It's fucking crazy, Italy released their voting results and there's some very suspicious activity going on for the semi-final voting.

Israel Getting nearly 40% of the votes? What kind of fixed voting is that? I understand if the EBU is willing to overlook that Israel has better chances than anyone now. I never expected to see this kind of fixed voting in eurovision especially now that voting in the competition has fallen out of fashion so much. It's not too unlikely that some Israeli firm outright purchased SMS credit to vote for their entry thousands of times automatically because Italy especially has had strong historical ties with Palestine and their liberation struggle... And also Italians staged some of the most massive protests against the genocide in Gaza. Israel is just trying to make a point at this point and  the EBU is just willing to eat it up completely.

There's also reports now that the EBU added fake clap tracks to cover boos when Israel's entry aired. Crazy times we're living in:
https://www.reddit.com/r/eurovision/comments/1coer9z/booed_or_booless_israels_crowd_reaction_on_tv/

We went from Israel barely being allowed in the contest supposedly to them receiving a EU-sponsored pass to vote fixing and the EBU intervening to make them look better against the crowd's wishes to boo them.

Back home in the local top league tournament where Olympiakos dominates, this year they were trying the classic approach of trying to dominate in possession but obviously it didn't pay off this season at least locally. Olympiakos is now bound to finish far from the top spot, at best I'd say third unless a miracle happens.

It's amazing in a year where they didn't do as well as expected in the local league they manage to conquer the conference league final position. Well the recent change in coaches really seems to be paying off now. José Luis Mendilibar really seems capably to bring this team up to a european standard in their play style and based on their current capabilities. Olympiakos owner Marinakis is said to be poised to invest even more in valuable transfers, it'll be interesting to see if Olympiakos keeps fairing well in European tournaments with this strategy.

It really seems like Olympiakos is getting to the final while having just 20% possession.
If I was an Aston Villa fan I would be fuming, coping and seething. Well Aston Villa would need to score too many goals than realistically possibly to advance but still they could have done their best to win. However it's interesting to still see them losing while having like 80% possession. The strategy Olympiakos is playing seems to be paying off against premiere league teams. Risky but it works. Would be interesting to see what they do in the final.

I am watching the second semi final now and every song so far is very good. Talented artists and good songs. Marina of Greece kinda fucked up on some parts but hopefully people are still going to vote for us. Czechia is unexpectedly good I am surprised they weren't higher in the odds. Albania also. So far 5 songs in I'll be sad if one of these doesn't make it to the final.

Just in, Former president Trump openly attacked the Biden Administration's based on the policies it has been following against crypto and called for crypto fans to vote for him:

https://fxtwitter.com/WatcherGuru/status/1788373884418294072

This is such an interesting development. I would assume Trump has been following everything happening in crypto and to an extent had also been personally affected given he released NFT projects. I wonder if the Biden campaign will give in to respond given their up to now total disregard of crypto investors.

May 7: Nigeria to Ban Person-to-Person Crypto Trade in Dented Naira
Here we go again. Nigeria had become one of the major hubs for crypto and with good reason. People earn very little for a living but even that amount of money gets lost if they keep it in the local currency, Naira.

Inflation has been eating people's savings actively with the NGN losing around 88% of its value against the Euro in the last 20 years... Imagine holding a child's savings account for that long and he has lost nearly all of his purchasing power when he's able to open the account to get the money. It's crazy. The politicians think that by banning p2p trades they'll be able to avoid the Naira losing value? How about investing in their own country's production instead of allowing foreign corporations plunder the national wealth? Maybe that would help with inflation instead of being draconian against people... I don't know how Nigerians will react to this but I hope a crypto grey market arises out of it in defiance.

Bitcoin is pseudonymous, not anonymous. This isn't something new. This also isn't something that we've just realized. It's more of a feature other than anything else. Altcoins that have implemented privacy features such as Monero, while good at what they do, face the issue of decreasing or stagnating adoption rather than growth.

We have to realize that censorship goes beyond nodes and a decentralized network though. Monero, due to the very fact that it features anonymous payments, is the victim of a continuous censorship attack. Being desisted from exchanges, blacklisted from institutional adoption etc.

So even if bitcoin made the bold move to make a departure from an open ledger standard, it would still be very prone to censorship. We have to consider the cost-benefit analysis.
What are the current benefits of BTC (especially among all crypto)?
More adoption.
More market access.
More widely recognized.
Deep market allowing for large transactions without killing liquidity.

What would bitcoin gain from being anonymous?
Recipients won't know where coins are coming from (averting some censoring scenarios).
What else?

If Bitcoin forks to be more like Monero, all the above benefits though are lost in an instant. Are anonymous payments worth that much over destroying what has already been built on bitcoin? I'd argue that this change would only bring more censorship by giving credence to FEDs and legislators to destroy all BTC infrastructure as it could more easily be deemed a notorious market.

So? Bitcoin doesn't need any protocol level changes because already it's not mandatory to use it with identification or your real IP address. Are you then saying that Snowden is stupid?

If he had wanted a Blockchain where the inputs and outputs of transactions aren't broadcasted he's free to fork Bitcoin as many have already done, or follow one of the existing forks.

It's not about the ETFs or the finance markets either. But at this point one has to recognize that Bitcoin remains the most highly adopted   cryptocurrency because its existing festureset is still more robus than all competition, even after so many years. For less traceable transactions go to Monero, Dash,  Zcash... Whatever. If you start to ponder why these coins aren't #1 you'll realize that in order to support a revolution you need more than electronic cash. Electronic cash will get you as far as toppling the banking system at best. What then? That's not much on its own. It's just a tool.

Bitcoin doesn't need to be everything, everywhere all at once under this pretense. Many have said that bitcoin should be anonymous, support smart contracts, support NFTs, be turning complete, support tokens etc. Those that try to build that on Bitcoin can only do so in a very sub par way because it was never designed to do thst. Bitcoin works well as is and is pretty successful so far doing what it was designed to. For radical changes hardforks have always been allowed and even supported by many, but they're not Bitcoin.

So people are forming a bandwagon with Snowden saying that BTC needs to have privacy on the protocol level, a change so radical it could see it delisted from all major exchanges and having its ETF status revoked, yet people aren't willing to accept that Ordinals and Runes abusing taproot features to front-run regular transactions at a comparatively cheaper rate is something that should be patched? The latter wouldn't even be that radical as it would essentially be just a bug fix. Whereas Snowden's suggestion would make BTC into an altcoin and also radically shift bitcoin's philosophy of public ledger and verifiable transactions.

I just see so many contradictions in today's bitcoin community. It's funny.

Congrats!
Olympiakos' match was also very tough. They had to make a turnaround against their opponent but eventually managed to successfully pull it off. It's interesting now that two Greek teams could eventually end up playing against each other in the EuroLeague final. I can't wait for the semifinals. I'll watch both of them if I can as a Greek. Very exciting time to be watching basketball as someone from my country this year. It's been a very long time since we had this level of success.

The following matches will certainly be very exciting!

Can I preface this by saying that I don't mean what I'm about to say in an offensive way? Maybe you can help me come to another revelation because I genuinely fail to understand the motivations behind talking to me like that.

I get that people don't like Luke and I get most of your points. But what I don't get is why so many people seem to be on the offensive whenever someone talks about Ocean pool in a non-negative light.
Do senior users of this forum have something to gain from ordinals/runes? I'd bet that not ever 1% of this forum operate mining hardware anymore as it's become too much of a hassle to run as an individual. So what's the deal with siding against those opposing ordinals/runes? I don't understand this.

If we think about bitcoin's long term future, it's probably better to preserve and focus on its value transacting capabilities. Action against ordinals/runes is a novel idea based on good principles. So are we just going to stand completely against it, especially if it happens in a voluntary manner? Or are we just hating on Ocean because of some code Luke released over 10 years ago?

I'm not under the impression that anyone here would have ulterior motives to support Ordinals or Runes but still, attacking those that just oppose them in such passion seems a bit much to me.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/08/us/rfk-jr-brain-health-memory-loss.html

Wake up babe, new New York Times attack article just dropped 

They're now claiming that RFK Jr. has parasitic worms in his brain based off of a statement he once made. They even defied medical ethics to ask doctors for a diagnosis about someone they haven't examined. It's so funny how the media will play with someone's pain only to make fun of them and attack them in politics. If the Biden campaign keeps being so reactionary I expect more centrists to end up voting Trump because this media strategy is beyond stupid.

Can you do something to prove your claims? Export your rolls, share screenshots, or better than all... Show that the provable fairness your wagers happened under wasn't actually fair?

Stake's original games are actually provably fair. Even the slots! So the results are predetermined. You can change your wager amount and Stake won't be able to do anything because every single roll is determined in prior.
So before making such accusations you may as well read a bit about how gambling works and how provably fair algorithms can be used to verify rolls are fair. Don't just go out of your way attacking a casino if you don't know anything about these things otherwise you're just making a fool of yourself.

There's a real tangible effect that ordinals/runes minters will face if part of the hashpower doesn't mine them in the blocks they find.
Effectively they become more expensive to be included in a block. Right now with OCEAN being a small part of the network this effect isn't very large. But it's also acting as a vote of sorts.

If more miners get behind OCEAN it's indicating that they care more about what they perceive as a better step for the health of bitcoin's network rather than some short term profits. Of course Ordinals/Runes give economic incentives for miners to act against the interests of users seeking to transact value on bitcoin's chain, which harms the overall utility of bitcoin as a tool to make electronic cash transactions (which is Satoshi's original intention), so I'd say Luke is right to call these types of transactions an attack on bitcoin.

Surely not everyone has to agree. And not everyone has to follow the same ideals... But Luke isn't forcing anybody to do anything here. It's a novel proposal to miners to opt out of mining abusive transactions completely voluntarily. The results so far show that while some miners hold ideals to support bitcoin against this so called attack, those holding the vast majority of the hash power either don't care enough or would rather go after short term profit.

Any centralized service can claim to keep no logs while in fact they do. So logs or not is kinda besides the point.

The thing here is if you for example wanted to deposit to an exchange, companies like Coinbase tend to follow the trail of coins and if your transactions are tied to a "tainted" address (which may include casinos) then there's a high chance you might be asked questions or they might even close your account which could cause troubles. So for users feeling insecure depositing or withdrawing coins to a casino if they get their coins from an exchange like Coinbase then some basic mixing kinda helps ease the stress of potentially being caught and having your trade account shut down.

But as a side effect this can also be utilized with people that don't have as pure intentions as avoiding their trade accounts being shut down. It could also be indirectly used for people wanting too hide their tainted coins involved in trafficking and whatnot. You can never know really. With bitcoin being traceable these problems arise everywhere. You may be depositing coins to have some fun and if you end up winning and withdrawing profits, by the governments standards you could be partaking in a "money laundering operation".

Well it's true that if a country wants to be draconian against online enterprises they can very well be. For instance, in most developed countries it's easy to play in an online casino that would be considered non-licensed by local laws just by buying crypto and some DNS change. But think about New York for example. New Yorkers have it very hard for them as they have little to no access to legal crypto exchanges. If they have to rely on peer to peer sales that are unreliable and expensive just to load up their casino ballance they might as well succumb to the pressure and only play on whatever licensed app can be offered in their locality.

I assume the same applies for China as well as many other countries where access to crypto purchases for retail investors is very restricted. Europe could be like that at the turn of a switch as well. And if that happens, there's little to no infrastructure to support the purchase of crypto at market prices for individuals. So especially for online casinos I don't think there's going to be a cyberpunk future. If a country wants to restrict access to them regardless of collateral damage they can do it by cutting off the funding methods.

Just see what TryNinja posted above me and he's 100% correct. By the logic of this removal also maybe Bustabit should be banned because in their site they advertise mixing with just different words:


I was actually in favor of mixers being banned here but if we aren't strict on what counts as a mixer then maybe lots of services should end up banned.

By that logic pretty much any service that uses different inputs for withdrawals could be classified under the same category but ok, I understand that being promoted as a mixer is kinda too much.

I noticed that a thread for the promotion of a new exchange openly advertising as no KYC got moved to the archival board. Link

The promotion manager moved it voluntarily?

As far as I know there's no official announcement of no-KYC services being banned in this forum. But perhaps it's coming?

Here's some more news:

May 3: BTC-e Operator Pleads Guilty to Money Laundering Conspiracy

This has been a long time coming with the U.S. openly colluding with national justice systems in Europe. Instead of going through the country's court systems, the U.S. urged a direct extradition order from a ministerial office in Greece. Ever his arrest, for operating an unlicensed exchange BTC-e which was one of the biggest at the time, the U.S. FEDs are surely trying to make an example of Alexander Vinnik.

May 4: Former Cred Executives Indicted on Wire Fraud, Other Charges
I'd argue that this is a good development as case law against "crypto lender" ponzi schemes can only be a good thing given how much money has been stolen through them.