Making money is the main goal of any trader, why else would you risk your existing money to make a profit? The main question now is do we focus on short term profit or long term profit. As a day trader the only real concern is short term profit and to repeat it regularly. The average investor is more concerned with medium to long term profits, which in my opinion involves much less risk than day trading. Any newbie to the trading world should not be focusing on short term profit in my opinion. Crypto prices tend to fluctuate a lot and it's hard to stay on top of the current trends. You are also right that we should be focusing more about learning and getting experience than making the highest possible return. But we should always keep an eye on the profitability of our trading strategies and if we are making losses we need might need to adapt to new market conditions.

I think that it's still a good price right now to invest in bitcoins, it's not cheap but also not expensive. There is no guarantee that you make a profit in the next 6 month or 1 year, however your chance to make a profit long term are good. Nobody can give you an exact estimate how much profit you are going to make, there is a lot of uncertainty with investing in crypto currencies. What I can tell you is that there aren't many good alternatives at the moment, the high inflation rate makes any money market funds or savings account bad investments. The outlook for stocks is not great either, cryptos are a better alternative. Don't wait too long until you start buying, with the DCA method you could be buying a constant amount every month for the next year. It's best to not worry so much about the perfect price to buy or sell, it's nearly impossible to get the timing right.

For me the only real time to gamble is in the evening because of my work schedule. I would expect that most people are like me and spend all day at their work place and only have free time in the evening for gambling. If I had the free time I would prefer also to gamble in the afternoon like you. It's a better time slot because our brain activity is higher than in the evening. In the evening I am usually a bit tired and might make more mistakes than in the afternoon. The best time is when you feel the luckiest and can concentrate the most on gambling.

It's true that a loss is not the worst thing in gambling and we shouldn't focus too much on it, because it can't be avoided. Losing is part of gambling as is winning. We can't have the one without the other one. The longer we gamble the higher the chance that we will make a loss eventually, there is no gambler that wins a 100% of his bets. That's why we need a system to deal with losses and not get emotional attached too much to our gambling. We shouldn't feel bad about things that can't be avoided and rather try go learn from them. The main question should be if the losses could have been avoided or are part of our strategy. Most strategies are in the 40-50% chances, which makes losses quite common. Another question should be how we react after a big loss, it's important not to fall into a tilt mindset and gamble more reckless afterwards and even lose more money.

Going through your list it all sounds like very easy mistakes that all of us can avoid. I would put your 2.) point as the most important mistake that should be avoided, never use borrowed money when gambling. In the movies it might look nice when someone uses leverage to make a huge profit, but that isn't the real world and we are more likely to lose large sums of money than to win. Your 1,3 and 5. point  all sound very similar and can be avoided of we are using a gambling strategy. For years now I use a martingale approach to gambling that helps me a lot to know exactly how much I should be betting each round. The more we gamble the harder it is to keep track of our situation and make the right decision, a good strategy can help a lot here.

I have no idea how a circus is structured, but I would expect that it's not a community owned circus is most cases and there will be a boss on the top. And the one on the top who manages everything and holds the most risks will likely be the richest out of the whole circus. As for the land owner of where the circus is located I don't think they make a lot of money. At least in my city the circus is always far outside near some park, the rent is not going to be high for it. Reading through your list of professions they are mostly just jobs and shouldn't be earning much more money than in another setting. Like the salesman or the performer can't be making much more money than in another venue which is not a circus. The only person that could be earning a lot would be a specialist that has a professional training, maybe when there are deadly animals like lions than get special training the handlers could more money for the risk they take.

Another very interesting week of professional CSGO matches is coming up with the BLAST Paris Major 2023 European qualifications happening. With the announcement of Counterstrike 2 I think that the hype for CSGO is going to intensify this summer. We have 8 matches coming up on Thursday where a lot of strong teams are facing weaker opponents which is giving us a good opportunity for some save bets, even though the payouts are going to be small. These are all best of one matches, so there could be some surprises if one team has a bad day. That is why I am going to limit myself to only betting on 4 matches to not spend too much money. First match will be Virtus.pro vs SAW which should be an easy win for Virtus.pro. My second bet will be NaVi vs Into the Breach which should be won by NaVi without much trouble. My third bet will be on FaZe vs OG, which is going to be won by FaZe hopefully. And my last bet is going to be a bit risky in the match Team Liquid vs 00Nation, I am going with the Brazilians on this one. Coldzera is still one of my favourite players and I hope they get a good day and can win the match.

Yes I am still holding strong and not even thinking about selling any of my coins. Why are so many people now at 28,000 USD thinking about selling now? The price is nothing compared to the ATH, long term bitcoin is going to rise much higher. The inflation in the world is going to push BTC, so is the halving next year. Like you I was buying last year and all my purchases are in the green now. Making small purchases every month was the best approach to get cheap entry prices. In my opinion it makes no sense to sell any coins right now. I will rather keep buying more coins when I have available money to spare. When selling now the risk of missing out on the next big rally would be too big.

You are right that luck is the most important factor in gambling. Without luck there is no chance of winning long term, but the longer we okay the smaller becomes the impact from luck. Any long term gambler will eventually reach the averages for his winning and losing chances. Unfortunately the chances for losing are slightly higher than for winning, that's how the casino manages to make a profit. The only real control a gambler has is the amount he bets, all the winning chances are predetermined by the casino games. That is why I try to keep my losses as small as possible, while still having chances to make a profit. Also important for me is to take a part of my winnings every time and save them. This helps me to grow my bankroll longterm and stay motivated for another big win.

That's good of countries to become more willing to deal with their own currencies directly between each other, instead of using the US Dollar. To a certain extent this is going to reduce the number of financial transactions needed and also increases demand for these currencies. In international trade it's usually one country that sells goods, material or commodities and in the past was paid with US Dollar, the country then could use the money to buy anything they want from all other countries that accept USD. Now with more bilateral trade, the country that receive the foreign currency would need to exchange it or have a smaller range of countries to buy things with the money. This could be a  great way for smaller countries to try and generate more trade. Especially when it's harder to move large quantities of foreign money around. This could also be an effort to engage more into goods vs goods trading instead of settling for money.

Most people are expecting another election of Biden vs Trump which would be hilarious to be honest. Trump is a great guy to see a constant stream of memes, as for his chances to win the election it's hard to tell at the moment. There is still the problem of him getting arrested and losing a lawsuit because of his payoffs to Stormy Daniels. These high profile court cases could create a lot of negative feedback and would be used by the democrats to further alienate his voter base. On the other side is Biden who is already so old right now that it seems kind of strange for him to be in the office another 4 year term. Placing any bet right now seems very risky and I would only do it with a small bet for the fun, not really with the intention of making a lot of money. 

These drops are not really that big compared to the average amount a gambler spends at a casino in a month. You can look at it as form of rake back from the casino and almost all the big casinos are offering these days. During the covid lockdowns we had a big boom in the online gambling industry and casinos needs to be competitive to attract new customers and maintain their gamblers. In my opinion these drops are legit and I haven't heard otherwise. Also most casinos have a chat window where you can actually see which players get the drops. For the casino it's a form of advertising and the players can't withdraw that money. For example at one poker casino where I play regularly, the give every gambler daily a 0.25 USD tournament ticket. You have to play with it and even when you win you can't withdraw that money, you need to play with 3x the amount you won before being eligible to withdraw. That is a great system as it increase the number of games at the casino and doesn't hurt much the profitability of the casino.

I don't think the two are the same. Maybe there is some more general meaning for the two phrases, but for me chasing losses means that you can't take a break from your current gambling session and want to gamble until you recover again. This is usually a very dangerous situation as we become only focused on the amount we need to win and don't focus anymore on the risk we are taking for it. In many cases chasing losses is going to lead to higher losses. Finding closure for me means to accepting your current position and finding a compromise. This could be for example to tell ourselves to quit after out next win, even if the whole session is a loss. The approach is much more rational as it accepts the loss we made, but at least let's us end on a win. It can also help to focus on our overall bankroll and to make sure that we can always come back to gamble another day.

There is no reason at all for me to withdraw bitcoins at moment. It's nice to see the bitcoin price to finally recover, but I don't think the recovery is going to stop here. Prices will keep rising over the next few months and the people who sold now will feel bad. Don't forget that inflation is still in the 8-10% range and we need to have a plan ready what to do with our profits if we sell now. Buying unnecessary things at the moment is a bad idea, I would only sell my coins if it's an emergency. In case you have a promising investment opportunity coming up than it would make sense to withdraw some coins, otherwise I would just keep them.

Usually during risky times is the best chance to make some money. When we wait until everybody thinks now is the best time to invest, then it's usually already too late to make big profits. There are no guarantees when it comes to investing, risk is always involved, it's what brings the higher return than a bank account. At the current time the worst thing we can do is not invest our money. Inflation rates are around 8-10% and the bank only pays 1.5-2.5% interest on the bank accounts. Don't wait too long until you start investing. The best approach is to split up your money and follow the DCA method, you will buy a constant amount over a long period of time and don't worry so much about the individual purchase price.

It's true that not every gambler uses combi bets to enhance their odds, or at least spread out his bets to reduce overall risk. To most of us here on the forum it seems crazy to spend such kind of money on one single bet. I am also not a fan of combi bets, because I tend to pick too many risky bets, it's usually one leg that ruins everything for me. Still I would always prefer to have multiple smaller independent bets than to put all my money into one. One of my best friends is the best example for the exact opposite, he only bets on his home team and always for them to win. For almost 5 years he has the same bet each week and only adjusts the amount he bets based on their winning chance. Placing only one bet limits us too much and has bigger risks to something go wrong.

Hope alone is not a guarantee that the price is going to rise long term. In my opinion it's a bad idea to buy any kind of risky assets with borrowed money. There is no guarantee that it's going to pay off and we face a lot of risks in the meantime. A loan usually requires us to make periodic interest payment, and with bitcoins we don't have any income if we don't sell. We could be forced to liquidate some coins at unfavourable prices. When it comes to real estate it's a different story, because we usually live in the house or apartment and would need to compare the monthly loan cost to rent payments. It's not like we could avoid living anywhere for free, the opportunity cost are quite high. So buying any crypto currency with a loan is bad debt in my opinion.

In my opinion demo accounts are a great tool to get familiar with the ins and outs of trading and we can learn a lot from it. It depends all on our motivation and mindset towards the demo account to make the experience as real as possible. The first time I got involved with demo accounts was back in highschool, we had in my last few years always a stock trading challenge sponsored by one of the big banks. We were basically trading real stocks and options on a paper account with some prices for the top 3 traders at the end. Even though you don't really feel the wins and losses you can make it a real experience if you believe in it. The same thing I would recommend to do when trying out trading for the first time. It's our own decision to be emotional invested in a demo account or not, if we start the whole experience thinking that it's not real money anyways than we will probably not learn a lot. Demo accounts are a great way to test our strategies and see how profitable we would be in the real world.     

Of course you can make all these payments with bitcoins. There are basically two options, the first would be that in your country bitcoins are accepted as form of payment. That would be the best solution as you can directly make payments in BTC and send the coins without needing to exchange them first. The second option would be that only FIAT money is accepted, then you would first need to exchange your BTC to FIAT and then pay all the bills. So as long as there is an active market for bitcoins you should be fine getting around with your coins. But in both cases bitcoins aren't really a bank, because a bank offers a wider range of services. To me bitcoin is a currency, we can't get a loan alone from bitcoins, as there needs to be a person that actually lends us the coins. Bitcoin is a decentralised currency that requires us to interact with other people, we still need a platform to engage in the services that banks would offer us directly. Making transfers isn't really the definition of being a bank alone. The main question is however how much do we still need a bank with all their services in the futures? Wouldn't it be much cheaper if we find a peer to peer solution without the whole banking expenses behind it.

The main argument for renting vs buying a house or apartment is that you don't lock yourself down in one place. In my country it has become quite common for people to change their job frequently, a good friend of mine for example lived in 3 different countries over the last 8 years. Owning an apartment in such a case would make it much more difficult to switch cities and accepting a new job. Renting instead of owning gives us a lot of flexibility and also is less cost that we need to pay each month. When buying an apartment or house it involves usually 80% of borrowed money which can take a very long time to pay back. Especially now in times of inflation rates of 10% the borrowing cost can increase quite a lot down the road. It can take 30 years to pay off one house and is going to put a lot of constraints on us.