https://www.aprecon.com/latestnews/mmm-founder-sergey-mavrodi-dies-of-heart-attack/

Sergey Mavrodi, the founder of MMM, a Russian company that perpetrated one of the world’s largest Ponzi schemes of all time, is dead.

Sergei Mavrodi, the former deputy of the Russian Duma and one of the most prominent fraudsters in Russia's modern history died at the age of 63.

In 2007 Sergei Mavrodi was convicted in a Russian court of defrauding 10,000 investors out of 110 million rubles ($4.3 million).

What more can be said about that. 

I love playing games and earning money from that, so I will mention the following sites :

https://lordmancer2.io/ - The first open-world MMORPG on mobile where players can mine cryptocurrency. <Disclaimer : I have not tested this and I do not know if they are a scam site.>

https://www.augmentorsgame.com/  <Not a scam, I have checked it out and I participated during the ICO>
Forged by the powers of augmented reality & blockchain, be in control of fantastical creatures. Battle, train, sell & trade powerful & rare creature. <Funded by a Shark Tank investor>

https://99bitcoins.com/9-cryptocurrency-inspired-games-you-should-be-playing/

You will have to be creative to get some money out of this, but it can give you the next best thing, which is FUN with Bitcoin. 

In some 3rd world countries, inflation is very high and you might get much higher interest rates than 1st world countries on your investments. I just used 10% as the highest percentage to highlight the difference between getting 800% in one year with Bitcoin and getting 160% in say 16 years from the interest that you could have received in a Bank. <huge difference, right?>

The difference is still highly in favour of a Bitcoin investment at the highest possible interest that you might get from the Bank. It would be interesting to see what would happen if you brought compound interest into the comparison, because the difference in profit would be less, if you kept the money in a fixed deposit over a longer period.

This is a very open discussion, but a topic that needs some attention.

As an investor I always have to compare my actual profit on a year to year basis, to consider if I should continue investing in that commodity or currency or stock etc.

Let's look at Gold for instance :  https://goldprice.org/gold-price-history.html < In 16 years my profit would have been +/- 343.78% >

Let's look at Silver for instance : https://silverprice.org/ < In 16 years my profit would have been +/- 256.15% >

If I deposited the money into a fixed savings account at say %10 p/a <very high for some countries> combined interest = 160% over 16years. <without compound interest> Feel free to make the compound interest comparisons.

https://www.gobankingrates.com/banking/see-interest-rates-last-100-years/

These are very crude statistics and cherry picking comes into play, but it does give you an idea what the Bitcoin price needs to be to beat some of these investment strategies.

I think my more than 800% profit with Bitcoin last year, overshadowed the profits from other investments I could have made for the last 16 years.

We need 1 or 2 good years like 2017, to render all other investments null and void for several years. ^smile^

What other investments comes close to the profits that we saw in 2017? { 1 year } 

If this is a relative small market, nobody would really invest their time into developing specific technologies to circumvent the restrictions that are put in place, not to mine it.

Once this becomes more popular, you might experience some problems with people trying to circumvent these restrictions. They might even launch DoSS attacks against the IP's that are allowed to mine these coins.

Then you also need to deal with accusations of mining centralization that would be used as arguments against your coin. People feel very strongly about mining centralization and the risks associated with that. <This will influence adoption of this coin>   

We are already pretty close to a cashless financial system. The large majority of people already shifted to a debit and credit card only lifestyle and online payments are mostly done via Payment processors. <PayPal>

Now we introduced a new more sophisticated and innovative technology, called Crypto currencies that takes us even closer to a cashless society.

Many African countries use digital payment technologies on mobile phones, like M-Pesa. Looking at the bigger picture, we are much closer to a cashless financial system, than most people would think. 

Ok, so you got burnt by Kraken <losing $25000> and now you want to get back at them by flaming them on public platforms? It is a pretty strong claim to make that a business is about to be shut down, do you have any proof of that?

A lot of us lost money on exchanges that got hacked and we feel your pain. The problem is, once you take that pain and you attack the exchange in public and they start losing money, you will be taken to court by them and you might lose even more money.

If you come to a forum like this, you should rather share your experience <the truth> with other people, to highlight the flaws in that business. Claiming that the business will shut down soon, without proof, is taking it a bit too far.  

Bitcoin is like digital Gold, it dropped the weight and it is travelling via the internet from person to person and are being tracked by a online ledger that are stored in a decentralized technology called the Blockchain. The Gold still retained it's value, but it is just a digitized token now.

That should be easy enough, right? 

Just a little side note : It is not the length of the post, but rather the quality of the contribution that gets merited.

You can write a "Wall of Text" in every post and it will not be merited by most people. The reason for this is simple :

~ People are pressed for time, so they will stop reading after the first 2 paragraphs.
~ Some people are just too lazy to read.
~ A lot of people will search for unique posts that are not just a duplication <copy&paste> of other people's ideas, before they give sMerit.

A well structured post that adds constructive value to the discussion, will be more beneficial to the forum than a "Wall of Text" that says nothing.  

Congratulations, you deserve it for your active participation in discussions in this thread and your absolute dedication to this site. We bumped some heads in the past, but it was always resolved in a civil manner, and that is what is required from a good PR manager. <You should always respect the user/customer, but you also have an obligation to protect your Boss.> 

It is nice to see that the owner of Freebitco.in acknowledged your contribution and rewarded you with the promotion. You are the right person for the job. ^smile^

The "supply chain" attack can be countered if you validate the seed? I will not dump loads of coins onto any hardware wallet for a extended time in any way. I will use it for small amounts for daily ecommerce and store the rest of the coins in cold storage. The management of the coins is more important that the device or method you use to store the coins.

If you acquire the product directly from Ledger and not from Amazon or some obscure third party, you should be fine. If the seal was broken on the package, I would only use it for small amounts. <Honey trap>

You only lose money when you sell. You have to remember that, to prevent you from losing money in the future. If the price goes up to $20 000, later this year, then you might say that you made a profit of $8000. <Once again if you sold it>

Unfortunately we cannot tell you what to do with your investment. A lot of people was in the same position last year, because they bought coins when the price was high and then they held on to those coins and was rewarded with a 800% profit on their investment.

You have to decide, Sell now and lose money or hodl and possibly make a huge profit. 

Yes, I also read that before it was deleted. I think the upside of this is that the penalty system was "tested" and it worked. This is definitely not a negative result, but rather very positive. If you do something that would be perceived as a "cheat", the LN will kick in to punish you for that.

A lot of people like to push the boundaries and the Lightning Network just proved that it will not tolerate cheating. <intentional or unintentional> 

The Chinese government is very happy to use financial tools, if it is under their control. They will over regulate the ICO process to give them oversight and control mechanisms and then things will go on as normal. We have seen this happening with Bitcoin exchanges in the past and they are now applying that to ICOs.

This is not just happening in China, because most governments are moving in the same direction with regulations. They acknowledge the advantages of the technology, but they want to be in control of it.

Your problem is the Gmail account that you used. One of my friends lost 4 weeks of income from his Ethereum mining, because someone hacked his Gmail account and then changed his password for his local exchange. These webmail services are the weak link in the chain.

If you do not enable 2FA for everything you do on these services, then you are opening yourself up to hacks like this. I am very sorry to hear about your loss. You could contact your webmail provider to try and trace the computers IP address, but most of these hackers will remote to other computers that they hacked to do this. So you would be re-directed to the computer that they hacked.

The coins will move through several services that would mix the coins, so you will only be able to trace it to the first service they used and then it will be gone. <illegal gambling operations & mixer services>

What is a Cryptocruncy  

The Urban dictionary says Cruncy is, a song of great magnitude, that is pleasuring to the ears. Evokes the action of partying at first sound. So I reckon a Cryptocruncy is a song about Crypto currency that is pleasuring to the ears?  

Cryptocurrency is a digital currency in which encryption techniques are used to regulate the generation of units of currency and verify the transfer of funds, operating independently of a central bank.

We cannot go around making up our own names for the technology that has been defined, it will confuse people.

You are coming to the wrong platform to ask investment advice on anything other than Bitcoin or Crypto currencies. The majority of people on here are heavily invested into Crypto currencies and will never be 100% biased in their reply to this question.

I can tell you from personal experience that Crypto currency <lending> is extremely risky. There are a lot of risky operations out there that are unregulated and the chances are good that you might lose money in one of those.

If you want to have a foot in the door with Crypto currencies, then I would suggest that you buy a small quantity of bitcoins whilst the price is low and just wait for the price to increase to a new ATH to sell it for a profit.

I think this is one of the reasons why the spamming of the legacy/SegWit Blockchain was put on hold. Most of those resources are now focussed and channelled towards sabotaging the Lightning Network. These people know the Lightning Network is the real game breaker for them and they have to sabotage it.

I am glad to see pro-active measures to implement strategies to protect LND nodes. We are being attacked from all sides and we are still winning. ^lol^

Please DO NOT do that. Bitcoin and other crypto currencies are still highly experimental and for that reason a very high risk investment. You should see Bitcoin as a new start up company with many challenges and a uncertain future, but a lot of potential.

Bitcoin investments should never be funded by debt or the selling of expensive assets. It is fine to sell the old gaming computer that are gathering dust in the garage, but never sell the roof over your head or the car that takes you to your job.  

You should never go all in with Crypto currency investments, because it is just too risky.

How will the miners be able to identify the stolen or lost coins? Bitcoin is based on Gold mining. Once the gold has been mined, it is out there. Whatever happens after that, is not the miners concern. They cannot re-mine Gold that was lost or stolen.

This concept is the same for Bitcoin mining. Once the bitcoin has been mined and sold to other people, it is out there and not available for re-mining.

The rarity of bitcoins <Gold> will just increase, if a percentage of those bitcoins <Gold> are lost. This will in turn increase the value of the remaining bitcoins <Gold>