That is one quality Real Madrid has shown for the last several years when they also won the Champions League a couple of times. They weren't the best against PSG in the quarterfinals last year and they also were not the better team against Manchester City, but they were extremely effective and waited for their opportunity. Especially the last Champions League season has shown that all of those teams can be a favorite. If you just consider the numbers right now, I would also not bet against Napoli as their performance is just too good in Serie A right now. At the same time neither Bayern nor PSG is showing their strongest game, but that doesn't mean they can't win it.

The result between Dortmund and Chelsea was also quite lucky for Dortmund. There were 8:2 shots on target for Chelsea and in the end it was an excellent solo goal by Adeyemi, but I think that Chelsea played a decent game and they will get their chances in the second leg.

There is one thing that never really makes sense to me when we talk about AI being used in trading for example. When the goal of an AI should be to generate an alpha for a trader, there is only so much alpha in a certain situation in the market to be made. If the AI does a good job, it generates a max alpha for user A. If user B now requests the AI to generate max alpha, wouldn't it necessarily lead to an alpha being perfectly neutralized to zero with a growing number of users?

To me this seems like there is a contradiction because everyone could just start to use a certain bot. In the end it should come down again to who has access to the best software out there, which means it is again nothing more but a programming competition and speed and even then I would be careful because I think it is prone to errors when it comes to external events. How would the AI anticipate something like a pandemic? Or a war? Or any other event that has significant impact on the global economy?

These staking functions have primarily been a tool to attract investor's money to their platforms, but there is indeed some risk involved. If they engage in a competition of who is paying more for nothing, it could have ended in another disaster like FTX at some point. Anyway, I agree that decentralized solutions are the way to go anyway for those who are interested in parking their crypto in exchange for an interest rate.

The only problem I see with non custodial staking is that it will lead to centralization over time or not? Won't the rich get richer and gain increasing network dominance? If those who stake the most also re-stake their gains, they'll start dominating the network. It shouldn't be too much of a problem as that also increases their skin in the game, but centralization is still one of the results.

The financial requirement is pretty high I think in order to be able to stake, but that's where those pools come into play. However, does participating in pools compromise individual security?

I find it hard to assess whether time is running in favor of China or not. In the end China is highly dependent on a well functioning global economy, but if every country is now investing heavily in military equipment and defense, there is less money to be spent on Chinese products as well.

Today at the security conference in Munich China emphasized that territorial integrity is to be respected by everyone in the world, but that was also implying that Taiwan actually is a part of China and they would only take back what belongs to them anyway. They will now also start a peace initiative regarding Russia and Ukraine, but they haven't really specified what that is going to look like. It didn't sound very convincing and the US made clear that they have their doubts. As far as I know it was quite a heated debate between Chinese representatives and US representatives.

Nobody really knows how much Xi Jinping actually knew about Russia's plans to invade the Ukraine. Since Putin and Xi Jinping met or talked right before the invasion happened, it is likely that he knew about this plan or at least received some obvious hints from Putin. It makes a lot of sense that Xi Jinping was very interested in seeing how the Western world would react to the invasion.

It is good to see that the West now supports the Ukraine the way they support them, but who knows what would have happened if the West decided to not support the Ukraine. Do you think that could have been an additional incentive for Xi Jinping to take action against Taiwan as well? Now that the support for Ukraine is constantly growing stronger and we are probably even going to see fighting jets being delivered, Xi Jinping is probably going to at least think twice before he decides to invade Taiwan. I think there is no doubt now that the US is going to stick to their word and protect Taiwan as well.

I mostly agree but I think that stable cryptocurrencies also contributed a big deal to expanding the crypto ecosystem as well. Having an option to hedge part of your Bitcoin by paring it in stable cryptocurrencies was certainly something that was missing until the first reliable options came out. It also made taxation less complicated for the users since they didn't have to calculate exchange rates between Bitcoin and another volatile cryptocurrency.

You could have sold for USD as well of course, but that comes with the hassle of having to wait until the USD arrive in your bank account. Now whether or not someone likes and uses stable currencies they still contributed a lot to the overall crypto market I guess.

But yes it did add another risk vector to the system eventually. However, I don't expect the SEC to shut down those stable currencies because if they deem it a security and the issue is just that it wasn't registered as such, isn't the most likely turn of events that Binance or Paxus registers it as such and perhaps pays a fine? If it is backed as those reports state by 100% US Treasury Debt and Bills, what reason would the SEC have to deny attempts to get it registered and just operate it as a security?

Could it also be that Binance diversifies their own liquidity portfolio by taking those other pegged currencies and turning it into BUSD for their customers? They still own the other stable currencies and perhaps they expected to BUSD to get attacked at some point by the SEC like is the situation now. A risk could be that bank accounts or other liquid assets get frozen and they won't be able to serve their customers. But if they hold those other stable currencies they could still prevent a bank run and collapse from happening.

If they give out BUSD and we now have a look at their balance sheet and how everything is backed, the only way for them to fully back it 1:1 is by using their own cash to buy US Treasury Bills and US Treasury Debt. Otherwise they would have listed other stable digital currencies as some of the backing they have for distributed BUSD.

Now that it is clear that BUSD is also fully backed and at least as well backed as Tether is I think it is now only a question of time until those other stable currency providers will get mail from the SEC as well.

Technically it is possible that Bitcoin's supply could get inflated in the future, but it is not a likely scenario as the vast majority of stakeholders would have to upgrade their software / nodes in order for a new supply to come into effect. It is not probable because there is usually no stakeholder who would financially benefit from an increase in the supply.

The way Bitcoin is designed and the basic principle which the community agrees on will favor scarcity and a limited supply. It is still many decades to go until there will be no more Bitcoin issuance per block mined. Until then the network should be in a state where miners are still sufficiently incentivized to invest hash power and get rewarded from the transaction cost. That's an interesting situation none of us will be able to witness, but I think we'll have an idea whether the network is going to make it in several years from now when we had two or three more halvings.

I didn't expect that result I have to say. The reason why I thought that the game between Brugge and Lissabon will be much closer is that Brugge played an amazing group stage this Champions League season. Now this game was just all about Benfica and this is literally over but still it needed a penalty for Lissabon to turn the game into their favor. The second leg must still be played of course, but given these statistics from this game I don't have any hope whatsoever that this could get close. It is perhaps better as Brugge would have had less of a chance to also play a next successful round.

Bitcointalk Profile Link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=33155
Bitcointalk Rank: Hero Member
BTC address for payouts: bc1q2prmvxprqvf784elttzygj9kcuytxwnejt4pq9
Utopia Public Key for CRP payouts: E044918E26B7CE0A734B206854AD8E235EE691618CA23787F052E3E9D0C9373C

That's the point. Dortmund needs a strong first leg in this matchup. The game at Stamford Bridge is more of a coin flip I think and I don't expect Dortmund to dominate the game there. But I do think that Dortmund is going to dominate the game in their home game and that is when the need to take the opportunity and make use of their chances. We have seen games where they just couldn't score despite having double digit shots on target. That's what they need to avoid in the Champions League as that can still be punished even by a team like Chelsea that is out of shape.

This leaves out the fact that Bitcoin is not a stagnant technology, it keeps evolving. It also depends on the individual context people are using it in and also on the individual purposes that people are using it for. Some consider it a store of value in the form of digital gold, and some use it for transacting value on a frequent basis, making it more being used as a form of currency.

There are many questions that will impact our opinion about what Bitcoin is. New technology and applications, ever growing infrastructure, code updates and global adoption by governments, institutions/organizations and people, etc. For Bitcoin to function as a currency, it is obvious that the circulating supply has to carry a certain value first. Volatility is likely to flatten out with growing adoption and increasing value. Inflation is hard-coded and therefore deterministic. Everyone knows what the inflation will be, but nobody yet knows how volatile it will be. I do expect Bitcoin volatility to decrease over longer periods of time if the market cap keeps increasing.

Yes redemption is going on and I am asking myself whether the SEC could even put those operations on halt at once entirely. Wouldn't this usually be against their obligation to protect consumer interests? That would lead to a frenzy and a bank run at whatever exchange is still accessible and paying out BUSD.


@jackg I just checked out a couple of sources and it seems that BUSD is by no means the worst in terms of being backed by anything of value. BUSD is essentially 100% backed by US Treasury Bills and US Treasury Debt (with overnight maturity):





While this is how Tether is backed as per their report from December 2022:




Unless I am getting anything wrong here, it looks to me as if BUSD is at least as fine as Tether. Tether has relatively more positions that seem to come with weaker insurance.

That is what I think as well. Somehow these totalitarian regimes think that war propaganda is an essential element for their governments to stay in power. Hence, China is nonstop talking about how they are getting pulled into a war that they don't actually want, which is of course ridiculous.

But at the same time China isn't interested in a global war. They have been acquiring critical infrastructure all around the globe.



They have been pushing their Belt and Road Initiative (New Silk Road) aggressively for many years now.



I think they would do this only when plan on fighting a war with sanctions rather than with real weapons or even nuclear weapons. As The Sceptical Chymist said, sanctions are the likely scenario at least in the beginning. Nobody would build such an economic network if the plan is to nuke planet Earth anyway.

China does know that fighting a military war would put all of their decades long efforts to an end. There are also the major non-Nato allies like South-Korea and Japan surrounding them and those can't be underestimated either from a strategic point of view. I also doubt that India would ever join forces with China and Russia. I don't know how reliable the Global Firepower Index is, but I would still say that even a coalition between Russia and China would run into dramatic deadlocks unless they are willing to extinguish planet Earth from the universe.

The speed at which China builds its global economic network is concerning as that might be an indicator of China preparing for some form of confrontation, but I doubt it will risk a military confrontation anytime soon due to an attack against Taiwan. Hopefully I am not wrong.

With digital money accounts, they can literally cut you off from the real world within a blink of an eye . They can impose a modern form of coercive detention on you without putting you into prison. What happens if you have a dispute at court and they obviously want some answers from you, answers that might incriminate yourself and it's not even true. Perhaps they can put you under pressure by blocking certain or all functions of your digital money account. in fact, if cash doesn't exist anymore they could cut off every lifeline that let's you participate in real life. I think it is going to end in a surveillance and oppression disaster. It doesn't even have to happen the obvious way.

Not many people are aware of how the Pegasus spyware has already gotten out of control. Even when they claimed to not use it at all or, if they use it, only in more or less specific cases and not in an arbitrarily prevalent way, it now got out of control. Of course it did because governments cannot resist. Even if they initially had good intentions (which I don't believe), they just can't resist.

And CBDCs are a surveillance and control junky's dream technology! They can create mobility profiles, spending profiles, mental and physical health profiles, etc. That's a horror scenario for the future and it plays into the hands of big corporations. Good luck getting reasonable insurance rates when they know more about you than you know about yourself as you have no idea what score they apply to you based on the data they own and put together about you.

The last word hasn't been spoken here yet if I understand correctly that Paxos has 30 days to respond and convince the SEC otherwise.
What I find a bit odd is that BUSD gets targeted first. What about Tether and USDC? This may just be the beginning of a wave of lawsuits against stable coin providers. I do get Armstrong's point that attacking regulated stable coin providers will only lead to people using offshore services, thereby increasing overall risk.

I don't know how the SEC will try to bend the law in their favor, but the securities term is already undergoing quite some stretches here and there when it comes to cryptocurrencies.


On this website I found the following under "What is not a security":

- An interest in a deposit account with a bank or a savings and loan association

If I had to decide whether stable coin staking is technically the same as holding a security, I would tend towards saying no because it seems to be more similar to a standard deposit account.

The XRP case is now three years old and there is still no decision how to go about it from the SEC's point of view. It's possible that this will also take years, but the SEC is already pushing for providers to cancel their staking programs and the issuance of new stable coin supply.

But Real Madrid is feeling maximum pressure with all those important games coming up. A first "final" against Liverpool, then the Copa Del Rey against Barcelona on March 2nd, at the same time they have to try and catch up with Barcelona although that's not up to them but to Barcelona. The next three weeks will be indicative of which way this season is going for Real and also for Ancelotti. Barcelona is in a more comfortable situation because they can rotate their players and give them a break sporadically. If Ancelotti does the same and they lose more points in La Liga, he might have to fear to get sacked. That is not the case for Xavi.

No doubt that Chelsea is in a whole lot of trouble and their achievements over the last couple of weeks have been negligible at best. Still they have some strong players and we know how these games can go. They are not some second division average club. I agree that if those statistics apply, Dortmund is the favorite and I think that the home game is a huge advantage for Dortmund as the fans are backing their team without a doubt and they'll go the full distance cheering for them. Chelsea is in a more difficult position when it comes to their fans. If Dortmund can score the first goal in Chelsea I think that the fans will slow down a lot and become relatively quiet. I expect Dortmund to go all out in the first leg and perhaps Chelsea might be overwhelmed. The longer Chelsea can keep a clean sheet, the harder it will be for Dortmund. Even if Dortmund will put emphasis on a strong offensive game, they should avoid at all cost to concede some easy, unnecessary goals. Even if Chelsea isn't at its best right now, easygoing nature by Dortmund could still lead to being eliminated.

We often talk about the traditional forms of investment like precious metals or maybe even software companies by now, but hasn't the pandemic been proof that there are a couple of risk vectors one could smartly look into? Now that we know what impact pandemic events can have on the world economy, and given that our population is growing and spreading of such events becomes more likely and more dynamic, dedicating a small portion of one's portfolio to pharmaceutical companies can be as much of a hedge as owning gold.

Actually, when the pandemic kicked it we have first seen a sell-off of assets that people don't necessarily need for a living. Almost everything has been performing badly at first. With the infusion of unbelievable quantities of fiat money we saw a wild bounce-back of the markets all over the place, but among the safest bets back then had been the pharmaceutical companies. Even if the stock price doesn't perform that well, they turned out to be very reliable dividend payers.

Now chemistry is not a subject I am all too familiar with and I ask myself whether there will ever be a way to create some form of alternative gold or synthetic gold. There are various reports, but they also seem to be changing over time. I also don't know how trustworthy reports are about how many % of all existing gold has been discovered or is yet to be discovered. How can anyone possibly know for certain?

The 100% transparency of Bitcoin's defining parameters can never be attained by anything that is yet to be fully discovered all around the globe.

While I agree that supply control can be abused for price manipulation, you should still and not mix up the terms inflation and volatility as you seem to have done in your first post.

Inflation within the Bitcoin ecosystem is set in stone for now and deterministic. Everyone can look up the reward schedule and right now we are at 1.7% - 1.8% in newly issued Bitcoin relative to the existing circulating supply.

You are probably referring to purchasing power as Bitcoin is denominated in USD. Of course that varies and has been varying significantly over time. Actually, volatility was what attracted investors, helped the network grow and brought about incentives to improve and grow the global infrastructure for Bitcoin (and cryptocurrencies in general).

Now if you pick specific points in time you can indeed tweak numbers concerning Bitcoin's purchasing power and argue that it performed not very well, but that is very subjective. Nobody in the world would claim that Bitcoin decreased in purchasing power over a 10-year time period. And those who think about it realistically also know that Bitcoin is most likely going to stay highly volatile for an extended period of time. But especially when you take longer periods of time you will see that Bitcoin is much closer to gold than anything else. Gold had its crash of 45% or something from 2011 till 2016. That is why an investment like Bitcoin shouldn't be understood as a short-term gamble. You can be lucky and catch a fantastic bull run momentum, but it can also end in a catastrophe if you need the money in a few months from now and are forced to liquidate your position.

Again, inflation for Bitcoin, in contrast to fiat money, is set in stone as per the parameters hard-coded into the protocol. No single centralized entity has a printer in their basement and can freely issue some new Bitcoin.

From where we are now Bitcoin still has a lot to gain, not least in terms of general acceptance among people. That is different for all the well established fiat moneys. The USD doesn't need to be accepted anymore in the sense that people need to familiarize themselves with and understand its mechanics better (although they probably should). The USD can crash for inflation reasons when new USD simply get printed and it can crash for economic fundamentals when the economy backing it underperforms.

With Bitcoin there are less uncertainties in my opinion when it comes to shenanigans that a government can apply out of the blue and to be honest, not so many people do actually follow the numbers like circulating money supply when it comes to fiat money. The average Joe just notices that there is less food for more money in his basket at the end of the day.