You can't escape this pattern. Bitcoin is not really built in a way where it can become a people's currency. The POW algorithm and the increase in difficulty, make it the game of riches. If you can invest huge money in mining rigs, then only you have access to such decentralised system and mine bitcoin. Otherwise you have no choice than to buy from open market. That's what the bitcoin capitalism is. Whales indeed controls the market.

I personally feel that POS is much better than POW if the entry barrier is reasonable. That's what something truly makes a coin people's money.

They are becoming wiser it seems. Unless US government stops printing dollars and stop proving loans to banks at teaser rates, there's no way for USD to regain its previous purchasing power. Moreover, now many countries are initiating international trade using their own currency which is further worsening the situation for USD.

Gold has always been a great support for protection the capital investment. Probably that's what banks are trying to achieve as the market forecast stays gloomy. Wise step I would say!

It's not just about FTX crisis. Cryptocurrency is a super volatile asset. Its past performance can't guarantee its future returns. So it's always better not to use such volatile assets for pension funds. Even if it is used, the exposure should have a limit so that the losses can be recovered from the other assets. Probably that's what the government is trying to check and regulate in Canada and for good reasons.

The pension fund is serious money. A lot of lives are dependent on it. So fund managers should take a very cautious approach before they are allowed to misappropriate the public fund into some high-risk assets. If government wants to control it, there shouldn't be any problem.

Anonymous P2P trade is a dengerous idea. I personally would never trade crypto to fiat in such a platform where KYC verification is not needed. It is highly likely that dirty money will get mixed in the economy and the receivers will be summoned by police. When it comes to bank, I would not risk an anonymous transfer to my bank account.

However, if you are trying to build a crypto to crypto exchange without KYC, you are welcome. But ensure to register it in such a country where government will support such initiative.

Quantitative easing and dollar printing should stop at once. If banks have access to the money stash at a very low interest rate, the banking crisis will never stop. It may also have the power to de-throne USD from the world's leading money to junk money. I don't care what Jemie says but the current banking failures seem like a classic banking 101 fail which is usually taught in B schools. You get money at a certain interest rate, and you lend that money to the businesses and commoners like us and earn the spread. So when you cost of raising funds increases, banks must not invest that money into low-ticket treasury bonds. You don't earn spreads. The situation worsens because FEB kept on increasing interest rates without thinking about the consequences.

Now when these CEOs are crying foul and saying that the crisis is not over yet, ask US to Step in and provide support to the banks so that they can revive. They have trillions of dollars in their treasuries which can be put to good use.

Thank you very much Heisenberg_Hunter for reviving the raffle.

I choose 4

Here is my Bitcoin address: bc1qpap4pmturdqg9vahlq9mg7hd0hdwrg46npctge50us7xlwudpuwqysweu2

I hope to win!

Tokens are worthless. 99% of the tokens you see today, won't exist in next couple of months. Only very few survives if they are able to find a committed group of supporters. So don't rely on such things. Rather adopt coins like bitcoin or ETH which has a global base of supporters. If these coins crashes down, the entire crypto market will face the same fate. So these coin will be the last ones to get into existential problems.

Only these coins have the power to change the way we handle money or own things. But that's something we are yet to see.

Such hates come naturally when someone feel insecure. It's not a rocket science to understand why Warren Buffet and Jemie Dimon hates bitcoin. It's because bitcoin directly challenges their business empire. They know that they can very well become irrelevant if bitcoin continues to grow and adopted by human population.

I believe every good thing will eventually find some haters but that never hinders the growth of that good thing. It's all power game at the end of the day!

Then what you are saying is that "Proof of reserve" doesn't make sense! It doesn't give any confidence to the users or investors that the company or the coin issuers are not solvent to meet liabilities. The basic requirement of an audit is to generate trust amongst the users/investors that a standard accounting practice is being followed and we can reply to that report.

If that is not the case, it is always good to use your own wallet for storing cryptos (not your keys, not your coins) and also it's good not to touch useless stablecoins who claim to keep 1:1 reserve for their issued coins. It's an ongoing challenge and will remain as it is for some time, it seems!

I believe the main reason why crypto casinos grew is that they were able to churn customers from fiat based casinos. Many customers do not like to go through detailed KYC procedure that is mandatory in fiat based casinos. Also a lot of people do not want to reveal their gambling habits to their banks and credit card providers. Crypto casinos provided a way out of those procedures which helped their business to grow even after the pandemic time. Hope this trend continues.

Yeah! I believe Amazon has started a couple of similar stores in Europe where you won't have to stand in the payment queue. You just add items to your basket and leave the store. The payment will be deducted from your Amazon wallet. But I don't know if such innovative solutions are available for crypto payers or not. I guess not!

There is an alternate way to pay through cryptocurrency. There are websites like Bitrefil or Coinsbee from where you can buy digital gift cards from various brands and use them in retail stores or in their e-commerce platforms. I have personally used services from Bitrefil so I have found them useful. But their fees are somewhat higher than the market price of the coin. But yes, that's what you are paying for convenience.

This was expected to happen. Even in my country, crypto companies faced the same issue. It went to such a level where some companies decided to close down their operations and one of them moved out to Singapore from where they are providing services to 30+ countries.

You need to understand that banks are the biggest financer of any country. So they have a very strong lobby and high level connections within the government. So such attacks will continue to happen, worldwide. UK is just leading the way.

The future of AI is going to be horrific. People are unable to understand the denger of AI and promoting this technology. But the fact is that, AI will be responsible for millions of job losses in 2023 and 2024. The economy will collapse. Banks will fail and businesses will go nuts.

The biggest denger for crypto market is that AI can code a coin for you and guide you to launch in the market. The entire crypto market will soon be flooded with such pointless coins very soon. Resist AI or the future looks grim.

Banking is a business and like any other business, it can fail too. However, in many countries, governments usually step in to revive a failing bank by providing them access to liquidity and by providing them provisions to write off bad debts. This is a part of the economy and this is nothing new. I wonder why US government didn't come to rescue SVB. Probably they are saving budget for another war against another oil rich country. But that's a different debate!

You are probably the only person I am seeing who doesn't access banking services. It's your call but cryptocurrency is not enough to support your life and expenses unless you are living in El-Salvador.

Lower processing fees will be always beneficial for the merchants for obvious reasons. Whenever merchants are allowed to keep the maximum amount from a transaction, it's great for them and certainly increases profitability.

In my country, we have fiat payment gateways that allows merchants to receive payments for free. Crypto space is quite new so it's highly unlikely to happen anytime soon. But we need to understand why crypto can't become a preferred choice for payment, it requires both parties to pay a fees to make a transaction happen.

It's Unfortunate for the state of Massachusetts, but not for the bitcoin ecosystem, fortunately. That's the best part of decentralization. Even if some massive anti-crypto campaign is funded by this old lady, crypto ecosystem won't get affected. Some certain groups of people living in that state might not have direct access to cryptos if anything goes wrong. But largely, no impact will be seen!

It's true that politicians need to learn new things and it's a big responsibility of today's youth, not to elect such people who are old and ignorant of new techs. In my country, we are facing this issue for a long time. It needs to change for good!

Very much possible! But the amount of bitcoin needs to support your expenses in tax-free countries like Dubai. Also, each country has its own definition of tax systems so first find out how many days you have to spend abroad so that your own tax department considers you as a non-resident and doesn't impose taxes based on that tenure. In my country, a person needs to stay abroad for 180+ days to be considered a non-resident. So, find out that information for your country and plan accordingly.

Also, many tax-free countries will require you to furnish your income statement from businesses you are running there. Not for tax purposes but to stay compliant with the international anti-money laundering law. So make sure you have a real-world business to back up your numbers. If you get these things right, you are good!

Lol! Greenpeace has vested interest in spreading such FUDs. Not sure if Ripple is still funding then, but surely some banking organization is doing the funding here. Only bad part is that, common people might also believe in their FUD. But surely the crypto market will remain unaffected. We have become truly immune from such FUDs. Even Mr. Warren Buffett and Jemie Dimon won't be able to make a dent on the stability of the market.

When the crypto prices go up, a lot of people feel jealous because they have missed the boat already. We can safely ignore such FUDs.

The global events are definitely having a great positive impact on crypto demand, which is resulting in price increase. Banking collapse is definitely shifting the trust of common users towards crypto. However, it is very difficult to say whether it's going to hold or not.

FED can surely step in a decide to decrease the interest rate, which might again have an adverse effects on the demand. But only time will tell what's going to happen.

Nope! Banks will be a part of this CBDC network for sure. The only stakeholders getting removed are payment networks like Visa or MasterCard. This is an excellent news because these payment networks act like broker and gets a pie from each transaction they process. Now the money generated from payment processing, banks will get a cut and the overall transaction costs will be reduced.

Secondly, dependency on USD will be reduced to a huge extent. Without the payment brokers, all transactions will be going from one bank to another bank and will not require USD settlements even for international payments. Good for many, bad for some!