OK... I was wrong... the next finance minister is not Amit Shah. The former defense minister, Nirmala Seetharaman will be handling the finance ministry. She is well qualified and tech savvy, but I have no idea about her stance towards cryptocurrency. She has a reputation for being very fearless, and has a nickname "Iron lady". I am being optimistic about crypto right now.

How can an exchange guarantee a certain amount of supply of a particular coin? Only the whales and promoters may be able to do that. In a typical ICO, anywhere from 30% to 50% of the coins are reserved for the promoters. And in case they decide to dump all of these coins in one go, then there is no doubt that it will become worthless.

Looks like my luck has run out. Got 0 points from yesterday's game and for today also I will get the same number of points. Never expected Pakistan to perform so well after the thrashing they received during the warm-up matches. Just hoping that Round 2 will be better for me... there are a few tough picks, but I guess I can manage.

You are telling only one side of the story. And that is the problem with the Congress supporters. They still don't understand why the majority of the Indians despise them.

My family was driven out from the state of Mizoram 21 years ago, just because we happened to be Hindus. My tribe (Reang or Bru) have been residing in the north-western portion of Mizoram for many hundreds of years. Perhaps even before the majority tribe (Lushais) arrived in Mizoram. Out of the dozen or so different tribes in Mizoram, by now only two are majority non-Christian: the Buddhist Chakma (around 8% of the population) and the Hindu Reang (around 4% of the population). Things were peaceful until the 1990s. But that changed after the death of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

After 1991, the ruling Congress party came under the control of Italian Catholic Sonia Gandhi (wife of Rajiv). She took a hardline on Christianizing the northeast India. Arunachal Pradesh went from 4% Christian in 1990 to 60% Christian as of now. Hindus were driven away from Christian states such as Nagaland and Meghalaya.

For my tribe also, the troubles started during early 1990s. The Lushais sent several Christian missionaries to the Reang area. Very few of the Hindus converted to Christian, even after the allurement of monetary gifts (Reangs are the poorest community in Mizoram). As the Lushais lost patience, they began threatening the Hindus to change religion.

Finally in 1998, there was an all out attack by the Christian militia on Hindu villages. Hundreds of my tribesmen were killed, all the villages burnt to ground and many of the girls and women were raped. Entire Reang population was forced to flee to the neighboring state of Tripura. For the past 21 years, my tribesmen are living in subhuman condition in these refugee camps. Some people converted to Christianity, and went back to Mizoram. But they were even forced to change their names. They are not allowed to speak their language. Of those who remained in the refugee camps, very few people like me have managed to get education and find good jobs.

Now the Lushais are threatening to do the same to the Buddhist tribe (Chakmas). And it may happen anytime soon.

Now see the irony. India is a country where Hindus and Buddhists are 80% of the population. Yet Hindus are being driven away from their villages in Kashmir, Mizoram, Nagaland, Meghalaya and Kerala.

The mainstream media never covers the plight of the Hindus. But as social media is getting popular, these incidents can be no longer hidden. Now the Hindus have woken up and that's why there was such large Hindu polarization during the last month's elections.

Looks like it is going to be the second consecutive upset today. England is really struggling against Pakistan. They are seven down, and still need more than 200 runs to win. The required run rate is now inching close to eight runs per over. I know that both Stokes and Root are big hitters. They need to step up the scoring rate, and they need to do that now. 

It is easy to collect altcoins, from airdrops and bounty campaigns. On my part, I have never purchased alts for Bitcoin. My entire altcoin holding came from bounty campaigns and airdrops (converted a large portion of that to BTC/ETH as well). The same can be said about forked coins such as Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold. I never purchased them. I received them after the fork.

I am not sure about the total number of altcoins, but I read somewhere that it is close to 10,000. Let's assume that half of them are being actively traded (taking a very liberal estimate), and that gives us a total of 5,000. The defunct Cryptopia had close to 600 different coins listed in it. But they closed down last month. Another option is Yobit, but that exchange doesn't have a good reputation.

Another surprise in store? Pakistan is off to a good start versus England. After 13.2 overs, they are 80/0 with F Zaman and Imam ul Haq scoring the runs at a brisk pace. Both Archer and Woakes went for quite a few runs... Hopefully England will be able to fight back once Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid bowl in tandem. On the other hand, we can expect 350+ if Zaman and Imam stays there for some more time.

16. Rajasthan: 25 out of 25 for NDA.



Apart from Dalits and Muslims, not much support for Congress.

17. Telengana: TRS-10, NDA-4, UPA-3 (out of 17).



The big story is that NDA is making inroads, especially in to the upper caste and Reddy communities.

18. Tamil Nadu: 38 for UPA, 1 for NDA.



anti-NDA wave among all segments of the population.

19. Uttar Pradesh: NDA-64, MGB-15, UPA-1.



Extreme polarization among all the communities. However, NDA manages to make inroads in to Yadav/SC communities, making sure that MGB losses the race.

20. West Bengal: TMC-22, NDA-18, INC-2.



Hindu polarization to counter the Muslim appeasement by TMC.

11. Karnataka: Out of 26, NDA 24 and UPA 2.



Most surprising is the shift in the Vokkaliga vote. They used to be hardcore supporters of UPA. Now they have aligned with NDA.

12. Maharashtra: 43 out of 48 to NDA, 4 to UPA, 1 to AIMIM.



SHS (NDA) has replaced NCP (UPA) as the most popular party among the Marathas. Otherwise no surprises.

13. MP: 28 out of 29 to NDA, 1 to UPA.



Big shift in tribal vote towards NDA. Else, no surprises.

14. Orissa: Out of 21, 12 to BJD, 8 to BJP and 1 to INC.



Here also, tribal vote is shifting to NDA.

15. Punjab: Out of 13, 8 to INC, 4 to NDA and 1 to AAP.



Last stronghold of INC in north India.

6. Gujarat: BJP 26 out of 26.



Everyone except Dalits and Muslims supporting NDA. Hardly any backers for INC among upper castes and OBCs.

7. Haryana: BJP 10 out of 10.



The Jat vote bank of Congress has vanished in to thin air. Muslims are the only community that continues to support them.

8. Jharkhand: 13 for NDA, 1 for UPA.



Tribals are about one-third of the population and they supported NDA this time.

9. Jammu and Kashmir: 3 for NDA, 3 for UPA.



Not surprising. Hindus and Buddhists voted for NDA, Muslims for UPA.

10. Kerala: 19 for UPA, 1 for LDF.



One of the few states where NDA could not get majority support from the Hindus.

Election results are published and now a few post-poll surveys have come out. I will try to analyze each of the states as per the post-poll survey.

1. Andhra Pradesh: Out of total 25, NDA got 0 seats. YSRCP-22 seats, TDP-3 seats.



No surprise with the results. The Kamma have traditionally supported TDP, while YSRCP got most of its support from the Reddys.

2. Assam: Out of 14 seats, NDA got 9 and Congress got 4 seats. One seat went to AIUDF, the party set up by the Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants.



70% of the Hindus voted for NDA, while 90% of the Muslims voted for UPA-AIUDF. Tribals (Bodos, Karbi.etc) voted overwhelmingly for NDA.

3. Bihar: Out of 40 seats, NDA got 39 and UPA 1.



NDA vote bank (Upper caste Hindu+OBC+SC) remained firm, while the Yadav-Muslim vote bank of UPA showed a lot of weakness. UPA got only 55% of the Yadav vote.

4. Delhi: Out of 7 seats, NDA got 7.



Hindu upper caste and OBC firm behind NDA. Dalit-Muslim vote split between INC and AAP.

5. Goa: Out of 2, NDA 1 and UPA 1.



No surprise here. Congress won South Goa as it was able to get some of the Hindu votes.

Australia still need 50 runs, and I hope that they'll not lose any more wickets now. These matches were relatively easy to predict. Teams such as Pakistan and Sri Lanka have gone down a lot during the past few years. The Round 2 is going to be more challenging. We have matches such as AFG vs SL and AUS vs WI, which are tough to predict IMO.

I chose the "thrashing" option because I thought that those matches would be one-sided. Not because I clicked them for fun. For the Afghanistan vs Australia match, I chose the "Easy victory" option in favor of Australia. Let's see how that works out. BTW, I again chose "thrashing" option for the next two matches (SA vs BAN, and ENG vs PAK).

The first part of your post was OK. But the second part shows your complete ignorance towards the basics of cryptocurrency. How KYC is going to prevent the exchange hacks? Most of the exchanges which were targeted by the hackers were KYC compliant. Cryptopia is a perfect example. On the other hand, BTC-e / Wex.nz which went without any mandatory KYC requirement survived for more than 7 years, before closing down due to unknown reasons.

I never considered West Indies as a team capable of winning this edition of the world cup. But I am having second thoughts after watching today's match. They dominated every single department during today's match and the Pakistanis were quite clueless against them. I am quite convinced that West Indies will at least be able to reach the semi-final stage. After that, everything will depend on luck.

Archer was probably the architect of the English victory. It is surprising that a player whose place in the team was not secure until the last moment has cemented his place so firmly after just one match. But it also sends a wrong message to the cricketing world. He shifted his allegiance from West Indies to England quite recently and only monetary considerations played a role in that move.

One interesting thing that can be noticed if you check the Monero charts is that during the past two months, it has gone down against Bitcoin. The exchange rate has fallen from BTC0.013 per coin to around BTC0.011 per coin. This means that XMR has remained as one of the laggards during the current bull run (due to obvious reasons).

Doing research is essential before investing in any of the ICOs. But one important thing remains even after that. How you will know that the development will continue once the ICO is completed? I have faced this issue again and again. There were a number of good projects, which performed more or less well during the ICO. But a few months after the ICO, they became worthless.

The Cardano community has also gone in to hibernation. There are a number of issues that needs to be taken care of, but they are pending for the past so many months. The developers have either become too lazy, or they have migrated to other projects. The time is running out for Cardano. If they want to stay in the top-10 list, they should woke up from the sleep and take the necessary steps to get ADA more acceptable.