That's pretty hilarious because by the logic that Du Plessis cannot be African because of being white, Adesanya cannot be New Zealander. Not to mention that RSA, just like most (if not all) of sub-saharan countries was founded by whites and the vast majority of its black population immigrated into it.
It's also funny how Adesanya didn't have a problem performing under the Chinese flag at the beginning of his career, which makes him look like an absolute sell-out who only returned to calling himself Nigerian because it's a huge country with a huge audience.

In what way is he an oligarch? I think you're using this word way too loosely. Not to mention that he stepped down from UKIP a few years ago and is not a member of any party (as far as I know).
You might not like the guy, but there's no denying he has way less actual power than any of the major banking groups.

And it's not as much about people feeling sorry for him, but more about people getting pissed at the fact that one's account can be closed for their political beliefs/affiliations (whether that story is true or not).

And as for "shady" businesses, the logical course of action would be to report such to relevant authorities rather than denying him a service and make him move his shady business elsewhere.

I doubt it. People making a living out of sports betting are like unicorns, everyone has heard about them but no one has seen them in real life.
The only way to make consistent profits would be arbitrage betting. The problems with that are: 1) you have limited opportunities; 2) sooner or later, it'll get you banned from betting platforms.
Other than that I see no realistic option for regular profit. You making consistent wins would require bookies to keep miscalculating odds in your favour, which is unlikely to happen (on a regular basis).

I'm not advocating for throwing all the money into one pot and going all in on one thing. Of course you need to budget for all life expenses and carefully plan to achieve your financial goals.
Personally, I do have multiple special purpose reserves (house repairs, holiday fund, car maintenance fund etc) and diversify my investments. But at the same time, I'm looking at it as one big fund and periodically would evaluate it to make sure I manage it in the most optimal way (to the best of my abilities). For example, I have separate funds for investing, but that doesn't mean I cannot also invest money held as a house repair fund. It doesn't make sense to keep it on a low-interest bank account and watch it get eaten by high inflation.

Back to the subject of gambling - what does it even mean to have your money split as "your own budget" and "the gaming budget"? Obviously your gaming budget should be a part of your own budget, unless you're gambling with other people's money. And what's the point of having a hard split (other than to make yourself feel better)? If your gaming budget is low or drained, but you spot an amazing betting opportunity - are you not going to take it (provided you have other funds and can afford to risk them)? Or if your gaming budget grows big (by luck) and you have a great investment opportunity - are you not going to take it just because you earmarked that money for gambling?

I haven't delved too deep into this story, but it's possible that the reasons behind denying Nigel Farage services were not necessarily political. If that was the case, they'd probably do it openly to virtue signal and to scare away people with "incorrect" opinions. But as reported by The Financial Times they offered him a basic NatWest account instead (Coutts is part of the NatWest group). As much of a downgrade as it is, it shows they don't necessarily mind to keep him as a customer.

Anyhow, stories like that will definitely work in his favour in terms of getting public sympathy. People are more likely to root for underdogs and nobody likes banks.

If I'm not mistaken the memefied version was an attempt to combine the grammatically correct term of "halving" with the word "happening" from then popular "it's happening" Ron Paul memes.
I believe the same origins can be attributed to the word "flippening" (in reference to the possibility of ETH taking BTC's No. 1 spot).

I also prefer the 2nd version. A little things like this one (or "hodl") gives BTC community some uniqueness.

I'm not sure how I feel about BTC price potentially being dictated by institutional investors trading ETFs. This isn't quite the direction early bitcoiners were aiming for, but time will tell.


What does Binance have to do with BlackRocks's filing for ETF and how does this prove SEC is not trying to push Binance out of US? Wrong thread?

That's not true, most gamblers don't care about value betting and wouldn't run any odds/payout analysing. Instead, they'd be focused on betting on the most probable outcome, oftentimes accepting poor payout rates.
Value betting is not about guaranteed win, but about spotting odds that are higher than they should be. If I offer to pay you $1.20 if you win a coin toss with a wager of $1 - that's a good value, despite of whether you win or lose.

Not much of a surprise here, we couldn't expect crypto to have any preferential treatment. So if all kinds of assets that proceeded from crime could be seized, then crypto should not be an exemption.

Coinbase did phrase this one a bit oddly though:


It reads as if the authorities not only could seize crypto proceeded from crime, but also seize crypto that can help identify crypto from crime. Whatever that means.

I tried to verify it with the bill itself, but it's pretty lengthy: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/29/enacted

If you don't want to classify a trade as P2P whenever any 3rd party is involved, then you'd be left only with crypto/physical cash transactions. When you want to wire fiat, you'd have to use third-party bank or payment processor services.
A more sensible approach is to assess the nature of the involvement of the 3rd party. In the case of Binance, I'd call it a semi-P2P. If they only provided a platform to connect buyers with sellers, then I wouldn't have a problem in calling it a peer-to-peer platform, but since they also hold crypto in escrow, charge fees and resolve disputes (when needed) then it's indeed not a full P2P.

There shouldn't really be any distinction between the capital and the current profits (from gambling or other). It all should be viewed as one pool of funds.
I think the best way in making financial decisions would be to develop an almost autistic approach when the past (so i.e. the origins of the funds) is irrelevant and you only consider two things: 1) how much funds have I got available; and 2) what's the best way to do with it (invest, spend, gamble etc).

In this case, is not as much about BlackRock investing in Bitcoin, but more about them making it easier for others (especially institutional investors) to invest in it. So they'd be making profits from managing the ETF rather than from Bitcoin appreciating in value. So pretty similar to centralised exchanges, it's the number of users and activity that matters, not the asset's price.

That's true, but the idea behind researching and analysing in sports betting is (or at least should be) not to win every single bet, but to be profitable in the long-run.
So, depending on the type of sports you bet on, you could either completely discount any exceptional events (injuries or other unforeseen things) as they won't matter in the grand scheme of things, or, if such events are likely to happen and can have a tangible effect on your results, you need to account for them when calculating your odds.
And another thing to consider is that such things could also work in your favour, i.e. if something bad happens to the team you're betting against, it all should balance-out.

I understand where you're coming from and can relate to that, as I was using a similar tactic back in the day. But the truth is, this is a good example of how to NOT approach gambling. As you yourself said, this approach would not make you feel like losing - meaning it's based on emotions and feelings.
What you should be aiming at, is an emotionless, cold-calculated approach, i.e. it doesn't matter if that $20 was previously won, earned, or if your grandma gave it to you, that's completely irrelevant.

Whether or not coins are actually "tainted" largely depends on the laws in each jurisdiction, i.e. how they approach a situation where say a merchant gets paid with stolen money (be it bitcoins or physical cash), will such money be confiscated or will it be seen as legitimately earned?
Of course it gets trickier with P2P exchange, and I think it'd usually be approached on case-by-case basis, but in countries like the US, there would be a big chance of them getting seized, because the US loves seizing stuff (see the Civil Forfeiture laws)

I think the general idea is that, given its size, position and connections, BlackRock would not bother filing their application if they didn't know that it'll likely get approved.
I would imagine that people at the very top of the food chain know each other, or are at least closely connected, to the point they could discuss any future moves informally, over a cup of coffee, before doing that officially.
In other words, if SEC had an unwritten rule that no BTC spot ETF will ever get approval, then giants like BlackRock would probably know about it from their unofficial channels.
And it's kind of telling that they haven't filed for BTC ETF until now, despite Bitcoin being around for 14 years. I'm sure they could spot an opportunity much earlier on, but for some reason, they didn't make a move.

Yes, there were some reports of some of the UK banks cancelling services to customers involved in crypto trading, but I don't think it was necessarily due to those banks hating on crypto, but more about the fact that such transactions would fall under "suspicious" in their systems. That could mean that such transactions triggered internal investigations, and since the cost of employees' time is not cheap, keeping those customers would mean making losses, so it was easier to just kick them out.
But still, most major banks would not cause you any problems for transferring to/from crypto exchanges. And I think, as crypto becomes more mainstream, "unfriendly" banks will be changing their stance as well, if they haven't already.
Anyhow, just because a few private businesses are not very keen on crypto that doesn't mean the whole country is as well.

I would imagine that the portion of gamblers who are aiming for constant profits or even are hoping to make a living out of it is probably very small. Those who do, will likely have some idea of how can they "beat the system" and would not rely solely on luck. For the rest of the gamblers, they're probably thinking of themselves as occasional gamblers, and as such would not even bother to even think about long-term consequences or try to come up with some sort of winning strategy. But what starts as a fun, once-in-a-while activity, can imperceptibly turn into a dangerous and financially-draining habit.
But yeah, if one wants to place an occasional wager on their favourite team just to get more kicks out of watching a game, then they won't be diving deep into analysing odds etc

So things are really looking worse and worse everyday for Binance, they keep getting bashed from every side. We have reports of massive net outflows of customers' funds (which is understandable), but what puzzles me is how come Binance's proof of funds does not seem to reflect the situation at all:
https://www.binance.com/en/proof-of-reserves
It's showing snapshots of customers'/exchange's balances at the 1st of each month, and comparing BTC and USDT balances at 1 July with balances at 1 Feb (before all the drama started), the customers' funds actually went up. ETH balances went down compared to Feb, but are still higher than at 1 April. This doesn't make much sense to me, or maybe I'm just missing something here.

Some bullish news, BlackRock's CEO, Larry Fink sees Bitcoin as a good opportunity and wants to "democratize crypto". After having their initial ETF application rejected (apparently for trivial reasons) they re-filed it recently.

BlackRock Wants to Make It Cheaper to Trade Bitcoin, Larry Fink Says

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-05/blackrock-wants-to-make-it-cheaper-to-trade-bitcoin-fink-says


ps. they seemed to intend to subscribe-wall this article but I can read it fine, and hope you are too.