1 million USD in India? Middle class?

1 million USD isn't a lot in New York or London or Paris or Tokyo. In India with several million? I highly doubt you can say they're middle class.

Would you like to bold the other 3 words you left out?

Now, as I said in my previous post, morality/ethics isn't something you can prove with logic, there's no real objective truth in it. People have a different sense of morality, and I guess some people simply don't think that doing drugs is immoral. Perhaps some people don't think murder is wrong either, people have been killing each other for thousands of years. Personally I really can't accept either, and feel this way very strongly. But I guess my comments were overly provocative, for which I am sorry.

The reality though, is that it's not really "backed" by monero. Your moneros are paid to the game, for development, maintenance etc, which is fair. But you can't change the game currency back to monero, so it's not backed by it. You are allowed to trade with players for real currencies, i.e moneros, unlike many games. But that's exchange between players. Moneros sunk in the game is sunk, there's no way to get it back out.

Am I understanding this wrong?

Your argument is akin to saying the government is forcing terrorists to resort to underground activities in order to build bombs for suicide bombings, etc. No they're not. They're saying you shouldn't be a terrorist.

Governments do their fair share of shameless activities, but this isn't one of them. It's too bad ethics can not be determined by logic alone, so I can't argue against your point that people can put whatever they want in their bodies, except to say that I disagree. It's extremely irresponsible and selfish. For example, you have to think about how it affects your children and family.

And besides that, it certainly affects others. The smell of marijuana lingers for hours and is absolutely disgusting. Well, I think it's marijuana, I'm not really sure since I know nothing about that kind of stuff. And the areas where there are many drug addicts are quite unpleasant. It really affects the community in a negative way.

Uh, no. My moral principle is to not support criminals harming people and their families. Just because my morals differ from yours doesn't mean I'm confusing legislation with morality.

I simply feel that it's wrong both in terms of being illegal and immoral. Too much freedom is a bad thing.

It's amazing how people are shameless enough to support criminals, even if they're hiding behind the computer.

*It's not like I support everything the government does; but regardless of whether the government is good or not, I won't support these criminals.

Hey, I'll only take 15 bitcoins to do it

1 million will not buy you a very nice private island. You guys overestimate the term "millionaire". It's no longer what it was in 1950. I would say to live a "typical" "millionaire lifestyle" you probably need at the very least 30-50 million dollars.

There aren't that many 30-million bitcoiners, and even those who really are the really early adopters that have 100k+ bitcoins, it's simply not liquid enough to afford them that kind of a lifestyle. At most they can buy a pretty nice house/apartment in a major city and retire, likely they'll still be interested in bitcoin's progress.

At 10k/ea, that's about 40x the current amount. If you buy in today, you need 25k USD to become a millionaire.

It's not likely that there will be a lot of people who have 25k USD to spare for bitcoin, while not having a significant networth to begin with.

Not sure how many are left who bought in at a significantly cheaper price.

Having never studied psychology, and probably having a very low EQ, I disagree.

I think that people don't really change because of money. The people who are down to Earth and don't show off wouldn't do so whether they have $1 or $10,000,000, whereas people who always have a need to be better than others will always try to push their successes, no matter how small, in other people's faces. Some people love to be in the spotlight, some people want to avoid it.

This is your personal tendency, it doesn't change because you suddenly have a lot of money. In fact, having money allows people who couldn't be in the spotlight before, who couldn't show off before to do so. It'd be harder to hold it in if you really were successful.

Besides, just because you have lots of money doesn't make you intelligent/high class or whatever. You really have to prove your worth in order for other successful people to accept you. They won't do so simply because you basically won the lottery.

... because buying and selling illegal stuff is illegal??? ... Those criminals are lucky they're not caught and put in jail. Or executed in another country.

Do you only want coins that are good investments? Or are you okay with any coin that's new or has unique uses or whatever that isn't necessarily an investment?

I guess I misused the term house edge. I just meant if you had 49% chance to double, then you have 49% chance to double, lol.

In the case, that for example, the chances of winning/losing are exactly 50/50, but you get a 99% return if you win, it's slightly more difficult to calculate, because even when you win, you haven't doubled your amount, so you'll need a

WW or WLWW or WLWLWW, in essence, you need to win twice before losing twice, while winning the first game* which is basically

1/2 * (1/4 + 1/4(1/2) + 1/4(1/2^2)...) = 1/2 * (1/4 / (1 - 1/2)) = 1/2 * 1/2 = 1/4.

*The actual chances are smaller, due to the fact that the amount lost for every L is greater than the amount won for every W, so after a certain number of iterations, you'll need 1 extra W to make up for the lost amount. In particular, after the first W, and after 99 LWs in a row, you'll end up with 100% of your starting bankroll, effectively repeating the process from the beginning.

I have to say that back in highschool I used to be a prodigy at probability, and did very well at math competitions because of it. Probability came naturally to me, and everything just made sense. I didn't need to learn it. But for some reason, my brain power is drastically weaker than it used to be, and I no longer intuitively get these concepts.

I bet there's a much easier way to calculate the above, with more accuracy. Oh well, at least my point is made.

Y changes with your bankroll (or the % of your bankroll you bet per bet).

For example, if you bet all or nothing, assuming a 1% house edge, Y = 49%, quite obviously.

a lot of what was said on this page can be summed up in two words: Selective Memory.

That's all it is. I admit I'm guilty of it as much as the next person. You just gotta understand that your intuition sucks.

A personal anecdote: in 2005-2007 I played this game called Kingdom of Loathing. It's a pretty interesting stickman semi texted based mmorpg with lots of references and jokes and stuff. The currency in that game is "meat".

Anyway, there's a gambling mini-game within the game, which is essentially 50/50 double or nothing, with a small house cut.

Long story short, I managed to make 135,000,000+ meat starting from 70,000 meat, using a modified martingale system.

What happened after that, you might ask. Well, I lost it all . If only I could repeat this with real life money... but I never gamble with real money, except "gambling" by investing in bitcoins.

I'll use cash until either no one accepts it anymore, or I die. If anything, I'll use it for nostalgia. I like cash.

It doesn't matter how off their prediction is, as long as it brings attention to bitcoin, it's a good thing, for them and for us.

i wonder how many contradictions i just read in that post...

So I don't see a single instance of monero or xmr in that quote?

I think of it this way. How will the world be without centralized fiat currencies? I mean, if we didn't have bitcoin, or other "improved" currencies.

I don't think I can be better off without fiat. I think it'd be a lot worse, and no, I'm not a beneficiary of the banks. Thus, fiat works.

It's kind of like I have a tree stump that I sit on. You, on the other hand, invented a chair that massages your body while you sit on it which is really comfortable, relaxing, and good for your health. That doesn't mean my tree stump "doesn't work", though. So yeah, I think bitcoin has the potential to revolutionize finance, but I'm not sure decentralization is a necessary component of that revolution.

You can. I spent about $800-1000 CAD/month the past few years in University. That's about $10800 CAD a year, if you exchange that to USD at current exchange rates, that's $8474. Assuming 3% inflation, a very conservative 5% return on investment and no taxes because of low income, $423700 is enough to live off of without touching the principle. If you can get 7%, you only need $211,850.

But it's not a great lifestyle, and you might have a bit trouble finding rent by the time you're 40.

On the contrary, it has worked well for centuries, and continues to work well for the vast majority of the world.

That said, can it be better? Most definitely. There are many things that can be improved with the current financial system. I'm just not sure decentralization is one of them.

Your argument is akin to saying "Well, cars have proven that they don't work, since traffic accidents happen everyday. That's why we need to replace round wheels with triangular wheels."

Well, you managed to identify a problem, but you didn't identify correctly the cause of the problem, thus you can't provide the correct solution.

Again, I'm a bitcoin bull, but I'm not a fiat-government-centralization hater.