Sentiment seems to be jumping all over the place from week to week. There feels like a great deal of uncertainty is in the market right now with people’s predictions changing depending on how Bitcoin moved that day. Right now people are back saying $50K, but a few weeks ago it seemed like $10K was imminent. I’d be scared to buy or sell here, but it does feel to me like we’ve changed directions and it’s up from here. I guess it will remain to be seen if that’s the case or if we’re just witnessing a head fake before the next leg down.

Westbrook takes a lot of the blame for this loss. His shooting was terrible. I don’t think anyone thought that such an athletic player would have a good ending to their career, but it’s hard to watch someone who was once so great now be unable to make a shot. I think Russ may see a buyout in his future. The way he’s playing is not only a liability on the floor, but his contract is detrimental to the team’s ability to sign new talent. I don’t think John Wall would be any better either, but it seems a change is warranted at this point.

I still can’t believe this is true. Someone like Drake is about as big of a partner as a platform could have. I’m guessing the Super Bowl promotion went well so they decided to expand their partnership. How long before Drake has half of North America rapping lyrics about gambling on Stake? I wonder if Drake might even be taking on an ownership stake in the company. One thing is for certain, moves like this show the platform is growing and doing very well financially.

I was half kidding back when I suggested we add a “Prophet” rank and the activity level would be rather low looking back ~8 years later. A new rank would be cool though. It’s been discussed as you can see from the quote for quite some time, so I wouldn’t hold your breath. This is one of the easier things to add to the forum though, so maybe if there’s enough interest then theymos will oblige the calls for a new rank.

What would I suggest now you ask?  Bad Mother Fucker - At 4000 activity/merit

https://youtu.be/YDiRZ2xx9xI

I never have but I could see why if you gambled a lot that you would. I’ve seen the social media posts where influencers are bragging about how much money you would have made of you followed their picks. Personally I’d rather have my destiny in my own hands and make my own picks. I guess that’s why I’ve never paid for tips. I imagine that at least some of the influencers out there selling their picks have to be somewhat successful. Even if it’s just due to a “lucky” streak.

It really isn’t difficult to understand that the house has an edge and eventually everyone will lose money to the house. An easy way to think of it is that the lights in Las Vegas cost a lot of money to keep turned on. The casinos that pay for the electricity have one main customer (aka source of income). So it’s the gamblers in Las Vegas who really pay for all those lights.

Same thing with internet casinos. They have servers and employees, etc. Maybe less overhead that allows for a smaller house edge, but in the end it is the customers that pay for those things. If the house didn’t have an edge, the casino couldn’t stay in business and wouldn’t exist.

I think a lot of retail investors have been out of Bitcoin and into altcoins for a long time. One major explanation for this in my opinion is a lack of education on market cap and being discouraged by Bitcoin’s high per coin price. I think this is why am ETF will have more widespread adoption among retail investors. Most of the small investors I talk with these days are into Ethereum and a basket of unknown coins. So I don’t think retail being in or out makes much of a difference at this stage. Investment funds are scooping up all they can and that is perhaps the more important information.

Looks great. As others have said I think a website is a great idea. I think maybe providing an updating embed-able image that users can use anywhere (like here for example) would also go a long way towards getting more users. I see you created something for telegram, maybe a Discord bot is also a possibility?

Great work on this and it seems to be well received so far. Thanks for your effort!

I think it shows that Binance is committed to provide good service to it’s customers despite political pressure or government dealings. I expect this will rub some the wrong way and they will stop using the service, but personally I would be more concerned if I was a customer and they were just freezing assets of their customers for any reason they’re told. This is why DeFi is so important and I hope the Bitcoin community gets access to some good DeFi options someday soon, because it is clear that the exchanges will be the point of failure for Bitcoin going forward.

What happened to the individual player bets on stake.com? For a bit there I was able to place bets on an individual’s stat line. I liked that it gave lots of different options to bet on so that I could go crazy on games I was going to watch. I can’t find these betting opportunities anymore so I assume that they are no longer available. Are there any plans to bring back these player bets or was it decided that it wasn’t worth the effort of keeping them on the site?

I’m not getting the connection to opensea here. Is this some attempt at promoting an NFT collection? I must admit, using some address holding list funds as a lure to get people to interact with an NFT project is a new idea for me, but I can see how someone could have concocted this scheme with that intent. It seems weird no signed message would be presented, as obviously people would want to know it is legit. That’s a lot of coins to just claim are up for grabs. I remain skeptical.

That’s a pretty big line for a basketball game with LeBron James on the opposing team. I’m always hesitant to bet against good teams with such a spread. The Lakers are an absolute mess these days though so it might be a good bet. Barring a heroic performance from LeBron James or an appearance of the old Russell Westbrook, I’d say the Mavericks have a good chance of bringing home the win tonight. Luckily, the game is being televised on TNT so we can all watch how things play out for ourselves alongside commentary from Chuck, Ernie, and Shaq (and Kenny).

With things like options and derivatives in place now in the Bitcoin ecosystem, it will be much harder for the price to make massive leaps in price. This is because of all the structured investments making small fortunes off small moves. It’s what happens to all markets as they mature and it’s these added levels of stability that make markets more attractive for big players, which ultimately leads to a more slow and sustained rise in price. Many people are calling for an end of the 4-year cycle for this reason. They expect that we have reached the point where Bitcoin is more guided by investment than the reduction of block rewards cycle. That remains to be seen, as so far we appear to be mirroring the cycle fairly well, with the exception of the massive price drawdown where there should have been a bubble. Again, I blame things like options for this.

I would agree that this is probably the game I'll watch tonight.  Luka Doncic and LeBron James squaring off has in the past led to some incredible stat lines.  I expect both of them will be going for triple doubles tonight.  With all the Lakers drama between their coach and Westbrook starting to hit a boiling point, and LeBron's camp making it known they're disappointed that Russ wasn't traded, it's pretty much a nightmare team situation.  Making it worse, now everyone is saying that Anthony Davis is as good as gone to the Bulls this offseason to get Demar Derozan on the Lakers.  That probably means we'll see Russ offloaded this offseason.  I doubt it will be for John Wall but you never know.  I don't think the Lakers expected so much media coverage of them NOT making the trade just because LeBron wanted them to do it.

Drama drama drama...  This season sure has been full of it.  When LeBron James leaves the league there will definitely be a hole in media coverage.

I don't think that eBay is going to release a shitcoin.  Every legitimate company that has tried to release their own shitcoin has felt a lot of backlash from the government.  With eBay running a successful business, that would seem like too much risk to take on for them.

I do agree they'll probably have some custodial wallet system where you don't actually control the coins.  That would likely lead to things like chargebacks using Bitcoin and eliminate the entire advantage that Bitcoin would bring to sellers on their platform.  Basically, it would be a way to get more customers by having them deposit their Bitcoin, and maybe eBay would even have a partner where they would earn interest on your Bitcoin, but wouldn't actually provide users any security advantages.  I hope I'm wrong and they build a more OpenSea type of system, but I seriously doubt it.

If you have a lot of Bitcoin and you want to spend it directly on eBay, this might be a good thing.  For people who want exposure to Bitcoin without actually knowing what they're doing, this might be another way to achieve it.  I do think people should be aware that a custodial wallet doesn't provide the security you would expect from chargebacks.

I am curious to hear how eBay has handled disputes lately.  It sounds like their new payment system is meant to address fraudulent chargebacks, but I haven't had any experience with it.

Perhaps we should rename this place altcointalk?  More seriously, it shouldn't come as that much of a surprise.  People like to work on projects and build things.  The Bitcoin community here has turned highly maximalist to the point where I've seen people get negative feedback just for mentioning other currencies (even myself).  This toxic attitude has chased away so many users that even on this very website the altcoin section is more popular, and this is the home of Bitcoin discussion on the internet!  I think the community needs to relax a bit with the whole boy who cried wolf scam attitude, and start respecting people who build things that interact with the Bitcoin blockchain.  Not to bash this very thread, but people give out more merit to useless statistics than they do to long-running Bitcoin projects.  That would lead you to believe we want more statistics and less projects here.  I guess my point is that if people want Bitcoin to be discussed here more than altcoins, maybe start working on a Bitcoin project, or be a part of discussion about a Bitcoin project.  That beats sending all your merit to the next LoyceV thread while calling those building on the blockchain scammers...  We as a community are the only ones to blame for how this board has fallen so drastically in quality over these last 5 years.

I don't think nuclear strikes is on the table.  World War III seems like a bad idea to me, and certainly to Russia.  I also agree that Russia has been preparing for this for a long time, and is set to profit greatly from some of their decisions.  That being said, I don't think Russia expected the international community to stand so strongly with Ukraine.  The sanctions are far greater than I would have expected and more countries are taking part than I thought would be willing to stand up to Russia.  I have been impressed by the international response so far, and hope it continues.  Usually the United States is left standing alone in times like this, or our allies send a few troops and make a speech.  This time it seems everyone is on the same page and willing to put their relationship with Russia on the line to do what is right.  I think this is a good development, and likely one that constant criticism of the UN by a former US President helped to achieve. 

Historically War has been good for investments.  It means the government is going to spend a shitload of money, which is good for markets.  One might argue that government spending has been propping the markets up since 2009, so this latest war is no different from the housing crisis, pandemic, etc. as far as markets are concerned.  Many people credit World War II and the Vietnam War for spurring economic activity that led to great booms in markets. 

Unfortunately, in a world where everything is centered around money, there will be those who always clamor for war.  There's a lot of companies manufacturing bullets and bombs.  They aren't doing it for looks.  They want to profit and so long as government officials have exposure to these sorts of investments, war will always be considered as a money making opportunity to some.  There are people who say, "Bitcoin fixes this" but I think seeing how Russia has played their hand so far, you might think that Bitcoin is actually going to exasperate this so long as countries can profit from their own bad behavior.

While this may not be the greatest advice in the world, I would recommend using your exchange to accept USDT payments.  That way you don't have to pay fees to move them from your wallet to the exchange and you can still verify using the blockchain or your exchange that payment has been received.  The added bonus is that many exchanges pay interest on USDT holdings, so you would get paid while the funds sat there until you needed to access the money.  

The downside of this would be that you would have to trust the exchange, but it sounds like you're going to transfer the funds and do that anyway.  At least in this scenario there would be no transfer fees for you.  Just make sure that you check the deposit address on your exchange every time that you go to accept a payment to avoid any problems that might occur due to the exchange giving you a new deposit address (some exchanges change their addresses occassionally).

You may even find that the person sending you funds is sending them from an exchange, so there might even be a savings of fees on their side if you're both using the same exchange and making an inter-exchange transfer.

Well, they say it is better to give than to receive, so maybe you were really the big winner.

I enjoy putting up these crazy weird little raffles.  Join up and help make this a fun experience for all so we want to continue doing them.



I was on the fence about including you since you seem to be a new user with a relatively short trading history.  I see that selassiesoildier vouched for you in your trust feedback though, so I'll take his word that you're a friend to the community and include you.  Good luck!

Thanks to all the participants so far!  I can't wait to see who the "Biggest Loser" will be this time.