Don't forget that the soccer clubs have these accounting practices where they can split the investments in players over several years.

Just check out this quote:

"So, by signing Mykhailo Mudryk on an eight-and-a-half-year contract, the way it is dealt with for accounting and FFP purposes is you take that £88m cost and you divide that over eight-and-a-half-years, and it works out as just over £10m-a-year."

It is possible to split the investment by the years of the duration of the contract. The example explains it well. Even if Real Madrid were to pay $200 million, they could sign Mbappe with some loopholes in his favor for 8 years and there actual financial burden per year would reduce to $25 million from such a transfer. I don't know in how far the Financial Fair Play rules will be adjusted to close that loophole, but I think it is still possible. They have investigated a lot of escape routes regarding accounting and the related FFP rules.

I appreciate this a lot as I admit my approach was rather pragmatic and not very smart... When the fees were high I didn't use Bitcoin if I didn't have to and waited until the fees were in a range that I actually didn't care about them anymore. The result was that I didn't double check whether even the low fees make sense, totally discarding the principle 'a penny saved is a penny got'.

But now with all the congestion going on again, thanks to o_e_l_e_o I paid close attention to what my wallet recommended compared to what's actually required on average in order to transact in a reasonable time at reasonable cost. My wallet was totally off all the time and fee recommendations have constantly been on the most upper end and even if I decreased it as much as possible in the standard options, I was still above the real time market fees. I had to open advanced options and only there was I able to type in manually the average real time recommended tx fee from blockchair.com.

Am I good to go with blockchair or is there another place you guys here are using/preferring?

I had a good feeling the past weeks for a couple of times and every single time Bitcoin stopped at some tipping points where I thought this could be it. But instead it is going back and forth, but in a weird pattern sometimes. Quick big pushes followed by quick big sell offs. I am often instantly trying to search for reasons for either movement, but all too often there is nothing to be found. I wonder if these are some games being played by the big guys? I am certainly not one of them so I can't know.

Like in the last 15 hours or something, those buys and sells don't make sense to me. You can't even draw a line that returns some trend. I think over the shot-term for the rest of May we are going to see more of a sideways movement. I'd prefer it goes up, but rather expect less and receive more.

Haha come on be fair, I never asserted that! I never said they can't win it, I only said that concluding that AC Milan is now ripe to win it because they haven't won it in a long time doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Even now that they are behind after the game against Inter, they are still not out yet. It is almost inconceivable that they can still turn this mess around now, but I would not deny that they still have a chance because they do for as long as they are willing to play the next game and not stay home.

The discussion about Manchester City and their role as a favorite is quite old by now, but it is still valid. I have somewhere seen the analogy here that if someone puts a gun to your head and says that you have only one chance to pick a team that wins the tournament, which one would you pick? I assume that most of the threatened would say Manchester City, and would you?

But where is the twist in the logic that because they haven't won a cup in a long time, they are now more destined to win it? Lincoln City from League One in England also hasn't won a cup in a long time, perhaps it's their turn very soon?

In terms of Milan beating Napoli without difficulties, I think we watched different games or you are talking about a different year / season. Napoli was the better team in both games, but Milan scored the goals. That is soccer. But in the second leg Napoli had one of these games where you can do whatever you want, but you can't score. They dominated the game like they've never dominated Milan before ever. But Milan was able to resist the constant pressure with a lot of luck and won the game. Calling the second leg a win without difficulties could serve as a new definition for purely result oriented assessment of a game. The team won the game? Ok, then it was without difficulties, no matter what actually happened during the game. 

You said they are running successfully and that is correct if you take the table as the reference point. The disappoint part is that Bayern's success does not only comprise their performance, but also the performance of their competitors and here Dortmund in specific. If Bayern now loses the last three games and Dortmund does the same, the end result will be a success for Bayern and this is the best approach to describe what happened this season. When you say that Bayern is successful right now, yes they are because Dortmund is not. Usually when we talk about a team being successful, we say that because they win their games and play well. But this is still not what Bayern is doing. They aren't successful, they are lucky. 

No, there was too much on the line for both teams and nobody would deny that. Only because the names are Real Madrid and Manchester City doesn't mean that it is going to end with 5 or 6 goals. Also remember that Real Madrid hasn't been an offensively playing team for a very long time now. It is not the Real Madrid that scores 3 to 4 goals on average per game over the course of a whole season.

It was a very strategic game and it was what I thought it would be. Real Madrid had some more dangerous situation in the Man City box and Man City dominated the game in about 60% of the game. But I have to say that Real Madrid really had their scenes as well. They weren't weaker in total.

The draw favors Man City a little bit, but since the goals away count double rule is gone, this is practically a start from zero in Manchester and Real Madrid is able to score at any point in time. If that happens, Man City will have a hard time to turn the game around even in their home stadium.

Bottom line of the game is that we have seen two impressive goals and a game that made appetite for more. Next week no team can decide that a draw is fine. We will see even more aggressive attacking from both teams.

I never liked this approach by people to say that only when you win the World Cup you can become a legend. What are you going to do when you become one of the best players in the world but you are born in Iceland or Luxembourg? I have nothing to say against those countries, both are great countries, but in regards to soccer it is quite apparent that they will never win a World Cup. But does that automatically mean that never in the future a player from those countries can become an exceptional player who outcompetes everyone else in all other competitions?

The World Cup is still an important event with a lot of meaning, but Messi is the best example. How can someone say that Messi would not have been legend, had he not won the World Cup?

I think what could also be an important difference from the perspective of Manchester City is that this time they have the second leg at home. That was definitely an advantage towards the end of the second game last year when the Bernabeu audience exploded after the equalizer goal. When that happened the whole Real Madrid team was carried by the crowd like crazy.

I can only imagine how it must feel when so many people are screaming and crying and want your success so badly. I am sure that this is a lot of motivation to everyone. This time Manchester City will have their crowd in the back when it gets close.

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I did certainly expect them to fight hard, not least because they played at home and the fans are expecting nothing less from them than they have shown. If they didn't win that game against Wolfsburg, I would clearly expect some serious discussions about players and the manager as well. This win was a must and that's it.

The signal to Bayern, yes perhaps, but Bayern is busy with themselves. It is not like they were sitting on the couch hoping for Dortmund to fail against Wolfsburg at home. They assumed that this fight will go on after this weekend. Bayern needs full points and Dortmund does, that is what both have set as their goals now.

It is indeed a big one and as far as I know nobody really understands how interconnected they are and what their systemic relevance might be for the entire ecosystem. As I belong to those who have no idea, I would just go by the numbers that are relatively well know, which is the global market share in trading volume. I am aware there can be fake volume as well, but I guess that Binance doesn't fake more than others in whatever way possible. Now when we only take the trading volume and the number of customers, it would be a huge hit to the ecosystem if it became public that they would be in serious trouble.

If it turns out that they are sort of systemically relevant, it would perhaps create a kind of Lehman Brothers moment in peoples' heads and I think that could have substantial consequences that would take the ecosystem some time to recover from.

Sure but let's cut out the emotional part and assume that gambling in the long run is a losing game. Isn't it then just a question of how long I keep playing in total? Not only on a certain day? The only difference would be that I could afford to go broke for a longer period of time.

Let's say I want to place seven bets in a week and at the end the chance is quite high that I am broke with my budget for that week after the 7th bet. What is the difference in the overall outcome when I place seven well-considered bets on one day versus one bet per day over seven days? Even if I take profit on day one when I win the first bet, the outcome after seven bets could be the same either way.

The difference is that addicted gamblers could tend to place bets on events they have no idea about because there are only so many on certain days. But if we leave that aside and assume that every bet comes with the same amount of consideration, when do you actually take profit? Or when do you cut losses? What if I placed a couple of bets, lost them, and then there is one more event that I think could very likely go in my favor. Cut losses and leave that event?

I am just saying that the probabilities of losing long-term stay the same for as long as we assume that the individual is acting rationally. But it can also be rational to bet on one more event after you lost a bet.

It is not about the right moments to take profits or cut losses, it is about the dose and a bank roll management that is never a threat to any financial obligations and personal progress in real life. Even if you are a winning gambler and you gamble for 10 years 24/7 and you make quite a fortune, I would still question whether that was the right decision to keep going. Losing lifetime in the social sphere can also come at a cost even if you are a financial winner.

That is mostly true and I see it the same way, but the huge difference between back then and now is the significantly increased downside risk and the decreased upside potential. Nobody could have ever truly known how far Bitcoin will go, but when you consider its total supply and you would have decided to buy 10,000 Bitcoin for $45, you would have owned a significant share that either goes to 0 one day and you would be $45 poorer or you would hold a relatively significant share in something you think is interesting and somewhat different from other potential assets in a very tempting way.

This does not mean that Bitcoin can't outperform other assets anymore. It would probably will for quite some time, but if I am not mistaken, nothing has ever performed like Bitcoin I believe. The psychological effect on getting in when you know you have missed the train for over a decade is rooted in the accounting you do in your head. You think about the 10000x that it has done already and then you have doubts whether it can do it again and whether there is something else that could do this. Ultimately, you do know that it had never been easier to get rich and this has certainly become true for some of the earliest buyers.

It is said that seed investors take the biggest risk because they finance a start-up or product that is still in its infancy. In the case of Bitcoin there wasn't really any risk if you only look at the numbers. Throw 50 bucks at it and let it go. Couldn't have invested 50 bucks in Facebook or Amazon and also became as rich.

That would mean that market mostly gets moved by the bigger players as these fee issues will certainly shy away all those people that I once thought could be mostly interested in acquiring or using Bitcoin. If you live in a part of the world where the average income is far below the richer parts of the world, I am asking myself how people there could come up with the idea that Bitcoin makes sense in the long run? The fees are a problem and it is a threat to adoption progress in many parts of the world. It is not that surprising that some alt coins will be preferred over Bitcoin then. Of course if you are moving thousands of USD it doesn't matter that much. It is difficult to tell what the price rallies in the past were mostly about, big money being followed by huge amounts of smaller money? If that's the case I won't expect too much price action for as long as the fees are still sky high again. What would the fees even be when the public sees Bitcoin flying towards $100,000? There would be so much volume, so many transactions be made that we are probably also going to see ATH fees.

This is interesting and I thought that the biggest problem is this ordinals stuff creating this congestion, but then I came across this post


and I wondered in how far exchanges and miners can actually manipulate fees by creating overly expensive transactions themselves and then hope for people to just accept whatever their wallet calculates as the required fees? It makes sense to me as there have been times where I didn't pay attention myself and accepted whatever had to be paid.

But again, could fee manipulation be a long-term problem despite increasing adoption? Both exchanges and miners would have an incentive to do it if it's possible.

But this game day could still result in a happy ending for Galatasaray as Fenerbahce lost points. Galatasaray plays a stunning season and then shortly before they can take it home they start losing points in two games. Now the derby won't be any easier, but it is a huge chance to correct the last two results and extend their lead again. They have been playing negligently recently. If they fail to win then this season would turn into a shocker.

The 6-0 doesn't change that much I think. If it was about the goal difference in the end then yes, but Dortmund is too far behind to make that count eventually. Yes psychologically that was a good counter to Bayern's win yesterday, but Dortmund can play one game like this one against Wolfsburg and the next one they are catastrophic and nobody knows what's wrong with them. When I saw the result against Wolfsburg, I thought that really they could have done it this season, but it is not about the games when they score 4 or 5 or even goals, it is about the games when they lose points against weak opponents. Too bad.

This is turning into a disappointment for the 76ers as it seems. They are about to let a 9-points lead go down the drain. Such a big chance and now it is coming down to a heartbeat final in the 4th quarter. I didn't expect that after the first half of the game. The worst part for the 76ers is that they gave away their home advantage so easily. That shouldn't have happened and now Boston can improve their starting position for the last games so much. That doesn't look very promising for the 76ers.

Woah, and now they scored the equalizer with less than a minute left, ok I'll give it a second before I conclude with some final words.

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Ok this has been a breathtaking ending. I think that sums it up quite well 

Playing at home should give the Lakers a bit of an extra drive, but getting destroyed by a 27 point gap in the last game makes me tend towards a Warriors win. Even if Curry isn't scoring as mad as he did against the Kings, the Warriors have still dominated the Lakers so hard in the last game. They have more variance in their game I think. Curry had a 3-5 on his 3-pointers and he could play much riskier if needed in a certain situation during the game. That is a big weapon they have there.
The Heat played this one strong, but still this was a game that I thought would end much closer. Now with another home game they can set an important sign and take a huge lead and continue their somewhat surprising journey.