It is true that Pfizer has reported the highest proportion of adverse reaction among all the COVID 19 vaccines. But even for Pfizer, the numbers are not alarming. 39 people per million died after taking the Pfizer vaccine, and the vast majority of these deaths occurred due to reasons unrelated to the vaccination. And also, the study was mostly conducted among the elderly people (those aged 80 and above). The COVID related mortality in this age group is almost 20%. So you need to chose between a 20% chance of death from COVID 19, and less than 0.0039% of death from the vaccine.

LOL.. the governments around the world are dependent on their national currencies, and the case with United States is no different. In fact, I would say that the US is even more dependent on it, because their national currency (United States Dollar) is the reserve and trade currency of the world. This situation provides them with an advantage, because the US government is able to take loans at near-zero interest rates. Their economy can survive, even if the debt balloons to more than 100% of the GDP. On the other hand, for countries such as El Salvador and Ecuador, it doesn't matter whether a decentralized currency such as BTC is increasing in acceptance, because they don't have a national currency.

Hash rate may be dropping because of the low BTC price as well. A couple of months back, Bitcoin was trading at $62,000 per coin. The exchange rate as of now is $34,000. Expenses for the miners remain the same, and at least for some of the mining farms the price of Bitcoin is not high enough to return a profit from their operations. So there is a chance that they simply shut down the mining operations for the time being. The number of coins being mined is limited. So even if they increase their hash rate, they are not going to get more coins.

Unlike the case with Bitcoin, the altcoin prices are not normally denominated in terms of fiat. They are normally shown in BTC, or in Ethereum (especially for the ERC-20 tokens). So the price fluctuations for alts are normally measured in terms of BTC or ETH. If the exchange rate against BTC remains stable, then in normal circumstances the alt price will go down against fiat when such a movement occurs for Bitcoin. More than 10 years have passed since the first altcoin was mined. And unfortunately till now, I haven't come across an altcoin which can exist without Bitcoin.

I don't think that their performance in England during this pandemic period should be taken as a yardstick. Even India struggled in England recently. I would still say that as a team, Pakistan has shown a lot of improvement recently. Their batting is still overdependent (to a degree) on Babar Azam, but others (such as Fakhar Zaman) have now stepped up their game. Also, the pace bowling department is showing a lot of maturity nowadays, after such a long gap. The pace combination of Shaheen Afridi, Hasan Ali and Haris Rauf remains a lot of people of the golden period two decades ago, when Wasim Akram and Shoaib Akhtar used to open the bowling for Pakistan.

What is going on with the Bangladesh cricket team? It sounds like almost every senior player has got some issues with the BCB. We all know the case of Shakib al Hasan. He has spats with BCB from time to time and probably that was one of the reasons why he got very harsh punishments in 2014 and 2019 (when he was banned from playing). Sad to hear that Mahmudullah also faced the same issues. Why there is no protest against the BCB, if they are mistreating the players in a regular manner? I am 100% sure that the BCCI would not have the courage to take such actions against their best player.

I am not sure whether the usage of VCCs may help you with tax evasion. Unless you mix your coins, it is easy for the authorities to track your transactions using cryptocurrencies. And at some point, you need to cash out. If you are using an exchange such as Binance, then only a few options are available for withdrawal and normally they don't allow anonymous cash withdrawals. You can always use the same method (i.e converting your coins to VCC at the time of cashing out), but I don't know how practical is it. Because VCCs can't be used in all the domains where cash is accepted. It may be OK for small amounts though.

Immigration is never the solution. Look at any of the countries that has permitted large scale immigration. The migrants remain less productive when compared to the original population. They put a huge strain on the resources, and a large portion of them are living of welfare payments. On top of that, the majority of the migrants in many of the countries are not high skilled legal migrants, but unskilled ones who mostly migrate through illegal means and chain migration. Countries that permit only skilled migrants (such as Japan) has benefitted from them. But that is not the case with others.

The COVID restrictions have made matters worse. Subcontinent teams are struggling to get adjusted to the conditions in England and that may be one of the reasons for the lop-sided nature of the matches. It was not just Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Even India struggled against the New Zealand pace battery during the WTC finals. In case of Pakistan, they could not organize any warmup matches and have to stay inside the bio-bubbles all the time. So it might have affected their performance. The England players on the other hand are playing county cricket.

Couldn't watch the live match, because I am living in India. But just woke up and saw the scores and I was really surprised. I didn't gave much of a chance to Italy, because I thought that England had a huge home advantage in Wembley. Anyway, I am happy with the results. The English fans were disgusting in their behavior during the matches against Germany and Denmark. And I am glad that Italy put them to their place by winning against them at their home ground. My only regret is that I could just watch the highlights instead of the live match.

One reason why Monero went down (in terms of acceptability and usage) during recent times is due to the closure of several dark markets. On top of that, many of the exchanges have delisted Monero, due to its association with contraband trade. However, in the future I could foresee an uptick, as the authorities around the world are getting more and more hostile in their attitude towards cryptocurrency. Mainstream exchanges are facing more and more harassment, and this is pushing users towards P2P platforms and DEX sites. In such circumstances, XMR may once again witness a surge in demand.

England still refuses to reimpose the lockdowns. Because despite the increase in number of new cases, the death toll has remained low. The average number of new deaths have remained in the 20-40 range for the last few weeks. More than 60% of the population has received the vaccine till now, and therefore the chances of death are low even if they get the infection. And this is the reason why England has reopened the economy. But the case with Japan is not like that. Vaccination coverage has remained low, with just 17% of the population receiving two doses of the vaccine.

Back in 2014 and 2018, we had corrections amounting to more than 80% from the ATH levels. But it may not happen with the cryptocurrency market this time, because of two factors - 1. the entry of institutions in to the market in a big way. These investors can hold on to their investments for many years. 2. a lot of the users are already aware of the 4-year cycle and may think twice before they get rid of their coins during dips. The correction may still happen, but instead of the 80% we had in 2018, we may get 40% or 50% at the most.

The thread title needs to be changed. Bitcoin is not a physical asset that can be banned. It is a set of codes, that doesn't exist in the physical state. Therefore it is not practical to ban Bitcoin. What the governments can do is that they could make the conversion of Bitcoin to fiat (and vice versa) more difficult (especially of the volume involved is large). And this in turn will have a crippling impact on the cryptocurrency market, by causing a reduction in the exchange rate and the trade volumes. Users may do their trade through P2P platforms, but the prices may slump.

The catch here is that West Indies is strongest when they play in the T20 format. Because their team is full of T20 specialists - Kieron Pollard, Andre Russell, Nicholas Pooran, Andre Fletcher, Chris Gayle and Shimron Hetmyer to name a few. It is always going to be a tough task to take on West Indies in this format. On the other hand, Australia is weakest while playing the T20 format. And to make matters worse, this time they were lacking the services of their T20 specialists. Three matches remain, but going with the current form I don't think that Australia will be able to make a comeback.

LOL.... I agree that this was a great win by Argentina, and that too against one of the top teams in the world (Brazil). But will it be right to call Messi the best player ever? I wouldn't even rate him as the best player ever to represent Argentina. For me, Diego Maradona is the no.1, followed by Messi at no.2. But still I would rate Messi ahead of others like Alfredo Di Stefano and Daniel Alberto Passarella. Anyway.. these things don't matter now. The big news is that Argentina has won Copa for the 15th time (and for the first time after 1993).

Did you even read the previous replies? This is why I am against allowing the noobs to make posts in important sections such as Bitcoin Discussion and Economics. Out of the 20-30 threads on the first page, at least 75% are irrelevant spam or clickbait posted by noobs. And even in the remaining 25% threads, most of the replies doesn't make any sense and are posted by noobs without going through the news.

Vietnam hasn't recognized Bitcoin, or made any move in favor of cryptocurrency. What we are talking about is the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), which is essentially a digital version of the fiat. It has nothing to do with Bitcoin or any of the other true cryptocurrencies. The attitude from the Vietnamese government towards proper cryptocurrency hasn't changed, and I am afraid that with the listing of the new CBDC, they may become even more hostile towards Bitcoin and the altcoins.

In terms of market cap, the highest level ever achieved by Ethereum was 31.17% attained in June 2017. From that level, it dipped to less than 10% later, due to various issues. In terms of scalability and fee, Ethereum is in an even worse state when compared to Bitcoin. And the implementation of ETH 2.0 hasn't made much of a difference. So if some cryptocurrency steals market share from Bitcoin in the future, then it is going to be some other altcoin and not Ethereum. Ethereum doesn't have the required scalability and security aspects.

Taylor is a very good player, but one thing that he doesn't know is how to play for the team instead for himself. On both the occasions, he got out by playing unwanted shots. This was a rare opportunity for Zimbabwe to get a very rare test win against one of the teams in the first division of test cricket. But they wasted the chance. At some point of time, the ICC need to ask the question whether it is good for the health of cricket to given them any more chances, while teams such as Nepal and Netherlands doesn't get any.

LOL.. another heavy defeat for Pakistan. And remember that this is against an England squad that is lacking most of the big names. Players such as Phil Salt, James Vince and Lewis Gregory would struggle to get an inclusion if the regular players are available. On the other hand Pakistan went to England with their full strength squad. Even before the start of this series, England was on top of the ICC Men's Cricket World Cup Super League. Now they have further increased the gap, with 85 points from 14 matches.