Video games are designed to make you hooked and extract as much as they can from you.  You are slaves on the world they created, wasting your consciousness away on a virtual world.  And the grinding games are the absolute worst, its just the same gameplay over and over.

Disney has become the media giant and has been on a spending spree for the last decade buying up different ips.

Facebook has been buying up all their competition and is the dominant social media company and nothing else can compete with it.

Companies become so big and they have enormous power over us, do you think companies like this should be broken up by the government or be allowed to reign supreme?

Anyone recommend a crypto lottery to play that is legitimate? Anything in this space has better odds than government run lotteries.  Ideally something that pays 99-100% of collected funds to the winner and is verifiable with blockchain.

No one involved with bitcoin at the beginning had the foresight to register Bitcoin.com?

Instead we let Roger Ver have control over bitcoin.com with his shady intentions.  I still think he is a good crypto supporter and he wants to see everything succeed but what do you guys think of him owning bitcoin.com?

Video games are loaded with aspects of gambling and people of all groups and ages play these games in modern times.  Many games have things like loot boxes that you pay for to random prizes, Runescape has the duel arena where you can gamble gold against one another, and there are many more examples.

People may start off with video games and then eventually move on to higher sums gambling in real casinos.  What are your thoughts on this matter and should anything be done?

What is your favorite film that revolves around gambling?  A few notable movies come to mind that I enjoy: Casino, Rounders, and 21 are probably my three favorite with Casino being my top pick.  Mainly because Deniro is such a great actor and it shows how corrupt Vegas casinos really used to be.

We have some of the most intelligent people in the world working on extracting as much wealth as possible from high volume trading.  For someone to gain money in the market someone most lose.  Imagine if we had these minds working on solving real world problems that would actually benefit society.  Just like gambling, trading is zero sum.

I constantly here people say " Only invest what you can afford to lose"  Well no matter where your wealth is it could crash.

-Invest in USD- USA could collapse and experience mass inflation making your dollars nearly worthless
-Invest in Bonds- Government could collapse making your bonds worthless
-Invest in real estate- Housing prices could crash, natural disaster could hit and insurance company could go bankrupt
-Invest in metals- prices could crash, asteroid mining could collapse prices

Your money is never 100% safe no matter where it is invested.

Pretend that all the fiat money in the world is gone and the whole world is only using Bitcoin.  Ignore scalability issues for this scenario.

I'm sure most of you know that most money is actually created by banks through fractional reserve lending.  Our economy is stimulated by people constantly taking out loans to make purchases.  But with bitcoin you can't loan money that doesn't exist.  Maybe we would have to change our consumerism as a society and prices would drop.  Being able to borrow money easily makes everything rise in price.   What are your thoughts?

Say someone wanted to solo mine with a very cheap setup with hopes to find a block themselves.
What would the odds of finding a block be over a certain amount of time?  I'm just trying to compare it to winning the lottery with a similar sized jackpot.  I want to compare the odds for fun.  If any probability / math experts want to chime in that would be great.

Is there a liquid exchange where can an American resident trade their btc for RMB?? I have an account at BTC-China but just learned today that they have disabled trading (?) for US residents. (God I hate living in the US ... time to move, again!)

The security breach at Bitfinex is just beyond the pale. No online wallets/businesses are trustworthy. I can't with a clear conscience recommend that anybody invest in or hold cryptocurrency until the community puts an end to the rampant theft.

I'm slow, and overdue, but now taking all my coins offline to a cold wallet, and not coming back until there is some fundamental change in security protocols, such that I will never risk suffering a 100% loss like some have experienced at Bitfinex. **I didn't have a btc balance at bfx at the time of hack, but I only got lucky.

When you want to look at the DAO chart, or Eth chart, or some odd chart that you normally don't look at every day, do you have a go-to spot, exchange, website or other, to reliably find a very good, dynamic real-time chart?

Of course I go to bitcoinwisdom.com and coinmarketcap.com like everyone else, but the former only offers charts on the handful of major currencies, and the latter's charts are terrible, in my view. So where do you go?

Thanks in advance.

Sometimes I travel to China on business. It is sort-of my own business and I have spent months there at a stretch. Even getting a 2-yr visa and renting an apartment and such. If I were to go back, do you know of any btc-related business opportunities, to source/sell goods or some such? I have cause/opportunity to visit lots of different types of businesses and manufacturers. If something was worth sources, I'm sure I could do it.

Is it just me, or does it really appear as though bitcoin poker activity has slowed down quite a bit? I recall in the heyday of SWC, when essentially everyone played at the same place, and bitcoin was relatively new and undervalued, that SWC always seemed reasonably busy. By reasonably busy I'm guessing around 300 players logged in, give or take. Now players are spread across multiple sites, such that they may congregate on one site for an hour or so if there is a big tourney running, but otherwise this same, fairly static community has since dispersed their play across multiple sites such that rarely does a site have +300 players like SWC used to enjoy on a daily basis?

Is Betcoin an exception? I don't really play there so I don't know for sure. Last I logged in a couple weeks ago things were surprisingly slow. Was the bitcoin poker community better served when there was only one place to play? Or am I just nostalgic?

Before you deposit BTC into your Bovada acct, consider just buying Bovada cash from me with a 10% bonus.

Example:

You originally aim to deposit $20 of btc into your account.

Instead you put that into escrow and meet me in a heads up table, where I will donk off $22 to you.
(I raise to $22, you reraise, and I fold. We can do it in smaller increments too, if that makes you more comfortable.)

Why am I offering this? I have $ tied up at Bovada, and I'd rather not have them mailing me a check.

Serious enquiries only pls, preferably via PM. If you just want to make conversation or snarky comments kindly find another thread for it.

I have almost 6 Btc invested in the Augur pre-sale:

https://sale.augur.net/

I'd like to borrow some btc (2-8 btc) in order to raise my stake. Thus the total stake (original 6 btc + lent amount) becomes the collateral, to be repaid soon after REP is issued and fungible, i.e. can be sold.

*I'm only interested in dealing with seasoned and reputable lenders/partners. You know who you are!*

As compensation I offer downside protection ~100% (depending on size of the loan) and either a fixed or floating return on the lent amount.

Offers & advanced discussion please PM directly.

Some background:

Investors in the pre-sale are entitled to 'Reputation' (REP) tokens upon launch of the Augur prediction market slated for early next year. Thus one invests BTC today but receives REP early next year. See details on the link above. REP will have income streams attached in the form of fees generated by activity on the Augur exchange, giving them a real 'intrinsic value.'

Yesterday he deleted my thread - didn't move it, or even send it to the trash can - just deleted it. After I had invested a good 20 minutes drafting the original post for a thread that I intended to develop over the days and weeks ahead.

No explanation. No 'This message moved to Trash because of XYZ ...'   No simple courtesy of a PM. Doesn't even respond to my query about what got his panties in a knot.

F*kd up.

1.   After felting in a tournament, do you hang around the room bad-mouthing the play of the remaining players, the very ones who crushed your soul and sent you packing?
2.   Do you regularly find yourself borrowing mom’s credit card after a particularly bad run?
3.   Do you find that many of your opponents seem to have some odd familiarity with your mother?
4.   Have your friends and opponents given you an affectionate nickname, such as ‘ass clown’ ?
5.   Do you spend hours churning freerolls on second-tier btc poker sites, extolling your phenomenal poker skills and experience?
6.   Were you directed to this quiz by your poker opponents?
7.   Do you regularly find yourself whining to poker site admin about other players?
8.   Do you feel an overwhelming need to refute, denigrate, or otherwise dismiss the results of this quiz?

If you answered ‘Yes’ to three or more of the questions above, you are a Poker Troll or, more affectionately, Ass Clown.

Now you know.

[a site should have insurance on offer to players that are 'all-in.']

Lets face it, there are too many btc poker sites, and everyone is at a loss on how to innovate.

Here is an answer/opportunity that is already being used (so I've heard) by a few obscure sites. And I think it is an idea could drive high stakes cash play.

That is, a site should have insurance on offer to players that are 'all-in.' Insurance sells at a modest mark-up - it is a built-in profit center for the house, and is valued by players who can use it to smooth out their results.

Personally I have strong preference to play games that have insurance on offer - it allows me to play higher stakes and damper the inevitable bad runs.

I know in China live poker games insurance is always on offer, and I've heard that some Chinese online sites also offer insurance to its players. It would require a modest amount of programming, and some familiarization for players who have not used insurance in the past. Anyway insurance is never mandatory for players. In fact, if a site generates good revenue from insurance, perhaps they don't have to charge rake, so in that way cash players have an even greater incentive to play.

I would play at such a site ... who's going to bring it?