I think the most interesting game for the second leg will be the game between Freiburg and Juventus in Freiburg. They are an outlier when you look at their success and the money they have available to be spent on salaries. As soon as they have good players other clubs come around and buy them and yet Christian Streich manages to put a team almost every single season that is highly competitive. This season in the Bundesliga has been very solid so far and because I think it is great to see clubs with less money to also achieve something big, I hope for them to win that game against Juventus next week.

As much as I like to see games with only big names, I also liked it how Frankfurt made its way through the Europa League last season when nobody expected them to have a chance against Betis, Barcelona, West Ham and the Rangers in the final. It was an amazing story and the fans were full of enthusiasm and the TV pictures were seen around the world.

Why did you think that Dortmund will win the game against Chelsea? In the first game Chelsea dominated Dortmund in their home stadium as well. They won every singe statistic but they weren't lucky enough to score a goal before Dortmund could hit the lucky punch. If that didn't happen, Dortmund would tie that game at best and on a normal day even lose it.

In the second game I didn't think that Dortmund will win at all. They had a successful start into the year 2023 but people tend to forget that many of the games they played and won were also very close games. Games they could go either way.

Against Leizpig it could and should have been a draw already as Leipzig was the better team in the second half by far.

It's true that normally they wouldn't have a chance in particular in away games, but if they had no chance at all then there would be no point to even go there and play. There is often a little window for opportunity and Bournemouth did exploit that well, but in the end they were also a bit unlucky. I am not talking about the game as a whole. If you just look at the numbers, there could only be one winner. But when you concede a goal in the 97th minute, there is always some bad luck involved.

The other way around it would be Arsenal who had bad luck until the very last moment given that they had 81% ball possession and 17-1 corners and 31-4 shots. But still it is worth mentioning that a team that passionately defends its goal also deserves a reward even when they can't compete in those statistics as soccer is as important when it comes to defense.

That is actually a very important point you raised here as well. Economies of scale due to international division of labor has an enormous impact on our output capacities, which is important as for a long time we had an ever growing population and along with it demand for all kinds of goods and services. How important optimal supply chains are and how the service sector is dependent them as well could very well be seen during the pandemic when China was the largest exporter of hygiene articles and equipment that was needed to provide inside and outside of hospitals. When supply chains stopped working optimally due to lockdowns, it took quite a while to fix the shortages and some countries were even forced to make up for stuck supply chains by ramping up their own production of certain products they usually obtained from abroad.

The war has now also shown how globally interconnected production and supply chains are. That is why Taiwan is a point of contention as well as it dominates the global chip industry and is key to countless production processes of vital technical products.

I think the more interesting question is how the replacement will happen? Transitioning from gold to paper money doesn't destroy gold's value. I am convinced that one day there will be a technology that is going to replace Bitcoin in some way. As has been mentioned before essentially everything comes to an end at some point. The thing is will it be something that first cracks Bitcoin's algorithm and destroys a lot of wealth? Or will there be some sort of smooth transition where wealth stored in Bitcoin is still not rendered worthless and everyone has a fair chance to shift from Bitcoin into whatever that next thing could be? When technology is involved the way it is in Bitcoin, it could all come to an end with a big boom I guess. Any thoughts on that?

Now I have read several times here that higher education doesn't guarantee a well paid job or even a job at all. There are no guarantees for anything in life except for the fact that we are all going to die one day. This leads the discussion away from some statistical facts that have been mentioned here. The overwhelming majority of successful people in general and entrepreneurs in specific do have higher education or attended a university for some time, but left college in order to pursue a business endeavor.

Whether or not higher education guarantees anything is up to you. I am sure that with a degree everyone can find a job, perhaps not a dream job though. But what higher education certainly is, it works as an insurance. If you have no idea what to do exactly at the age of 18-19-20, the best thing you can do before you start wasting your time or go after something half-heartedly is to get higher education. A degree can't be taken away from you and chances that you meet someone to work with on something you are passionate about are higher when you socialize in academic environments.

The modern world economy is based on a deflationary? US dollar? I am sure you meant to say the opposite, but anyway yes you are right that the hyper connected world is impacted when a crisis happens in one of the global centers for finance and trade or in a place where the world is dependent on for sufficient supplies in resources (Ukraine + Russia).

But there are still countries that manage to keep their inflation under control through smart monetary rules and policies. But there are also circumstances that due to its nature can either be more or less influenced by the government. Whenever it comes to monetary unions, as soon as the central bank makes mistakes or conducts bad policies, the entire union is inevitably affected automatically. The difference in the impact then results from the level of national debt and that is indeed a factor that distinguishes countries from one another in the European Union for example.

Trade and logistics have a major impact as well. If logistics are interrupted or even fully discontinued temporarily, prices for goods that do not reach their destination will go up as they become scarce due to external events.

I would say that they don't even give the entire banking system infrastructure energy and resources expenditure a first thought. They behave as if that infrastructure wouldn't consume anything when they decide to attack Bitcoin once again. You could argue against them in so many regards. Money has to be carried around in transporters, couriers get shot. All the security measures that must be taken and cost money. Ok, you could say it also creates jobs

I don't know if it has ever been done, but an approximate calculation of what the global banking infrastructure consumes in terms of energy, money, resources lost in terms of corruption, robberies, required security, etc. I think a true case could be made for Bitcoin in this regard and all those skyscrapers wouldn't be necessary anymore anyway as most of the business could have been taken online long ago.

it is also often argued against Bitcoin as if the status quo in terms of energy consumption is set in stone. Cars have been running with combustion engines for a century now so why not give Bitcoin to decades to become environmentally clean(er). This shows that it is not about the energy consumption why Bitcoin is hated by governments, it is just one angle that is easily understood by the public and can therefore be easily instrumentalized to make a case against Bitcoin. A slogan like "Bitcoin is consuming enough energy to power Denmark for a year" works quite well and sounds shocking in the first place. Even leaving the fact out what the composition of that energy is that could be used to power Denmark for a year.

But is there any other asset class apart from things like copy rights or patents where you have to refresh ownership or verify that you are still alive and an active owner of a certain asset in order to not be expropriated? It is still quite a special situation that you are describing here. I get the idea why you say it could be important to recycle coins into the network, but why would Bitcoin be treated as a non-durable asset class? Everything else is. If I own a gold bar I won't ever have to go anywhere and prove continued ownership nor do I have to signal or verify anything ever. A piece of art also doesn't become worthless just because it has been lying around in your basement for 200 years.

True and it is very easy to bash Bitcoin when it comes to voters because the majority of them still don't know how it works, what kind of energy it consumes, whether shifts to renewables are possible and already happening, or they are not interested in understanding it at all and politicians know it is an unpopular term to use when you are trying to win voters for you. Now Bitcoin still seems to not be big enough of a topic that someone like Donald Trump would use that word in public. There is no need for that.

The threat really is that legislation or bills get past without in depth discussion because nobody really wants to fight about it in congress. But thinking about it the discussion about energy consumption has been going on for years and it makes no sense because other technology also has to move to renewables over the coming years and so does Bitcoin. I am not aware of the exact number that Bitcoin mining is operated on renewables, but it is quite significant by now I think.

Might be worth a read as it just came out today.

You described it well and phrased an interesting question. I must say that the question, if you really think about it in detail, is an incredibly complex one and you would have differentiate on so many levels and in so many areas to come up with an answer that at least offers some level of detail.

You could say that China benefits from cheap energy since Russia is forced to find alternative customers because of the ban of Western countries. While China now has cheap energy, they are also an export nation that depends on frictionless markets and smoothly working supply chains. Is it a good deal to have cheap energy in exchange for markets full of frictions and disturbed supply chains? If you just calculate that in monetary terms, I guess China is worse off as they benefit the most from a vibrant global economy with them at the core of a main export nation.

But if you look at it from a political angle, China benefits from Russia doing the dirty work now, meaning that they are keeping the West busy with defending Ukraine while they can stockpile military equipment produced with cheap energy in order to prepare for some future confrontation.

Now this is just a tiny excerpt of what is going on in the world. The fact alone that Russia and Ukraine combined are responsible for almost 25% of the global grain export shows how critical they are to the global food supply especially in areas like Africa.

I doubt that any country as a whole is better off economically because of the war. Industries are, of course, but entire countries, I don't know. My guess would be no. If anyone knows better than me, I'd be interested in knowing.

Hi guys,

as part of my review I also tried the function to convert CRP and UUSD into vouchers. That works very smoothly and I want to share those two vouchers here and whoever redeems them, redeems them! Both are just under 2 USD in total.

USD-DHFN-MGBK-UYQT-5OZ3-P7LT
UTP-XBNW-D623-IYFJ-7MQG-LUAV


Enjoy! 

Wow this is some meaningful graphic. Everyone knows and gets to fee on a daily basis that inflation went through the roof, but these graphics help reminding ourselves of how bad it actually is and how costly it will turn out to be for all of us in the long run. When policy makers talk about a "crisis", it implies that these are bad times but bad times must end when the good times will start again. It also has some character of temporariness. In this case inflation will have severe long-term consequences, many of which haven't yet enfolded to their full potential. Demographics come into play, pension funds/insurances are under massive pressure, real estate markets could collapse again in light of rising interest rates and people are not able to refinance their mortgages, more government money needed to cushion social hardships, etc.....

As you say it is not necessary, that is correct. But is it helpful? Oh I think it is very helpful in many regards. Education means you have gone through a lot of reading and learning, it helps you navigate through literature and provides you with an understanding of how to efficiently and effectively conduct research on a subject of interest. That could happen any time when you are an entrepreneur. You want to get a quick overview of a certain topic and you have come across stuff in the past so you know where to go and what words to look up and perhaps even which sources to refer to.

It also helps you with raising money. Whether people like it or not, but higher education is a plus, it is not a must when your idea or perhaps the prototype (recommendable to have) speaks for itself. The prototype does, the idea not. But if you are very early in the process and you need funds, having an idea is great but your CV will count a lot more than if you were able to present a prototype. If you have the idea and higher education, it does definitely help to gain trust from investors easier as it is often said to imply that you may have a more structured thought process that led you to certain conclusions. I am not saying that that is necessarily the case, but I am sure that higher education helps with raising funds.

I am not so sure whether it is about a certain time span whether or not the crypto market turns into a bull market. I think it is a lot more about the events and news about crackdowns and regulations and so on and so forth. We have had several collapses of relatively relevant crypto companies/exchanges and it is still not really transparent in how far there might be more systemic risk that we just haven't discovered yet. I think it needs some catalyst for Bitcoin to switch into bull market sentiment, but is there really extraordinary good news on the horizon or relative certainty that no collapses are waiting around the corner? Nobody can really know except for those who do But I think that some players would make to love a move but are not sure whether the timing could be particularly bad right now.


One thing also is important to consider. It was often said that the stable coins played a big role in the last bull markets as they have been said to be excessively issued in order to buy up and push Bitcoin. That theory was never really confirmed nor denied, but if that was the case and there is now the growing interest from governments to further scrutinize and investigate stable coin providers, then that would actually take away one component that added to the upwards dynamics in the market in the past.

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Whatever, but if I understand you correctly, that still doesn't the situation for the great grandson right? He finds the chest with 100 million USD worth of gold after 110 years and it is not his anymore? Whether someone + their successors arbitrarily decide to keep it for more than 109 years or whether is lost doesn't matter? I mean what if I just don't want to sell but keep it as part of my diversified portfolio? What happens then after 109 years?

Bitcoin can also be noted in mBTC and satoshi. I am confident that whatever gets lost over the decades to come, there will always be enough satoshis so serve Bitcoin's purposes.

It is not that I don't get the problem you are describing, but it is a very delicate topic as it goes straight to the core fundamentals of Bitcoin which as of now essentially are the value proposition.

About the impact of Silvergate, that's right it wasn't as harsh as the FTX collapse yet. If I understand correctly, Silvergate has filed for an extension to provide requested reports about their overall financial situation. Is that about right? That would mean that as of now we don't really know whether there is more to come or have I missed anything here? I am perhaps not up to date in that case. I just know that there are countless companies directly involved with or connected to Silvergate. But I don't know the implications and what kind of consequences that could entail. I have no idea of the systemic relevance of Silvergate for the industry.

My Utopia Review:

Expectations and first impression:

I don’t install clients from crypto projects very often and when I do, I usually don’t expect very much. Most clients are pretty much the same despite developers claiming otherwise. But after a quick download (Mac OS) and smooth installation, the first thing I realized after running the client is that there is certainly more going on with this one. As some here have stated before, it is overwhelming for a few minutes until you get an overview of the basic functions and navigation between them.

In the welcome message it says “By tracking real-time events using Geo locations and seeing them on the map, you will receive information first-hand and will always be on top of events happening around the world or in your city.“
I was wondering where that geo-tracking data gets logged and stored and whether I can manually search for events by typing in my location in some specific menu. I then noticed that under the “Tools“ section in the top bar there is an item called “uMaps“. You can search locations similar to Google Maps, but I don’t fully understand how to easily find real-time events or whether someone published anything at all. If Utopia grows and meet ups become more realistic, an overview section of available events that are taking place right now or are scheduled (based on a location I type in manually) would be helpful. Right now I felt a little bit lost on the map as navigation is complicated as it also shows a lot of outdated data point. The map opens up within the client.

The question whether I can switch the geo-tracking function on or off, led me to check out Utopia “Preferences“.

First of all, the preferences are very detailed and essentially cover everything you need and way more. Some of them have been mentioned in other reviews, so I refrain from being redundant here. However, I did not find anything about geo-tracking and this leads me to the question how the geo-tracking works on the client side and where and how the data is stored and for how long it is kept? Geo-tracking data must obviously be tied to an account and, hence, to a public key. If I want to hide my whereabouts, joining a very specific location based on coordinates and showing up in the channel is probably not that smart unless you use a different username for Utopia than you are using for other applications.


Afterwards I checked out the “uWallet“.  

The option to spend CRP and UUSD on other platforms accessible through the website under “Merchants“ is awesome.

Advantages of the Merchants section:

• Allowing for CRP and UUSD to be spent on items of all kinds adds a big deal of utility to the cryptocurrencies.
  
• In turn, merchants accepting CRP and UUSD further drive adoption and people familiar with Utopia can list their items for CRP and UUSD as well
  
• The granted anonymity of CRP/UUSD voucher payments can be a big plus for both merchants and customers
  

But with the advantages also come some disadvantages and suggestions for improvements:

As I am not aware how the listing of merchants works, one question is whether there is any vetting process in advance or whether any merchant can get listed on the Utopia website? I was wondering whether they could provide dangerous links to their websites on the Utopia website. I would advise everyone to use a safe setup before opening the merchants' websites listed on Utopia. While I would also suggest a review/recommendation/rating feature added to every single merchant on the platform, I don't really know how to set it up such that it can't be faked. It would save other Utopia users time to click through all the merchants in order to find one that is worth visiting the website. Perhaps it would be helpful if a number of successfully completed purchases can be attached to a merchant's section on the Utopia website.

I had a look at the gift card merchants and only one of them accepted CRP/UUSD, but with a massive surcharge in general (no Utopia issue though). The other gift card merchants offered cryptocurrency, but they did not offer CRP / UUSD payments.

It looked like this:



There you could choose the crypto in the first step, but when you choose Perfect Money, it immediately asks you for your log in data. You could then set up an account, but the payment would still have to be made in Perfect Money USD and no option for CRP/UUSD is offered. A review feature would allow others to leave a note that CRP/UUSD payments are not possible anymore and the merchant section could be cleaned up accordingly.

Further, I can only refer to @Neuroticfish here as the search function is all good, but it still is kind of insufficient to allow for people to get a decent overview of what is offered.


In the process of trying to make a purchase, I familiarized myself further with the “uWallet“ and decided to

• convert some CRP into UUSD, which took about 33 seconds to complete
  
• send some CRP to Crypton Exchange, which also took about 33 seconds to arrive
  
• and to send CRP back from the exchange to my uWallet, which took just a few seconds
  

The transaction fees for normal transactions and withdrawal from the exchange is 0.1% fixed. The transaction fees for creating a voucher is 0.15%. The network fee for making a swap within the client is 0.0002 CRP. When you swap tiny amounts in the client from CRP to UUSD, it seems as if you are getting less than when you sell CRP on the exchange. That difference approaches zero if you type in larger amounts. It is a rounding bias.

The sign up on the exchange is extremely smooth. You are definitely safe from KYC procedures and you only need your public key, your Utopia nickname and a password. Any action is broadcasted to the client, which immediately notifies you about log ins, deposits and withdrawals. The minimum withdrawal is 5 CRP, so if you intend to just try it out, don't send less than 5 CRP. The withdrawal fee for Bitcoin is 0.00015 fixed. This seems to be a little expensive to me, but I won't complain. Though I think when someone with smaller amounts wants to trade their CRP for Bitcoin (CRP > USDT (TRC 20) > BTC); they should keep in mind that 0.1% trading fees apply and the withdrawal fee of 0.00015 BTC as mentioned above.

Conclusion:
As the developers say in their greeting when you first open the client, they have put countless hours of work into building the ecosystem. There are still so many function to have a look at, but what I have seen so far is a solid foundation for the ecosystem to grow. All transaction-related functions are working smoothly. They are clearly designed, quick and safe in execution and the uWallet is in general designed very intuitively. Creating and sharing vouchers is as easy as it can get. Anonymity is a big big plus! The sign up on the exchange works like a charm. Sadly, the exchange doesn't have deep order books as of now. I would seriously consider using that exchange from time to time when there was more liquidity. Hence, spreading the word and driving adoption is key. CRP is no currency that is just lying around, but has several use cases, among which is also earning rewards from delegated proof of stake, which requires 64 CRP per thread. UUSD is redeemable for both TRC20 USDT and DAI, the latter of which is used to back UUSD and can be verified on the Ethereum blockchain.

As we have seen there are also more or less unexpected events like that with Silvergate now. The precise impact on the price and overall sentiment can hardly be calculated, but those incidents cause unnecessary trouble in the market on the one hand and also incentivize regulators to take a harsher stand on cryptocurrencies as a whole. As soon as the public gets to hear about it a positive trend might be slowed down significantly.

When you ask whether it is going to be bullish or bearish, I would say it depends. The less multibillion dollar collapses we have in the industry, the better. But we don't really know what situation most exchanges or stable currency providers are in. What we do know is that it is probably often too good to be true.