Lets get back to winning ways this next fight night shall we I've had some terrible weeks ever since the Adesanya night I feel. I know that Stipe is probably the overwhelming favorite from the fans point of view, but at least the odds are fairly stacked. In fact, I'm seeing it favour Ngannou right now, which I would be inclined to agree with. I think Ngannou has better prepared this time out, and I believe he will get the job done with a TKO. However, if Ngannou can't get that knockout blow I see Stipe taking this via decision. I can't see Stipe taking Ngannou out, and I can't see Ngannou's fitness holding up in the championship rounds to get him a decision win.

There has been positive changes with the Altcoin sections though, the implementation of the bumping system helped with reducing the amount of fake bumping or at the very least prevented most users from ever seeing it. So, despite it still being of lower quality compared to other sections in the forum, there has been improvements in the last few years.

Now, how we actually combat it further without stating the obvious; removing the possibility to run bounty campaigns, I really don't know. As far as I can see as long as these are allowed, and altcoins remain popular there will always be a spam problem over there.

Bitcoin Discussion still has its lower quality posts, and this isn't because of bounties, at least not primarily. So, its obviously an issue outside of bounties also, which means removing bounties probably wouldn't eradicate the issue inside the altcoin sections either.

I'm really disappointed in Holland honestly. I get it, its part of his character, and hes gone on record in the past that he doesn't take fighting as serious as other fighters, but that fight was terrible. It wasn't the fact that he had no answer to the wrestling that his opponent brought, but the fact that he wasn't motivated to at least try. Multiple times, I saw against the cage not guarding, not doing anything. Well, except for running his mouth of course. Then the last few seconds of the fight, instead of going for the knockout, which he was very capable of doing on that night as previous rounds showed, he walked away from his opponent.

No matter how entertaining Holland might be when he runs his mouth, I don't think I could ever root for him again. I'm always going to want him to get beat, and truly if he doesn't redeem himself in some big way, and continues these antics I'm not sure I'd even want him in the UFC.

I get your point, but in comes a point where someone is objectively wrong. Imagine having a discussion about how Bitcoin, has the biggest amount of users in the world when compared to other currencies. Its verifiable wrong to state that, so if someone was trying to put that point across, they are wrong, and therefore no matter the point of view they are looking at it from, it doesn't matter.

This is a poor example, and I can't think of a better one right now, but I hope that you understand the point I'm trying to make. It doesn't matter what point of view someone is looking at if its objectively wrong. However, when it comes to opinion, or speculation based discussions, of course there is always going to be alternative views, which is what makes discussion so great.

An example of this, would be how a rich man might view Bitcoin as a risky asset to invest in, however a person from a poor background, might see the volatility of Bitcoin as a positive, and a way of earning money quick enough to help their family.

For this type of business, and considering various factors including. but not limited to; Security risks, lack of business in Bitcoin to justify it, waiting for confirmations, and the fact that Bitcoin is generally quite volatile it might be worth giving them the advice that they should probably look to invest in Bitcoin, and not accept it right there on the spot. As we know, confirmations ideally should happen before accepting a coin, just for good practice. However, this might be unpractical when it comes to short rides, and you would probably have to delay the passenger.

I don't know, but I just don't think Bitcoin works well in this instance. It takes time to make a Bitcoin payment generally, with various factors someone has to take into consideration, but when someone is using a taxi service they are generally in a rush, especially in the cities. So, they want to make payment as soon as possible.

Of course, they can always accept Bitcoin on the side, and the normal advice of investing in Bitcoin still applies.

I think Khabib has been officially retired for a while, it was just Dana trying to hype up events, you know "if something special happens he may return". I believe the reasoning for Khabib was his mother asking him not to fight anymore, which although I did think there might be a slight possibility that Conor vs Khabib might happen again, that was quickly erased when Conor lost.

For the next main event I've got Holland by TKO. I'll get the rest of my god awful predictions up tomorrow (seriously my last 2/3 weeks have been awful).

You are asking this question on a Bitcoin forum, so one would assume that there will be a clear bias towards Bitcoin being the superior currency. Although, just to throw a little curve ball I'll bring up a point which I think is valid; The better currency is what suits your needs, and is in line with your goal. For example, if you aren't the risk taker, and you are saving for a house Bitcoin might not be the best thing to put your money into. Instead, a savings account which offers interest might better benefit you. For example, in the UK we have various government schemes where they will put a certain amount per earn based on how much you deposit.

That's just one example out of hundreds that could be listed. Basically, Bitcoin can be very profitable in the short term if you want to take risks, and cash out into fiat. Fiat currently is more accepted around the world. To go back to the housing argument, if you were to buy a house its very likely that you'd find that the people selling aren't willing to accept payment in Bitcoin. So, to buy a house you would likely need fiat.

However, if you believe in Bitcoin you might want to stick your money into Bitcoin, and hold onto it. Either, until its hit a certain price point which you would then withdraw or keeping it to use as the primary currency later on. Especially, if you think that Bitcoin could hit 1 million for example, keeping just 1 Bitcoin, and not touching it could potentially serve you well in the future.

Its down to your circumstance, and what you want to use your money for. There is no real better currency as we all have different needs. Objectively, if you were to look at the pros, and cons I could probably list more pros on Bitcoin's side, especially not relying on third parties, however that is also subjective, and depends on the person. Some people like to rely on third parties, and dare I say it I believe certain people might need it. For example, the fraud protection that banks have in place is actually somewhat of a good thing, and can protect those that are likely to fall for various scams.

I've seen threads which were siding on the side of poor quality be overturned, and turned into good discussion simply because of the replies added depth, and the discussion developed from there. So, we can all play our part, for threads which aren't quite bad enough for reporting, we can try, and develop the discussion by adding quality discussion. Unfortunately the issue we have is there will always be more spammers than there are users reporting, and moderators to handle the reports, which basically means unless there is a change to who, and how bounty campaigns work, we'll continue to have this problem.

I'm not completely opposed to bounties, and offering rewards for posting, and I don't usually like imposing restrictions when they aren't needed. However, I'd like to see something altered to better combat this type of spam, without enforcing too hard restrictions. There's been numerous suggestions in the past, but I'm not actually positive that any of them would achieve what we need, unless you completely remove it.

I don't know theymos' stand, but as cryptocurrency gets more popular I can see this getting a bigger, and bigger issue, and if there isn't a way to mitigate it, I expect that there would either be restrictions implemented if there are any that would benefit the forum, or if not a complete removal of bounties. Obviously, this is just my personal view point, we've managed the with bounties, and signature campaigns for a while, but at some point in the future if there is an increase in concurrent users I do see something being done about it.

I think most of the world right now wants france to win, at least that's the impression I'm getting from various friends, and rugby forums. I know Wales definitely haven't set the world alight in their performances, and I'm probably one of our biggest critics in the Pivac era. However, we've really started to demonstrate some real improvement recently, and to be honest I wasn't expecting to get this far in the competition, without losing. Yeah, we narrowly beat 14 men in the competition, but sometimes especially if its a forward that gets sent off, it can actually make it easier to play, as it just means that one of the forwards needs to do a little bit more work, and encourages that under dog type attitude.

Now this is a big test for us, France are playing some slick rugby, and were definitely the favorites to win the Six Nations, and are the favourites coming into this match. Despite this, I'm actually quietly confident going up against them. Wales are notorious for bringing in a scrappy game, and I don't think the French will want a slow, and scrappy game. I wasn't particularly impressed with them against England either.

I think we can keep the score close as long as we impose a scrappy game. I do believe we can even beat them, and pinch another grand slam. However, its all depending on whether we can make the game scrappy. I believe if its allowed to flow, and France get it to their backs then despite the attacking prowess we process now with other wingers, they won't be able to defend against the tenacious French back line.

I'm going with a Wales win, which the odds will definitely favour, although there is definitely some bias in that

If you aren't particularly fond of the bank in the first place, then I would recommend just changing banks. Not just because they are blocking cryptocurrencies, but by doing so they are demonstrating that you aren't truly in control of your money, and you are governed by their policies. I've done this in the past, I haven't agreed with the policies set out by banks, and therefore changed bank accounts. I haven't really looked back since, and the bank I'm with now hasn't blocked any transactions concerning Bitcoin.

Obviously, what others have recommended about P2P transactions is good advice, but doesn't come without its risks. Personally, I'm very strict when it comes to relying on third parties, and when they demonstrate something which goes against my beliefs, whether its in their policies or not I'll look for better alternatives. Depending on the country you are in, I've noticed that the "older" banks are more hostile towards Bitcoin, while the newer challenger banks are more accepting. There are a few older banks which are accepting of it, but out of the big ones in the UK I've either had or heard issues from friends from at least 3 of them.

When concerning transparency you can't really have it without compromising privacy in some sort of way. However, I'm not sure how much transparency is needed when concerning the payments of the campaign. Generally, people only care about if an individual has been paid, and not how much the campaign is sending in total. So, you could potentially get users to sign up without an address, but by doing so you make it harder to prove that the campaign has sent you money, especially if you want to keep your addresses private.

I'd probably be in favour of changing the way sign ups for campaigns work, and not broadcasting your address to the world upon sign up. However, having that transparent system has worked in the past for finding cheaters of the system. So, there's definitely pros, and cons to the system. Really, the people behind the campaign should probably be on the look out for people cheating the system, and would have all the addresses. However, as the saying goes two heads is better than one, and by having the addresses public you introduce a lot more that can do the vetting for them, without needing to pay someone to do it. 

I thought this, and the typical "Bitcoin is used by criminals" outlook would have been squashed when Paypal introduced Bitcoin to their platform. Obviously, the way they implemented it didn't quite benefit the former issue. However, I'm not entirely convinced, but surely Visa a reputable company introducing Bitcoin finally puts a nail in the coffin for both of these issues. It would likely see an increase in adoption, as well as price.

For certain, Visa would be fairly clued up on the volatile nature of Bitcoin, and might even be able to benefit from that by bringing more users to their platform, because it would likely be the easiest way for people to kill 2 birds with one stone. Although, we have seen in the past companies implementing Bitcoin payments, and then pulling it shortly after. I believe Steam Powered once upon a time implemented Bitcoin, and pulled it a short while after. Of course, I'd expect a payment processor like Visa to be a bit more diligent when it comes to introducing alternative payment methods on their system, but it definitely isn't unheard of big companies pulling Bitcoin after they've implemented it.

I don't know how controversial of an opinion this is, but I actually prefer watching the fights with no fans. Getting to hear the corners, the fighters sometimes talking to each other, and the impact of the shots which is pretty much all drowned out whenever we have fans back. I do get what fans bring to an occasion, and in almost every other sport I'd prefer to watch with fans. Rugby, and soccer for example have lost some of that spark without fans, especially football.

I imagine in fight island they'll be allowed fans back sooner, although I'm unsure what the regulations are over there, and the USA regulations I'm unsure of. In the UK we've allowed I think up to 2000 fans in certain football matches, but has been rather inconsistent due to the lockdowns we keep getting.

I'll post my predictions up a little later or edit this post.

As DdmrDdmr suggest I would have liked to see a larger dataset, preferably above 1000 to actually be able to start drawing out some conclusions. Although, I appreciate organizing surveys, especially when people generally aren't interested in filling out surveys to begin with, and more so when people aren't particularly interested in broadcasting that they own Bitcoin.

I believe this has been demonstrated in various different countries, but the country that comes to mind is China. China has been fairly hostile to Bitcoin in various different ways, but I believe they had the highest volume of transactions for a long period of time. I imagine they still do without checking.

When done properly, and aren't primarily pushing out some sort of agenda its a good starting place for introducing concepts that you aren't aware of, so would have never of thought of looking it up. So, although I agree that the Bitcoin whitepaper is definitely not beginner friendly, and almost assumes some sort of familiarity with cryptocurrency or computers at the very least. It does name the various concepts, and allows readers to cross reference from the whitepaper to find out more information about specific concepts. So, a whitepaper like the Bitcoin whitepaper is good for this purpose, but shouldn't be used as a learning resource on its own, as it would likely persuade people to give up for not understanding it.

For those reading the whitepaper, and are leaving with more questions than before, without any real answers there's a number of different places online that you can read about each concept. A whitepaper isn't something which is teaching you how something works, but usually talks about the concepts that the product or in this case cryptocurrency will be using, and fundamentally how it will work without actually going into great detail.

So, a whitepaper is useful to read to get a broad overview on how things work, but should be supplemented with additional resources to truly understand the concepts introduced. There's various resources from books to podcasts, but in general you can't go wrong with searching up your queries here on the forum, as its probably already been discussed at length, and has various different inputs which you wouldn't get from a one sided view point article or book.

Although, you must be wary that this forum is from individuals like you, and I which means that the viewpoints that someone has to offer, might not actually be factual. This is usually cleared up with other users pointing out the issues in someones post, but keep in mind that not everything you read here is factual, even if it is coming from a high ranked user.

The wiki is also another great resource to learn about the concepts introduced in the Bitcoin whitepaper, and if you can't find the question your looking for, and don't understand any of the material online you can always ask here in the appropriate section.

This isn't just the Bank of American, unless they are the ones funding it, but there's a campaign against Bitcoin all around the world. In the UK we've got various terrible tabloid newspapers which spout this nonsense all the time, but from time to time I'm seeing this sort of propaganda against Bitcoin on more "reputable" news sites like the BBC. Of course, the BBC are state owned, and you could assume that they would naturally want to report against Bitcoin. However, the BBC although definitely bias, are better than a lot of the miss match news outlets of today.

I'm wondering whether there's someone funding this sort of propaganda rather than it being personal view points of each "specialist". Since, I would like to think positive news regarding the Bitcoin price would get more clicks, and grab peoples attention more. However, despite the recent climb in price, I've seen the mention of it being a bubble which will "certainly pop" or like you mentioned the amount of power that Bitcoin miners use....you know ignoring much of what the world uses.

I don't think Bitcoin will become a reserve currency, unless its controlled only by a few people, making it more centralized, and something to represent value rather than having value simply by acting as a currency should. The only way we can really stop this is via adoption, and encouraging investment into Bitcoin, which is something the news outlets, and various organizations are campaigning against.

Not to mention the amount of times I've heard Bitcoin is a bubble, and its going to burst soon. Like traditional currencies, and any technology for that matter doesn't have some sort of events resembling a "bubble". They ignore that bubbles can actually be beneficial for traders, and that other currencies also have bubbles as that's the natural pattern of currencies. However, Bitcoin is more volatile in the amount that it can rise, and drop which is also part of the reason it appeals to speculative traders.

Nothing more than coincidence their past "predictions". Sure, there's been some pretty good likeliness when it comes to certain events, but we as people are pattern recognizing machines, and therefore we pick out what is familiar in a scene, and relate it back, but ignore much of what doesn't match up. Simpsons, has very likely made several other scenes which may have "predicted" something in another alternate timeline, but if the above post is correct about having predicted things 18 times (this is likely subjective too) compared with the amount of seasons that Simpsons has; which is around 32-35 seasons, with over 700 episodes in total, they've only have 18 scenes which show a likeness to real world events. Considering the creative freedom that a show like Simpsons has, its expected that they'll have these sort of "predictions". Especially, considering how broad some of these predictions are. For example, the horse meat "scandal" was something talked about before it was proven. The auto correct is something which is quite easy to think of. My point is, none of these were particularly outlandish. The equation on the board was probably the most impressive one. However, I wouldn't say most of these are particularly impressive when you consider 700 episodes total, much more scenes than that, and only "18" predicted scenarios. I do believe a few people compared Anthony Joshua VS Andy Ruiz to the scene in The Simpsons where Homer becomes a professional boxer too. Of course, its only so much alike, and not completely accurate down to every level, something which is often overlooked.

However, like I've mentioned there are some instances where its pretty crazy how they predicted it or lead to believe they have some sort of insider knowledge. The Higgs boson equation having being the most impressive. However, getting back on topic I don't think Matt Groaning, and his team actually have much insider knowledge at all, and they are now playing up to the fans by taking part in the "The Simpsons predicts things" movement. So, it goes without saying I don't think they know who Satoshi is, and I don't think it'll ever be revealed in their episodes. They have basically planted the seed in which if they do somehow make a prediction on who Satoshi is, then it will be trending everywhere, and everyone will want to watch The Simpsons from now on for fear of missing out. Although, if nothing happens, and they don't make the prediction it will simply be forgotten with no reputation loss, or viewership loss. Hence, its smart for producers to do this sort of thing.

As for other shows making "predictions" I expect Black Mirror to be one that predicts a lot of things in the future.

Bitcoin theft or any theft is indeed punishable under law. Due to the nature of Bitcoin, it can sometimes be difficult to prove that there's been a theft in the first place, and I'll admit that there's definitely complexity involved when reporting Bitcoin theft.

As for banks blocking transactions, this is somewhat true. They do indeed have fraud protection, and therefore are actively looking for suspicious activity. However, if missed, and they do indeed get missed once the transaction has been sent, and the money has been removed you'll find it rather hard to get that money back. There's been evidence of banks missing transactions, and being fooled multiple times in history. In fact, its quite a common saying within the IT industry that large organizations, and banking systems generally have poor security protocols. There's several books that have gone into detail of various high profile companies having absolutely shocking security practices. However, yeah I can acknowledge that having a safety net in terms of fraud prevention is something that people rely on these days, and will see as a benefit. However, there's clear downsides to this too, mainly convenience or "censorship". For example, your bank has the right to deny a transaction if they deem it against their policies. They can also, suspend your banking account for the same reasons. There's been various reports over the years of banks closing peoples accounts for purchasing Bitcoin as an example.

You can't send offline, this is true. However, there is ways around this if you want to have the upmost security. Its advisable to have "cold storage" which you intend to hold for a long time, secured in a offline environment. While, also having a hot wallet which houses significantly smaller amounts of Bitcoin, but Bitcoin that you intend on accessing regularly. There is ways to mitigate some of the issues you might face though, using a hardware wallet, or securing your system. If you are using cold storage for larger amounts, and another "hot wallet" for smaller amounts then you might argue that this is better practice than having a bank account which stores all of your money, which you access through a online portal.

Github or any website for that matter can be falsified as you put it. Government websites have previously been hacked, and have been falsified. I have no doubt that banks are targeted too,

I do understand your concerns, there are clear downsides to being responsible for your money, mainly being related to the lack of a safety net if something goes wrong. However, there are clear upsides to it, and if you approach Bitcoin the right way, you can argue that its more secure than any banking system in the world. You can make Bitcoin as secure as you want. From a code point of view, its been tried, and tested, and is in active development. However, for someone who doesn't particularly like to rely on third parties, controlling your money right down to the very way its stored appeals to me. Also, the freedom to move your money when you want without having to deal with additional third party policies.