I was aware that after all the money printing and giveaways during the COVID was just delaying the payment of the crisis ´till a moment in which the economy could possibly take better care of it. However, it was certain that the true cost of the crisis was not being paid. But here is the bill: Soaring inflation, happily accepted by governments in Europe and mainly in US: 5% YoY in August.

This is bad news for most, however it is good news for bitcoin that benefits from inflation and loose financial policies. Keep hodling!

Some people may thing that there are countries that would do better to adopt bitcoin as legal tender, just like in El Salvador, and in many others bitcoin is widely used for fear of the economic and authoritarian policies of the governing juntas.

However, I am inclined to think that bitcoin needs a country. The value of bitcoin, the community and the influence that exerts could potentially make that possible when bitcoin reaches an even higher valuation (perhaps it would be possible even now). How would Bitconia look like? How would we get there?

We have know that China has many times expressed and effectively carried out all shorts of moves against bitcoin, but recently they have made very serious moves that not only send a message for the future but also had very real implications for stock owners.

- Serious warnings to Ali Baba owner.
- A "voluntary" donation from Tencent to the "common good of Chinese people".
- A clear warning against any entrepreneur that has "too much public success".

Could this be dampening or even killing the expected growth of the Chinese economy? Are they, after all, still communist enough?

https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/la-liga-betting-shirt-sponsors-2020-21-season

The new law has knocked down strongly all the preferred advertising options for betting business. They cannot, for example, be on a teams shirt nor celebrities from sports are allowed to promote betting houses or platforms. Also, the adds in TV can only be run late at night. Needless to say that is a torpedo on the finances of several teams and may affect their ability to recruit and maintain the right players.

Teams directly affected:

Alavés (Betway), Cádiz (Dafabet), Granada (Winamax), Levante (Betway), Real Betis (Betway), Sevilla (MarathonBet) and Valencia (Bwin).

While most of the illegal activities in the world take place in USD and I am far from saying that bitcoin is actually worse than any other asset on that regard, I have read many news about the American withdrawal from Afghanistan and how the US government froze some billions of USD belonging to the previous government or perhaps (debatable) to the country itself. Obviously, this could not have happened if those assets were held in bitcoin or other crypto. It seems that not everything is good in self-sovereignty?

BTW, this is not a statement saying that Taliban are terrorist, just wondering about some other cases in which states were clearly linked to terror.

A simple question to the forum - I hope that people can provide sensible answers, since it would be way too easy to preach rather than to reason.

It has been mentioned many times in the forum that banks can be killed by bitcoin and that crypto is a threat for central banks, etc... One of the reasons that make me doubt about that possibility is the worldwide need of having a strong lending and borrowing system. I think that currently DeFi does not offer a realistic solution and that lending eventually has to rely on an intermediary. That, in some way or under a different name, is a bank.

How is this problem addressed currently and how could it be solved at large scale without a "bank" of shorts?

There is an old song called "Thee Gambler" that goes like this (snipped part), by Kenny Rogers if I am not wrong.
,

He said, "Son, I've made a life
Out of readin' people's faces
Knowin' what the cards were
By the way they held their eyes
So if you don't mind my sayin'
I can see you're out of aces
For a taste of your whiskey
I'll give you some advice"

...

"If you're gonna play the game, boy
You gotta learn to play it right
You've got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
You never count your money
When you're sittin' at the table
There'll be time enough for countin'
When the dealin's done

Knowing when to hold'em, knowing when to foldèm are usually part of your ability, training and experience when playing poker or other games that have some math to it, my question for the forum is how do you know it is the time "to walk away" and I also hope that you never get to the point that you need to know "when to run".

A few of my friends are struggling to get a job. They are in their mid-lives and the country they live in is particularly difficult to find a job at a certain age. Also, when some recovery was being noticed after the 2008 - 2012 crisis, COVID struck hard on an economy with a strong tourism sector. Meanwhile, I made some choices that landed me an stable and reasonably paid job that also leaves enough time to do other stuff that generates income or reduces my costs if I wish to do so.

What is the situation in your country and for yourself? Would you be able to land additional work for example working with crypto, selling stuff on-line, youtubing or something else?

Recently I read about the divorce of Bill Gates and how the Melinda & Bill Gates foundation will continue with business as usual despite Melinda´s spin-off (off the marriage). This foundation manages 49 billion in assets, mostly from donations from the uber-rich.

While Microsoft does not have a particular fame for mistreating employees, most of the large companies, to some extent, are benefiting from market monopolies, questionable tax exemptions and in some cases questionable Human Resources practices. Does it make sense to you to first "take" from society by paying little tax and then doing philanthropy to "give back"? Sound to me quite cynic.

It may soon change due to inflation, but as of now we live in a crazy world with the Euro - it is called the wonderland of negative interest rates. For those who are not in the loop, it works like this: You lend me 100 euros and I promise to repay you 99 euros. My first question, how much would you like borrow under these conditions?

I was speaking with a friend that wants to buy a house, mostly on credit as it is usual in many places. He was saying that he wanted a 25 year mortgage because he would like to have the house paid as early as he could. However, my take on this is that given the ridiculous interest rates, I would rather do like Europe or US and have that debt ... forever

https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/spains-la-liga-agrees-sell-10-stake-cvc-nyt-2021-08-04/

La Liga has received a great investment  in the range of 3.2 Billion for a 10% of the "ownership". The clubs are to get most of this new capital and they are free to invest, but with the limit of 15% in players. the rest has to be for infrastructure and other improvements. This should help Barca keep Messi, but what other players are going to be under offer in the future? Should the other clubs in Europe be concerned? And, how does this change the odds for the European championships?

In the Aspen Security Forum, Gensler requested authority from the US Congress to regulate cryptos strongly describing them as a Wild West full of fraud, scams and abuse.

There is something to be said about the leader of the organisation that allowed Madoff to run a Ponzi for decades speaking about crypto being a problem, but to be honest I cannot blame him. While the majority of the crypto community are honest people, the naivety of many has given wings to the thieves and fraudster. My take is that regulations, particularly in US are not going to make a difference for most people.

At the same time, he is admitting that crypto will become mainstream.

Olympics are here! Nowadays you have all the options to bet to almost all sports, but there are not that many occasions to use you knowledge about the international scene of some of the sports to make more interesting bets. For example, football is fine because you would normally get many chances, but what about new sports such as climbing? An also being able to do so almost all day around   Don´t get to crazy about it guys!

Jokes aside, will you be betting on the Olympics? Will that be on top of your usual betting or instead of your usual betting?

I have heard rumours that certain people, including a president, were treated with monoclonal antibodies, a therapy that is not widely accessible and is extremely expensive. Anyone knows about this?

One of those successful cases of bitcoin hodling was a friend of a friend. They (a couple) took an important risk by investing 60k of a dismissal compensation into bitcoin and making a x100 on it before selling half. I do not know what they did with the rest. Now, these people were not rich, they took an enormous risk compared to their total wealth. They had to really believe on the project and pass though some of bitcoins usual "tests of faith".

For someone with let´s say, a net worth of 1M USD or more plus house, hodling 60k until they became 6M would have been not that much of an stress. Do you think it was easier to benefit economically from bitcoin if you were already a bit up in the ladder?

Is it as strong as the US or more

YES - Trade war and decoupling
NO: continue...

Is is a bit weaker than US?
YES - Try to bring then under our sphere of influence. Set military bases if they are in a strategic location. END.

NO: continue...

Is it much weaker than us?
NO - establish trade deal and keep in check. END

YES: continue...
Do they have oil or other strategic resources?

NO - ignore or make an unbalanced trade deal. END
YES - continue....

Do they have a large population or somehow are difficult to invade:

NO - look for a reason to invade or create it "humans right abuse", "terrorism supporters", "own weapons of mass destruction", "they are a dictatorship". If it is true the better, but not needed. Invade.
YES - continue

Is it easy and cheap to overturn the government?
YES - Send the CIA to support a candidate that will be managed by US.
NO - Blockade.

One of my neighbours, a million years ago, was obviously addict to the slot machines. He would spend hours spinning in a nearby bar (these machines are allowed in bars in my country of origin) and my take is that he would spend a fortune on it. Once, I passed by and I overheard him saying "I am going to teach this machine who is in charge". It sounded like he was attributing some short of conscience and life to the machine and though he could "beat it". I have observed that many people that gamble are into that type of thinking, that is, it is me against this code and this machine and I can actually break the code and win.

I personally do not play slots, but do you think that is why people like slot machines? Short of breaking their code?

I know many people bet on boxing matches and I recently saw a post on an "slapping tournament". I was thinking that professional boxing is kind of questionable as a sport discipline and even more so as a gambling event. It is known that many boxers sustain long term effects of repeated micro-trauma and even some have been know to die in the ring. For all boxing fans and for others that may have a view on this, how is this being considered a fully legal activity being supported? And how is betting of people hitting each other being considered as legal and ethical in today´s world?

As users of gambling sites, we have to be careful and do our own research before committing our funds to a site. But no matter how much you dig around there is always a chance of being scammed or at least not being treated right by a service. I just read this article below on the need to have some short of protection or even a self regulation. Would you say that you would play more confidently if you knew that you can potentially have a claim if you think something is not right with the system or the decisions? How would that protection look like for you?

https://sbcnews.co.uk/europe/uk/2021/07/23/richard-hayler-ibas-the-ombudsman-from-abstract-concept-to-a-workable-reality/

Muchos llegamos aquí, al foro, hace algunos años. Nuestra fe era mínima, no sabíamos mucho de la comunidad, ni de la parte técnica... ni de casi nada. Para muchos de nosotros el bitcoin era una caja de tulipanes holandeses y nuestro objectivo era ver si podíamos sacarle un duro a todo esto.

Confieso, en mi caso, pensé que el bitcoin ya había pasado y que ahora había q apuntarse a las alts. Así lo hice: miné, participé en campañas, traduje "White Papers", participé en el foro,... No fue mal, supongo q incluso razonablemente bien teniendo en cuenta el tiempo invertido.

Mi opinión ha cambiado desde dos años hasta hoy. Ahora soy, por una parte, un hodler - un hodler algo escéptico porque la vida te enseña q hay pocas certezas -  pero un hodler q no suelta un satoshi aunque baje el 50%. Me lo puedo permitir... lo considero mi billete de lotería. O quizá el billete de lotería de los que vienen detrás mío, porque mi vida no cambiará sustancialmente creo.

Sigo haciendo campañas como se puede ver, aunque ahora es sólo con pagos en bitcoin. Nada de proyectos extraños liderados por equipos de adolescentes q viven en casa de sus padres y a los cuales no les prestaría dinero ni su abuelita.  También soy ahora un jornalero del bitcoin y pago con posts el billete de lotería de los que vendrán después de mi.

Se que hay muchos miembros nuevos que tienen que hacer este camino y yo soy el primero que cuando me hablaron del buy and hold pensé que era una comedura de tarro para gente que no tenía nada q aportar. No fue así, pero se que cada uno tiene que llegar a sus propias conclusiones y cometer sus propios errores.

Mis disculpas por el tocho.