The countdown is running guys and I just saw the lineups for Bayern vs PSG and when I saw Yann Sommer as Bayern Munichs goalkeeper, I thought how often he must be thinking that he is dreaming. He probably never expected to get the chance to play in the Champions League against PSG one day as he is already 34 years old and there was no plan to leave his club for another one. Then Neuer breaks his leg and because of the injury of someone else suffered while skiing, his whole career takes a turn and he plays the biggest games possible in club competitions, what an amazing story.

As for the odds we can see above, I think that the game for Tottenham will be harder than the odds reflect. 1.81 seems to be a little low to me. I expect a fierce fight and I don't think that Tottenham will win with 2+ goals against Milan. It is more likely in my opinion that they go into extra time.

To be fair Chelsea deserved to advance to the next round. Both games taken together Chelsea was the better team, but the circumstances under which they today scored their second goal were a bit weird. I learned a lot about the referee rules as I didn't even now some of the stuff that had to be applied today when the penalty was given.

On stream they said that this game is make or break game for Graham Potter. They are perhaps right when he now also wins a couple of games in the Premier League, but when they keep losing and also get kicked out in the next round of the Champions League, I still think he has not yet reached the dry land.

Todd Boehly was also at Stamford Bridge today and watched the game. He is probably pleased and will give Potter some room to breathe and prepare for the next games. If Chelsea can make it to the semi finals, they could even save the season partially although not starting in the Champions League next year is actually quite the nightmare for Chelsea.

Benfica showed a great performance and shouldn't be underestimated as well. Brugge is not the kind of opponent that should get them into trouble, but still winning 7-1 in both legs is strong.

Bitcointalk Username: Noruka
Forum Rank: Sr. Member
BTC segwit address: bc1qmzy3e57cl62042f8epeunlncel38r2xyh6px2n

But overall the game went quite in favor of Getafe. There were some close situations where Girona today was just a step too late or too slow. It doesn't work that way for Getafe very often, but today it happened. Girona fought back hard after the halftime. Especially after the 3-1 they pushed Getafe and they only tried to hit Girona on the break from that moment on. I think it's a fair result after that first half for Getafe.

It is still a very long way for Real Madrid to win a title. They are behind in La Liga, they are behind in Copa del Rey, and in the Champions League they still need to win a quarter final, a semi final and then a final. I assume they won't have problems winning this round against Liverpool, that is why I didn't mention it here but the game still needs to be played.

The chances for Real Madrid to win a title are still relatively small. That can quickly change, but it can also quickly be over in a couple of weeks.

That is quite optimistic to state as a fact that Arsenal will beat Liverpool and Newcastle

Perhaps you are right, but I would at least expect some close games. All three games are away games and both Liverpool and Newcastle only lost one game at home in this season. What makes you so confident that Arsenal will beat them both when statistically the chance that those two clubs lose a home game is less than 10%? 

Arsenal is still facing Liverpool , Manchester City and Newcastle. They are also playing against Chelsea, but I wouldn't say that that game is as hard as it once was when Chelsea was in shape. Manchester City is still within striking distance and Arsenal also has to play away against them. This can still go a lot of ways but I wonder whether Manchester United can be successful enough to play for the first in the end. That would be the icing on the cake for this season when it turns into a three-way fight.

They could lose more than 3 matches, but sometimes it looks as if they could also play 3 levels better than last game if they needed to. They have strong 60 minutes during a game and score their goals, they also have fun together, but the only games they fight really hard are those where something serious is on the line. Now it can of course happen that some of them get injured and they can't easily scale up their level, but 8 points in Ligue 1 for PSG is quite a lot. In the EPL I would say that the first could quickly lose two or three games in a row, but in Ligue 1 it is not very likely.

The Europa League is their last chance and I really think that they will show a better performance there than in any other competition. We all know that they have extraordinary experience in the Europa League. Aren't they even the club who won it most often?

La Liga is going bad for them. This is a season they should try and forget about unless they can catch up over the next few weeks. It is 9 points to the Europa League qualification and that's not impossible to achieve, but there are a variety of other clubs that are performing better than usual.

Well ok so it would change the market dynamics for all the goods that are in stock and have been bought with Bitcoin. That would draw more Bitcoin out of circulation.

But regarding the intermediary thing, isn't that the gap that could be closed by a full-fledged software that is fully adapted to applicable legislation and easy to handle for the merchants? There is already massive accounting software out there. What do you think is holding software companies back to tap their toe in the water and try to build something where merchants could more or less get started with plug and play?

The pressure and expectations are now all on Manchester City. They want and must win the Champions League finally. Leipzig would have hoped for a win, but that would have been too much I think considering how the game went. But now they can play a game almost free of pressure. Nobody "expects" Leipzig to beat Manchester City, but at the same time they know that if they also have some luck along with a strong performance, it is not impossible for them to win that game. Or to make it into a penalty shootout.

When strong teams play against weak teams the real problem to solve for the weaker teams is to score at least one goal and that is what makes Barcelona be almost invulnerable against weaker teams. They just don't allow other teams a lot of chances, if any at all.

They also regained the strength to win with just one or two goals. That was the case for a very long time but they lost that quality for a while. Now they are hard to beat again.

That is what I notice as well. A good number of merchants do accept Bitcoin, but that doesn't change the market dynamics of Bitcoin for better as it is just funneled back as a sale into the market through Bitpay etc.

@BlackHatcoiner when you say we should fix that, the biggest problem is probably for merchants to set up the infrastructure with lightning right? I haven't done any research on that topic, but are there companies like Bitpay that handle setting up lightning infrastructure and even connections to the merchants' accounting system?

One major step towards more merchant adoption would be plug and play solutions or click and install kind of things, but it is more complicated that I guess?

A solution would be amazing where a merchant could move a line chart in an easy to use interface like when you define sound volume, thereby defining which % portion of a Bitcoin payment they want to sell back into the market and which portion they want to put into their books as real Bitcoin. I think a lot of merchants would take a little risk and perhaps accumulate little by little through such a function. The software should handle all the accounting and they only need to shift this line chart from left to right, from 0% to 100%.

I don't know what the current status is of existing software solutions out there especially for smaller merchants who can't afford an army of crypto expert accountants.

Real Madrid can win it when luck is a bit more on their side, but Liverpool is going 200% in this game. With the fans supporting them and the chance to please the audience tonight, I think that Madrid will have a very hard time defending against Liverpool.

Still Madrid is Madrid, I know. But it is no surprise that the bookies think Liverpool's chances for a win are higher than Madrid's.

How do you know that Satoshi isn't around anymore? That's an interesting point of view and maybe you can tell me why you know that he isn't around anymore?

You are perhaps right, but these derby matches are physically very demanding and thinking about Ancelotti, I believe his utmost dream is to win the Champions League once more. The last thing that should happen now is an injury of an important player. Within just three weeks afterwards they are playing against Fc Barcelona and the second round against Fc Liverpool. Therefore, I would agree with you but taking these circumstances into account I think it is possible he will at least slightly rotate players.

Since the only competition that Atletico is still playing is La Liga, I think they do have a little chance against Real Madrid in the away game. Real Madrid might need to rotate a little bit and not send their best eleven players into the game. Then again if Real Madrid wants to preserve a little chance for the championship they are actually forced to win that game. If Barcelona can extend their lead by another three points, I just can't see how in the world Real Madrid could make a comeback. It is a tricky situation for Real and Atletico can just give their very best and don't have to care about recovery times or injuries. That's a totally different situation for Real.

There is a number of factors involved that can be related to Bitcoin's price. This is where in my opinion you are right. With an increasing number of users does utility increase. With increasing utility, the number of potential use cases increases, which in turn attracts more users who increase utility and so on and so forth. I have observed that myself repeatedly. People sometimes asked me what they can do with Bitcoin. My answer used to be very short as you can imagine, but by now there is a number of things you can do with it and with the number of things constantly increasing, more and more people decided to hold at least a little bit of Bitcoin.

Although this is not a use case anyone has been looking forward to, being able to pay for VPN services in Russia these days still is a use case of great importance. The same counts for other countries that are trying to shut down VPN services. The easiest way is to block traditional payment methods from facilitating transactions for those services. That's not possible with Bitcoin. There are several use cases where political control or oppression is involved. Especially when you live in areas with uncertain social, economic and political conditions, I think it makes a lot of sense to hold some Bitcoin. Doesn't even have to be a lot, but maybe enough to preserve some flexibility just in case.

It would still need some governments from major economies to foster practical regulation and accept Bitcoin for tax payments. They can still pass regulation that makes it overly complicated to use Bitcoin for various purposes. Especially when it comes to smaller scale transactions or micro transactions, they could force people to document everything from the origin to realized gains and losses etc. In the end it is a race that governments can't win, but they can delay the adoption process. At the same time they accelerate it by making a certain spectrum of transactions more feasible.

I don't know in how far technological questions like those about quantum computing and its impact on Bitcoin first need to be addressed and answered in more detail. If a cryptocurrency serves as the world currency, it should at least be clear that it can't be attacked by hidden innovation. What if one government is researching technology that nobody else knows about and it could attack a multi trillion dollar network? Could that result in a serious doomsday?

That's the only chance clubs like Sevilla in Spain or Benfica in Portugal have. The Primeira Liga is not attractive enough for strong talents to stay there when huge clubs are already knocking on their door. Benfica could benefit a lot from making it quite far this Champions League season. The comparison to Sevilla is a bit problematic as Sevilla is a bit in a stagnation phase and they will have trouble qualifying for big tournaments for next season. They have usually been strong in the Europa League and it's a game on eye level against PSV.

The fight between Fc Porto and Benfica is all about both waiting for the other team to make a mistake, but they just don't as of now.