Hard to compete with a team that was made up of mercenaries. Nepal is a poor country and all of their players were natives. On the other hand, Singapore didn't had any native player in their team and most of their players were former Ranji players from India who agreed to play for SG in return for a monetary payment (out of the 5 teams, only Nepal and Malaysia had native players).

There is no point in complaining, as teams such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia regularly win medals in Olympics with their imported athletes. But the difference here is that you can't compete in Olympics if you don't have citizenship of that country. On the other hand, you can play for Singapore in cricket even if you don't have SG citizenship.

I don't think that in case the test match ends in a draw, they'll call for super-over. ICC will be more interested in declaring the winner based on their ridiculous rules (just like the maximum boundary rule they had for the CWC finals). For example, they can declare the team which bowled the least extras as winners. Or it could be the team which contributes the most to the ICC in terms of revenue. You never know these crazy people and the rules they make. Their aim is not to award the match to the team which performed the best.

So you are indirectly saying that Manny needs the help of some heavyweight like Mayweather or McGregor to get to a figure of 1 million plus PPV buys. The last fight (Manny vs Thurman) got around 400,000 PPV buys and I guess that is the maximum that Manny can attract. Someone like Mayweather is needed to take the figures to 7 digits.

You can use a VPN to move your coins. But in case you want to encash them, how you are going to do that? As long as the transaction is crypto-to-crypto, the authorities many not be able to trace back the coins to you. But once you convert the coins to fiat currency, this anonymity is lost. Selling the coins for physical cash is one of the options, but there are multiple risk factors with this method.

They don't want Rupee to Bitcoin conversion, as it can negatively impact the national currency. However, the good news is that Subhash Chandra Garg (ex-Economic Affairs Secretary) who was probably the most rabidly anti-Bitcoin government official, was fired by the finance minister last week. It is not yet clear about who will become the replacement, but for me it is a good sign.

The US is home to a few tens of millions of Bitcoin users. So the IRS has sent notices to less than 0.1% of all the Bitcoin users. Since the number is so small, I suspect that these guys (who received the notice) might have done something wrong (such as tax evasion). Now it is wrong to assume that the IRS is prosecuting all the crypto users in the US.

Singapore vs Nepal match ongoing right now. You can watch the live stream here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fwr2CQR2YJQ

The winner of the match will participate in the global qualifiers. Right now, Singapore with an advantage. They batted first, and made 191/6 in 20.0 overs. Nepal started well, and they are 27/0 after 3.0.

-----------------------------------------------------

BTW, did anyone watched the match between Edmonton Royals and Toronto Nationals? I watched it because Yuvraj Singh was playing. He made 35 from 21 balls.

Basketball is not that unheard of in India and Pakistan. In India we have a franchise based basketball league, which is quite popular among the fans. But the real reason is that the Indians are not athletic enough to compete with players from the United States and Russia. Average height in India for males is 165 cm, which is 11cm lower than the case in the US.

One of the options is to import some second tier players from countries such as US and get them naturalized as Indian citizens. But I don't prefer that route.

Ideally Libra should not be allowed in countries other than the United States. It is a centralized currency, backed up mostly by the United States Dollar. The US government can use it as a tool to strengthen the position of USD, against other currencies such as the CNY and RUR. After the recent spate of privacy violations involving FB, this has become very necessary.

If I am not wrong, KYC is mandatory with Coinbase. So the vast majority of these 30 million users may be real individuals, rather than bots. Also, it is heartening to note that the growth in the number of users didn't slowed in 2018, when we had a prolonged bear phase. The numbers have almost doubled when compared to what we had in 2018 January.

A rough estimates for the total number of BTC users, based on this stat would be somewhere around 200 million (including inactive users).

Historically, the prices have gone down whenever the talk about bans surfaced. First in 2013 December, the prices crashed when there were rumors about a ban in China. Another crash occurred in mid-2017, when there were similar rumors from the same country. And in 2018, another crash occurred when ICOs were banned in Korea. In case the United States authorities ban BTC, the market is not going to behave in a different way.

The first thing I have noticed is the incredible diversity among the teams. There are a total of 32 participants and all the (inhabited) continents are adequately represented. The only missing super-power is Great Britain. My country (India) also failed to qualify, but that was expected. Another thing I have noticed is that the vast majority of the teams have fielded native players, with only a very few including naturalized players (one exception is Italy).

Ireland would not rank among the top 15 teams in cricket (if all of them had test status), and bowling them out for 38 can't be taken as a measurement for the ferocity of the English attack. You should not forget the fact that the English bowlers conceded 200 plus during the first innings. I am still mad at England for robbing the world cup from a more deserving team. I just hope that the Aussies will teach them a lesson and show how to play ethically.

Anyone agree with me that the ICC should revoke the test status of Ireland? Their performance was really horrible and I have a feeling that test matches should be limited to those teams with international standard. Ireland comes nowhere close. Afghanistan is doing well, so I would suggest the ICC to revoke the test status of Zimbabwe and Ireland, to make it a ten team affair.

A single coin may not be able to overtake Bitcoin on its own. But it is entirely possible that the combined market share of the altcoins can cross the 50% level (three months back, we were having similar figures). Bitcoin will remain as the largest currency (in terms of market capitalization), but there will be a lot of fragmentation in the crypto market.

Pathetic performance by Ireland. It was the worst performance by any team in a test match. The ICC should seriously consider revoking their test status and reconsider the decision only when they are 100% sure of their competitiveness. Their appalling performance brought disgrace to all the emerging teams and now test nations would be reluctant to stage any matches against these lesser teams.

First wicket down for Ireland. William Porterfield out for 2, with Woakes picking the wicket. Looks like they won't even make 100 in their second innings. And this is what I got from espncricinfo:


The odds are heavily against Ireland. But they need to bat it out like their life depends on it. This is the closest they could get to a test victory, for the next 10 years.

BTW, someone had claimed that 9 out of the 11 members of the Irish squad were born in England. This is not true. Check this:

WTS Porterfield: born in Londonderry, Northern Ireland
JA McCollum: born in Waringstown, Northern Ireland
A Balbirnie: born in Dublin, Republic of Ireland
PR Stirling: born in Belfast, Northern Ireland
KJ O'Brien: born in Dublin, Republic of Ireland
GC Wilson: born in Dundonald, Northern Ireland
SR Thompson: born in Londonderry, Northern Ireland
MR Adair: born in Holywood, Northern Ireland
AR McBrine: born in Londonderry, Northern Ireland
TJ Murtagh: born in Lambeth, England
WB Rankin: born in Londonderry, Northern Ireland

The only player who was born outside Ireland is Tim Murtagh and he is playing for Ireland because his grandparents were from Ireland and he is an Irish citizen since 2012. On the other hand, the England captain (Eoin Morgan) was born in the Republic of Ireland and holds the Irish passport. To this date, he don't have a British passport.

The Irish cricket team is the United Ireland team (Republic of Ireland + Northern Ireland). In football and all the other sports, they play separately.

My prediction is like this:

If the lead is <150, then Ireland has a great chance of winning this test.
If the lead is in the range of 151-200, then both the teams have equal chances.
If the lead is >200, then England has a great chance of winning this test.

Now the lead has increased to 181, and let's see whether they will be able to cross 200 or not.

Not really. Their reputation is quite good around here and it has never been proven that any of the coins can be listed in coinmarketcap if the promoters are ready to make payments. Obviously, the team behind coinmarketcap is not operating the website for charity. They get revenues in the form of advertisement income and payments for providing data. But they have never listed any coin after accepting payments and if that was the case then you might have seen a few threads against them in this forum.