I'd imagine they would want you to pay taxes if you bought an in-game item and then resold it for a profit regardless of any new NFT classifications. Under these guidelines though, the seller would be subject to nearly a 30% tax presumably. Wonder how many people will inadvertently have dodged taxes not realizing their in-game item sale would be subject to the same tax as any other digital asset?

That's assuming they don't make in-game items classified as a collectible. NFT's aren't physical so the Biden administration are just making useless tax provisions because they're desperate for revenue. They need to pay their trillion dollar spending packages somehow.

The irony here is that plenty of governments will provide loans out for educational endeavors without realizing the educational institutions will raise their prices knowing that they have a young population that can be locked into a life long loan commitment with unlimited funds from the government. Perhaps the bank is doing you a favor, in the U.K. and U.S., students will graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in debt. The modern education industrial complex is a profitable endeavor depending on which end you're on.

Banks aren't entitled to give you a loan without valid collateral. An educational certificate represents earning potential, it isn't a guarantee.

Twitter is on the decline and there's a reasonable probability it goes bankrupt. I'm not one to normally agree with Elon Musk.

However, I don't disagree with this. Bots promoting scams have overtaken the Twitter algorithm and there isn't a feasible way for manned content moderation when the platform is so large. Twitter is still free to use and there isn't a fee for participation (tweeting, replying etc. all are still free).

The "for you" tab was an open market place for manipulation. If the algorithm couldn't find a way to override it, then only allowing verified accounts to appear is probably the only thing that can save it.

https://nypost.com/2023/03/27/resentment-may-have-driven-nashville-shooter-audrey-hale-cop/

Mentally ill transgender "man" left a manifesto. Outright attack on Christians among the false allegations that transgenders are facing threats from hate groups. The story will disappear in a couple of days and the radical transgender crowd of childhood indoctrination will continue to pretend they face oppression.

Over the last 10 years they've gotten more radical.

Where most people make their mistake is they don't invest early enough. The key time to begin investing is in your 20's as those contributions have the capability to grew 10 fold over a period of 40-50 years depending on when you retire. Investment accounts should be treated independently from Bitcoin investments because you can almost guarantee certain types of investments will yield you a positive return over a period 40 years. Bitcoin would almost certainly grew by some degree over the same period but perhaps it's less predictable.

That being said, Bitcoin is absolutely critical to a retirement portfolio. Don't put all your eggs in one basket, diversify. People can have varying opinions as to the percentage of your portfolio being Bitcoin, but having Bitcoin as a part shouldn't be a difficult decision to make. A lot of the traditional financial advisers I've seen recommend <5-10% which isn't enough IMO -- to each his own.

I'm amazed how many people think "legal tender" status is supposed to be the barrier to entry for crypto when legal classification could not be any less relevant than it already is. Legal classification of "legal tender" is the government's endorsement of currency. It means nothing more. Should you incur debt by the government, you're due to pay them currency that's deemed legal tender. That does not stop P2P transactions. Most transactions are not done with the government anyways, so we don't necessarily need Bitcoin to hold legal tender status. It's not like the government would bother entertaining the idea to begin with.

The UN is the most useless international organization there is. I would not look to them to garner any movement towards decentralized currency as they engage in international posturing without any direction. I'm not aware of what the IMF believes of Bitcoin but their recommendations won't be valuable because the government of each country decides what type of currency is circulated through their economy. Seems to me the IMF would support CBDC's more than they would Bitcoin.

These organizations thrive off centralization, it's why they exist in the first place. An inherently decentralized currency is antithetical to their agenda. More control's good for business, according to them.

A reserve currency doesn't have to have government endorsement. USD is the current reserve currency -- and the U.S. has plenty of adversaries that forcefully hold the currency for the sake of participating in the global economy. China, Russia, etc. would love nothing more than to not rely on the United States currency system in order to trade which is why USD is being dumped out of currency reserves at record rates due to high inflation and overzealous sanctions. It's within the interest of countries to adopt a decentralized asset that isn't prone to the typical political manipulation that USD is subject to.

Gold solves the issue but for logistical reasons, it isn't feasible to conduct bilateral transactions through gold. Crypto fits the bill quite well.

If it's truly a capitalistic economy, then usually usury would be stomped out by the competition undercutting the high rates of which ever lender. If the market is free, competitive, and fair, then it shouldn't be a problem. Greed isn't a capitalism problem, it's a human morality problem. I wouldn't expect capitalism to be perfect, because predatory lending agencies exist -- though capitalism can make things more fair for the consumer because there's alternatives.

They're right that cross-border payments are troublesome and expensive, but CBDC's aren't the answer.

Banking institutions act as intermediaries between consumers and consumers are forced to adhere to the banks convoluted regulations which make it difficult to send funds internationally. Bitcoin is P2P and universal and obviously it doesn't have the same types of issues. Theoretically, CBDC could solve this problem if you're dealing with a single country but it isn't feasible to hold a dozen different types of digitalized tokens for the sake of doing business with different countries. You might as well stick to traditional banks at that point and deal with them to issue out payments for you.

Government shouldn't be in the position to control inflation, but they've taken that responsibility upon themselves to try and handle the balancing act of currency manipulation. Depending on the country, the government has the ability to resolve most economic woes by opening up free markets, lowering tax rates and regulation to encourage entrepreneurship, and staying out of the creation of central bank policies which hamper growth.

An individual government can't control global affairs like war. Understand, however, that most of the economic problems you see are a result of government ineptitude, not the Ukrainian war. The war just made matters worse.


I find the problem to be the sanctimony of the government which is they would like to go door to door and help everyone in the country. Instead of physically going door to door, they create a social welfare state at the expense of the working class.

This is precisely why so many people were upset with the government intervention in the first place, similar to that of the '08 crisis.

Normally, a larger bank could come in and purchase up the assets of SVB because they would have the liquidity to spare. It's not as if creditors would be completely out of luck if the government did not step in. FDIC allegedly stopped private banks from coming in and purchasing SVB for whatever reason. If the remedy to a bank collapse is for the federal government to come in, then people might as well bank with the federal government and have them manage assets. And in fact, some of the socialist politicians in America advocate for such a system where investments are managed by the federal government instead of private institutions. Social security is already a system that works like this, and it's set to become insolvent in the near future.

Keeping 120M on an exchange, good grief.

"Kroll" is the agency FTX is using the to liquidate and reimburse creditors and apparently they have some experience with these sort of matters. Perhaps this person might get their money back, or at least part of it, but my understanding is these matters can take ages to settle. And who knows how many assets that are on their books actually exist for the purposes of liquidation. How much were FTX execs able to get away with and is now unrecoverable?

FedNow is the federal reserve's miserable attempt at trying to develop a digitalized payment platform to compete with what the private market offer. I imagine they might use the platform to introduce CBDC's considering a payment system like FedNow hasn't been developed by the fed for over four decades since the development of ACH.

Bitcoin won't be banned. The government will just offer new ways to regulate the growth of the space until it drives people away. And they might even try to force people to use their trash FedNow system while they're at it too.

I follow international and U.S. politics closely -- and I do not bet on them hardly ever, no matter what the odds are.

Too many real world factors change the odds and it only takes the slightest distraction to completely flip an election. Campaigns have gone up in flames over the most insignificant blunders, and paid actors have the potential to influence outcomes depending on their power.

Try and factor these extraneous influences is nearly impossible.

The Biden White House released an earlier report on crypto and they've laid out their positions clearly. They're going to follow the lead of higher regulations and curtailment of the crypto industry, perhaps introduction of CBDC's and raising taxes on crypto users. Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if they start implementing wealth taxes for investors who sit on crypto in a desperate attempt to raise tax revenue and/or incentivize institutional investors to stay away from crypto.

Seeing as the ineptitude of the federal reserve has reached a boiling point, coincidentally the Biden administration seems more adamant than ever to regulate crypto.

And don't forget, when FTX crashed, they wasted no time to capitalize and used FTX to layout regulatory framework through executive orders: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/09/16/fact-sheet-white-house-releases-first-ever-comprehensive-framework-for-responsible-development-of-digital-assets/

These "fact sheets" are nothing but propaganda.

His reasoning is clear -- it increases surveillance capabilities by the U.S. government. I'd add that it also gives even more centralized authority for the U.S. government to control monetary policy. Even though most banking is digital, USD is still a physical system. The U.S. government still recognizes physical cash as legal tender.

Should they move away from such a system and implement digitalized tokens as an alternative -- you can say goodbye to any sense of financial independence as a USD holder. Every token you have will be controllable by the U.S. federal government. It's a lousy system.

Most of the CBDC ban talks are political grandstanding, anyways. But it's still nice to see where a politician stands on these sorts of issues. Should DeSantis become President, it gives us a hint of where he'd take the federal reserve.

Their friendship only exists as long as mutual benefit exists. If Russia begins to be bad for business, or perhaps if geopolitical interests misalign, then the friendship ceases.


It's become popular for U.S. politicians to demonize China as part of their campaign strategy because most Americans don't understand anything about international relations so it's good for polling. But the problem with Biden is his family loves to dabble in dodgy business in which his son is the beneficiary of lucrative Chinese business deals. The Chinse know this. Biden looks comically weak on the global stage.

These emergency lines of credit are given to the institutions, but not the individuals. Funny how that works.

The government shouldn't be in the business of saving enterprises from their bad investments because it occurs at the tax payers' expense. Contemperaneous to these bailouts, do the taxpayers really have any say on which institution should be bailed out and which ones should collapse? Of course election time, voters have a choice to make their voices heard. But it'll be a little too late by then.

My number one priority. Other features on your list aren't too important to me.

The common tactic for a lot of casinos is to hide KYC behind their TOS and issue a KYC check when a user wins something sizeable. I'm not going to submit documents to a business that could disappear the next day. Even some of the supposed reputable casinos in the past have had issues with KYC.

Reputation/KYC I'd consider one in the same. A casino that hides KYC behind their terms of service and sporadically KYC's in order to avoid paying out wins is immediately disqualifying.