As a newbie, you are eligible to get some merit from me for demonstrating that you have the ability to sign a message.  It's a pretty simple task and if you have a Bitcoin wallet, it shouldn't take you more than a couple of minutes.  I'd recommend taking a look and getting your merit journey started there.  Like a struggling musician who throws some coins in their guitar case to spur donations from others, maybe having a few more merit will get people to more freely send you more. 

Here's a link to the thread but I don't check it as frequently as I should so have some patience.  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5300698.0

It was a great year in the NBA.  Lots of frustration and disappointment surrounding superteams like the Lakers and Nets.  Kyrie held his ground on the covid nonsense.  Ben Simmons sat out with hurt feelings.  James Harden and Russell Westbrook showed they are no longer top tier NBA players.  Zion didn't play and blew up like a balloon.  LeBron showed he can still put up huge numbers.  Giannis showed continued improvement.  Embiid nearly carried his team to the Finals with a broken eye socket.  

Looking forward to next year and what moves happen in the offseason.  I'm expecting the Lakers to attempt to trade Westbrook, but likely find no suitors.  I think DeRozan and Beal will likely find new teams.  Ayton is as good as gone from Phoenix...  I'm already excited to see some moves being made.  Bring on the 22-23 season!

...and congrats to the Warriors for being the 2021-2022 NBA Champions.

We are certainly closer to the bottom than the top at this point. I’d feel ok recommending people buy again, although I don’t expect any of the people who were excited to buy at $50K to do so now. Human nature and all that. It’s scary with the recession backdrop, but that’s why the price is on sale. I think those that buy now and can hold on for another 2-3 years will likely be well rewarded for their effort.

Once they got Porter out of there it turned around quick. The Celtics have shifted their strategy to a more typical defense and while that is hurting Wiggins, the Splash Brothers look like they’re back to normal. If Draymond Green could hit a 3 pointer this team would be as dangerous as the old Warriors teams. The Celtics better bring it in the second half. It’s starting to look like we’re getting our last look at NBA basketball for the year.

Not a great start for the Warriors, letting the Celtics get a 12-2 lead to start the game. Otto Porter is getting exposed out there on every play. Some NBA players just don’t have what it takes to perform at the highest level and it shows. The Warriors better replace Porter immediately. He’s being hunted on defense, turning the ball over and missing open shots on offense, and the game JUST started. I hope Kerr makes a move during this timeout and doesn’t look back.

I would always prefer long odds.  Anything can happen, so you can lose with good odds just like you can lose with bad odds.  At least one of them makes the payoff worth it though.  One should always consider the payout and weigh the risk/reward of any gamble.  Personally, if it's about the money I'd rather have a low chance of winning a big stack, rather than a good chance of winning slightly more than my money back.  Otherwise I'd go invest it (not now obviously as we head into a global recession) in the stock market and enjoy the long term gains.

As we get closer to gametime, I'm wondering if the Celtics defense will take the same approach that they've been taking...  Completely ignoring Andrew Wiggins in favor of making sure Curry never has an open shot.  I think that strategy hasn't been working and they'll need to adjust.  I think they'd be better off letting Smart play Curry 1 on 1 while their defense focuses on shutting everyone else down.  Maybe a hard foul here and there...  I do hope we see a good game and I hope that there are no injuries.  Boston's gameplan has to involve roughing up the Warriors a little though.  Size and strength haven't played as big a factor these last 2 games and the Celtics can't let Wiggins get 10+ rebounds again.  That's unacceptable.

No.  The OP doesn't list a mirror link and I don't see a section of the website that does either.  Every time I've complained of issues in the past I usually get a PM with a bunch of links telling me I should try them, but obviously I'm not going to try logging in from some random link sent via PM.  Does the official site have a section that shows the mirrors somewhere?  That or having them added to the OP is probably the only way I'd use them.

I am having the issue again where when using the TOR browser and you finish the captcha, no email is sent and no email code entry window pops up.  It just takes you back to the login credentials screen.  I've noticed this is somewhat common after Stake updates, but it's sad that I won't be able to get a bet on tonight's NBA game as a result.  In the past usually a TOR browser update fixes it, so maybe it's a problem with a recent TOR update?  Is anyone else accessing this site using TOR?  Wondering if it is a local issue or a TOR issue or if I need to nudge someone here that maybe with the last update functionality for TOR was broken.  Must...gamble...on...stake...

I'm not sure how true that is.  I don't know much about ICP, other than it was pumped by Coinbase to be one of the largest cryptos out of nowhere, then crashed and burned everyone who touched it.  I've never heard anyone saying anything about it other than that it was a scam, so I'm a bit surprised to see someone on these forums pushing it like it's some sort of addition to Bitcoin.

Should we take ICP seriously?  Does it solve some issue or add value to Bitcoin in a way that I am not understanding? 

They definitely have a chance.  If they win today then it's game 7 where anything can happen.  I want the Warriors to win because I love a good legacy story, but I am sad if today turns out to be the last day of the NBA season, so I won't be upset if they lose.  More than anything though, I don't want to see a blowout.  A lot of times when in this position a team will get down a little bit and then start hoisting 3 pointers to try and comeback, which leads to them getting blown out.  If Golden State gets an early lead and the Celtics give up so I don't even want to watch the second half, I'll be disappointed.  Whether or not we see game 7, at least let me not know who is going to win this game when there's 3 minutes left in the 4th quarter.

Common sense would dictate that if you would receive double homicide for murdering a pregnant woman, then maybe murdering just the fetus would be considered murder. 

I'm not pro-life or anything.  Quite the opposite actually.  I think they need to loosen the laws on justifiable murder.  However, I don't think we should be discriminating on the life of a fetus either.  So I'm torn on this entire situation.  I guess my main issue is that abortion tends to shift the responsibility of not getting pregnant away from the person who should not be getting pregnant.  If someone is raped or forced into carrying a child, sure, that's wrong.  If you're a prostitute who thinks abortions are cheaper than birth control, then that's a problem, as those people in my opinion are serial killers...  Maybe people should get a punch card of some sort.  You're only allowed to murder X amount of people (justifiably) and if women want to use that punch card on their own fetuses, so be it. 

Anytime you mention businesses accepting Bitcoin and their options, it's a good idea to let folks know what open source projects are working to help make that possible.  The most popular (as far as I know) way for businesses to accept Bitcoin without messing around with 3rd parties that charge high fees and take custody of your funds is to use BTCPayServer.  I haven't ever heard people saying bad things about it, and while I have no experience using it myself, I think I've seen enough good implementations of it to where I feel good recommending it.

https://btcpayserver.org/

My take on the Coinbase Learn and Earn is that it is a total scam...  They pay the "earn" part out as taxable income last I checked, and they give you $3 in a (usually worthless) currency.  So right off the bat you're on the hook for nearly $1 in taxes.  Then, they charge you something like $2 in fees if you want to sell it.  So even if you're lucky enough to sell immediately before the value crashes, chances are that you won't make anything after taxes and fees.  Their hope is that they stick you with this useless currency, you see the value drop to where fees make it so you can't even sell, then you pony up your own real money to buy more thinking it'll bounce and you can sell.  Then just like that, you're a shitcoiner who is losing money because you got sucked into a trap.

TL;DR

It's a trap.  Don't waste your time with that garbage.

I stopped selling equipment on eBay because they don't care at all about their sellers.  They will allow returns for any made up reason weeks after the item has been received.  This is bad because basically all newbies hop on eBay, buy mining equipment thinking they'll get rich overnight, then after a week of mining they see they made like $10 and ask for a return.  I've heard eBay has gotten better about this lately, but I won't test that theory.

I've found Amazon to be far superior when it comes to selling hardware.  They will at least allow you to charge a % restocking fee, so the buyer has to decide if they want to stick with their purchase or take an immediate loss.  So I'd advise you to take a look at Amazon over eBay if you're wanting to sell for fiat.

I brought this up in 2015 in the Donator/Staff section of this forum.  I was annoyed that obvious scams were being allowed to be posted in the marketplace sections and bumped while being locked (unlocked to bump, then relocked) to make newbies think it was safe to purchase from them while not allowing anyone else to give warnings.  I guess it was expected that we just leave negative feedback for what is an obvious scam with no evidence?  I think it's this approach to community moderation that led to psychos like Vod getting into the DT network.

Anyway, here's the response I got from a Global Moderator 8 years ago when I brought this up.

This is understandable as well.  I used to offer cheaper escrows (in dollar terms) but then trolls would constantly setup fake escrows to waste my time or attempt to scam the escrow with crazy stories.  It became quite a drain on my time, so I had to let costs float up with Bitcoin to make it no longer worth the cost to play games.  For a while I was trying to push a "bonding" setup to save buyers money, where sellers could put funds into escrow and buyers would know that it was safe to purchase from those vendors because they had funds being held by an escrow on behalf of their buyers.  That way the seller could pay one escrow fee and his buyers would know their items were safe, saving them from escrow costs.  It was an idea that never took off though.

The scary thing for me isn't the losses we just incurred, but the economic environment moving forward.  Bitcoin has never been through a massive global recession before.  As the economy melts down over the next 18 months, I find it hard to believe that Bitcoin will be able to maintain it's value.  Especially considering where we are in the 4-year cycle.  Does that mean sell?  If you need to, but most of the damage has already been done.  I'd advise people that managed to sell the top to start dollar cost averaging back into the market, but for those looking to speculate now that prices are lower...  I'd urge you to not try and catch a falling knife, because things could get back if Bitcoin doesn't act as the safe haven during a recession that it's been billed as.

No doubt he was in the wrong for what he was doing, but it was a joke and he didn't lie about his identity ever.  I think banning him for life was a bit of a harsh move, but I understand it.  He said it was worth it to be able to shoot around on the court and I'm sure he's going to make a fortune off the video and new subscribers, so it seems like it's all good.  I am sad because it would've been funny.

Patrick Beverly did tweet that he wants Big Daws on the floor when his team plays the Warriors next season, so maybe there's more life to this series of videos yet...

The question of the day though... Will the NBA season end today?  I think so...  Warriors in 6.

Looks like these bikes are indeed going to become a reality.  Sondors claims they're still going to make shipping to customers this month.  I am personally slated in their next production run, which is expected currently to ship in September.  Still, it is great to see that they are real and customers will have them in their hands soon.  You can get an update from the professionals in this youtube video, but I'm excited to have my first electric vehicle incoming in the next several months. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQXT6CiHOmk