The token XAI was listed today; I sold almost immediately after it was listed and made a quick $15 profit in the 4 days the launchpool was running—not too bad but not great either. I could have made more if I waited, because it has now risen in price, but I'm at work and couldn't bother looking at a random token's price every single minute. So far, no new projects have been announced, while the APYs on stablecoins such as USDT and FDUSD are ridiculously low at the moment. I'll possibly wait a few days to see if another project is announced or the APYs increase; otherwise, I'll consider moving my funds to a different platform.

Day 5:

Half way through, 4 years and 18 weeks behind. We're getting closer.

Day 4:
Almost 37%, 5 years and 21 weeks behind.

Well, although I understand your point, buying a TV is better than gambling his winnings away and losing everything in the process. Everyone has different priorities; if we go down this hole, we shouldn't be gambling in the first place. It would certainly be better if we were spending our gambling money for investment purposes, but that's a completely different story.

Day 3:
Forgot to keep my computer turned on overnight, still making progress though.

Congratulations not only for winning such a significant amount of money but also because you successfully understood when it was time to stop and redeem your profits. A large number of gamblers would have continued in an attempt to multiply their earnings or would eventually use that money to gamble at a later date. Not only did you buy a TV, which I guess was something you were looking forward to, but you also have some money left from the purchase.

That was some decent management; hat's off to you!

That's true; the whole ETF approval matter has been delayed several times already. I'm not too fond of betting on something that has been postponed several times already. I have mixed feelings about the ETF approval. On the one hand, I'm positive that Bitcoin will be approved, while on the other, it's constantly being postponed. Why hasn't it been approved or even denied at this point? Why are the results delayed by that much?

In the end, in my opinion, it's going to be approved anytime in the future; however, I wouldn't bet on it; the 50/50 chance doesn't look too appealing to me. Despite what happens, even in the scenario where it's not approved, Bitcoin will do just fine without it, as it did for all these years.

I agree that all casino games depend 100% on luck, probably except a few, such as poker or roulette, which also depend on your strategy and skills. Sports betting seems to be the most reasonable and logical option, due to it combining several factors—luck, knowledge, and strategy—in order to investigate the best odds and come up with a betting plan determining which games to participate in and which team to support.

Keep in mind that there's no such thing as a guaranteed bet, nor is any strategy or person infallible. No kind of prediction is accurate in such cases, and you should always remember that the chances are always against us; the house always wins.

Retire with gambling money? Haha, good luck with that. Unless you hit the lottery or something and win millions of dollars, you cannot retire with gambling money, no matter how often you win in casinos. You're more likely to be struck by lightning than win the lottery; unfortunately, the chances are extremely insignificant to motivate me to become a frequent buyer.

I don't doubt that there are people winning, but it's almost impossible to win out of so many people playing. Unfortunately, it's a method to motivate the poor and the average class to believe that they can turn their lives around.

Exactly. There's no point in discussing how we spend our money or how often we gamble. I generally don't care what others say; I'm not that much of a frequent gambler either, nor have I suffered any significant losses that are becoming an issue in my daily life. I generally avoid discussing controversial subjects, such as cryptocurrencies or gambling, because people often have different or contradictory opinions. We don't owe anyone an explanation.

As long as we're able to control ourselves, how much money and time we spend, and be responsible in general, we're fine with ourselves.

Day 2:

We're making progress, slow but steady, almost 20% and 7 years left to fully sync.

Certainly not. What would be the point of playing? That wouldn't be called gambling in the first place. The reason gambling is fascinating is because we're unaware of the outcome; the anticipation is what gets us going, boosting our adrenaline levels. If we know from the beginning that we can't make any money from it, then there will be no emotional release; all the emotions that are going through our body are what's making gambling exciting.

I would consider playing if there was the option not to use actual money but virtual money, like it's a game. Providing that, in the completely hypothetical scenario, there were no other alternatives available. However, you're mentioning that casinos would still function like they're supposed to, requiring money to play but without any chances of winning, which would be absurd if someone was willing to waste his time and funds with zero purpose and outcome.

It's always easier to blame someone else for your misfortunes than to take it upon yourself and accept that you're wrong. Unfortunately, it's not easy to accept that you're addicted or that it's purely your fault for losing all your money. This applies to all kinds of addictions, such as alcoholism, drugs, and so on. As you've also mentioned yourself, psychological assistance from the government is inadequate; it can take months to schedule an appointment with a public therapist, while visits to a private licensed therapist are quite pricy, especially for someone who has blown their money away.

The first step in such cases is to identify the problem, which is often yourself, and seek help. There are support groups that may also assist, but it's vital to accept that you're struggling and ask for assistance, even through the public health system, if necessary.

Right, understood, thank you!
Yeah, it's been really slow the past few hours, progress per hour has dropped from 1.5% to 0.5%, still a long way to go. Set pruning to 35 GB, will see how it progresses and will consider reverting back to 45 GB tomorrow.

Not sure if this counts as the first day or the second, it's fine either way.
Quoting the "getblockchaininfo" command's results below.


Beat me, I'm using a 10 year old refurbished HP ProBook, 4th generation i5 but 12 GB of ram.

Thank you. I'll stick to 45 GB for now and see how it progresses in the upcoming days. If everything is going smoothly, I'll switch it to 100 or 200 GB.

Something I haven't understood though, I've never used Bitcoin Core in the past and this is all new to me, so excuse me if I'm asking dumb questions. I have the client running, go to CMD to run the command "bitcoin-cli getblockchaininfo" that Tether has mentioned in the original post, but receive this error.


Have I understood something incorrectly?

Here's the client running



Supposedly, it'll only take 3 more days.

Yeah, it is; it was showing 10 to 12 days after a while. I'm not sure if I can keep my laptop running 24/7 for so many days, but I'll give it a go after I return from work. Right now, I've set pruning to 45 GB; can I change that afterwards? If I see decent progress, I don't mind setting it to 100 GB. I have approximately 200 GB of space on my SSD, and the HDD is quite full, but my main concern remains my internet, as its speed is quite unstable.

It hasn't happened to me, but from what you mentioned, if I understood correctly, he told you what to bet on, and he'd receive a small percentage of your winnings if things actually worked out. Did I understand correctly? Because you're basically saying that you were risking your money on a claim someone else told you, while he had a risk-free opportunity to make money, provided that you actually won. Personally, I wouldn't do it. You already mentioned that you lost from 4 to 8 consecutive times using his predictions. It seems to me that he's simply making stuff up, hoping to stumble upon a win, without risking his own money.

On top of that, just because he's claiming that someone won $50,000 doesn't mean it's true, and even if it is, it could be a total coincidence.

Right, I was mostly referring to the pruning part and not the downloading a snapshot from a third party, but didn't refer to that in my initial post.
You don't need to store the full 500 GB while performing the initial block download. If you set to prune at 50 GB, then it will only ever keep 50 GB on disk despite downloading the full 500 GB.
I've started downloading Bitcoin Core now, and I've set the prune block storage to 50 GB. Unfortunately, storage capacity isn't my main issue, but my internet's limited capabilities. I used to have over 50 Mbps on my previous house; now I'm getting 10 or 12 at most. Otherwise, I wouldn't mind if I downloaded as much as 200 GB of data.



No worries, it'll be finished in a few years 

I've made a decent sum of money through their Launchpool projects, so I don't' see why not. As I've also mentioned in my previous post, billions are being transacted on Binance; if something were to happen to it, it would have an immense effect on the market and cryptocurrencies. I don't disagree; my Bitcoin is not on any exchange, not because of safety concerns, but because I don't want a centralized service that has all my details, including my ID and perhaps my tax identification number, to know how much money I've got.

Sheepless AI's launchpool is ending in approximately two hours. We'll see how it progresses tomorrow, when it's listed at 10:00 UTC. Moreover, another project was announced, again, XAI, for 4 days, starting on January 5. We'll see how that goes.

That's true. I had also signed up for a known casino in my country that offered a couple of free spins without having to deposit any money in return; it was supposedly a Black Friday offer. I managed to win a few euros, which I used to bet on other games and later lost. It was only a petty amount, not comparable to the €10 bonus you received, but my point is supporting what you've stated: sometimes casinos offer bonuses with no strings attached that may actually prove to be worth it. Even in my case, I could have potentially won if I was luckier, and it would be money out of thin air, 100% profit without even requiring a deposit in order to withdraw.

Which app was it, if you don't mind me asking?