the benefits it can offer to civilization and society.

If nothing else, ETC offering could boost volitility and trading volume. There could be opportunities for trading when the btc etf rolls out.

Two of the main arguments against bitcoin I've read are.

1) Bitcoin transactions are slow.
2) Bitcoin is electricity intensive, inefficient and wasteful.

I never understood how bitcoin was supposedly slow in contrast to traditional banking methods of moving money when bitcoin transfers might take 2-3 hours tops. Bank wire transfers could take 2-3 days tops. Bitcoin already seems much faster than wire transfers. I don't know if its fair for bitcoin to receive so much criticism in terms of transaction time.

The electricity issue is also non crucial. Many nations have an electricity surplus. Especially with advances in solar and wind energy the cost and availability of electricity seem to be improving worldwide, possibly to a degree which nullifies criticism against bitcoin's power consumption.

In the USA some states have such a high surplus of available electricity that they no longer offer payments to those who install grid tied solar panels on their home as the available pool of electricity is already too high. With that much surplus of electricity the argument against bitcoins high electricity consumption seems null and void.

I'm not certain it is fair to compare bitcoin and gold. Some claim bitcoin is worthless and fiat, with no intrinsic value. Although I wonder sometimes if the same analysis could be made of gold. Could it be said that gold is merely a strange type of yellow metal with no more intrinsic value than any other type of metal? The value people place on things like gems, precious metals and crypto could be sentimentally based to some degree.

I don't know if bitcoin is gold 2.0. But it might be fair to say btc is the next evolution of money & as mammals evolved and thrived making other life forms obsolete and extinct, so perhaps bitcoin might represent a superior evolution which eventually phases out currency dinosaurs like the euro and dollar.

Conor McGregor and Korean Zombie could be the guys that gave Aldo the toughest fights and both had reach and height advantages over Aldo.

Max Holloway has a height advantage over Aldo (but not a reach advantage). I think that gives Holloway a better chance of winning than shorter fighters like Chad Mendes or Frankie Edgar.

Jose Aldo's cardio has also not looked good. He only fought 1-2 minutes of each round when he fought Frankie Edgar. For the most part Aldo coasted in that fight & Frankie Edgar did not pressure him much.

This card is still 4 months away with no other fights announced other than Max Holloway vs Jose Aldo.

I wonder if Michael Bisping vs Yoel Romero might also be announced for Rio.

Nice find. I'll definitely check it out & sign up if I'm not too late.

Khan Academy also has a good entry level introductory course on bitcoin.

https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/core-finance/money-and-banking/bitcoin/v/bitcoin-what-is-it

It is very interesting and beautiful how bitcoin functions and achieves certain types of functionality using cryptographic functions.

A decent investment could be cnc 3d printers, cnc laser engravers or some type of cnc routing machine.

A person could conceivably start a small business making jewelry, keychains, etc.

Entry level CNC machines are around $100.

Not sure about viability, but that could be something worth looking into.

Computers being state based deterministic machines, many cryptographers have used weather data and other information which appears to lack predictable patterns as a basis to generate random keys & make encryption more difficult to crack.

As far as I know, it is a common practice that has been in use for decades.

Good idea.