Yes I think gambling became much more safe now than it was in the past. There is no more real threat to our lives when we gamble online as when we were visiting casinos. I remember reading stories of people that being robbed on the parking lot after leaving the casino with big winnings. In today's word most of the gambling is done online which gives us another layer of safety and also anonymity. Nobody knows when we win big and this can help us to avoid problems in the future. Online casinos became a big boom in the last few years and that also led to the rise of scams in the internet. It can happen for us to get scammed when gambling online, but this is nothing compared to bodily harm that can happen to us in physical altercations. Money we can always win back later, but our health is much more important. Another thing about online gambling is that news about scams spread much faster. If one casino starts promoting fake games and steals the customers funds then they will be quickly flagged as criminal casinos and gamblers can avoid them. That is why gambling is now much safer than it was before.

I have been gambling for a long time now, from sports betting to casino games I like all types for games that are being played for money with the chance to make a big profit. Like with everything in life there are good and there are bad days, we can't all just be winners. After a bad evening where I lost a big hand I definitely ask myself if all the trouble is worth it and if it wouldn't it be better to take a break from gambling. That is a normal experience I would expect many other gamblers to have as well. But as soon as I spend a day away from the casinos I feel normal again and my brain tells me that it wasn't so bad and I should try again. When it comes to gambling we need to be honest to ourselves and not try to trick our thinking. At least in my experience are big losses not very common, the same goes for big wins. Most of the times after a gambling session I have a small loss or win. That is why I try not to be affected to much by these outlier events. It also helps to remind us that without a the chances of a big loss there wouldn't be the chance to reach a big win and get the jackpot.

I never heard a story before where people died of thirst in the desert carrying full water bottles with them. Wouldn't you eventually start drinking it before you die? I can understand that you would not drink all your water at once, but wouldn't you ration it at least so you survive the longest. Another point is that due to the heat isn't the water going to vaporise eventually so, you should better drink it before? And I remember reading that people stranded on sea would drink their own urine to survive longer, for that you would need to drink the water sooner. When it comes to life and death situation there is no point in trying to save for bad times, it's all about survival. In my opinion saving money is an important part of everyday's life. We don't know what is going to happen in the future, there could always be a big disaster like the earthquake in Turkey and Syria. Without any really savings we could be in deep trouble. Also don't we want to leave some money behind for our children? We all got money from our parents and grandparents, shouldn't we do the same and leave some of the money we have for the next generations? That is why I would never drain all my money without thinking about the rest of my family.

Good for him, 11 years is a long time and holding through all the bull and bear markets since then must have taken some strong stomach. Only question I have is why sell now? At the moment it seems to me like one of the worst times to sell your coins. Maybe he needs some money, but why not only sell a fraction and at least keep some of the money for the future. If you hold your coins for such a long time you should always keep some. Also anybody who only holds his coins for 3 months can't be looked at as a HODL investors, for that you should be holding longer than a year. Personally I have traded bitcoins quite active in the past and moved on now, for me HODL is the only real option to save and grow my crypto portfolio. I am looking at crypto currencies and bitcoin in particular differently now, it's an asset that should be part of any portfolio. That is why I am planning to leave my coins forever and pass them down to my children and hopefully my grandchildren eventually.

Sorry to hear that you are struggling in your job and also congratulations that you already have such good investments that yield a nice passive income. Quitting your job is a tough decision that should be well thought through. First of all, how reliable is your passive income? Will this continue till the end of your life without any real risks attached to it? A good friend of mine got a house from his parents when he turned 30. He prefers to live in the city and rents out the house with a nice passive income. The problem is that he can't fully rely on it because the house is already older and there always some small issues with it. For him it's a bonus to his everyday life, but he needs to put a lot of money away for repairs and maintenance. The second issue you already mentioned is inflation. How reliable is your passive income when it comes to high inflation. Any regular paying job has to eventually increase the salary with inflation rates, this might take a few years but  is eventually going to make us not lose out on the value of our money. With any fixed interest rate passive income we might be losing in the long run if the inflation remains high.

No there is nothing wrong with bitcoins. All my friends and family know that I invest in bitcoins and other crypto currencies for a while now. I am not trying to hide it and enjoy talking about it with anybody who is interested in cryptos as well. The number of people thinking that bitcoins is a scam has dropped considerably over the years. The more popular crypto currencies became in the last year the more people started to learn about it and lost their fear of being scammed. I don't think that people are afraid to meet other bitcoin users, in my country there are quite a few gettogethers for crypto users. The fear comes more from dealing large sums of money, people would be similar afraid when they have to make large transactions in cash with people they have never met before. When going into a store there is a lot more protection, because the business is usually regulated and has a longer track record.

I don't think this correct and probably you haven't met enough gamblers. It's a very general statement that me and my friends would say is wrong. Already from a young age I have been saving money each month in a bank account. And once I started gambling I made sure that there is a clear split between my money. A portion of my money each month I set aside for saving, trading and gambling. Where saving is the saves form and I don't really take any risks, investing is much more risks and means that my money can be locked in for a year or two before it makes any return. And then there is the third form, gambling, I already know from the start that there is no guarantee to make a profit and a high loss of money could occur any time. My friends are very similar and wouldn't use all their savings for gambling one day.

That's an interesting question, I never really thought about if casino owners are using their own platforms. To a certain extent it makes sense for any owner to actually use their own casino. Only as gambler you will see how well your casino is running and if the website and games are running flawlessly. For that the owner could create demo accounts and wouldn't have to real use real money. If the owners enjoy gambling and want to see what the competiton is doing it would also make sense to have accounts and the other big casinos. But gambling large sums would be better to do at their own casino. Another question if any money the owner makes is better to be paid out as a salary or maybe as gambling win. This depends on the tax rates in the respective country, and maybe it's worth it to pay some money as a form of free bets.

It seems like that ChatGPT always gives the same answer and only uses a more sophisticated language the older the audience. Reading through the responses it's very clear statements about what gambling is. There is no positive or negative language involved, to me it sounds very neutral. I am kind of relieved that there is no bias from ChatGPT against gambling. In todays political correct and highly politicised society I would have expected some developers to add negative language to it. It's good that the Ai advises any age group about the risks involved in gambling and that people should only use the money that they can afford to lose. Only thing missing now is that ChatGPT gives us a winning gambling strategy.

I am really glad both G2 and Heroic reached the final yesterday and there was no surprise. This leaves one big match for today to predict correctly to finish the series with a decent profit. Heroic had a great semi final against Navi, I think they already gave up before the match because in the finals they would have played G2 again. S1mple really seems to be struggling lately and couldn't achieve a positive K/D ratio, on the other side TeSeS is playing really well is going to make it hard for G2. Team Liquid played a really good tournament this year, but against G2 they had no chance. On both maps it wasn't even close and G2 looked so calculated and executed their strategy flawlessly. I am also going to bet on G2 today. NiKo is a such a great player, he deserves another title under his belt. Same goes for Swanii their coach, he is a cool guy that put so much work in and deserves the success.

I agree with you, DCA is a great tool for anybody looking for an easy way to add bitcoins to his portfolio without investing too much ging analysing the market. Using technical analysis for a more advanced strategy is good for anybody who has more time at hand and wants to outperform the market. When it comes to trading there is in my opinion a clear trade off between time spend to analyse the market and the return we make. Following one technical indicator is probably not enough to beat the market consistently. That's why I split my crypto portfolio in two parts, an small actively traded portfolio with around 15-20% of my coins and the rest is long term hodl portfolio. Each month I save some money to buy more bitcoins, for that I use the DCA method. Not much to worry about and my portfolio keeps growing consistently. In my actively traded portfolio I rely on technical analysis to give me trading signals.

It's great to read success stories of bitcoin from other parts of the world. This is exactly what we need bitcoins for, to have one currency that can be used all around the world and is not affected by governments. To me it seems that especially small businesses can profit from accepting bitcoins as a form of payment. Bitcoin became so popular in the last two years that we need to keep the trend growing. It's one thing for businesses to switch to bitcoins, it also needs the crypto community to use this option. It's up to all of us to make sure that the demand for crypto payments is growing. Only when the companies see how many people are using cryptos they will also adopt them. The same goes for the local banks who are still reluctant to deal in bitcoins. Eventually they have to change their mind and give into the demand from the consumers.

From some who switched career path already twice in his life I can give a few tips and insights myself. The first one is that a degree from university only really matters for landing your first job. Once you have several years of working experience and can show some of your projects you worked on nobody is going to ask what you learned in university. As long as you have a degree it will show that you are willing to put in the time and effort to learn something. When switching career paths it's all about learning something new, and maybe you already have some courses you took in the evenings that gave you knowledge about the new field. Another great tip I can give you is to keep in touch with your old colleagues and bosses. I did a few internships during university and used to meet my former bosses did lunch once every several months. This helped me to keep up to date what was happening in the area and I already had contacts when I wanted to switch my field of work. This should really be thought through well before making any life changing decision.

Today are the two semi finals matches of the IEM Katowice 2023 tournaments. It has been a very interesting matches so far and all the top teams Heroic, G2 and NaVi are still in so far. The first match will be NaVi vs Heroic, which is going to be quite intense. Heroic is currently ranked 2nd in the world after G2 and only lost one map so far this tournament against complexity. I think they going to win against NaVi and will play in the final tomorrow. NaVi had a more difficult tournament so far as they lost 2-0 against G2. The second match today will be G2 vs Team Liquid, which should be an easy win for G2. G2 managed to win all their matches 2-0 so far, whereas Liquid only played 2-1 in their last 3 matches. The final tomorrow will likely be Heroic vs G2 and I will bet on G2 to win the tournament.

Seeing rehab centers switching their focus on to trading addiction must mean that there is a lot of demand for it. Over the last 5 years trading became so much easy for the average investor. Transaction fees decreased a lot, the number of banks and brokers increased, and also direct accessibility became much better. There are a lot of different apps with which we can start trading very quickly with only small capital requirements. The drawback of the evolution seems to be the rise in trading addiction. Luckily I am not addicted myself and hopefully can keep it that way. I keep a close eye on my trading activities and have no problem at all to take a break from the market for a few weeks. The main thing why I try to control myself as much as possible is that I was addicted to cigarettes in the past. I smoked for more than 10 years and it took me 5-6 attempts to finally stop. It can be very difficult to overcome an addiction again, that's why I try to be very strict and follow my rules to not get addicted. Having some fixed rules on how much we allow ourselves to trade per week is important.

I think there are two changes happening in the world currency markets at the moment. The first is the rise of crypto currencies. For the last few years a lot of investors started to aquire druotos. The second trend is the losing power of the US Dollar as the world dominating currency. This is comes as other countries like China, India, Russia and big oil export countries in the middle east are trying to trade in their own currencies between each other, instead of settling all trade in USD. All these countries would like to see another currency as the world leading trading currency, if possible their own currency. This seems very unrealistic at the moment, why would any country support something else then their own currency. The real question is now would there be a compromise to find a different currency every country would be happy with. Here comes crypto currencies in as the perfect solution, an independent currency that is not controlled by government. The main problem here is that the price for bitcoin is not really stable, as long as there are big price fluctuations it's hard to use bitcoin as the world currency to settle all trade.

Compulsive gambling is a bad habit that anybody should try and get in order very quickly before it could lead down to an addiction. Losing control over our own actions when there are large sums of money involved is very dangerous and can make us lose a lot of money. Taking a step back and analysing our behaviour is a good idea, but we shouldn't be too critical and need to put everything into perspective. Especially your point 2.) and 3.) made me a bit nervous at first. Both of these points fit my gambling style very well, even though I try not to be a compulsory gambler. But after reading it again I realised that it's describing a normal martingale strategy, my most used gambling approach. The martingale strategy needs us to bet always larger amounts after a loss, so that we recover all previous losses with one single win. To someone who doesn't know the strategy this could seem like compulsory gambling.

For me there is a big difference between saving fiat money and saving bitcoins. In the past I have been more lose with my crypto currencies and used them regularly for purchases, one of the things that I regret deeply. Today I am much stricter and if I need money for a bigger purchase I would always take it out first from my fiat savings account. Another thing is that I can transfer money out of my savings account very quickly, whereas with bitcoins I would have to go to an exchagre. This extra layer makes it better to save in crypto currencies than in fiat money, and its easy to create different wallets for different purposes, at the bank everything is kept in one account. Then there is the issue of paying taxes on my crypto profits. Every time I would sell bitcoins I would have to realise capital gains and pay taxes on it. In my savings account I can use all my money without worrying about taxes. And then there are the opportunity cost for saving in fiat money, right now inflation is around 10% and the interest being paid from the bank is around 1%. So I am losing 9% value from keeping my money in a saving account. Saving in bitcoins instead gives at least the opportunity to make some of that loss back by rising prices. Any savings account has not the same upside potential as bitcoins.

Thanks Willi for another raffle here, your stainless plates look really nice as always.

66 - Mauser

Good Luck to All and a great weekend.

In case you really need the money than selling some Bitcoin and other crypto currencies is a way to raise your funds. Everyone needs to decide himself which assets to sell and which too keep. For me personally I would prefer to sell some of my stocks and bonds first before I ever touch my crypto coins. Back in 2016 I made the big mistake to sell all my coins, which I am regretting ever since. That is why I would only consider selling cryptos right now if I really have to get the money. Just make sure that you really want to get rid of your bitcoins, maybe it would make more sense to only sell a fraction of your crypto portfolio and keep the rest of them. The long term trend of bitcoins is still positive and it's only a matter of time for prices to recover.