I wish it was such a linear calculation, but we also need to take into account that the actual amount of money needed to push the Bitcoin price from 10k to 20k is very different from pushing it from 40k to 80k if you do the calculations based on multipliers. To go back to the 70k range I think we will need enormous short-term momentum, gigantic volume and sustainability of positive sentiment for a few weeks. It would mean we would go from 720 billion to 1.5 trillion market capitalization for Bitcoin alone. That's a lot!

I am hoping for positive developments and intentions all the time, but nuclear weapons are one of the best examples how a source of energy can be used for good and for evil. This is not to discuss whether nuclear energy or power plants are good, I am just saying that if it is used for generating energy only, the intention is to make things easier for everyone (not taking into account possible consequences that way of generating energy may have). But nuclear power can also be used for bombs. Whereas with knives we all know we can cut a piece of meat, we can also cut some human throats, but knives won't drive humanity into the ground. Nuclear bombs could, but it needs human beings to decide whether to launch them or not and that will never change.

But if AI advances beyond the human brain capacity while human beings naively keep believing that this is an unrealistic or even impossible scenario, there would be no turning back. I think that is what Musk is trying to say.

Your hope that everything will be used for good must be appreciated, but if anything is unlikely to become true ever, it is what you are hoping for. Things that are incredibly powerful to support human beings, but also incredibly powerful to destroy human beings, will always be used both ways.

I am not sure if it was Musk, but someone said that AI is more comparable to a virus. It will never be possible to eradicate it 100% once it has been released and spread among the population. But AI could get to a point where it is able to independently reinforce learning curves and feed itself with data that is no garbage because it will be good enough to identify supportive data that fosters its learning from garbage data.

This is what Djokovic often brings up as the thing that motivates him the most when he plays against is toughest contenders. I believe him, Djokovic is the kind of guy who turns negative sentiment into positive energy for him. Ronaldo is the same in football. It probably is something that sets all the world stars apart from others unless you are the one who is loved by everyone, like Federer, which can also give invaluable positive energy.

But I am not sure about Sinner. He is playing stunning tennis, but beating Alcaraz just like that also means that Djokovic isn't that bad in shape.

"Imaginary future" is a pretty good title for the introductory post you chose as it leaves room for speculation and is not narrow minded. It includes everyone with their own perspectives and live story.

I think being able to save can be a goal in and of itself as much as being able to freely spend, to buy a lambo, can be a goal. But there are very different people in our society and I think a lot has to do with their past. I know some people who dreamt of buying this big house or car and once they got there and could do it, they preferred to save.

I think sometimes it is more the mental challenge people give themselves. And sometimes you have people who buy the lambo and then want a next level car and then the next level car.

For me personally I think knowing that I could do something if I wanted to is probably more than 90% fulfillment of that desire already. I don't want to say 100% because there are certainly things I would love to afford instead of saving the money when I arrived at that goal.

This could of course be a valid point and it depends on what the coach thinks about Lukaku. It could still be an option to let him play and let him score his goal or give him 60 minutes to keep him moving with the team. But at the same time a break could also make sense. I guess this is the biggest threat for those who went with Lukaku scoring a goal. Either a break or a very short play time for him.

@leea-1334 and @jayce, I am out of the battle for the free bet as jayce got me covered with the remaining answers and he is 1 point ahead of me. There is now a draw between leea-1334 and jayce, but timing of submission now depends on Lukaku and the Belgium game.

@jayce did you already get your Lukaku jersey and the Belgium national flag out?

The real problem he is describing is meant differently I think. When someone develops nuclear bombs secretly, another nation can do that as well. Take Iran as an example and there are estimations that they will have a nuclear bomb in 18 - 24 months. I can't verify these assumptions, but let's assume they are true. Then Iran would have a nuclear bomb, but that doesn't lead necessarily to the end of the world because other nations also have the nuclear bomb, which counters the threat. Of course, if this gets out of control a nuclear war would destroy planet earth, but everyone can make a decision whether to push the red button or not.

But if one nation secretly advances AI controlled "somethings" into autonomous, self-thinking and decision-making soldiers, planners, you name it, and they release this AI controlled something and then someone else tries to counter also with AI controlled "somethings", the people responsible for releasing these things may not have been able to grasp and anticipate the consequences, but by then there would be no turning back as AI may outcompete human beings in all regards. It is not only a slippery slope like with nuclear bombs, because there is always someone who can decide to not push the red button and stop the slippery slope. But AI may get to a point where it gets beyond the threshold that it requires to be fed with data externally provided by human beings, but instead they understand how to get better by sourcing their own data. This is where nobody can anymore decide to not push a button and stop the slippery slope.

I tried to write down my thought process here in a concise way and I would really appreciate some feedback on my post because I think this is a really interesting discussion we can have here. I am not claiming I am right, please take my post here just as some food for thought.

Yes, I can feel that pain as the clean transaction history really is a thing if you are doing some little trading here, HODLing there, betting there, using a DEX, then a CEX, then a swap service etc... Very complicated and there is no software tool that could every cleanly grasp it. It is all excel-sheet work if it gets that complex.

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Yes back to topic!

So I made some screenshots because I figured I have no idea how cricket works. I only have them in German but those who understand cricket will also understand my screenshots (in contrast to me).







At the bottom of each screenshot are the odds who is going to win, or I think is more of a voting of people using that tool. The screenshots are in chronological order and as you can imagine, when I saw the result on the first screenshot, it says 212 - 130/3, making Australia a 94% favorite.

Does cricket not go back and forth with whose turn it is? It is one team first and then the other? Or why was Australia such an overwhelming favorite when to someone who has no idea about the sport this looks like South Africa is way ahead?

Interesting and bet365 is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the growing market in Germany. But don't get me wrong here, I had the prejudice that Croatia maybe one of those countries where there is lax regulation and probably more welcoming towards gambling, but I don't really know why I thought that. Probably because I am used to very strict rules in many things in Germany and then think that is must be less strict elsewhere.

Although we do have one very nice tax law concerning cryptos and that is if you hold your crypto > 12 months, whatever the gain is that you make afterwards when you sell is 0% tax.

This is crazy:


No need to mention that in terms of taxes Germany can suck really hard, but betting on sports or other gambling activities does not entail any taxes, except for the so called "Gambling tax", which is 5.3% and supposed to be paid by the gambling provider. In Germany the bookies sometimes deduct that 5.3% immediately from your stakes. Some use it as a promo that the pay it and don't deduct it from the players.

But 5% of every stake and then 15-30% for winnings in excess of 100 EUR is nuts.

This is a German article, but an official one from some major tax support association in Germany and it says that 9.4 billion EUR were generated in revenue in 2021 and I wonder if that high revenue is also the reason why they keep the tax low to not shy away the industry. Since when has that been established in Croatia?

This would indeed be hilarious, but I think Buffett can't get around being connected to Bitcoin one way or another.

^SOURCE

Even if he still says that Bitcoin is rat poison or a gambling token, he is already implying that there is business to be made when he says that people won't stop playing the roulette wheel. As more and more banks will be heavily involved with cryptocurrencies and Buffett considers banks one of his investment targets, he will also be part of the game. If he still believed that Bitcoin is rat poison and he would never touch or get close to it, seems it doesn't mean he would refrain from buying stock in crypto-friendly banks that, by the way, outperform some of his major other investments.

Thanks @Slissy and yes, this was quite a miserable round for you in terms of results, but let me tell you that I do prefer the BSFL thrill to last until Sunday. Sure it is more comfortable knowing the thing is over and I got the 3 points, but I like checking results over the weekend as it is the time when I got some more time for myself anyway. But since I have been wrong on the Poland - Czech question, I think I am also pretty much out of the competition for the free bet.

Good luck on the next one!

Oh this is so true, it usually applies to most credit cards and also to long-term debt, for instance when people buy a house the interest rate is only set at a fixed rate for a period of 10 years or something. After that people have to prepare for a totally different interest rate economy. I have seen that a couple of times in my area and that hits really hard. Now people were able to buy houses at very low interest rates, below 1%. But when they have to refinance their mortgages now, they would be around 3.5% - 4%. When you owe 200k, this can make a different of 500 EUR per month in extra debt.

So yes a very good advice is to keep debt at the lowest level possible.

There are many factors that made or allowed Bukele to bet on Bitcoin. Not every country could easily do that, or let's say not as easily as El Salvador, but I think every politician who does that also takes a gamble. I am not sure how safe Bukele was that he would get elected again or would be safe in his position even if Bitcoin goes wrong for him temporarily, but I can imagine that he was not considering the temporary downtrend of Bitcoin. He might have thought that this will take him straight into the winning zone and he could please the population with Bitcoin presents or something.

El Salvador also had a miserable credit rating and I think Bukele may have seen this investment as a chance to solve problems quickly, which he couldn't have done the standard economic way.  

This is a question that depends extremely on individual circumstances. There is no rule of thumb to that. I guess one quasi rule of thumb could be the higher the amount of spare cash you have, the more it makes sense to shift your cash wealth into assets that you either know very well and believe in, or have a track record that you can comprehend. I am not saying that history is a great indicator of future performance, but there are some assets or also foreign currencies that historically do better than others during inflation. But if you don't have spare cash at all, then the "survive" in OP's title probably makes literally sense because that is the first thing you have to do, use your cash to pay for any necessities and unavoidable bills.

Das kann ich absolut bestätigen, weil Electrum die Transaktionsgebühr auch gern mal verzerrt, je nachdem in welchem Tempo Blöcke gefunden werden. Also grad bei wirklich hohen Transaktionsgebühren lohnt es sich durchaus, die Seite von Jochen Hoenicke zu verwenden, um dann einfach die eigenen Präferenzen recht akkurat einschätzen zu können. Das Tool erlaubt es halt, dass man gut einordnen kann, mit wie viel Zeit man wohl bei welcher Gebühr rechnen muss. Electrum liefert da immer noch eher eine Momentaufnahme, die aber wie gesagt total verzerrt werden kann, weil bspw. in einem Block jemand seine Transaktion mit extrem hohen Gebühren pushen wollte oder weil viele Transaktionen ausgeführt wurden durch schnelle Blöcke. Da ist's dann hilfreich mit der Übersicht, um sich die Sache im Zeitablauf genau anschauen zu können.

It would be helpful to know what this


means in detail. At first glance, it means that they can't spent the money on literally anything, for example things like gambling or using it to buy Bitcoin or any pleasure activity will be blocked/prohibited.

But while economic stimulation could be one reason to do this, gathering data and getting access to a person's private sphere could be another reason. I have no idea how the infrastructure is built out and whether the government has a good overview of who owns what, who consumes what and so on and so forth, but I can tell you that even in some European countries governments have severe problems to figure out the social and financial status of their citizens and to address citizens either all at once or based on selective requirements because they lack data necessary to decide who is eligible for support and who is not. If bureaucracy is an issue in a country, this kind of project may help to sensitize them for what's to come what has long been planned by the government.

The setup for the last two questions that will decide the match between me and Slissy is actually quite awesome for a hedge, as I just noticed.

There are four games, which is the two qualifiers for Wales and Croatia and I picked "no" for both winning their matches, and I said Alcaraz over Zverev. Since the latter only works out for Slissy when both Medvedev and Zverev win their games, I am in a comfortable position to hedge at very high odds:



I am not really going big here, but turning 12 bucks into 100 bucks is still cool. Total odds are around 8.5. @Slissy, you can only win if my bet slip hits 4/4. Otherwise I am taking home the 3 points. It's interesting how valuable it can be to take the lead after the first three or four questions by just 1 point as it opens up these hedging opportunities at pretty low cost.

@slissy now it is official that there will be no draw for us. Two remaining different answers and I still have the 1-0 lead. This is again a round that pays off to those who have been a little bit more brave.

Not a single participant of any division went against the odds in both events Argentina - Uruguay and Colombia - Brazil. Who would have thought that despite Colombia turning around that game there will be no more than 4.5 cards? And Argentina losing is also a surprise.

2nd division Saint-loup and 3rd division goodpunt are teaching 1st division a lesson so far!

Mir ist irgendwie entgangen, dass das Urteil erst am 28. März 2024 ergehen soll. Auch wenn wohl klar ist, dass das unter keinen Umständen für SBF erträglich ausgeht, interessierst's mich schon, ob sie da einen zweiten Ross Ulbrich auspacken und ihn im Gefängnis sterben lassen wollen. Wenn 110 Jahre das maximale Strafmaß ist, es um 8 Milliarden USD geht und die Jury einstimmig für schuldig befunden hat, dann frag ich mich inwieweit ein Richter da noch Spielraum hat. Er muss ja berücksichtigen, dass Existenzen zerstört wurden, die ebenfalls de facto lebenslänglich bekommen haben wegen SBF.

Nun bereiten die Eltern eine Berufung vor. Nicht, dass das jetzt unerwartet gewesen wäre, aber dass die Mutter bei der Urteilsverkündung geheult hat und der Vater sein Gesicht in seinen Händen vergrub, das war doch schon vorher klar. Ob die wohl wirklich geglaubt haben bis zum Schluss, dass da noch was geht für SBF? Also das war ja teilweise zum Kopfschütteln, was da ans Tageslicht gekommen ist und wie die Verteidigung und SBF selbst argumentiert hat.

Gegen die Eltern ist nun ebenfalls ein Verfahren angestrengt worden bzw. Klage eingereicht worden und ich bin mir ziemlich sicher, dass die nicht erwarten können, dass irgendein Gericht mit denen zimperlich umgeht. Denn indirekt waren sie die beiden, die aus ihrer Position und mit ihren Kenntnissen heraus genau wussten, dass sie ihr Kind womöglich für immer hinter Gitter schlittern lassen. Allein die Forderungen, die der Vater in Emails an SBF verschriftlicht hat, sich beklagt hat, dass da mehr Kohle fließen soll von FTX auf sein Konto, als es schon nicht mehr so doll lief. Rechts- und Ethikprofessoren mit Spezialisierung für Steuerrecht und was weiß ich noch alles, und dann in Stanford. Ich glaube, dass es da auch nochmal einen auf die Mütze gibt in dem Verfahren.