No one is talking about Bitcoin gold nowadays and no one is using it for making payments or any other purpose. There was a time when BTG had some value. Back in 2017 December, the exchange rate was above BTC0.02 per coin (the current exchange rate is around 98% lower). Those who invested in BTG have witnessed most of their capital going up in smoke. And if I am not wrong, BTG is no longer in the top-100 list of Coinmarketcap.

It was really really close... The last wicket partnership between Mehidy Hasan Miraz and Abu Jayed Chowdhury took them so close to the finishing mark, but in the end Jomel Warrican got the crucial wicket of Miraz before he could finish the job. When Nayeem Hasan got out, Bangladesh still needed some 42 runs. But Miraz was scoring runs at such an ease and I thought that he may be able to score the remaining runs.


long time back.. one of my Indian friends sent me this:

It takes a lot of courage to deviate from the statements that were issued previously and to admit own mistakes. PayPal was very critical of Bitcoin a few years ago. They even closed down a number of accounts that were used for cryptocurrency trading. But eventually they admitted that cryptocurrency is the future of finance and they will benefit if they adopt Bitcoin in their platform. To their credit, they admitted their mistake as soon as it was evident and went for Bitcoin without wasting any time. Now MasterCard is following their footsteps and the other payment processors such as Visa are also looking towards Bitcoin adoption seriously.

Ever since I got my first mBTC in my wallet, I haven't seen a single online shop accepting DOGE as a mode of payment. DOGE doesn't have any practical real life usage, and it is not widely used for making payments. And I can understand why it is not being used for payments. No one want to trust a joke coin, which can go up or down by as much as 50% in a single day. And also, unlike the other popular options such as BTC, ETH, BCH and LTC, we don't know much about the bugs and vulnerabilities that are present in DOGE.

From what I have seen, altcoins are not in a good condition right now. Whatever spike occurring now is mostly due to the Bitcoin rally. For the last 12-18 months, I haven't heard a single news article related to increased acceptability or adoption for any of the altcoins (although I can show hundreds of suhc articles for Bitcoin). There is a bull run going on in the altcoin market as well, but I don't think that it is sustainable.

If the government had a conciliatory approach, then it should have done the same with other sectors as well, such as gambling. Despite repeated requests from the public, they have refused to legalize gambling or cannabis consumption. The same goes with cryptocurrency as well. They want to ban anything that they don't like. You know how stupid they can be, when porn is banned in the country. These people still have a 15th century mentality, and it is difficult to do reasoning with them, or their supporters. 

I have already explained about it here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5316416.msg56327803#msg56327803

What the Indian government is proposing is not just the prohibition of cryptocurrency, but also confiscation of wealth from the existing cryptocurrency users. As such, it is against the constitution. I hope the supreme court of India will nullify this measure, if it gets passed in the parliament.

And I don't think that other countries will follow such measure, because wealth confiscation is against democratic ideals. Forget democracies, even dictatorships such as those in Cuba and North Korea would think twice before ordering wealth confiscation.

The scenario in India is different, because there is a large group of largely illiterate and brainwashed followers of the ruling party who will stand by whatever policies they make. Most of these people live in slums and have a deep hatred towards successful people who have access to good quality living. Obviously they will support measures such as wealth confiscation. But I don't think that such measures can be introduced in any of the developed nations.

Ideally if the government is concerned about preventing misuse of cryptocurrency, then they should regularize rather than banning it. But here the intention is something different. As many of the users have pointed out, some of the businessmen who are closely associated with the ruling party have taken a keen interest in the cryptocurrency sector. This proposed bill was created on their behalf, to get rid of the competition. They have tried this strategy with several other sectors in the Indian economy, and have achieved a great deal of success. They are hoping to repeat the same with cryptocurrency as well.

BTW, the penalty being proposed may be termed unconstitutional. Investments made before the ban can't be penalized, as the asset was not illegal at that time (someone working in the legal profession may be able to clarify further). And in case the proposed bill is unconstitutional, then it will be nullified by the supreme court of India.

There are both advantages and disadvantages of providing the users with such an option. But in my opinion, one of the basic principles of making payment with Bitcoin is that it is irreversible. If we give the option of cancelling the payment, after the coins are sent, then we are overriding that core principle. And then Bitcoin will be similar to PayPal, and the new functionality will be misused by the scammers. Let's stick to the core principles for now.

The problem with Virat Right now is that his aggression has got converted to arrogance and ego. As a result, he is unable to take unbiased decisions and in the end it affects the winning probability of the team. A lot of people have already pointed out his mistakes. But rather than rectifying them, he has attacked those who pointed out these facts. I don't think that he will ever change, unless the BCCI takes some concrete action, such as making Rahane as the test team captain.

From what I could see, it has gone much higher. When the OP made this post, the transaction fee was around $10. It has increased by almost 100% since then. Imagine this. A bounty hunter selling his token needs to dish out $40 just to move his coins (tokens from his ERC-20 wallet to exchange, and then ETH back to the personal wallet). If he receive $50 worth of tokens, then it will be reduced to just $10. This is so unfair to small scale users. And the situation with Bitcoin is even worse. I saw a thread, where an user mentioned that he paid $50 as fee for a single transaction.

LOL.. not surprising because a few days back I paid $15 per transaction ($75 in total for 5 transactions, I already posted about it earlier). I have a feeling that the high fee is here to stay. The number of users are increasing at a steady pace. Now the user adoption has reached a new peak, as a result of the hype created by Elon Musk, Tesla and PayPal. But the block size remains at the same old level. So it is natural to have such high fee levels. Even earn.com is showing an average fee of 102 Sat/byte.

This is extremely worrying. There was a study on the South African variant, and it was found that the vaccines which are in use currently have very low efficacy against it (even lower than what you have posted). Here is a link:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/08/oxford-covid-vaccine-10-effective-south-african-variant-study

Oxford Covid vaccine has 10% efficacy against South African variant, study suggests


This study was conducted for the vaccine from AstraZeneca and I don't know whether the vaccines from Pfizer or Moderna are showing a better efficacy or not. But the information we have till now is very worrying. And the worst part is that we may witness more mutations like the South African strains in the near future.

If India lose the series, then there is no chance that they will qualify for the WTC finals at Lord's. But then I am not sure whether Kohli will lose his job if that happens. I have a feeling that by now Kohli has grown bigger than the team. It won't be easy to replace him as far as test captaincy is concerned. Also, there will be resistance to some of the regular players. In the end we will see a repeat of the situation we had a few years back, when the players were divided into two camps, each led by Dhoni and Kohli.

I am not sure about this. South Africa has now lost three matches in a row (two test matches and the first T20I match). The morale is depleted among the South African ranks. On the other hand, the Pakistanis are in top form right now, despite fielding a relatively young and inexperienced side for the T20I series. My prediction is 3-0 sweep for Pakistan in the T20I series, after their 2-0 whitewash of the test series. But after all, Pakistan is one of the most unpredictable teams and it is really hard to make a bet in their favor.

For me, if it is NZ vs AUS, then both will be having equal chances. They will be playing in Lord's and both the teams won't have the home advantage. Australia is over-dependent on a few players, such as Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne. On the other hand, New Zealand is a well balanced team and they are not dependent on anyone. But then, Australia have players such as Steve Smith, who can win matches in his own. NZ lacks a player of that calibre. That said, I don't want to make any predictions until the India vs England series is over.

Anything less than 50-60 runs during the first powerplay is not regarded as a good start, especially in sub-continental surfaces. On top of that, they have lost two of the important wickets as well (that of Babar Azam and Haider Ali). One thing that irritates me the most regarding the Pakistan team is their lack of team bonding and coordination. The run out of Babar Azam is the perfect example. They need to be more careful about the communication, while batting.

There is a real risk of SEC spoiling the party, although the chances are pretty low. In India, they are bringing up a bill to prohibit Bitcoins and specifically they are asking the institutions to stay away from cryptocurrency. However, since the American government is run by more competent people I don't think that the SEC will bring any such law, which will prohibit the investment by institutions. But they can always create new obstacles, which may make it difficult for the institutions to move some of their money to cryptocurrency.

Back in 2017, it was ordinary investors who were afraid of FOMO (fear of missing out). Now it is the corporations that are afraid of it. After PayPal integrated Bitcoin to its platform, the other payment processors are rushing to do the same and MasterCard won't be the last one. No one wants to be left behind, especially when it comes to modern technology and innovations. It's a highly competitive world, and in order to stay relevant the corporations need to consider new innovations.

This was expected. PayPal started it, and now the other payment processors will follow. What we need is a single trigger and the rest of the batch will follow. Everyone has seen how PayPal benefitted from the decision to allow Bitcoin in their platform. It was beneficial for them, in terms of number of users and revenue. The same is going to happen with Tesla adoption as well. Tesla has started it, and large number of corporations are going to follow suit.