https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-cryptocurrency-ban-idUSKBN2B60R0

India will propose a law banning cryptocurrencies, fining anyone trading in the country or even holding such digital assets, a senior government official told Reuters in a potential blow to millions of investors piling into the red-hot asset class.

The bill, one of the world’s strictest policies against cryptocurrencies, would criminalise possession, issuance, mining, trading and transferring crypto-assets, said the official, who has direct knowledge of the plan.

The cryptocurrency users were recently hoping that the government may go easy on Bitcoin, since the finance minister had issued some vague statements hinting that there will be no blanket ban. But it looks as if the minister was just trying to fool the Bitcoin users until the regional elections are completed (elections are scheduled for next month). Now it is up to the users to decide what action they need to take during the elections.

[Bitcoin Sets Fresh Record Above $50K Pushing Yearly Gains to 69%]

Bitcoin Sets Fresh Record Above $50K Pushing Yearly Gains to 69%

https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-price-record-high

Bitcoin reached a new all-time high of $50,001.35 Tuesday morning, just days after breaking above $48,000 for the first time.

1. The cryptocurrency's latest pop pushes 2021 gains to 69%.
2. Nearly $358 million in bitcoin futures have been liquidated over the past 24 hours, according to Bybt, as the crypto has rallied more than 5% over the same period.
3. Meanwhile, futures contracts (BTCG2021) on one of the largest bitcoin derivatives marketplace by open interest, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, hit a high of $50,500.
4. Bitcoin's latest record high follows a flurry of institutional and corporates interest in the leading cryptocurrency.
Last Monday, Tesla bought $1.5 billion worth of the cryptocurrency, which saw the digital asset's price spike by almost $4,000, according to CoinDesk's price index.
5. Additionally, in just the past week, Twitter's CFO said the company is considering investing in bitcoin, BNY Mellon announced plans to custody cryptocurrency for its clients and PayPal confirmed its plans to add crypto to its Venmo product.
6. The overall crypto market broke $1.5 trillion for the first time on Monday.

We're there finally!!!!

And this has been achieved despite skepticism, hatred and threats coming from powerful authorities and individuals. We should be proud of ourselves. The next milestone is going to be $1 trillion market cap (right now we are at $919 billion).

[So what has changed now? Why a law that was rejected in 2018 is now refurbished and tabled again in 2021?]

A few days back, the Indian government announced that they will ban the usage of cryptocurrency in India. The bill is currently in queue to be presented during the budget session (which started today).

This bill was originally formulated by Subhash Chandra Garg in 2018, who was the Finance Secretary of India then. According to the provisions, anyone found holding cryptocurrency will be charged and punished with up to 10 years in jail. Back then, Mr.Garg got embroiled in to some conflict with some of the ruling politicians and was kicked out before he could implement this law. After that the cryptocurrency users were thinking that the government had given up its effort to criminalize cryptocurrency ownership. And that was until a few days back, when they made the announcement about this law.

So what has changed now? Why a law that was rejected in 2018 is now refurbished and tabled again in 2021?

If you take a look at the charts, then it become clear. Bitcoin prices have increased by almost 3 times during the last 12 months. Bitcoin is now worth $624 billion. According to conservative estimates, there are 5 million+ crypto users in India, who holds around $10 billion in cryptocurrency. However, these figures are based only on the stats from India-based cryptocurrency exchanges such as Zebpay and WazirX. The majority of the Indian users don't use these exchanges, and instead rely on P2P platforms. So the real number will be much higher.

The current government, which is headed by the Bharatiya Janata Party is essentially run by a few corporate houses, especially those owned by the Ambani/Adani nexus. Ever since 2014 (when BJP came to power), these corporate houses have monopolized various sectors in the Indian economy. The strategy used is very simple. First destroy the competition and then rollout their own product and capture the monopoly. Take the case of the telecom sector. Established brands such as Idea and Airtel were destroyed before Ambani came up with his Jio brand. And how can they let cryptocurrency out of their control? Since it is impossible to control a decentralized asset such as Bitcoin, they have decided to ban it. Once the vacuum is created, the pro-government corporates will come up with their own version of the cryptocurrency (which will obviously be 100% pre-mined).

Now what are the options that we have?

Nowhere else in the world, ownership of cryptocurrency has been made a criminal offense. There are certain countries such as China, which are having trading ban on cryptocurrency. But even they are not crazy enough to jail individuals just for storing a code in their computers. If the ban is implemented, then the government will give at the most 3 months time for the users to get rid of their coins.

Those who don't want to sell their coins immediately have very few options. They can try to travel to countries such as Qatar, which are having visa-waiver for Indian nationals. Before the limit expires, the individuals can attempt to get a work visa or investment visa. Another option is proxy holding. You can transfer your coins to a foreign national and ask him to hold the coins for you. But this is a very risky step. Right now I can't think about any other option apart from these.

Impact for the users

The existing cryptocurrency users will be adversely effected. With institutional investment of cryptocurrency gaining pace, it is expected that investment in Bitcoin would give good returns in the near future. But even those who were aiming for long-term investment needs to sell their coins immediately. And this can negatively affect the users on multiple fronts. If you sell your coins in a gradual manner, it is possible to reduce the tax cut to 10% or 20%. But when you sell all of your holdings at once, the top-most tax slab will be applicable for most of the users and they will be forced to pay 43% tax on their holdings.

And in the near future we can expect worldwide adoption of BTC. Eventually, Bitcoin will become legal in India once more. But the Indian users will be forced to purchase BTC at that point at much higher prices and they will lose out to users from the rest of the world.  

Response from the users

With a user base of at least 5 million, the cryptocurrency users in India are not some insignificant group. They are feeling helpless, because of the lack of unity. It is worthwhile to note that at least one opposition politician (Milind Deora of the Congress Party) has come out in support of Bitcoin. Cryptocurrency users in India needs to unite and take a political stance against those who are hostile to the idea of BTC. State elections are due in four crucial states in the next 2-3 months (West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Assam). Bitcoiners need to use their votes effectively, in order to defeat the political factions that are in favor of the Bitcoin ban. Tactical voting needs to be undertaken.

As we all know, the exchange rate of Ethereum has fallen during the past few months (vs BTC). From around 0.035 BTC per coin six months back, the prices have fallen to 0.0205 BTC as of now. The market share of Ethereum in the cryptocurrency market has fallen from 11.5% to 8.3% during the same period. Other alts have also fallen, but not by this much.

And this has happened despite the boost it received from the IEOs. Can ETH manage a comeback anytime soon? Will the investors stop selling their ETH holdings for BTC, and hold on to the coin?

I was just having my cup of tea and watching the ongoing Ashes series... a strange thought came to my mind.

All of us know that one of the main advantage with Bitcoin is that it can't be counterfeited. On the other hand, counterfeiting is a major issue with fiat cash.
According to some estimates, the sale of counterfeits and pirated goods are worth $1,700 billion per year, and the sale of counterfeited banknotes is worth $250 billion.

Is it possible to use this technology to prevent the counterfeiting of bank notes? Don't tell me to install microchips on all the banknotes. We need to keep the manufacturing cost below $0.10 per piece. I thought about it for 2 hours, but no practical solution came to my mind. Do you guys have any suggestions?

According to the Coinmarketcap website, Bitcoin dominance has breached the 71% level and is now reported at 71.2%. Including the forked coins (BCH, BSV, BTG.etc), the total market cap for BTC+forks comes to slightly above 74%, while the altcoin market share has dipped below the 24% mark.

I am sure that a lot of users may be unhappy about this, but I am delighted as more than 90% of my crypto assets are in the form of BTC. I had sold most of my alt holdings in 2018.

I am not very sure about the reasons behind the rising BTC dominance. But I suspect that the users have become more matured now, and a lot of them have realized that investing in shitcoins is simply not worth all the risk.

Here is my outlook for the major cryptocurrencies:

1. BTC: The prices will continue to increase and a new ATH may be reached by the end of 2019 or by 2020. The dominance will continue to increase and may reach 80% by the end of this year. But one concern I have is regarding the transaction fee. It has risen by more than 10x since the start of the year. Another 10x increase would be catastrophic.

2. ETH: The exchange rates are still lagging behind the ATH. The poor health of the ICO market is probably pulling ETH down. The Cryptopia hack also played its part.

3. XRP: I would say that this one is the most worthless and unreliable altcoins among the top 10. Therefore I am not surprised by its falling market share.

4. BCH: Holding well as of now. In case the BTC transaction fee spikes again (like what we had during 2017 Dec), then this coin can rocket upwards.

5. LTC: One of the best performing alts. However I won't be surprised if a correction occurs post block reward halving.

6. EOS: I don't know much about this coin.

7. BNB: I would consider this coin as overpriced. A correction is due.

8. BSV: A lot will depend on the future actions of CSW. Very unpredictable coin.

9. USDT: Everything was going well for Tether until the scandal at Bitfinex was revealed to the public. Now a lot of the users don't consider this coin as a reliable stablecoin. In the near future it will be facing a lot of competition from the other stablecoins.

10. TRX: An overpriced shitcoin. I don't have anything good to say about this one.

[NDA]

The voting for 2019 Indian general election ends today, and I though that it will be better to create a thread here. Unlike yesterday's Australian elections, this one hasn't got much media attention from outside India.

Still, we need to remember that this election is the biggest democratic exercise in the recorded history, with a total of 900 million people eligible to vote. The system used here is first-past-the-post voting, and there are a total of 543 constituencies.

The elections were being held in 7 different phases, starting from 11th April. The turnout varied from 10.32% (for Jammu and Kashmir during Phase 4) to 85.11% (for Assam, phase 3).

The ideological position of the various alliances are as follows:

NDA: headed by BJP, a center-right party. The core support base comes from upper-caste Hindus (~15% of the population) and urban voters. Foreign policy is pro-Israel and pro-Trump, while maintaining historical friendships with Russia. Hawkish on defense policy and hostile towards China / Pakistan. Stands against affirmative action. Against illegal immigration by Bangladeshi Muslims.

UPA: Headed by INC, a center-left party. Core support base comes from Muslims (~15% of the population) and Christians (~6% of the population). Mostly depends on rural votes. Foreign policy is pro-Palestine and pro-Democrat with preference for Russia over USA. Pacifist defense policy. Strongly in favor of affirmative action and tolerant of illegal immigration by Bangladeshi Muslims.

Others: A bunch of regional parties with different ideologies. Don't have any foreign policy. Most of them derives support from rural and minority voters. Have more ideological similarity with UPA.

These were the seat positions during the last election:

NDA - 336 (ruling alliance)
UPA - 60 (main opposition alliance)
Others - 147 (most of them allied with UPA informally)

As per the last opinion polls (published in April), this is the prediction (exit polls will be available in another 45 minutes from now):

NDA: 275 to 310
UPA: 122 to 149
Others: 111 to 142

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-01/the-logistical-nightmare-of-cleaning-up-russia-s-tainted-oil

One of the threads of the Russian oil pipeline to the EU has been shut down, after organic chlorides were found in the supplies. More than 30 million barrels of crude was contaminated (worth around $2.2 billion) and by the time the issue was noticed sections of pipeline and refinery equipment underwent significant damage. In legal terms, Russia needs to bear the bill for crude replacement and equipment repair.

It is still not clear who was behind this sabotage, but the authorities are claiming that the incident occurred at the Samara Transneft Terminal, where several smaller companies inject their crude to the pipeline system. The investigation still has no idea which one of these producers injected the contaminated crude.

Initial estimate for the loss to the Russian exchequer is anywhere from $6 billion to $15 billion.

There is this new airdrop at powtoken.com What do people here recommend about this particular token?  It can be had through FACEBOOK login. If the good folks here can shed more light on this one, that would be amazing 😉

https://www.facebook.com/anonews.co/videos/1676284645716421/

It can't get any more disturbing than this. This is an interview with one of the biggest criminals in Bangladesh, who is active in the Chittagong Hill Tracts region (a region mostly inhabited by mostly Buddhist and Hindu tribal people). He admits that he has sold more than 5,000 tribal girls to brothels during the last 7 years, and claims that he has killed over 500 of them when they refused.

[John McCain has brain cancer, his office says]

John McCain has brain cancer, his office says

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40664635

Veteran US Republican Senator John McCain has been diagnosed with brain cancer and is reviewing treatment options, according to his office. The options may include chemotherapy and radiation, his doctors said. The 80-year-old politician is in "good spirits" recovering at home. The tumour was discovered during a surgery to remove a blood clot from above his left eye last week.

I was saddened by the news. Although I don't agree with his political views, I regard him very highly for the courage he had shown in Vietnam. Just hoping that he'll recover quickly.

Despite the sanctions/blockade from Saudi Arabia and its allies, Qatar has maintained its position as the richest country in the world, ahead of Luxembourg. Interestingly, 4 out of the 5 countries are in the Asian continent, with Macau, Singapore, and Brunei occupying positions #3 to #5. Average wages in Qatar stands at $129,112 per head, which is almost double of that in the United States.

Hi everyone... In the Politics section I saw a lot of threads discussing Islam and Christianity. But I was surprised that there was no mention about the third largest religion in the globe (Hinduism). Please use this thread for discussions regarding Hinduism.