https://cointelegraph.com/news/new-report-highlights-increasing-decentralization-of-bitcoin-mining  - This report kind of debunk that theory. 

How would Bitmain benefit from a 51% attack? We all know a successful 51% attack would destroy the investor confidence in this technology and also destroy the price. <Whatever coins they have will be worthless in the long-run>

The cost to maintain a 51% attack, would also outweigh it's double spending advantages, before they get caught doing this. This will also ruin their reputation. <not that they are worried about trivial things like that> 

Why do we need a decentralized mining operation? I know people use decentralization to prevent attacks from hackers and governments that are trying to take it down. Is this one of the motivations behind a decentralized mining operation or is this more about decentralized decision making powers?

It could also mean that decentralized mining operations might prevent a 51% attack, if the mining pools are more decentralized. Right?

Please expand a bit more on the concept and what the motivation for this was.  

The SEC wants more control and protection for the investors. We already see large exchanges like Coinbase gearing themselves for mass surveillance with the acquisition of Neutrino. <surveillance vendor>

The KYC/AML regulations are simply not enough control and they need better control mechanisms to determine who are manipulating the global price. We will soon see more partnerships between companies with improved surveillance and public exchanges, before ETFs would be approved. 

Satoshi can destroy the price, if he suddenly sells those coins on public exchanges. Fortunately for us, most exchanges have strict KYC/AML regulations and Satoshi knows this. Someone like Satoshi value his anonymity, so he/she would never sell those coins on a platform that might reveal his/her true identity.

He might push those coins through several mixer services <even his own>and buy goods via Dark markets and sell that for fiat currencies to hide his/her identity. 

Steve Wozniak must be one of the unluckiest people in this world. He got screwed by Steve Jobs back in the day and are valued at almost $100 million. Steve Jobs his co-founder was worth around $10.2 billion at the time of his death. Now, he invested some money into Bitcoin and sold everything before the ATH in 2017.   

I still remember how big a deal it was, when "Woz" announced that he bought some bitcoins back then.    This guy should have been filthy rich and one of the Top 10 richest people in the world. 

Bakkt is a eagle with clipped wings. The US government <SEC> made sure that it will not be able to fly soon, because they know that they will not be able to control it. Institutional capital injection into Bitcoin sounds like a good idea now, but do you really want institutional capital dominating and manipulating the Bitcoin price?

I would much rather see natural adoption and equal distribution of coins and not some fat cats from Wall street, dominating everything with their fiat power. 

Dan old man, you are obviously missing the whole point of Bitcoin and how it will evolve into a true currency in the future. Bitcoin started out with only a few people buying loads of coins and this led to a situation where you have a uneven distribution of coins. <Whales with the power to manipulate the price>

As Bitcoin matures and gets distributed more evenly, the volatility issue will resolve it self. Once Bitcoin adoption grow enough, people will not have to convert to fiat currencies, because they can pay directly with bitcoins at merchants. 

   What happens with the other 4 billion tokens?

I have also seen other so-called live draws in the past, where people pre-recorded video footage and then claimed to live stream it. How would we be able to validate that the live draws are not some pre-recorded video footage?

We even had some lotto systems that were linked to the Blockchain and people even found ways to exploit that.    We are simply sick of scam Lotto operations and support for lotto systems are declining as a result of that.  

No, COSMEE token (COSM) and Enjin, according to this article. 

We will see some interesting times ahead, if a lot more cell phone companies start developing the same functionality in their phones. The Alt coin scene might just have a future after all, if they are chosen as the alternative coins to the two big guns. <BTC & ETH>

Roger Ver should invest in his own phone, Samhung and then push for BCash to be used as the only currency on the phone. 

I guess it is only fair to also hear/see the other side of Crypto currencies, right? We cannot deny that loads of shitcoins were merely introduced as pump n dump coins and some Alt coins were produced to back scam ICOs. A lot of us have first hand experience of that and we were taken for a ride during the peak ICO period in 2016 and 2017. 

Crypto currencies are not in any way immune to criminal activities, which is normal for any other scene where "money" or "wealth" are linked to a technology. <PayPal / Credit cards etc.>

Yes, I know they splash winning streaks for promotional purposes, but it gives a false representation of what the overall picture is. Very few people with one winning streak have a "green" long-term bet history with the casino.

That is why I like bustabit's statistics, because it gives a true reflection of the overall bet history of a specific gambler. Yes, you might admire a high roller for their massive bets and their winning streaks, but are they actually successful in the long-run?

One of my family members always boasted about their big jackpot winnings, but when he went bankrupt from a gambling addiction, he revealed that he lost way more than those wins he boasted about. 

The 2008 financial crisis were caused by reckless Banks <Fractional-reserve banking practices>

Fractional-reserve banking is the common practice by commercial banks of accepting deposits, and making loans or investments, while holding reserves at least equal to a fraction of the bank's deposit liabilities. Reserves are held as currency in the bank, or as balances in the bank's accounts at the central bank. Source : Wikipedia

We know some Crypto currency exchanges are guilty of doing Fractional-reserve practices and we might have the same thing in the future, if this becomes the norm. <It is our duty to prevent the same thing from happening in Bitcoin>  

I can tell you from many years of experience with cloud mining that it is just one big Ponzi scheme. You buy hash power and your income just decrease over time and you pay them a fee to "mine"  for you. 

I experimented with different Cloud mining services and they all have the same business model. Guaranteed regular payment cycles and dwindling profits over time. <Most common excuse = Higher difficulty / Lower Bitcoin price>

I had to cut my losses and exit the cloud mining scene. 

When your income are generated from a specific sphere, you have to be over optimistic about it's future and you are extremely biased in your opinion about it. I always look for the Crypto "link" in people's public opinion and discount it, if that person or company are invested in that technology. 

Just imagine what would happen if the CEO of Binance gave a negative opinion on Bitcoin's future. Who would still use their services, if they do not believe in it's future?

What I do not understand is, why Coinomi need to spell check your seed phrase on googleapis.com? Is this done on purpose to blame external factors, when someone within the company used this "backdoor" and get caught?

I have always said that centralized wallet providers and exchanges should never be trusted with your life savings. DO NOT put all your eggs in one basket. <80%+ of my hoard are stored on Cold wallets & Hardware wallets and only 20% are stored on different centralized services for daily access> 

Yes, I see they indicate the house edge with each game in Stake v2 now and the house edge for Video Poker is 1% and 2.7% for Roulette for instance. So saying that the average house edge is 0.5% is simply wrong.

Yes, only 1 game has a 0.5% house edge, namely Blackjack, but the average seems to be 1% and higher. You cannot claim to be the casino with a 0.5% house edge, if only one of the games has a house edge of 0.5%. 

In any way, it does not take anything away from the overall  experience of this casino. <It is still nice> 

I think it will also be fair to dig a little deeper and see how many of these high rollers are hitting losing streaks too. Yes, they might get the odd winning streak, but they might have had a few losing streaks too.

I monitored the overall statistics of high rollers in a game like https://www.bustabit.com/ and most of these guys are constantly in flux between winning and losing streaks. I guess you are only a winner, if you stop gambling after a massive winning streak, right?

A lot of these guys are doing this for the adrenaline rush and the reaction from their fellow gamblers. 

Why does this come as a surprise to many people? A Bitcoin whale needs to constantly acquire more coins to give them the opportunity to have a bigger impact on the price, when they want to manipulate the price.

I would have thought that they would amass more Fiat currency to trigger a hype cycle for the next Bull run, but they see more value in buying more coins from trigger happy newbies that are panicking with every small dump.

I guess it is better timing, when you buy cheaper at the bottom end of the price cycle. 

Wow, just shows you how cunning some of these people can be.    The guy looked legit and he sounded very sincere with his explanations to most concerns in this thread. I was about to install this, because I wanted to pay for something on Amazon and other intermediary services that buys goods on your behalf is just too complicated. < Purse > 

I will merit #TryNinja when this is validated and confirmed. <Let's give #binarytree an opportunity to explain his side of this story first> 

It is pretty obvious that most speculators just love commodities with higher volatility, because this is where their profit is generated. They want to buy at a lower price and sell at a higher price. The other thing is that Bitcoin has shown the potential to reach a $20 000 price and getting in at $3000+ price, is seen as a bargain entry price now.

The problem with this is that the ATH might just have been a fluke and we might never see that price again. It is currently the carrot for people to invest, in the hope that they might taste that nice carrot in the future.