Nothing is guaranteed in the cryptocurrency market. Ethereum has remained as the no.2 cryptocurrency ever since it managed to topple Litecoin from that position in 2015. But that doesn't mean that it's position is permanent. Ethereum was the first among the second generation cryptocurrencies. But now there are growing signs that it's technology is getting outdated. Ethereum is simply unable and incapable to keep up with the large rise increase in userbase.

I am not very comfortable with handicap bets, but it looks as if the odds for normal betting is not very attractive. For example, take the Turkey vs Latvia match. Odds are in the range of 1.08 to 1.10 for Turkey. The risk is too high and the returns are extremely low. Two consecutive wins by Turkey made the gambling sites to adjust their odds.

Now compare this to the odds for Spain vs Kosovo. Spain's odds are 1.11 to 1.13. Kosovo is not a very strong side and yet Spain's odds are lower than that of Turkey. I understand that Spain is not in very good form right now. But these sort of odds make it very attractive to place a bet in their favor.

Another interesting match is Montenegro vs Norway. The former is having odds in the range of 4.9-5.55, but they are in very good form right now. It won't be a bad idea to place a bet in favor of Montenegro for this match. Draw is at 3.20-3.48.

I agree. Curran needs to bat either at no.6 or a position above that. The England middle order (especially Buttler, Morgan.etc) failed pathetically during the Indian tour. They could have given an opportunity for Curran to bat higher up the order. Anyway, now the tour is finished and he will be concentrating on the IPL. And I am sure that the CSK management is not stupid enough to waste his batting skills by demoting him to no.8 or no.9.

Blue collar workers such as masons and plumbers can't work from home. If the lockdown is imposed, then they will be losing their income. But the good thing this time is that even in case lockdown restrictions are imposed, they are unlikely to last more than a couple of weeks. Hopefully their employers can compensate them for this time period. The government should also step in and offer some sort of financial help to such people.

The point to note here is that the New Zealand batsmen hasn't slowed down despite the loss of wickets. And they don't need to. Their lower order is very strong and therefore they can continue to play big hits at this point. Glenn Phillips is batting with 30 runs from 17 balls. The other batsmen just need to provide support to him. But the arrival of rain may bring Duckworth/Lewis in to play and that will negatively impact New Zealand as they have already lost 4 wickets.

It is still very early phase, but Turkey had an excellent start to their campaign. If they win today's match then there is a good chance that they will top the group and thereby secure automatic qualification to the next year's world cup. I don't think that Netherlands will fail to qualify, but it will be a big blow for them if they fail to top the group. If that is the case, then they need to play in the second round as well (in order to secure qualification).

No need to concentrate solely on the negatives. Take the case of UK for example. The number of new infections have fallen by 95%, and the number of deaths from COVID 19 has fallen by 98%. Along with Israel and China, UK has been one of the success stories against COVID 19, thanks to the vaccination program. As the vaccination progresses in other countries, they also will be able to bring the pandemic under control.

Group G matches are really going to be interesting. Right now Turkey and Montenegro are on top with 6 points each. For Turkey, in all probability they will receive another three points from their match against Latvia. However, Montenegro may struggle against Norway. They have the home advantage, but Norway is a very tough opponent. I just hope that they will manage to win today and keep the Netherlands at 3rd position.

West Indies looks to be in a comfortable position to win the test. Sri Lanka had an opportunity when they had West Indies down to 222/7, but they wasted it. The partnership between Kraigg Brathwaite and Rahkeem Cornwall has already added 65 runs and now West Indies looks comfortable enough to reach a total in excess of 350. During the last test match also, the Sri Lankan bowlers failed against West Indian lower order batsmen.

These guys are making predictions based on what happened to Bitcoin after the ATHs of 2013 and 2017. They fail to take in to account the recent changes in the cryptocurrency market. Back in 2013 and 2017, we had very few institutional investors. Almost all of the investment came from individuals, who were susceptible to panic selling. Also, a lot of the trade volume was consisted of dirty coins (i.e coins from dark markets and hackers). These factors have changed now.

Here are the latest stats from 29th March 2021.

Total market cap: $1,826,129,827,410 (+2.87%)

Bitcoin: $1,079,602,308,014 (59.120%)
Bitcoin forks: $14,449,316,639 (0.791%)
Stablecoins: $59,664,630,117 (3.267%)
Altcoins: $664,412,276,586 (36.384%)
WBTC: $8,001,296,054 (0.438%)

This is the change compared to my last post:

Bitcoin: -1.148%
Bitcoin forks: -0.021%
Stablecoins: +0.042%
Altcoins: +1.132%
WBTC: -0.006%

So from what I have heard, the fund (KiwiSaver Growth Strategy) has invested around 5% of its cash in to Bitcoin. In percentage and actual terms, it is huge. And if I am not mistaken, this is the first time that a government approved pension fund is making an investment in cryptocurrency. I am sure that in the long term, they will benefit from this investment. Also, many other pension funds around the world are going to take note of this investment.

And most of the previous posters missed the most important point. They made the purchase in October 2020, when the average price was $10,000 per coin. As per the current rates, their $17.5 million investment has grown to $101 million.

Rather than the banks and exchanges doing KYC individually, there should be a centralized system where KYC needs to be done just once. When the individual banks ask for additional KYC verification then they can be directed towards the centralized sites. This will reduce the effort not just for the end-user, but also for the banks and exchanges. On top of that, it will eliminate the risk of fraudsters getting access to the KYC data.

Name calling just confirms that you lost the argument. There can be high and low cycles, but Europe as a whole is going through a "high" cycle right now. Countries such as Italy, Spain and France are going through very high number of cases. So how can you justify the fact that UK and Israel are representing outliers with low number of cases? Italy has reported 417 deaths today. Spain reported 590 deaths on 26th March (data after that hasn't been released).  Leave all that.. Ireland reported 13 deaths yesterday (almost the same number as the neighboring UK, with just 1/10th of the population).

In my country, most of the shopping and payments were done through digital mode even before the pandemic. But from what I am hearing from my friends in India and some of the developed nations, the share of digital purchases and payments have risen there as well. This can have a negative impact for some people in these countries. Because my friends are saying that many of the small and medium sized shopkeepers are facing bankruptcy due to lack of business.

I don't need to write a 500-word essay to prove that the vaccines are working. All I need is a few points.

1. Three months back, the United Kingdom was facing a COVID 19 catastrophe, with an average of 50,000 to 60,000 new cases and 1,000 to 2,000 daily deaths. Yesterday they reported 3,862 new cases and 19 new deaths (most of it among younger people who have not received the vaccine yet).

2. In January 2021, Israel was reporting an average of 10,000 new COVID 19 cases. Yesterday they reported a grand total of 88 new cases.

3. China reported a total of 8 new cases and 0 deaths yesterday.

And it is no coincidence that UK, China and Israel have the highest rates of vaccination in the world. The COVID 19 infections have fallen by 90% to 99% as a result of vaccination. China has vaccinated close to 100 million people.

On the other hand, countries such as Brazil, which had ignored vaccination now reports the highest number of COVID 19 cases in the world.

I am not from India, but being a frequent visitor to that country, I can say that demonetization didn't brought any positives to the economy. The main objective was to reveal unaccounted funds being held by tax evaders. In this regard, the exercise was a massive failure. Because the government itself admitted that more than 99% of the demonetized banknotes were successfully exchanged by those who held them (either directly, or using proxies). The ban on cryptocurrency, if implemented will be just another blunder.

I am not a hater of Tesla/Elon, but I have serious doubts regarding the viability of such crazy valuations. Tesla is now worth $578 trillion (as per the latest market cap from the NASDAQ exchange), but their annual revenue is only around 1/100th of this number. The P/E ratio is 939. Obviously I understand that P/E should be high for new innovations, but the ratio of almost a thousand? It makes me uncomfortable.

That can be said about the other teams as well. Look at France and Germany. Also Netherlands and Italy. These teams are also struggling now, because their legendary players have retired. It will take some time for the youngsters to develop team bonding and cohesion. But their performance is still OK. I will not write off Spain just because of two poor performances. They didn't had enough time to train, due to the pandemic.

Litecoin survived for so long, but I am afraid that is has become outdated by now. It is still being accepted by a lot of online stores, but the falling exchange rate makes it risky to deal with this coin. It's exchange rate against BTC now stands at around BTC0.0033, a level which is almost 90% lower than what it had three years ago. Ethereum also is facing a lot of competition from other altcoins such as Polkadot and Cardano.