Yeah, I think the odds might have changed closer to the start. But when I placed bets on Betfair it was definitely still 1.26/1.27 for back and lay respectively.

Anyhow, great win from Australia. Started quite sluggish but as the game progressed, their dominance definitely showed in terms of athleticism and experience. Campazzo was great at the start but fizzled out - too many risky passes.

Farewell to an absolute legend in Luis Scola, though. Still remember his days with Yao on the Rockets. Odds on Australia seem like a steal for the semifinals - granted they are not likely to win, but 6x odds definitely entices me enough.

I'd say that if you think you are a trader, you are likely not a trader. You are a speculator.

Institutional market makers mean that there is pretty much no inefficiecies for the average trader who does not even operate a bot. Research has shown that hyperactive trading simply leads to below average market returns since brokerage can quickly add up, and the negative EV accumulates.

Patience is so important in the investing business - you need to be absolutely willing to hold an investment for decades until your thesis is proven.

Definitely.

I think that country bias plays a big role in this as well - people are more likely to be emotionally attached enough to their country rather than an independent team that they root for on a casual basis, and there are just so many events that makes it easy to place a lot of parlay bets in a short period of time without having to wait weeks for your betslip to confirm.

I'd say that bookies around the world are having a great period right now. Volumes must be sky high.

Rooting for Australia tonight.

Argentina is definitely a strong team, but the top two players on the team are probably Campazzo and Scola.

Australia simply has more youth. Scola definitely can't run full court as well as he used to, even though he can still dominate the paint.

Even at 1.26, it would back Aus. Although I'm 100% biased, that's for sure.

I've tried with Roobet, Duelbits and Stake. All work just fine with VPN.

If you think about it, it is in the casino's best interests to allow VPN. Of course they need to comply with country regulations when it comes to not allowing certain IPs from registering, but no one really goes out of their way to ban VPNs.

Also, a good way to test whether or not a site would work with a VPN is simply download a free VPN and try it out - ProtonVPN is a good option for this.

If anything, casinos should be turning over more in fiat terms.

As quite an early adopter of bitcoin, I know that I still value of lot of things in absolute BTC terms and not fiat terms. Gambling would be one of them.

When I'm betting with 0.01 BTC, I definitely don't feel like I'm playing with $400.

Those psychological differences definitely do add up for the casino, who ultimately profits more from it.

Almost guaranteed in my opinion.

It'll be a matter of time before the lines between physical and virtual casinos blur. Physical casinos like those on the Vegas strip will likely increasingly adopt technologies that push their operations online, especially after this pandemic hit.

Nobody wants to carry around a chip or even a card anymore in a physical casino. And with the inevitability of virtual-physical casino integration, companies will take a serious revenue hit if they fail to keep up with the crypto adoption trend.

Obviously on one wants to do KYC.

But there are two main reasons why casinos would attempt to enforce it.

1. There is actual legislation that requires them to collect this info, in which case they have no choice but to collect it. Otherwise the government may crack down on their services.

OR

2. They are using KYC as an excuse to hold onto player funds, which is definitely the more commonplace practice imho. And the worst are the those who don't notify you of this beforehand.

Nothing the player can do about it, just avoid casinos with a reputation/track record of doing this.

If they are not already adopters of crypto, institutional investors certainly will be going forward.

There is no way that they will simply sit out of the best performing asset of the past decade. A lot of high frequency trading firms have already started making markets on crypto exchanges, and I anticipate more established entities to continue to expand their presence into the future (SIG, Optiver, etc.).

Also, wealth management firms should start recommending crypto as a viable alternative investment going into the future as well. No doubt about that.

Only recommend it if your friend is willing to hold it over the long run.

And make sure to recommend that he DCA his way into his position - i.e., don't put all of his capital base in all at once. That increases the likelihood of him buying at market top exponentially. Instead, suggest that he dollar cost average.

It is almost guaranteed that BTC will be more expensive 4 years from now due to its disinflationary nature, and the halving in 2024. The problem is we don't know exactly when the bottom will be in this bear market, or whether this is a bear market at all. Averaging cost is a great way to ensure that you don't get ripped either way.

Despite the bullishness recently, I still think that we're potentially headed further down before an uptrend.

The fundamentals are obviously here but timing wise, this doesn't seem to be matching up with a bull period. We are still quite some time away from the next halving event, which will be in 2024 and the ultimate driver for the bull market.

I suspect that we'll see prices correct down to $20-30k and consolidate there for a bit after this current rally, before launching the next bullish move.

Have a look on eBay - I've had a dug around and there are plenty of currency bundles from Germany, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela.

Ironically though, given that everyone is trying to collect this stuff now, the prices of high notes can get quite absurd. E.g. I've seen $100 trillion notes being listed at more than $300 USD apiece and that seems to be the going market rate.

Definitely not a great buy imo. Just accept a slightly lower denomination (still in the billions/millions) and move on.

We've been calling it for quite some time now.

I personally think that even 0.06 BTC is way too much. The 2 BTC standard was set when BTC was $1-2k or even less, whilst 0.06 BTC right now is within that range alone. Regulators will still look at Binance and think that they haven't done as much as they could on the KYC front - one could still plausibly mass create accounts to circumvent this.

Definitely withdraw if you have large amounts in Binance. Anything more than 0.06 at this stage is asking for trouble.

I think that it is a matter of time before Blockfi and other custodial wallets run into serious legal issues.

They are essentially running a fractional reserve scheme without all the regulatory hassels that traditional banks have to deal with. I don't see how this model is sustainable - just look at the pressures that exchanges are getting recently, including Binance.

Is it really worth all the risk to just get a few percent each year on your BTC? You're much better off just holding it in a private key that you control and let the deflationary aspect of BTC take its course over time.

The offer makes absolutely no sense.

Whatever the ultimate company is, it is raking in $100 in signup fees and paying out apparently $2-3k worth of value.

I would agree with the judgement that this is likely a MLM scheme. Whilst that is not necessarily a bad thing, the chances of this being a pyramid scheme with no product to back it up is high. Unless OP is willing to hold referral money in escrow, I wouldn't recommend anyone sign up to this.

Probably partially due to regulators as well.

The blunder that occurred on Binance's leveraged tokens definitely was taken into account in this decision as well. I remember when Binance actually criticised FTX's leveraged tokens and supposedly made it better themselves - just to see a bunch of BEAR leveraged tokens go to zero when the market was falling.

High leverage/variable leverage is never a good idea, even for exchanges with large reserves. Good move to reduce risk I think, and I think it will be across the board.

If true, then this is excellent news for all BTC holders.

Hopefully, they actually follow through with the actions and not just go through the motions. I would also hope that they are not using a custodial model with a third party integration - but rather developing their proprietary technology to accept BTC.

All in all, this is a much more genuine attempt at integrating BTC than Tesla by the sounds of it. A lot less speculative for sure.

Absolutely do not trust signals.

Think about it this way: if the signals were actually legitimate, then why wouldn't the people running the signal service just use it themselves?

It makes absolutely no sense for them to sell it as it would diminish their own profitability, and make the opportunity disappear.

The only logical explanation is that they are making money off YOU. This goes with any telegram pump & dump group as well.

Isn't it funny how people are worried about inflation now?

It's almost like they have selective amnesia. If they hear inflation fears from bitcoiners (and they have, for 10 years), then they automatically deem us the radicals who are just spewing garbage to fulfill agendas. Whilst if they hear from mainstream media, they panic and start raising their inflationary expectations too.

Anyway, the period of deflation/low inflation is transient and now that is gone. This inflationary period is naturally reflective of the Fed and other central banks' wild policies during the pandemic. I don't know why anyone should be surprised.

BTC is still a great hedge against this, nothing has changed on that front.

Certainly a lot of shorts in the market.

People were focusing meme stocks like GME/AMC getting a second short squeeze, yet they forgot about BTC.

The market sentiment has once again swung into bullish territory with the crypto conference on the 22nd. I don't necessarily expect BTC to breach $50k given that we are still in a downtrend based on historical timing, but the $40k resistance should falter at any time and we could build a decent support there.