Well.. let's not examine the ifs and buts. It is actually very simple. The guy was suffering from mental issues and unfortunately his family and friends were unaware of it. If they had known about his disease, then most probably he could have got the required treatment and his family members might have taken adequate precautions. Actually this is a warning for all the gamblers. If you believe that you are showing signs of gambling addiction, then don't defer any further and seek immediate assistance.

I live in a country where gambling is de jure legal. But it is very difficult for the casinos to get license so 90% of the gamblers depend on illegal gambling dens. Here organized religion is kept out of governance, so we don't have stupid anti-gambling laws. On the other hand, I have travelled to countries such as India, where gambling is illegal. Here the gambling sector is completely under the control of criminal gangs, since legal gambling is not possible. And this is what happens when the government comes up with stupid bans.

I have a feeling that this desperate move will actually discourage people from getting vaccinated. How much does an Ohio state lottery ticket, with a jackpot of around $1 million cost? $5? or $10? The state of Ohio is offering $5 for its citizens to get vaccinated. Do you really think that this paltry sum will encourage a lot of people? It could have been much better if they had given $5 or $10 worth of supermarket vouchers to those who are willing to take both the doses of the vaccine.

Two important news coming in from the T20 sphere. First, in the news related to the Pakistan Super League (PSL) a mini draft has been completed to replace the unavailable players. Shimron Hetmyer has been signed by Multan and Zahir Khan by Quetta. Rashid Khan will be available for the Lahore Qalandars. Singapore batsmen Tim David will also be playing for Lahore.

Meanwhile, the CPL franchises have also completed their transfers and retentions. Andre Russell is retained by Jamaica, despite his comments against the franchise. Dwayne Bravo and Sherfane Rutherford will be playing for St Kitts & Nevis Patriots.

Well.. it is a problem. Elon Musk has hardly any knowledge about how cryptocurrency works and yet he has enormous influence on the prices. If Bitcoin moves up or down by 20% every time he tweets, then the institutions will never seriously consider about adopting Bitcoin or integrating it to their platforms. So first of all, we need to devise a mechanism to prevent such manipulation of the Bitcoin market by influential people like Elon Musk.

What does the Israel-Palestine conflict has to do with the T20 World Cup? Israel will almost never qualify for the world cup, and Palestine doesn't even have a cricket team. It is ridiculous to say that the tournament should be postponed because of the crisis in Israel. If the focus is on COVID 19, then it can still be understood. But only India and the other south Asian nations are affected by the pandemic. UAE has achieved more than 50% vaccination, and has remained largely free from the virus for the past many months.

With 9 years of experience in cryptocurrency sector, I would advise everyone to purchase BTC at current levels. Because with each phase of correction, more and more coins end up in the hands of whales and institutions. Mostly it is the noobs and the other inexperienced users who sell their coins at this phase. I would rather keep the coins for another 2-3 months, so that the prices may recover. Given the pattern we had so far, the next spike may occur whenever a big corporation announces its intent to accept BTC.

The point OP wanted to make was probably like this - there are Muslim countries where gambling is allowed. No one will say that Morocco is not a Muslim country, just because they allow gambling. So that means that it is possible for Muslim countries to allow gambling in their territory. Personally, I believe that religion needs to change with changing times. There is no point in sticking to ancient customs and rituals when the world is changing.

Till now I haven't heard about any rumors which claim that Apple is considering Bitcoin as one of the payment methods. But regarding Microsoft, they are accepting Bitcoin since 2014 for some of the specific niches. But still the core business doesn't have BTC as one of the payment options. When the accept Bitcoin (if it ever happens), then it will be a surprise (similar to this instance). Even with Moneygram, we had no hint that they were going to accept BTC. The announcement was like a bolt from the blue.

OK.. I agree that Cardano prices have gone up a lot recently and right now it is the 5th largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization. But in terms of adoption, Cardnao is far behind lower ranking coins such as Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash. How many online stores accept Cardano as a payment now?To tell the truth, none of the online shopping sites I use are accepting ADA as a form of payment. It may be due to the lack of liquidity, or may be due to the difficulty in storing the coins. Or maybe the store owners have realized that the security level for ADA is not satisfactory.   

Regarding the T20 World Cup, here is the latest news:

https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/difficult-to-play-t20-world-cup-in-india-mike-hussey-1263580


Now I suspect that the other teams might also take a similar position. I am afraid that the days of BCCI elbowing other boards to dance as per their whims and fancies are over. Apart from the poorer boards, I don't think that anyone will agree to the tournament to be conducted in India (especially after the fiasco we had during the IPL).

In related news, Asia cup has been postponed once again (probably to 2022), and the PSL resumption is also delayed.

China want to regulate cryptocurrency and that is all. If their intention was to ban cryptocurrency, then they could have shut down all the mining farms in China (which contribute to more than 80% of the mining hash rate). They are perfectly fine with the miners earning revenue by selling the mined coins. The only issue seems to be capital outflows in the form of cryptocurrency. Capital outflow has been an issue for China since long.. but now cryptocurrency has been used for making the transactions more anonymous.

This is actually confusing.. I have regarded PayPal and Moneygram as competitors to Bitcoin, and they seems to be embracing cryptocurrency. Perhaps, they have realized that accommodating BTC can be mutually beneficial for their growth. Once all the FUD from Elon settles down, I hope we will have more and more companies accepting Bitcoin (and hopefully we will never see Tesla again associating themselves with BTC). Who is going to be next?

At least Musk is responsible for the crash we are having for the last 2-3 days. The first PoS coin came in to circulation many years ago. If PoS was so much superior to PoW, then it could have overtaken Bitcoin and the other PoW coins already. That hasn't happened because PoS algorithm has a lot of vulnerabilities. It is a free market and no one is forcing others to use PoW coins. Now you can't just badmouth the PoW coins, because the PoS coins are not making much movement in the market.

The trick is to devote most of your holdings to long-term hold, while keeping a significant part for profit booking at regular intervals. No one really asked you to keep your coins in a cold wallet for 10 years. And also, the second lesson here is not to indulge in panic selling. This has been said so many times, and yet I could see a lot of noobs selling their coins at 36K and 37K. The basics are still strong. User base is increasing, along with adoption and acceptability. In the long term the price will definitely be higher. But you need to have the patience to make profit at that time.

For the last 12.5 years, tens of millions have been using Bitcoin without an issue. And a few months ago, a rich asshole enters the scene and create a lot of hype. And then he dictates that we should change the way Bitcoin works. I don't think that it is going to work like that. PoW has worked so well for the last 12 years and I really don't want any changes to the algorithm. Those who want PoS are free to migrate to any other coin, which they feel is more energy efficient. But I am not in favor of any changes, just because Elon doesn't like the current setup. 

Almost every OPEC nation now have trillions of USD worth of assets stored in various Sovereign wealth funds (SWF). They have invested mostly in American and European stocks, and these markets have returned good profits in the last two years (despite the pandemic). The Gulf nations in particular, have learnt their lesson from the slump of 2008-09. The oil prices have remained below $100 per barrel for almost 7 years now, but the impact is limited to some of the smaller nations such as Venezuela and Angola.

I work in the insurance industry and even we receive a lot of such phishing emails everyday. But the company made us go through a few training sessions to identify such emails. And also, whenever an email comes from someone outside our company, the mail is flagged. On top of that, Outlook flags most of the emails which are of suspicious origin. But still, I can understand the risk. All it takes is just one employee (out of thousands) to open such an email and click the phishing link.

China was able to use their human resources in a better way, because they implemented the one-child policy in 1980, which allowed the government to give proper education and medical care for all of the citizens. And the Chinese economy started to grow at a good pace, around 10 years after the one-child policy was implemented. What China did was not to reduce the population size. If you check the Chinese census, you will find that the population is still growing, although at a reduced pace. But the population growth slowed down and it made sure that more natural resources are available to everyone. And on the other side we have India, which has around one-third of the area as China and almost the same population. Having a huge population is a disadvantage, when that population doesn't have sufficient education or skills.

There is another important factor that needs to be considered. When manufacturers such as Pfizer and Moderna conducted their phase III trials, the original strain of CoVID 19 was prevalent in most of the countries. But now the mutated strains such as B.1.617.2 and P.1 are more common, and these strains are much more lethal and contagious. So the 95% efficacy claimed by Pfizer may be much lower in real cases, if the mutated strains are more common. Also, I have heard that a number of deaths have occurred in India among people who got two doses of the Pfizer vaccine (mostly expats who got the vaccine in the US and then returned to India).

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202105/1222709.shtml