I don't get it, why would they impose this kind of restriction? Didn't the government profit from the taxation? And if they ban sponsorship, who will the football industry rely on? It's not like alcohol sponsorship is any better... Sports brands will be the only ones left, I believe. On the other hand, it's good that the government is worried about the nation and can see possible consequences of continuous gambling advertising, but with such a crackdown the government should at least offer some alternatives and help out in the future.

I would recommend sportsbet, despite the name it has casino games and slots, also try playing poker, it's not only about luck, you can use strategies, analyze your opponents and actually win something, there are poker tournaments as well, I especially ilke them, very fun, a lot of interaction and communication. Also, the website has a stylish and simple interface. For slots I'd recommend Roobet - plenty of choices there, great navigation, never had any trouble finding anything there.

Luckily, I've never been hacked, but I take some precautions: all of my passwords and private key phrases are written down on a piece of paper (have many copies, but none of them are digital) and, just in case, I've memorized them all   Also, when withdrawing, exchanging I always double-check the address bar and the receiver's wallet address. Apart from that, I try to store my major savings on Electrum.

But I think there's another problem, that some bitcoin holders (not as few, as I thought) are currently facing - people really do forget/lose their passwords and wallet data, don't they? Take a look at that:


Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/technology/bitcoin-passwords-wallets-fortunes.html

I was really stunned by this news, $140 billion is a lot of money, such a waste  

After familiarising myself with the law, the jurisdiction, and looking through different cases, one thing became clear to me: almost anything can be justified and nearly anyone can get away with various sorts of law violations as long as this person has a good lawyer. In the Stahura case, the fact that he immediately pleaded guilty has played an important role in building a case for leniency, also, as I understand it, Stahura handled his duties as a mayor pretty well. Plus he's got no criminal history, and it's not like he's killed or severely injured anyone. So in the end, he was viewed as a good man, who has served well to the community and made just one little mistake, which he very much regrets. I'm afraid, the judge was left with no choice...

Theoretically, it's possible but sounds unrealistic and exaggerated. Also, the question is: when? In 50 years, maybe, but who knows what will be in 50 years? Will cryptocurrencies still exist, will there even be a need for them? Taking into account the last developments - Bitcoin will only rise in price, but how steep will that rise be - no one can tell for sure.

When analyzing the history of Bitcoin - 2 significant rises can be denoted. The first one was approximately from Dec 2016 when BTC was around $700 to Dec 2017, when Bitcoin almost hit $20k, that's 30 times increase in just a year! And the second one, I believe, we're experiencing now: in 2020 BTC had its ups and downs, but the average price was around $8-9k, and now it's nearly $40k, a 4-time increase. So, you can see the tendency here: the more Bitcoin is worth - the slower it increases in price. It's good, actually, it means more stability. But, taking into account all I just said, imagine how much time will it take for Bitcoin to reach the price you've named.

Good for you, that's really worthy of respect! I think many people, who were into cryptocurrencies at the beginning suffered from accusations and mockery. It's good that those same people came asking you around about Bitcoin, another matter that they didn't have the guts to buy some, but at least they admitted that they were wrong.

Many of my acquaintances (especially elder ones) to this day believe that they were right and someday the "bubble" will burst. Probably even looking forward to it  

If you can find bugs it doesn't necessarily mean, that you're a good coder, sometimes all it takes to expose a bug - is playing long enough, so that you'll be able to see certain patterns and for that, you only need some observance skills. Also, where's the guarantee that the casino will reward you? They might as well reward you with a simple "thank you" 

And can you consider using your knowledge of bugs as cheating? I could draw an analogy, that making money out of bugs is the same as picking up money that's lying on the ground. Someone dropping the money can be seen as a bug, and you picking it up is basically like making money out of bugs. On the one hand, it's not a good thing to do, but on the other hand..you know that it's either you take, or someone else, so why not use the opportunity?
 
Don't get me wrong, I'm not implying that anyone should do so, in fact, I consider this kind of behavior wrong, so I never pick up money in such cases. Just saying it's the same thing, so from this point of view, most people are probably cheaters when it comes to real life 

Neurologist

Speaking from personal experience - 16 unfortunate bets in a row are possible! That's my experience with Martingale..never used any "betting strategies" since then. At first, I earned around 20$ very quickly, but then I lost it all in like 5 minutes, plus lost the 40$ I had in there deposited, it was on the PrimeDice too, by the way. Wait, are you implying that PrimeDice is rigged? Or have I missed something?
But just theoretically speaking, from a probability point of view it can happen, however, the odds of that (if playing 50/50 chance, as I did, or in the case of roulette red/black) are, if my math is correct, 1 in 65,536, which seems rather rear...

Not necessarily. I don't think the campaigns rely on profit directly from people, who wear the signatures. It's just that Bitcointalk itself is full of people, who are into the things, that are advertised here: altcoins, gambling, other crypto-related projects. Thus, this forum seems to be a very good platform with a target-like effect. For instance, advertising the above-mentioned things on popular platforms or on social media, like on Instagram or Facebook, even with targetting, wouldn't be that effective, IMO.

Anyways, I donated much of my earnings here in research, because I'm a scientist, and research funding in our country is very poor, so if you want to make a difference, discover things and publish them - you need to rely on your own investments. But some of the money I actually use for gambling, just for fun, and mostly I gamble on the websites, that are advertised here.

That's very sad, these kinds of governmental regulations curtail the freedoms of the citizens, and such strict regulations, 10 years in jail, seriously?? It is also very frustrating that cryptocurrencies are nearly the only thing in which Third World countries could keep apace with any other countries, cryptos could've provided opportunities to become more independent, improve the economy, I seriously don't understand what were they thinking...

It all depends on what kind of gambler you are. If you just make occasional bets, just for fun - it will be more convenient to do it without intermediaries, and, like you said, with a betting broker most likely you'd have to make a bigger deposit.
But if you gamble on an ongoing basis - it'll be very time-consuming and tiring to make deposits on various websites and search for the best odds.

As for me, it's better to bet somewhere in the middle of the season (even closer to the end) because at the beginning, naturally, it's hard to tell how a certain team will perform, there's not much to go on with. Sometimes a team can win many matches in a row, beat all of the opposing teams, but after a few months the situation can be quite different, other teams start to "wake up" as the end is getting closer and often perform better, than at the beginning. So if you rely on your own judgment - mid-season is the best solution.

But they don't just hope, do they? It takes a looot of investments to make a certain brand recognizable, attract an audience and convince them to use it, and without that - no investors will give their money to your project. So, funny enough, but if your platform isn't really unique - in order to draw investors' attention you already have to be something, and not everyone has sufficient funds for that. And years ago it was way easier than now! Nowadays, due to enormous competition, you'll have to invest even more.

And the other way to attract funding - is being unique, so that your company won't have many analogs in the market, and one of the easiest ways to do it - is to associate your project with something new - altcoin, convince investors that it's something extraordinary, explain why it is better than other existing alts and voilà - your project has just become interesting. It's another matter that nowadays there's such a wide range of altcoins, that even this method isn't that effective, but it doesn't require many funds, so..worth a try.

Sounds risky at first, but now that I think of it, how do you actually distinguish between legalized and illegal gambling websites? I mean, do any of you actually try and search if a certain website legal in your country or not? It's not like you enter a website and it tells you that it's a black market website, right? For instance, in my country gambling itself has only been legalized a few months ago (due to endemic-induced economic crisis, I guess) and there are very few websites offered by the government, and they all suck. Does this mean that if I use any other websites (that might be legal in other countries, but not in mine) - I gamble in the black market?

Most certainly, influential people have an impact on the stock market and cryptocurrency prices as well. People tend to listen to public figures. That's why it wasn't a good move from Elon Musk to post on his Twitter about 4 covid tests in one day with different results (if you remember that one) - it immediately put doubt in many people's heads. But no matter, there's something more interesting.

Last month I've noticed something rather odd about Bitcoin and Musk. It is well-known that he's a big supporter of Bitcoin, but what can we tell about his actual assets in BTC? I remember that for some time Elon was all over the news in rankings, that he headed the list of richest people on Earth and it was exactly at the time when BTC has increased in price (Jan 7-8) and beaten its all-time record! And then..a couple of days later (Jan 11-12) media tells us that Elon Musk ISN'T the richest man anymore, and that happens concurrently with the drop in BTC price!! Can't be a coincidence, don't you think? What thoughts do you have on this matter?  

At first, judging from the name of this thread I too thought it's about how people died immediately after winning the jackpot, which seemed suspicious, because it's a common misbelief, that people can simply have a heart attack due to shock/too surprising events/excitement. As you said, it can only happen to people, who already had a heart attack, or have a medical predisposition.

But look at the articles closely - these people died weeks after winning the lottery from a different cause: in a car crash, or old people getting scared of something, and some of the search results just concern the matter of inheritance right in such cases...

Neurologist

As for me, it's not that surprising, considering that most people aren't that rich to afford various risky investments. Also, even if we take large investors - it takes nerve to see BTC drop in price and still keep it on the wallet, also, many people are greedy and they sell just as the price begins to drop.

So potential longtime holders are either very rich people who don't care if they lose money, but if they're rich and not interested in profit - why invest in the first place? Just for fun, I guess, so we can't expect the % of such people to be large. Or, it can be ordinary middle to upper-class people, but for this kind of people, it must be particularly hard to see their investments lose value as Bitcoin drops in price, so many of them eventually sell.

I've seen many decent movies named here, so I'll just list my top 3 gambling-related movies, each of a different genre:

1. "Casino" by Martin Scorsese, a perfect movie that allows you to fully dip into all this gangster-casino atmosphere, demonstrating all of its ups and downs (downs mostly ), drama. Like all Scorsese movies, it's beautifully done, gives you a lot to think about.

2. "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" by Guy Ritchie. I'd say it's more of a comedy/action movie, but quite interesting though, with an unexpected plot twist. Also, I can't think of a better movie that would demonstrate why one shouldn't rely on gambling to earn money and NEVER-EVER borrow money for gambling purposes, no matter how good this person is;

3. "Molly's Game" by Aaron Sorkin, I'd really recommend everyone who's a newbie in gambling to watch this movie. Not only it is very interesting, and you'll enjoy just watching it, but also consider it as a perfect instruction, explanation of how gambling works, how casinos work, even the rules of some card games are explained if I'm not mistaken.