For anybody with limited finances this is the best approach to investments in my opinion. Buying a property in New York sounds like a great deal, but this requires a lot of finances and for the majority of people this is not really an option. The advantage of investing in crypto currencies is that we can do this already with small amount. When saving a few hundred USD, or even 10k USD we could be building a nice crypto portfolio with good returns. Using that kind of money for a real estate deal would get us nowhere. It's hard to compare these two options because one requires to take out loans that might run for 30 years, whereas the crypto investments can be sold and bought everyday. Also using DCA seems the best approach for me to buy crypto currencies over a long period of time instead of making one big purchase today.

It comes as bit of a surprise to me that there isn't more research being done on this topic. From a casino point of view it would make sense to learn as much as possible about your customers to target their preferences more directly. In the gaming industry there is a lot of research being done. A few weeks ago I read that the average person gaming regularly is 33 years old and that there is a 50% female quote among newer gamers. With the rise of female gamers I would expect it to be similar in the casinos. If men are having fun gambling then woman should have too. The question is now if female gamblers are spending similar amounts as the men or if men are the better customers for the casinos. What I know from my personal experience is that woman are usually better at budgeting their finances and can keep a tighter control on expenses.

If someone only focuses on money and every action he takes is to try to get more monet, wouldn't you say that there are already some issues before he starts with gambling? Gambling is just one way to try and satisfy his urge for money, becoming a workaholic and focusing on his job 24/7 would be another issue. The same goes for buying risky investments to try and get the highest possible return, falling for risky insurance schemes or trying to create a side hustle. There are so many different ways people could try and get more money, gambling is just one of it and we can't blame the system for it. The big issue is that there can't be a risky way to get everybody rich quickly, because then would money be worthless. People who only to into gambling for making money will eventually get hurt.

That's an interesting topic and I haven't really thought about it in much detail. As far as I know there are no tax deductions from gambling losses in my country. Unlike losses from trading that can be offset against future winnings, I think that there are no benefits from gambling losses. To me this seems unfair and this why I don't really focus on the tax issue for my small winnings. As long as I don't deposit larger sums in my bank account there shouldn't be any issue. The tax question becomes more concerning after a big win and I am still waiting for that. I do it very similar to my crypto trading adventures, I would be happy to pay taxes if have the returns to do it. But as long as there is no big profits I don't see paying taxes as a major concern.

Yes free slot games are real and it's a favorite tool for some casinos to reward their loyal customers. Like you I never won anything big in them. My payouts are usually less than 5 USD which is a bit sad. Not really sure if it's worth for the casino to manipulate these games so that gamblers only can win small amounts, or maybe I am just unlucky. I noticed in the past that usually the time before Christmas is when casinos run more promotions and offer more free spins. One casino even had an advent calendar that had every day in December free spins. Maybe there is a difference between free spins for new users and for regular customers, because the spins are usually linked to one particular game. What I used to do with all the free spin wins is to place them on black in roulette for one round to double my profits.

Something I would add here is that people who have struggled with other addictions in their life are more at risk to become addicted to gambling than others. It's good to evaluate your life before and see if you have struggled with cigarettes, drugs, alcohol or even gaming. In case you have excessively consumed one of these things it's a good idea to have a close look on your gambling activities. Remain in control of your gambling habit should be the key for anybody with previous issues. Having a fixed set of rules is what helped me the most and be open about your activities to friends and family. Once you start lying to your family it's not far from lying to yourself.

No I think it's a complete different experience, visiting physical casinos has a very different atmosphere then when gambling at home alone. In most cases people visit physical casinos in a group and enjoy some good and drinks together. It's not everything about gambling, whereas in an online casino we are on our own and it's all about playing the casino games. Which is also why I think that gambling addictions would be different for people playing in the two types of casinos. It's much easier for someone to stay away from physical casinos than it is to stop gambling at online casinos. Anyone that is used to gamble online and becomes addicted will have problems to use the internet and not visit casinos. It only takes one click to be back at the casino and start playing again, while the other person might need to drive 1 hour to visit their favorite casino. Nonetheless both types of addictions are terrible and hard to overcome.

That's a good bitcoin allocation, I also try to have 70-80% of my crypto money in bitcoins. Bitcoin is still the most popular coin and offers a good return outlook with the halving next year. I expect that most people are waiting for next year before consider selling any coins. Waiting for the price to reach the ATH is another strong level after which people could start selling again. The problem is that if many people focus on such fixed levels to take profits in bitcoins is that there will be a lot of selling pressure. It could even get so bad that there are not enough buyers in the market and prices would drop sharply. Let's assume we surpass the ATH next year and directly the next day a large number of longterm investors want to sell their coins. Without many buyers in the market this could lead to a panic and collapse of the price again. I try not link my profit goals to fixed bitcoin prices as I still believe the longterm trend is upwards for Bitcoin.

Sorry to hear that you lost everything in 2008, hopefully your family managed to recover in the rebound. I am a huge fan of Michael Lewis and read the book and watched the movie. Listening to traders and their views it surprises me that not more people were finding out the huge mess the financial system was in. Having multiple homes and mortgages that you can't really afford and only relying on rising house prices to get out of your misery seems so wrong on multiple levels. Having now people doing the same scheme nationwide is going to lead to disaster. The issue back then was that many people knew about the problems, but nobody knew exactly when the bubble was going to burst. It was more profitable to ride the wave for a year or two in 2005, then to starting to bet against. Just look at Michael Burry, he was too early with his trades and lost a lot of money before the crisis hit. It's not enough to be right, we also need to be right at the correct time. While the economy is not doing great at the moment, I don't think we are heading to such bad times like in 2008. We don't have so many bad financial assets like the CDO madness from those times that were spread around the world

 I don't think this is going to work. Most of the AIs are all publicly accessible and if they really had an advantage over the human day trader, then all investors would be using them. There might be a difference between private AIs that have access to a lot of private information from brokers and exchanges directly, but I don't believe the general open AIs are going to revolutionize trading for the average investors. One question would be how the AI should learn to trade. In case he only works with past trading data and tries to find the optimal trading strategy, then this is nothing new. For 30 years already there has been algorithms that use technical analysis to find trend and trade on them. The other option would be for the AI to rely on current and forward-looking data, not using past trade prices. Here would be the question how reliable this is going to be. There is a lot of risk in using AI for our trading strategies, because we might not fully understand what the strategy is. Even if the AI does well at first, there is no guarantee that it will outperform the market consistently. I would be very careful to trust large sums of money to AI trading programs.

When influencers or streamers show their balances at the casino I think it's a flex and an effort to show what is possible for big gamblers. Most casinos have the option to hide the balance for streamers, so they deliberately want us to see it. The question is also if it's really their money or if it's an account given to them from the casino. As part of the marketing deal these streamers have to promote a particular casino, they could receive the money to place larger bets. I would even expect that they can't really withdraw that money and it's only for promotional purposes. That's why we shouldn't compare ourselves to the big streamers and influencers, we don't know what is happening behind the scenes. Like you I also prefer to withdraw larger amounts after winning some money. This also helps to protect me from losing all the winnings again.

While bitcoins are a great investment for longterm protection of our savings, I am a bit critical towards short-term profits during a big economic collapse. The problem with a major downturn is that most investors are going to avoid any risky assets and will focus on holding cash or government bonds. So, anybody that has large amounts of crypto currencies and is looking for buyers might not find them or only at a hefty discount. During a major collapse my first step would be to start stockpiling food again. I just finished eating most of the canned food from the covid pandemic and would make sure to have at least 4 weeks of food and water. Also toilet paper was a big issue during lockdowns, better to stock up as well. The best would be to have a private garden and start planting good, but I don't see any chance in the city. My next step would be to start looking for another job, just in case my employer goes bankrupt or has layoffs it's good to have already an alternative lined up. And my third preparation would be to start storing cash at home again in case there is a collapse of the financial system, almost like in 2008.

The group C matches of ESL Pro League 18 are being played today and on Wednesday Group D is going to start. The first match is going to be 9z vs Apeks, I am not so familiar with the two teams but Apeks seems to be the clear favourite. It will only be a small bet on Apeks from me. The second match today is Faze, they did a great job of reaching the upper bracket finals and will meet NaVi. It's going to be a close match, but I think FaZe has some advantage here and is going to win eventhough the two teams played against each other in Cologne this year and NaVi won 2-0. And the last match of they day will be the Chinese team 5yclone vs the the Apeks/9z winner. Here I would also expect Apeks to win, they are a mutch stronger team. As for Group D we have the match G2 vs Lynn which is probably one of the most one sided matches of the season, there is no way for G2 to lose it. Then there will be Virtus.pro playing against Team Liquid, which they should Virtus.pro win easily. Same for Cloud9 vs Eternal Fire, the russian team with Hobbit should be winning the match easily.

It's been a few months already since the news and so far nothing changed here on the forum. The ban seems to be focused on Australia and wasn't picked up by other countries. In my country I haven't heard about any political movement that wants to ban gambling advertising. When I look on all the ads we have over here it would be crazy to not allow gambling ads, but then all the other things. The most common ads I notice are either for alcohol or cigarettes. The huge hype about e-cigarettes and vapes can be seen on billboards on every big corner. It would be unfair to ban on specific industry and allow everything else. The question is also how such a law could be enforced if ads are only displayed online. Banning something in Australia should have no real impact for the majority of users here on the forum.

First of all China is not a democracy, it's really hard to compare them to other countries that free markets and open election. In China everything is controlled, over the last 2 years several economic indicators turned bad and the communist party decided to stop publishing them. I expect the Chinese economic picture to be highly skewed, only positive data is bringw broadcasted and everything else is pushed under the carpet. The second issue is that China is starting from a very different level to the developed countries in the world, average wages are lower, safety standards and environmental regulations are very different. That is why it's much easier for Chinese firms to compete globally during times of crisis. Also the Chinese government has a lot of money at hand to step in and boost certain sectors to survive the covid pandemic. China even managed to profit from the pandemic, I remember that almost all the masked in my country where produced in China. In my opinion the biggest threat for China is the trade wars with USA and if it intensifies it could spilt over to Europe as well. If most of the western countries would boycott China their economy is doomed, because the rest of the world can't take over all these exports. China is trying hard to expand into Africa and Asia to create more consumers, but they don't have enough money and China has to help out with loans.

That is a very interesting table, I had no idea our personal information would be so cheap. Somehow, I always thought it would be more expensive to get specific data for individuals like income, age, ethnicity, etc. Given that my salary is much lower and I am already older than 20, I feel a bit cheap that my personal information is not worth more. It kind of makes sense that value of the information is linked to the personal income of a person. But still paying only 1.3 USD for the information of someone that makes 130k a year seems a bit off. Such a high earner has a lot of disposal income and with the right advertising there could be a lot of money be made. The question would be now if it's so easy to acquire a lot of personal information online and that is why companies don't have to pay more for our data. Or most companies still rely on generic advertising and don't use all the personal information. Another thing is that among my friends it's mostly woman that order online, which would make personal information of woman more valuable than men.

It really depends for me how I feel about a particular bet and how much I am willing to lose on my conviction. In some cases the odds of winning are so high that it just doesn't make any sense to bet small. In the past I used to bet large amounts on the favorites on football match, even on leagues that I didn't even follow I bet on games with 1.05 and lower payouts. The problem was that in several bets the underdog won and I lost all my money. The amount of money you risk compared to your payout is so big that it's going to take month to recover any loss. Now I am trying to be more cautious, I still bet large amounts from time to time, but I also try to bet more smaller amounts. The good thing about high payout bets is that you can spread out your money across a large number of bets. Even if the winning chance for one bet is low, it's enough to win a few to cover the losses from the majority.

Not really sure what to take from your list. I have been gambling in half of those countries and never had any issue. Why should it be unethical to gamble in a country where it's legal? I would like to visit many more casinos and the top two countries/cities where I want to gamble next is Monaco and Macau. Anybody that visits the south of France should take a few days and enjoy Monaco. A few friends of mine already have been there and recommend a visit. As long as there a big casino and a legal framework from the government to regulate the gambling industry I don't see any issue. It would be nice if all countries around the world allow gambling, so people that live in a country where it's banned don't have to travel far to enjoy gambling. From your list I don't see any difference between these countries and their attitude towards gambling. The casinos offer the same games and there are even big casino chains that run operations in multiple countries.

That is great news, Franklin Templeton is one of largest asset managers in USA and has a good reputation. If such a renowned name decides to enter the crypto world it's going to bring a lot of new investors and money in. For the younger generations ETFs is the go-to investments if they don't have any information advantage. It offers a cheap and easy solution to profit of the price increase of the underlying assets. For both my parents I switched all their investments in ETFs, they don't hold any actively traded fund anymore. It makes sense to save as much as possible in cost and be happy about the index returns. Most ETF usually replicate the index synthetically and not really buy the underlying assets. It’s for some ETFs to buy actual bitcoins and engage in spot transactions.

Because they are not as profitable as they want to appear. I stopped believing in these YouTube videos that want to show us how quickly they can make a profit. There is no verification on how real the numbers are we are seeing online. The influencer could either fake their profits or hide all the losing trades and appear more profitable. As long as there is no independent verification on all the trading being done o would not believe them. These influencer usually get their money through number of people watching the videos and Ads on top of it. An affiliation scheme brings in additional money and let's the influencer benefit from any money the new customers bring in. This doesn't mean that all their ideas are bad. If the content creator is funny and talks about a lot of different topics then I would still keep watching them. Just don't believe everything they tell you, remaining critical and cautious can save a lot of money on a bad investment.