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. 

They've stated that their intent is to bring a "ultra-low voltage miner" to the market.  I haven't looked at the stats of this one very much, but it doesn't seem to me from the power usage that it has "ultra-low voltage" as a selling point.  I still assume that it will be a while before they're selling a consumer product, but when they do I imagine they will flood the market with something much more energy efficient and customized to take advantage of the benefits that would come along with an "ultra-low voltage miner" such as potentially less need for cooling making the device quieter and able to fit different form factors.

I am with you though.  Efficiency and underclocking beats overclocking any day of the week.

In a desperate attempt to try and keep the team afloat, the Lakers have released Deandre Jordan and plan to sign D.J. Augustin.  They're saying that Jordan will likely go on to play for the 76ers, who seem to be amassing as much talent as they can to make a run with Joel Embiid, who is playing the best basketball of his career while managing to stay healthy.  I'm not sure if this would be a good move for the Sixers or not, but James Harden and Deandre Jordan are both Brooklyn Nets survivors now of the KD/Kyrie pairing and might be able to bond over that shared experience...

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/33394673/philadelphia-76ers-emerging-frontrunners-bring-deandre-jordan

I'm betting Intel will have a higher build quality and better support team as well.  Their experience in chipmaking along with their deep pockets and industry relationships with manufacturers all the way down to retailers should allow them to rise to the top of the competition pretty quickly.  By the time they're selling miners to us peasants I'm sure they'll be offering a better product than Bitmain and keeping their wide price advantage.  How long this will take is probably anyone's guess, but if I were to throw one out, I'd say within 3 years we will all have the opportunity to purchase a top of the line product at an affordable price from Intel or more likely a retailer carrying their products.

I would agree that it is unethical and it honestly never even crossed my mind that people would consider doing such a thing.  I guess I'm a believer that bets like this should have a right to exist on prediction sites, I wouldn't participate and would probably think less of anyone that did.  Prediction sites are great when their community is good and honorable though.  I remember one of the early Bitcoin sites I interacted with a lot was bets4bitco.in or something like that...  Anyway, most of the bets were about fun things like whether or not aliens would be confirmed to exist by the US Government by a certain date.  Unfortunately it turned out to be a scam and everyone's coins were stolen.  It was fun while it lasted though.

I don't think too many people would agree that it's performing well.  Their crypto holdings valued in ruble must be an interesting chart to look at with regards to the war.  Kind of scary to think about war as a money making opportunity, but I guess that's what has been happening for probably as long as civilization has existed.  Hopefully Bitcoin can help bring an end to that sort of foolishness someday.  I'd hate to think that World War III is set off primarily because some politician wants to retire but would like to give his Lockheed Martin stock a nice boost before he does. 

I think common sense is probably the reason for this.  Don't let anyone have your private keys or use public keys that are generated for you by a third party.  This should be a no brainer.  You can generate your own QR code using your public key yourself, or I'm sure there are generators out there that provide you with a QR code for payment without needing to be the ones to have access to the private key.

For example, blockchain.com provides you with a QR code for any address automatically just by looking up the address.  There is no compromise of your security to use such a QR code for payments.  You can also easily check to make sure the QR code is for your address by just scanning it.

https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/168WXhArv7Fasqvi2xm5MQMfLhG18jifMe

In short, it should be common sense to anyone not to get your Bitcoin keys from someone else (some exceptions like physical Bitcoin wallets, but you shouldn't load them either) and I think that's why people are out warning people not to use malicious QR code generators.  Additionally, people shouldn't have their Bitcoin private keys posted publicly, but I don't think we need to have a public discussion about that either.

The Biggest Loser Raffle...
The first "Biggest Loser Raffle" seemed to be enjoyed by all (except maybe the biggest loser) so I thought it might be a good time to do another one.

There is no fee to enter, but if you are selected as the biggest loser you are required to pay for the prize.  Due to shipping variances, this raffle will be restricted to continental US shipping addresses only.  If you would like to enter, please have a trading history with positive feedback and be ready to spend BTC and get nothing if you lose.  If you have left me negative feedback, trolled me to the point of having your PMs blocked, or distrust me in the trust network, please refrain from participating to avoid an embarrassing situation.  If you're unsure about participating, drop me a PM and say hi. 

2 blocks will be selected to determine the outcome.  The first block selecting the loser and the second block selecting the winner. The winner cannot also be the loser.  The winner will supply a US address and receive their prize once the loser has paid for it.  Payment will be made to: 168WXhArv7Fasqvi2xm5MQMfLhG18jifMe

The cost to enter is a promise to pay $44 in BTC upon completion of the raffle.  Please select an open character below to particpate.



Participants:
0- slimzak
1- Dkois
2- Dernoste
3- dcarter
4- Dkois
5- 2stout
6- sunnybwoy
7- WhyFhy
8- Dkois
9- Dkois
a- dirtbike
b- Dkois
c- Rmcdermott927
d- Cryptogreatdane
e- FFrankie
f- Suzuki Matt

Some of the horrific video clips I've seen from this war really illustrates how war has changed.  Seeing tanks runover cars on the freeway like they're playing grand theft auto, or seeing cyclists having bombs dropped on their heads are things that are just unexpected to me and even unfathomable.  I think most people just want to go about their daily lives without fear of some government squabble murdering them while trying to get a workout in, or trying to make it to work.  It's pretty crazy that with all of the advancement of our civilization, war has turned even less personal and the loss of life seems almost expected.  Personally, I would prefer the days of swinging swords to suddenly having your entire family murdered in a second as a jet flies by...  If you haven't seen some of the horrific clips out there from this war, do yourself a favor and don't search for them.  It's absolutely heartbreaking.

One of the beauties of mining crypto is that you are constantly dollar cost averaging.  This is why despite buying crypto being a historically smarter approach, many still engage in mining.  The automated dollar cost averaging goes a long way.  As an investor, you can get the best of both worlds if you choose to dollar cost average your way into the market over time.  So when you ask if it is a good time to buy Bitcoin, I would say the answer is almost always, "yes" depending on your personal investment plan.  If you are able to be patient and dollar cost average your way into the market, you might even find that you enjoy the downturns as you can get more BTC for your buck, while also enjoying the price appreciation on the upside.  That goes far behind lumping everything into crypto at once and then when the price falls you give up and take a loss.

Bitcoin can’t fail. It has already succeeded. Blockchain technology is out of the bag and people have a new way of fighting financial oppression in the digital age. So even if Bitcoin’s price goes to zero, it will not be a failure. It has opened the eyes of many and shown that the revolution will be monetized. With politicians jumping on board the train, it’s really only a matter of time before Bitcoin, or some other form of blockchain technology takes over the current financial system without so much as firing a shot. Welcome to the future where what can be accomplished digitally surpasses what one can accomplish with an army.