Electric vehicles are becoming cheaper with every passing year. But even now, they are on average 2x or more costlier when compared to the gasoline equivalent. The cost of EV battery is still prohibitive and it needs to come down to make such vehicles more affordable for the general population. But then, no new innovation has happened with the battery technology for the last 2 decades or so.

China vs India is not exactly an apple to apple comparison. Most of India's land is suitable for agriculture, but in China that is not the case. More than half of the surface area is in the provinces of Xinjiang and Xizang, where the conditions are very arid and not suitable for agriculture. Provinces such as Qinghai, Inner Mongolia and Gansu also have similar climatic conditions. On the other hand, only around 10% of India is arid.

^^^ China invading Taiwan is highly unlikely. It will result in millions of deaths on both the sides. Look at the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. It is turning out to be a disaster for both the sides (as well as for Western Europe). Any future war will be highly pyrrhic and given the low birth rates in China they can't afford to lose millions of their young citizens at this point.

From what I have seen, the Russian economy is doing just fine. Their trade surplus is at all time high and they are benefitting immensely from the sky high fuel prices. The West tried to boycott Russian commodities and the latter just rerouted the exports to Asian countries such as India and China. Now nations such as Pakistan and Myanmar are lining up to purchase Russian hydrocarbons.

Why their population need to grow at a faster rate? A majority of the world nations are edging towards replacement fertility and near-zero population growth. The planet is already home to 8 billion human beings and we can't afford to increase that number by much. For economic growth, why there is a requirement of constant population growth? Why can't it be achieved with a stable population? Countries such as Germany and Japan are having stable populations, and still their economy is doing good.

If people are still keeping their assets in fiat, despite the fact that the federal reserve is printing banknotes like crazy, then they are purely delusional. In my country, the rates for bank deposits have now slipped below the inflation rate. And although stock markets gave good returns for 2021, I don't expect the situation to remain the same for the next few years. One important factor that is keeping retail inflation in check is that crude oil prices are staying below $80 per barrel. If this level is breached, then we'll be in trouble.

Someone needs to do an investigation into these protests. Who is provoking the people in El Salvador? There is a lot of FUD and fake news being circulated and it seems to be pretty organized. No one is forcing ordinary people to use BTC. It is their choice whether they want to use cryptocurrency or not. Given this, I don't see any point in protesting against the move. The rollout hasn't yet begun, as the Bitcoin law is effective only from 7th September. And according to rumors, Malta and Panama are next in line.

You need to make a choice. You can either opt for vaccination, which means that you will suffer from fever and body pain for 1-2 days. Or you can remain unvaccinated and risk dying from COVID 19. If you get infected with the delta strain, then the death rate is around 10% for unvaccinated people (for the original strain, it was below 1%). You need to maintain your health, irrespective of your vaccination status. But both these things can't substitute for each other. Maintaining good physical activity alone will not guard you from Coronavirus.

There can be two scenarios. In capitalist system, we will be having 3 classes of people - around 5% who are rich, another 90% who are in the middle-class with a relatively comfortable style of living, and then the remaining 5% comprised of "poor" people. The in socialist system we will have only two classes of people - 1% of the population will be ultra-rich (mostly the ruling elite) and then the remaining 99% of the people will be poor. It is up to the people to chose which system they want in their country.

From what I have heard, there are 11 countries apart from the United States that use the US Dollar as the national currency. They are - Ecuador, El Salvador, Zimbabwe, Guam, USVI, Timor-Leste, American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands, Micronesia, Palau and Marshall Islands. Out of these, 4 are dependent US territories (Guam, USVI, Am.Samoa and N. Mariana). Another three are heavily dependent on the US for balancing their budget (Micronesia, Palau and Marshall Islands).

That leaves a total of 4 countries where there is a chance of Bitcoin being declared as the legal tender in the near term - Ecuador, El Salvador, Zimbabwe and Timor Leste. Now that El Salvador has taken this step, the other three would at least consider it.

One of the reasons why altcoins (such as DOGE) is moving up is because Bitcoin has remained stagnant for almost two months now. Short-term investors are losing their patience with Bitcoin and are focusing their attention to smaller coins such as DOGE. But there is no guarantee that this situation will last for long. They will go down once more, when the next Bitcoin rally occurs.

Nowadays it is just a waste of time and effort to participate in these bounty campaigns. You need to spend 2-3 months on them and in the end there is a 10% chance that you will receive a small reward (<$25). And even if you manage to receive the tokens, because of the high ETH gas price it will not be viable to move them to the exchanges and convert them to Ethereum. And then there is a 90% chance that you will remain unrewarded despite your hard work.

Realistically I expect gold to touch $5,000 (£3,567) per oz sometime soon. With fiat currencies losing their purchasing power at such a rapid rate, assets such as gold, platinum, silver and Bitcoin would definitely go up in demand. But I am not sure whether the governments will allow that. It may sound draconian now, but the authorities can go for wealth confiscation in order to cover debt repayments (similar to what Cyprus did in 2013)

JP Morgan has been spreading a lot of FUD related to Bitcoin recently. Previously also they have done that, but they look really desperate nowadays. Do they feel threatened by the rise of Bitcoin?

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/17/jpmorgan-thinks-the-bitcoin-rally-is-unsustainable-and-doesnt-make-much-sense.html
https://www.coindesk.com/a-sudden-loss-of-faith-in-tether-would-pose-risk-to-bitcoin-jpmorgan-says
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-12/jpmorgan-s-pinto-says-client-demand-isn-t-there-yet-on-bitcoin
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/364066
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-09/tesla-s-bitcoin-bet-won-t-be-followed-by-others-jpmorgan-says

^^^ These are just some of the articles dealing with FUD spread by JPM during the last few weeks.

The XRP exchange rates are going up just because of speculation. During the last 12 months, I haven't head anything positive about Ripple. I would rather say that during the last one year or so, the adoption and acceptability of XRP has actually gone down. The market cap seems inflated to me. Some of the smaller altcoins have much higher acceptability when compared to XRP.

Do you really expect the exchange rates to go up all the time? In less than a month, the Bitcoin prices increased from $10K to $20K, and now we are under a correction phase with the prices fluctuating in the $17,500-$18,000 range. Ups and downs are a part of life in cryptocurrency market. If you can't deal with it, then probably you should not be investing in cryptocurrency.

Now that the event is confirmed, it will be better to add a poll here. I am quite sure that Manny will be ahead by a big margin. But still want to measure the support levels for McGregor. BTW, I checked the odds from some of the gambling sites. Manny is having odds ranging from -800 to -1500. Making a bet in his favor doesn't look rewarding, if the odds remain like this.

The voter turnout is going to be at record low levels for this election. Apart from the COVID 19 pandemic, there are opinion polls which claim that a large part of the American population is not supporting either of the two candidates. Some may go out and vote for third party candidates as a protest, but the vast majority will simply abstain from voting.

My favorite cryptocurrency is Bitcoin Cash (BCH), because this is the coin which has given me the maximum amount of profit. I received BCH for free in 2017 (because I was holding BTC at that time) and ever since then the value has increased by manifold). On the other hand, my investments in ETH and ADA brought me huge amount of losses.

Moving from one country to the other has become very easy nowadays. So the super-rich easily moves from countries with high levels of taxation to those countries where the tax slabs are lower. After a certain threshold, the rich people would be looking to maintain their wealth, rather than to increase it. For such people, off shore tax heavens may look attractive.