Oh wow buddy, that is a tough situation. First of all don't take any money from your family without asking. I doesn't matter if she is fine with it later, you should discuss it beforehand. 200 USD is also not such a huge sum, even if you lose some of it quickly you could repay your wife with your own money. From the way I am reading your post I think it would be good to get some realistic expectation in trading crypto currencies. Starting out small in trading is a good idea, just don't expect to make huge returns quickly. If you are looking for ways to double your money in a short period of time you need to accept a lot of risk, and the chances are quite high that you are going to lose some money instead of making big returns.

The last 3 matches of the ESL Pro League Season 17 are happening this weekend, semi finals today and the grand final tomorrow. All of the matches are going to be a highlight and should attract a lot of new viewers after Counter Strike 2 has been announced this week. There is a huge hype for CSGO now as the game is going to transfer this summer to the new software. The complete overhaul of CSGO by Valve is going to make sure that it will remain as the number one competitive shooter for the next 5 years. The first match today is going to be Cloud9 vs ENCE, both teams are quite strong and the match could be going either way. On paper Cloud9 is the stronger team, but ENCE had to beat some strong teams like G2 to get to the finals. I think they can pull it off and reach the grand final, with the current odds it's a good bet. The second match is FaZe vs NaVi, which is going to be even closer than the first match. Both teams only lost one match during the Season, but NaVi had to crawl their way through the lower brackets, so they played much more games. The match is pretty close to a coin flip and could go both ways depending on the performance of s1mple and ropz. I am going with FaZe for the match, and the final will then be FaZe vs ENCE where FaZe is going to win the grand final.

There are quite a few crypto poker sites online where you can find active games. My favourite casino where I like to play is SwC Poker. They have a neutral layout that makes it easy to get used to it and they offer a wider range of poker games. Most of casinos only focus on no-limit and pot-limit poker games, but there are some other nice variants like Omaha High/Low and 2-7 Draw. In the end these are completely different games and require different strategies, that is why it's harder to find active tables for it. On SwC you can just sit down on an empty table and wait for other people to join. In my opinion it comes down to where you are the most comfortable playing. Having different layouts can have an impact on the way we play and we should choose the casino which we like the most. Just try out all the recommendations you get here on the forum and settle for the one where you are having the best games with.

Every time the bitcoin price starts rising again the same question comes up, should people take out loans to invest in bitcoins. I am glad that the majority of the community here is against such investment practices. I feel the exact same way, it makes no sense to invest into risky assets with borrowed money. The problem is that there is no guarantee when bitcoins are going to rise. Bitcoins are long term on an upwards trend, but short term volatility can lead to losses. And with a loan we are required to make periodic interest payments, if we don't make enough profit to repay the interest we could be forced to sell some coins. I would argue that for most investors the risks is too high to trade with loans, and it's better to first save some money and then invest it.

Buying cheap and selling when it's expensive is the way how we make money in trading. The question is if the bitcoin price around 27-28,000 USD is really cheap or not at the moment. Last year the price was definitely cheaper. It's good to be optimistic, but I am more cautious about the next 3 months. What is the rational behind your prediction that the price is going to double in such a short period of time? The collapse of 2-3 banks seems to be a good motivation to go into crypto currencies, but in case of bigger banks starting to tumble things could get messy and lead to another almost financial system collapse like in 2008. If you have money right now then buying some bitcoins is a good idea, especially if you are convinced prices are going to double. You could also consider spreading out your purchases a bit and see if there will be another crash.

No of course it's not too late to start investing in crypto currencies. Every day brings new opportunities that we can profit of. The only point where it would make no sense to start trading cryptos would be if all countries in the world ban cryptos and we couldn't exchange them anymore. Which is very unrealistic, even is some countries ban the use of cryptos there will always be other countries that encourage it. My advice to you is to not think too much and wait to long again before making the first step. You should definitely learn about cryptos, but you can do this while already owning some. Buying bitcoins would be a great first step and when owning some coins you become more motivated to learn about the subject. Once you are familiar with bitcoins you can take a look at the alt coin market and learn a lot about all the projects. Just because we don't know something doesn't mean we should be staying away from it.

While it's true that AI is making a lot of changes and has huge potential in the way it's quickly analysing data and learning from it, I am not convinced that it will make many changes to the gambling industry. Back in high-school I learned a bit about casinos in my statics class and the first we focused on was that gambling rounds are independent from each other. So even after analysing all the past rounds over several months, is not going to change the odds of us winning or losing. Every new round is going to give us the exact same odds, which makes it very hard to find a winning strategy. Every casino game has a house edge to ensure that casino is making money long term. If there were strategies that make a consistent profit for the gambler than the casino would need to change it's games, otherwise they would go bankrupt.

I have no personal experience with gambling addictions, so it's bit hard for me to make a general interpretation of fiat vs crypto gambling  cases. Over the past 10 years I have gambled with fiat money and with crypto currencies quite a lot and found there are some differences. The biggest difference between the two is the high volality in the bitcoin and other crypto market. This volatility can lead to much higher losses than the actual coin we lose. For example, if we gamble away last year 1 BTC and then BTC makes a 100% jump this year our loss would feel twice as hard. This is the main argument why I don't want to use cryptos when the prices are low. Using fiat to gamble and withdraw in cryptos is the best way. All the hodl investors probably feel the same and are not so likely to get addicted to gambling with cryptos.

The saving for me means that we shouldn't put all our savings into one investment. It doesn't matter if it's stocks, bonds or cryptos, there is always some risk to lose money. In my opinion we can invest 100% savings, just not in one or two assets alone. If we spread our money out and buy a well diversified portfolio than we don't have the same risk profile. Even if some of our investments are going badly, there will be others that are doing better. The whole idea is that in case we need money in the future, to buy a new car for example, or to repair our washing machine, then we are not forced to sell a bad investment. Most investments move in cycles and if we are forced to sell during a bear market it could lead to a huge loss.

A bigger home or a new car is not important for me in life and wouldn't bring me much happiness. The most important goal for me and my family is a good health. Just recently I lost my step dad due to a serious illness. He worked all his life and had his whole retirement age planned out and covered with private retirement insurance. Before he even reached his retirement age he got diagnosed and died before becoming 68. That's why there is no point in planning too far in the future if we don't have the health to enjoy the time. I would rather go on a nice vacation with my family than to buy something new for myself. The important thing is to spend time with the people you love a hope that they stay healthy as long as possible. All the money in the world doesn't matter if you are just laying in your bed all day.

Yes I did use a referral link in the past to get two friends to sign up at a poker casino where we gamble regularly. Every time they spent a certain amount of money I get a percentage of it. It's not a lot of money, but it's adding up over time. As far as I am aware there is no limitations on the bonus payout, it's like rake back that is directly added to my bankroll. Maybe it's different at other casinos, but I feel like there shouldn't be an issue if you bring active users to the casino. It's a win win situation for everybody. The only problem I see is if the referral link is spammed on the Internet and people are getting annoyed by it. The casino could see a high number of people using the link, but nobody actually signs up with it or deposits any real money.

Isn't that normal in today's world? Everybody tries to get the best for themselves, no matter the cost for others. Most countries today are based on capitalism which means that we will reach the best outcome for the economy if everybody tries to make the most money for themselves. The gambling industry is not different from any other industry. That is why I am always cautious if I see someone using referral links to try and attract new gamblers. These referrals usually give a percentage of the money I spent back to the promoter. If there are some wrong information only to trick us signing up, I would make sure to contact the casino directly. A casino is more interested in long term customers, than in gamblers who play one time and feel cheated by fake advertising.

I am not an expert on KYC, but from what I read in some casino terms and conditions is that KYC is many cases linked to hard cap. So the casino won't ask any detailed information from you when signing up, depositing money and withdrawing small amounts. KYC only comes into place when withdrawing fund bigger than 1,000-2,500 USD. On all the casinos where I play these numbers are made public and any gambler can read up on them. It's not some arbitrage numbers the casino uses to try and cheat us out I'd our winnings. Before playing with real money we should always read up all the necessary information. It's sad that you lost money because of it and if the casino changed their terms after you won money it's wrong and should be challenged. Over the years I kind of accepted KYC as it's becoming the industry norm.

That's nice of you to write down your story here on the forum. It's always nice to read other people's story with cryptos, even if they made mistakes. The funny thing is that 2016 was also the year when I got bitcoins, but unlike you I didn't buy any books. I only used online articles and the forum here to learn about bitcoin's. Now with hindsight I wish I would have invested more time into my crypto education. My biggest mistake was in 2016/7 to sell all my coins again and not stick around for the long run. Looking at bitcoin as a great tool to save money longterm is the best approach.

It's a bit hard to follow your story, what has real estate investing to do with gambling? I don't think that every business has a dark secret behind it. Just because there are some bad apples doesn't mean the tree is bad. Gambling is not a successful business model for the customer, only for the casino operators. If you don't have any many the chances of becoming rich through gambling is slim. Which doesn't mean it's not going to happen, just the number of people losing money is much larger.

Getting tricked into eating wierd stuff for money was pretty common in my highschool time. I remember that one time a friend of mine bet me 20 USD that I couldn't eat a whole garlic in less than 3 minutes. Unfortunately I took the bet and swallowed all the small garlics as whole without a problem and felt good about the money. In the end I smelled like a garlic myself for a whole week and every time I started sweating I was almost throwing up. Until today I hate the taste of garlic. The craziest bet I ever heard about was like the guy that sold his house to put everything he owned on roulette. No idea how you could put your whole life on one single bet. The funny thing was that he got filmed doing it and it's on youtube, I watched that clip so many times with my friend. 

Bitcoin is a great tool for people who are looking for ways to save money. It enables us to store value outside of the reach from the government. With all the inflation going on in the fiat monetary systems in most countries we can try to escape it with buying bitcoins. This works for the poor and for the wealthy people, the problem is that the poor people don't have much money to save in the first place. I don't see bitcoin as the perfect solution, because people money before they can save. Right now we are seeing rising food cost and living expenses that will lower the saving rates in many households. Bitcoin alone won't be able to eradicate poverty, it needs economic reforms from the government to create better and more competitive jobs that will pay a higher salary. 

I have never heard of gambling on food eating, sounds funny though. Now I am wondering if there is a lot of money in the market, I just know the youtube competitions where skinny girls eat huge meals. To be honest all of the things you mention here are real people engaging in a sport or activity and you would bet on the outcome, this is more comparable to sports betting we have now than casino gambling. The internet gambling that became a boom during the covid lockdowns where traditional casino games, where you play alone against the house. It's hard to compare these two to each other. When watching life competitions it's a lot about the atmosphere and enjoying the whole event, from home on our PC we can't feel the same.

I don't think this is true, because at least in my family there are a lot of people who like sports and are not gambling at all. First of all there is a big difference between males and females being interested in gambling. From all the female friends I have and also wifes of my friends I know that there are only 1-2 woman who are really into gambling and like to bet, all the others would not use their money for gambling. Maybe in different countries there is a stronger mentality for woman to enjoy gambling, but also in the casino in my home town the male to female ratio is like at least 1 to 6, maybe even 1 to 10. And among my male friends there are some who don't like gambling at all, I think that around 60-75% of my friends enjoy gambling. That is why I would expect that maybe 30-40% of all adults are involved in gambling in some form. You also need to take into account that in some countries gambling is banned by the government which will lead only a few people doing it illegally.   

I always like to read about stories on bitcointalk, it's a good way to share our own gains and losses and try to help others not to do the same mistakes we did. Writing down our own story is not only helping others, but also helps to reflect on our own actions. When reading other peoples story I don't want to be them, we all do mistakes and there is no way we can just copy the success of someone else. Time has passed and it's much easier now to find the best strategy for the past than it is for the future. We shouldn't feel bad about invest too late into bitcoins. Probably 90% of the bitcoins users these days joined the party late, that is part of the game. Back in 2008/2009 we had this huge financial crisis which scared off a lot of investors. I still remember how much money my father lost with his stocks and that he never bought any new stocks after that. Living through such a crisis can scare you for life and will make it hard to find the courage to invest into a completely new asset class.