We all know China banned Bitcoin and altcoin trading first. Next they went ahead and banned miners. After that they rolled out their own digital Yuan. Which I am afraid did not succed as expected by CCP. Now suddenly they are allowing HK to go ahead with crypto and become a hub of Bitcoin as well as Altcoin economy. The biggest bank in HK a few days back declared that they will support crypto.

I mean what do you guys think is going around with this decision of China. As per my understanding HK has become a shadow control colony of China. Which was not what they had promised to UK. This situation could become a problem for USA and it's allies in the future. Already we can see big companies (banks) in the US are now buying shares of Microstrategy, whereby they are indirectly investing in Bitcoin. As they now realize the potential of Bitcoin.

Does that mean China is utilizing this negative situation in the US on crypto to its favour or they are just testing the possibilities in order to regulate it. Do remember this is how China became the 2nd larget economy in just 20 years.

The message of the head of Wagner PMC Prigozhin and Russian propagandists that their "second army of the world" after ten months of incessant attacks on the small town of Bakhmut, finally took it, does not correspond to reality. Most of Bakhmut is now indeed controlled by the Russian occupiers, but its defenders retain control over some industrial and infrastructure facilities and the private sector of Bakhmut in an area called "Airplane" in the southwestern part of Bakhmut.

But it is too early for Russians to rejoice. Having retreated from the central part of the city, the Armed Forces of Ukraine organized a “half-boiler plan” for the invaders in Bakhmut and now they “take” the enemy into a semi-circle due to the advantage of control over the high-altitude terrain surrounding this city. The Armed Forces of Ukraine successfully bypass Bakhmut from the north and south and gradually, taking into account the dry weather, begin to implement the operational encirclement of the Russians in Bakhmut using heavy equipment. Given that the city is located in a lowland, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have the ability to actually shoot the enemy from artillery from the hills around Bakhmut, and it is rather difficult for Russians to hide in its ruins, since the city is almost completely destroyed.

Moreover, even such a temporary success of the Russians in Bakhmut is rather doubtful. Prigozhin himself recently said that more than 20,000 of his PMCs were killed during the storming of Bakhmut: about 10,000 of its professional members and the same number of recruited prisoners from Russian colonies. But the human rights organization of Russia "Seated Rus'" claims that there were about 50 thousand prisoners recruited for the war in Ukraine, about five thousand of them received an amnesty and returned home, and over 40 thousand died in Ukraine. And recently, US President Biden pointed out that Russia lost about a hundred thousand military personnel near Bakhmut. Thus, several square kilometers of the ruins of the district center Bakhmut cost Russia very dearly. But the Russians will still need to be able to get out of Bakhmut. Prigozhin has already announced that from June 1, his PMC will leave Bakhmut and give up their positions to the regular army. He feels that this "Pyrrhic" victory may soon turn into a major defeat. So the fighting in Bakhmut continues.

I see the latest rave and have had to silently partake by keeping up with the conversation as regards chat GPT introduction and sudden need to finetune it serve varying online and even offline real problems.

 Coinbase Director Conor Grogan even had to explain recently how a GPT-4 helped him identify flaws that could be exploited both ways, after he dumped an Etherum contract therein.  

*Is chat GPT which is the latest AI, the answer to hackers and scammers?
*Is it a policing agent that would help stabilize anonymous anomaly in the trading space thereby reducing volatility?

Reference link for further read:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbooksauthors/2023/02/28/the-intersection-between-ai-and-blockchain-technology--industries-of-tomorrow/

"Excellent plan" - write off a fictitious, "far-fetched" accusation to the opponent, whose arguments are true, which you don't like, and the opponent reveals all your attempts to lie

About Russophobia - it's generally funny. I am RUSSIAN by origin, but not a resident of Russia, but a free Ukraine. Russophobia is a narrative invented by the Kremlin to scare its people and cloud their minds. There is no fear for the Russians. There is an aversion to RASHIZM, but these are different entities

And once again about the economy going to the bottom, i.e. about Russian

- China refused to buy Russian wheat despite Putin's requests
The record harvest of grain harvested last year by Russian farmers was not needed by Russia's largest trading partner.
China, which has increased purchases of almost all types of natural resources from Russia - from oil and gas to coal and metals - refuses to buy Russian-made wheat, despite numerous requests voiced by President Vladimir Putin. Instead of Russian wheat, China prefers Australian (59%), Canadian (18%) and American (9%) wheat. The problem arose at the level of China's phytosanitary requirements
And it was one of the notable export items. Oil is sold almost at cost, gas has fallen in price, Russia has lost its markets. Now the grain market and the largest buyer of this product. Undoubtedly, this is the success of Russia

- Russian President Vladimir Putin demanded that measures be taken in response to the mass emigration of citizens that swept the country after the start of the war and the announcement of mobilization.

- Two news are wonderful:
Putin demanded to protect children from the Internet
-- The governor of Primorye proposed to lure orphans to war with the help of certificates for apartments
Those. steal the opportunity to receive information from children, and at the same time send them to war, kill foreign citizens, and die themselves, and this is much more valuable

- One of Europe's largest insulin producers, Novo Nordisk, following the American BMS and Eli Lilly plans to enter the Russian market. In Russia itself, at the moment, insulin is produced by a semi-handicraft method, and in very small quantities ....

- With pleas and threats: Russia asked India for salvation from financial isolation - "great Russia" is once again begging for something from its "friends"

Well, Russophiles, let's talk about the economy?

Yes, the quality has certainly improved on the WTA. The players are performing well and also improving. I generally did not follow WTA because of the unpredictable nature and inconsistent performance of players. But now it feels like actually becoming more competitive and somewhat predictable.

Ukrainian channels are quite free, and are not interested in systemic lies like Russian channels So if there are inaccuracies, then they are not significant. I understand that you don't like it, but that's not my problem

But the telegraph is the only honest, unbiased, objective publication? Well, because there is an article that you liked, I understand correctly?
Come on then, everyone respects the telegraph, not selectively, but everything completely, there are a lot of interesting articles, will you also call them all the undeniable truth?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/russia/

Precisely.  That is why calls from impatient, entitled censorship advocates will fall on deaf ears and devs will continue to focus on scaling and other important factors.  Devs see the big picture and understand what they're building towards.  Whereas the entitled censorship advocates will make a lot of noise, completely fail to raise a single valid point (because they understand very little) and they'll never lift a finger to enact change.

Censorship advocates are already on the wrong side of history.  They just don't know it yet.

Time passes, and we have nothing to look forward to. We watch our lives pass, and the only thing we're looking forward to is the weekend or 20 days per year of paid time off. We're working a whole year, from 9 to 5 and sometimes even more, at someone else's business just to have an approximate of 20 days of vacation and two days off per week, with many of us having one or even none per week. Is it just me, or does this life sound completely depressing to me? Our ambitions are completely crushed by such a daily routine; our days off are mostly to get things done around the house and to rest. By the time that happens, the day has passed, and we have to go to work again.

At least where I'm at, having two days off per week is considered extremely lucky and privileged, especially if it's two days in a row. Personally, I only had one day off per week, and it honestly wasn't enough. On the one hand, I wanted to get things done around the house and rest, but on the other hand, I didn't want to stay inside doing practically nothing to enjoy myself. Thus, the single day off wasn't even close to being enough. Certainly, I'd be better off with two consecutive days off, but still, is that how you want your life to be for the next 10–20 years, or even more?

On the one hand, I don't want to complain; through the last few years of working, I've been on vacation four times, from 2020 to 2022, which isn't bad at all. On the other hand, I'd like to constantly travel and explore new destinations, the majority of which we'll never experience through this way of life.

Do you believe that there's a true way to escape this vicious cycle, or are we doomed to live like this forever? Telling me that my minor savings in Bitcoin are going to settle me for the rest of my life isn't going to cut it, because the majority of us won't ever have enough Bitcoin to retire.

Are you satisfied with this way of life, or would you prefer to live a different way? What would you like to change and how? Personally, I'm clueless and not satisfied with the idea of spending the rest of my life like this.

I understand that you have run out of arguments in this dialogue and you have completely switched to patriotic slogans. Drain counted.

The funded part of the pension has been frozen since 2014, take the trouble to look for fresher shit.

I am not contradicting myself, you say Ordinals caused huge losses like it created an opening for people's funds to be stolen in the network. TX fees isn't losses, a time will come when miners will receive incentive only through TX fees which will not be so cheap then, will it also be called losses at that time. I don't support this invention and i don't use it, but people are using it, and because the network is permissionless, they do not need my permission or yours to do so.

Medvedev is still one of the best tennis players in the world, but he does have a distinct playing style. it all doesn't look that smooth, and in terms of talent Alcaraz is a lot more talented. You can't make it with talent alone. The most talented tennis player ever is undoubtedly Federer. In the past, Agassi and Sampras had to work much harder for it, I think. Tennis was more fun to watch back then. Maybe there are just too many tennis tournaments these days? I don't think you can compare the generations well at the moment. Women's tennis is of a completely different/lower level than men's tennis.

Grow up.

Your personal spam attack has had zero effect on anything remotely related to resolving the issue.

Stop spamming the Bitcointalkchain.

Ordinals didn't cause any loss, it wasn't an attack that compromised the network or people's wallet, not that it is even possible, so what has a lawsuit got to do with this. BTC is even a decentralized currency, so if you ever lose BTC in your self custody, no lawsuit can help you recover it. Ordinals truly takes up block space, but it isn't a threat to BTC; it only causes mempool congestion and makes people to pay higher tx fees to outbid others and get their transaction confirmed, it is surely going to cool off.

It was difficult to read past your first sentence here as your claiming that Bitcoin's popularity has nothing to do with number of transactions whereas Bitcoin's "popularity" (quantifiable utility I assume) has to do with a lot of things, not just it's value. The number of transactions, value of transactions, number of users, number of accounts, these are all metrics that matter to Bitcoin in order for it to qualify as popular, which continue to increase. Whether you like it or not, Ordinals and other BRC20's are making these metrics increase, therefore increasing Bitcoin's popularity. Even if it's not in a way that you like, support or agree with.

Also you say that no. of txs is irrelevant because we have LN, which also proves a point that we don't need to be making small payments over the mainnet right? If so then why is it a concern that transactions are expensive if we instead use LN or other L2 solution? If we're all using Lightning, then the use of mainnet is simply to increase/decrease liquidity of channels, or otherwise open them. No offence but I'm really struggling to understand your argument if you're complaining about high fees but yet claiming that LN is the payment method (the latter I agree with).

There is a lot of history between these two players, the head-to-head over 11 matches
is Medvedev 7-4 Tsitsipas. Its going to be close  and Medvedev this season has shown
massive improvements on Clay. I'm going with a Medvedev win!


This is a tough one to call, Rune is growing stronger almost with every tournament,
if he can win today he sets out a massive warning to everyone for RG.

Ruud favours the Clay courts but has been under the radar this season really and comes
into the match as underdog, he is definitely capable of creating an upset though.

I think that I, you, the developers of the core, and any user of the bitcoin network, have the right to have a private opinion whether the pictures of frogs uploaded to the network are useless garbage or malicious spam, and even have the right to express this opinion publicly (but for the developers of the core, it is in their own interests best to be as careful as possible). But we can't ban it just because we don't like it. Because the owner of the picture with the frog will say that bitcoin is a scam, promised to keep its value and did not fulfill the promise - and we will have nothing to object to him. Who in their right mind would entrust their value to a network that, over time, could change the rules of the game and declare that value invalid garbage?

I'm honestly curious if you're frustrated by the monkey pics per se, or by the fact that the miners prioritize transactions which pay more than you do.

And here we are again, right after being told that the deficit was a fluke, that it's some state business with taxes and other bla bla that the deficit will be covered, and that Russia's economy will keep grow when in reality:

Russia Budget Deficit Hits $45 Billion, Exceeding Full-Year Goal
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-11/russia-budget-gap-hits-45-billion-exceeding-full-year-goal

Russia's Economy Contracts 1.9% In First Quarter
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/russian-economy-shrank-1-9-161523790.html

Love how Europe is sinking although it records growth while Russia becomes a superpower while in a complete recession.
But, yeah, reality and propaganda can't show the same picture, ever!!!!

(Reuters) - Russia's economy shrank 1.9% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2023, data from the Rosstat federal statistics service showed on Wednesday, following growth of 3% in the same period of last year.