This really is just one of Putin's power moves to make Russia relevant in the geopolitical arena of the world.

China is the upcoming superpower which means that Russia will get co-opted by China as the purveyor of an alternative to west backed system of capitalist democracies. Either that or Russia will just go out with a bang (Lets just hope its not a nuclear one).

What Putin has put at stake is Russian pride and identity. Despite the misinformation about fighting Nazis, there is little chance that this can continue to receive support from the population. The world isn't so closed anymore and the Russian channels of misinformation aren't as absolute and strong as that of China. The invasion will at some point lose support.

As far as Russia being the cornerstone of world economy, when was the last time that a technological innovation from a Russian corporation took the world by surprise. The time of USSR innovation and mega-manufacturing is long gone. Most of it has been taken over by the corporate espionage of China. America remains the only credible balancer to China. Russia is really just a power on its way out. Imagine all of this WITHOUT Putin. Nobody would have given a damn.

So lucky that you guys got off with just 0.1%.

In India, the govt has imposed a tax of 30% on EVERY crypto transaction done by an individual irrespective of the tax slab or financial level of the user. While it is seen by many to dissuade people from investing into the scams and ponzis being propagated in the name of cryptocurrencies, this will undoubtedly hurt the average enthusiast who are looking to make a career and income stream from it.

We could all use some education on how to use the ledger and the trezor without their platforms. The

Even if one starts to use the hardware wallet without their platform, I guess having even once used the platform means that their servers can easily connect that address with the said device delivered to a particular address and customer?

So that renders the whole thing traceable forever I guess. I would be happy to know if someone can give information to the contrary.


These moves aren't exclusively aimed at bitcoin nor have been provoked by them. Most of this has come to pass with the growing volume of trades and transactions that are happening on smart-contract platforms and the millions being moved in NFT sales. When only Bitcoin was being used, most transactions would have been smaller P2P ones. Those on Ethereum and these other platforms with VC money are huge and have been leading to a lot of people getting scammed and losing their money, OR, in a lot of other cases people making a lot of money without having to pay taxes.

I doubt that the nation states cared till it was just people losing money to scammers. Since every kid in the basement is starting to make 1000s of dollars with NFTs and wallet farming, they don't seem to be very comfortable anymore.

Pretty much nothing related to other cryptocurrencies or the smart-contract market. Not even about NFTs.

The only connect with real world applications that i see is about Options and derivatives and "Future of Financial Forecasting". Whatever that implies for Bitcoin is beyond me so it should be interesting.

While the lineup is definitely impressive, this does seem like old wine in a new bottle. There should at least be an exclusive session regarding the ETF rejections and SECs role, rather than the usual belligerence about "Is fiat money worth it".

From the topics, it seems clear that the organizers are not betting on a mixed future of Bitcoin plus smart-contract based applications. I am not sure if that is pragmatic or just sort of cultist.

Well. Aren't the Swiss the traditional, secretive bankers for almost every single entity that has billions of worth of black money earned from questionable sources. On top of that, they have been pioneers in this. A "Swiss account" is synonymous with ill-gotten wealth of monarchs and political leaders for every single developing country in the world.

Tether has been questioned multiple times about the validity of it printing tether and buying crypto off of Bitfinex. This means that they have quite a lot of "fiat wealth" to be taken care of. It should come as no surprise if they choose a Swiss city for this purpose.

Overall though, this should be seen as a positive in terms of crypto and the part about use of Lightning Network.

Well. First things first.. Is Serbia a country?? Isn't it like a part of Russia??

Ohh ohh..Thats Siberiaaaa! LOL

Anyways, I am happy to know that HRH Prince Philip is actually working. I do wonder how he has ended up with asset management after studying what sounded to me like "Hotel Management". Well i guess, industry is no bound when you are royal blood.

All well as the Prince seems to be pretty sincere and open with his thoughts about Bitcoin having the ability to free people and take us to hard money. The quote about "We need to take money back from the state" is quite revolutionary. We need more of you Prince.

This has been said for a long time now. Does anybody really believe that there is a thing called as "institutional FOMO". Institutions don't FOMO, they create and guide the conditions that lead it it.

When we talk about institutions, we aren't talking about companies owned by people like Musk, Saylor or Jack who are into Bitcoin because they believe in it. When it comes to wide scale adoption, there is no escaping the "institutions". They will leave no stone unturned to ensure that crypto does not become some sort of safe harbor for the billions of "consumers" on which whole economies depend. As far as capitalists are concerned, Saving is bad for them. I doubt they will simply let things go so out of hand that people can just sit in Bitcoin and keep getting returns from it.

While that really would be an ideal state, the plain fact that Bitcoin distribution itself is far from perfect, means that even if such a system comes into being, it'll only be a replication of the old one, albeit with new power centers. Bitcoin is basically our collective bet on such a future. Those who want to take the bet, buy bitcoin.

Its surreal that the attack on crypto could take this form too. First it was terrorism financing, Money Laundering, Darknet etc. Now that spot seems to have been taken by Monero.

This one about the environmental impact of PoW is baffling because those in the opposition just assume that the utility of a decentralized currency justifies no expense on energy. This is probably more due to the effect of pre-PoS lobbying by all these VCs who stand to benefit from adoption of DPos structures like EOS, Solana etc.

The answer lies in your question. It is "India's" largest platform. This means that the news of 30% taxes from April has led several of the investors to cash out. This would have led to the downturn in an already bear market.

WazirX as a platform has good fundamentals and they have jumped in pretty eagerly onto the NFT space. They are one of the few platforms that don't wait before jumping into these new things and I think they will eventually do well as regulations clarify.

Of course you shouldn't invest based on my or anybody else's opinion. I don't think the token per se has any utility other than being a cash cow for the platform. Yet, nothing stopped BNB from pumping.

This is actually pretty interesting. The people on iOS or play store searching for games are doing it for the fun of it. This is why they don't care whether the early adopters profited from it or not.

In these P2E games, the whole thing is so skewed towards the early adopters that nobody want to have to pay thousands of dollars to play a game that thousands of others have paid pennies, and sometimes zero money for. This "comparison" automatically leads everyone to try and find their own "first free game" rather than engage with an existing one.

While a few of these games will be able to sustain new players through good game mechanics and graphics, most crypto gamers are really just looking for their next flip or the one moonshot. The "jealousy" factor is pretty high and it is unclear as to how this plays out for new players trying to sign up to such games.

Economic cycles is one of the most fundamental truths of the way economy behaves. This means that it is impossible to come to a stable, final point for an economy. This is because there are so many interactions, so many stakeholders and so many transactions involved that the overall process can never be stable, Just like Brownian motion. This randomness ensures the cycles, which ensures changes in supply and demand, which inevitably results in inflation.

The trick isn't that "inflation is not real" but the trick is that the centralized entities that govern policies have vested interests driven by politics. This means that there is no natural method for markets to weed out unethical or inefficient participants. This is why decentralization and Bitcoin is so huge. It gives an alternative to this system.

I don't know but these posts talking about how "Bitcoin is misunderstood" are becoming old. Everybody knows that Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency. Everybody knows that a lot of OGs got rich off of it. That is the most that newbies know and thats all they care about.

Most new people these days flock to communities in Web3, Alt-coins and the multiple chains out there. BTC is kind of like always in the background but in terms of sheer engagement, nobody really cares anymore.

Its like the boring old grandpa holding the keys to the fortune while everybody else wonders who will find a name in their will.

It is true that big companies are catching onto the crypto trends. From Nike to game studios, everyone is catching onto the NFT craze. The only problem is that NFTs are fast becoming centralized and corporatized. This goes against the very idea of artistic ownership and freedom which made NFTs a hit in the first place.

Despite this, there is too much money riding on these ideas and there aren't enough thought-leaders in the space who care about decentralization. Everybody is up for sale (maybe a few aren't) and the idea that NFTs or P2E games could somehow profit the gamers and the artists, will soon be proven wrong when these corporates start making the real push.

Why are we still talking about the crypto cycles and bullruns like it is ever going to be the same again? Bitcoin is no longer a novelty and an esoteric commodity that everyone will jump onto as soon as they hear about it on their christmas dinners. Almost everyone in the world has their mind made-up about Bitcoin now. There are no more noobs rushing in, no more "institutions" trying to FOMO in. The market is not mature enough to behave on fundamentals rather than pumpamentals.

This means that the price of Bitcoin will depend on the stance of governments and regulators worldwide. From the rejections that Bitcoin ETF's keep getting from SEC(Due to Tether), there isn't much of a possibility of price movement. If and when an approval comes, it'll definitely be a moment of "Selling the news". By that logic, now would be the time to "buy the rumor".

Bitcoin is hodled by those for whom it has become their claim to wealth. Imagine you are someone from 8-10 years back with 1000 of BTC obtained for a minute fraction of their present value. If you are one of those people, it is hugely possible that you have done well subsequently by branching into other dev activites and have done tremendously well and are no longer on this forum.

You do not need to sell your thousands and all you need is for BTC adoption and belief to keep growing. So while you keep pushing out newer stuff, you want Bitcoin to stay the way it has always been, at the frontline of all the growth.

Nobody with that amount of bitcoin needs to sell. They are not hoarding it, its just their wealth and there is no need to cash out to fiat when it can very well serve as a foundation for whatever they decide to do in the crypto-space.

The thought that Bitcoin would be used for payments mostly evolved during the initial 6-7 years of this forum and Bitcoin. People loved giving example of Bitcoin's ease and speed versus a wire transfer or a cheque payment.

Things changed a lot as Bitcoin became common in developing countries like India, Indo-China etc which surprisingly, have far better banking practices than lot of Europe and America. The availability of a "scan-to-pay" fucntionality in these countries has been far more pervasive way before Bitcoin became a thing.

Arguably, Bitcoin is still better than wire transfers for international settlements. This use-case has been overshadowed by evolution of hundreds of new alts and the question that needs to be resolved is regulatory in nature. How will Bitcoin be regulated? If it can't be, then what about the Alts? The question is no longer of adoption. It won't matter to the governments that everybody is using it. It doesn't matter when or how mass adoption happens.

If you had 5K to invest every month in crypto, you wouldn't be asking this question on the forum but to a professional tax and finance adviser.

And if you are actually serious then with that kind of money, you would easily get to be part of a lot of these internal circles where people are just looking to get into pre-sales and dump on retail.

So maybe just buy 50% BTC, 30% ETH and spend the other 20% on any of the Alts that have been viral on Twitter. If things take off, then everything does. You can choose to change the 20% allocation to a new Alt every month.

PoW versus PoS can very well become the DC versus AC story.

Edisson bankrupted Tesla through slick marketing and Nikola Tesla left this world in penury as DC continued to remain prevalent due to lobbying efforts. When the world realized the value of having AC transmission, everything switched to AC.

PoS is DC..Slickly marketed by a lot of people with a lot of money.

PoW is AC. It'll prove its inherent value, no matter what.

I have no idea how this is not talked about more in the traditional media. 450 Million is a lot of money. And they basically sold their tokens to get that money. It shows a lot of confidence put by these traditional VCs into Polygon.
The whole space is going through a bear market but such major investments show that the underlying current hasn't changed. Just another major positive story can change a lot of things.

The website is pretty slick. Lots of Twitter followers as was usual with all the projects that mushroomed since the NFT boom. The last time i checked the site they had these sales of ship NFTs going on. They had earlier been sold out and were available at a premium.

Considering the dump, I won't shy away from taking up a bit of stake in their ecosystem considering solely the website design. its a gamble and if things get revived, it can all come back easily.