That's pretty normal, why should a casino even pay out 100%? They can't afford it, or where else would they make a profit to run the casino. Casinos are private companies that need to make a profit to exist. Buying slot machines, renting a place, paying taxes and electricity all costs money. The online casino needs to run a website, have IT security and support staff and also pay taxes and electricity. We shouldn't feel bad about not getting back 100%, as this would also be no guarantee for us to get all our money back. There is still randomness involved and this will only make the jackpots a little bigger, but not change our chances of winning much.

In my opinion money is only a tool to make life easier. Before people were using money to buy and sell things all trading was done with goods directly or by using precious metals in between. I don't see today's world functioning without money, there are thousands of different goods which would need to be traded somehow. People are not graving for the money itself but rather the goods they can buy with that money and the freedom it gives. Would a country without money really? I don't think so, who would make sure that everybody gets what he needs and not takes things from others? As long as there is evil in the world it will be hard to live without laws and rules that protect private property and income.

What a sad story, taking advantage of a person like that. And even if she returned 317k USD, what happened to the other 220k USD? It's all gone or did they manage to retrieve the rest of the money? I feel like that people are not willing to learn from such stories. Every few years there seems to be a story where family members betray each other for a money. A lottery winning is a life changing event that will let people disregard everything. In my country there is a saying that any friendship will stop once there is enough money involved. That is why we should never put a friend or family member in such a position where they have easy access to our money. I would probably never speak to my cousin again if he stole 500k USD from me. It's one thing to come and ask for money after winning the lottery, but stealing all of it is a nogo. Even if she returns the money to me, how can you trust someone like that again?  

That is a good take on the gambling life and how to deal with losses. I would even go a bit further and say that our loss is not only a payment for the pleasure we get from gambling, but also a required loss for the common good of other gamblers. It's clear that we can't be winning all the timing, because then the casino would run out of money and go bankrupt. So maybe it can make us feel a bit better after losing a big game that at least someone else has now the chance to win a lot of money and we helped to build up the jackpot. There needs to be people losing money so that the casino can build up jackpots for some lucky gamblers to win. It's like with a lottery, were 99% of the people need to lose so that there is enough money for the winners to have a decent amount to win. My main motivation behind gambling is that I value a large win much higher than a small loss. It is more likely to lose a higher number of games than we are going to win, that is why the plan is to keep losses as low as possible while having a chance to get a big win eventually. The longer we gamble the harder it becomes to control our emotions. It's important become to heavily invested in every win or lose, because we can't control the outcome of a game.

He is definitely right, online gambling is so much more easily accessible than gambling in a physical casino. We could spend 24/7 at an online casino and only take small breaks to sleep. We can start the day with gambling in bed before standing up, keep gambling in the train to work and during our lunch break. In the evenings we could gamble again in front of the TV. With tablets and mobile phones we can basically gamble anywhere at any time. That's why it's so important to have clear rules in place to keep our gambling habits in check. Personally I don't really like to do anything important on a small mobile screen. That's why I tend to only gamble on my desktop PC, even on a laptop I am not as comfortable. Another one of my rules is to not leave large amounts of money at the casino. Like this I have to at least deposit new money when I lose it all. It's another layer of safety to keep my gambling balance in order.

Da gebe ich dir Recht, die meisten neuen Leute hier im Forum schreiben im Bitcoin oder Altcoin Bereich und wollen erstmal mehr über Kryptowährungen lernen. Das ein neues Mitglied hier im Forum direkt ein Gewinnspiel startet ist schon sehr unwahrscheinlich, es sei denn er hat über Freunde und Bekannte vom Meritsystem erfahren. Als ich nach meiner Krypto Pause wieder zurück zum Forum gekommen bin mußte ich erstmal verstehen wie das neue Merit System funktioniert. Das alte System mit Aktivität und Anzahl der Beiträge fand ich besser. Ich glaube dass sich viele neue Mitglieder erstmal schwer tun mit dem Merit System. Ist leider schon schade, dass für normale Beiträge so wenige Merits vergeben werden und bei Gewinnspielen dann wiederum so viele. Und wenn man dann neue Mitglieder sieht die 1-2 Jahre im Forum dabei sind und die Hälfte meiner Beiträge haben aber schon Hero Rang sind frage ich mich auch öfters ob dass alles so mit rechten Dingen zugeht. Das Zweitaccounts überhaupt möglich sind ist auch schade, da sollte härter gegen vorgegangen werden. Auf der anderen Seite ist es auch natürlich schön wenn es mehr Gewinnspielel hier im Forum gibt, solange alles ordentlich abläuft.

That is a coo looking notebook, thanks for the raffle Willi.

Already voted on the Bitcointalk Community Awards and would go for 2 numbers:

29 - Mauser
61 - Mauser

Thanks and good luck to all.

I don't think this is going to be a profitable strategy for a casino. Limiting the whole operation to only use their own token puts a lot of pressure on possible clients. For example there are people who are only interested in bitcoins and don't own why alt coins, would you really want to force them into using your own tokens? I would expect them to rather stay away from your casino then to buy the token. Even if the casino is a one of a kind with their own new game that nobody else has. Then is still the question how will new customers come and try out your new games. If you don't allow fiat money and other crypto currencies you are limiting your reach of new customers a lot. It would make much more sense to give incentives to the gamblers to use your token than blocking all other cryptos. One idea could be to run special promotions that can only be withdrawn in your casino tokens, or you could give an extra deposit bonus for anybody who deposits your own token. The more crypto currencies you accept the more customers will come in my opinion.

It doesn't really matter where you want to invest the money, I would always advice against taking out loans to buy risky assets. You might have a good feeling about bitcoins and think there is going to be a bull market around the corner which you don't want to miss out on. But even with the best research and predictions there is no guarantee to make our desired returns. When it comes to investing borrowed money we face the risk to lose the money. In case our investments fails we will be still forced to repay the loan, which could ruin us financially for a long period of time. The best advice is to only invest the money we can afford to lose.

Yes it's crazy that Japan has a ban on gambling and at the same time in all the major cities you have a huge gambling culture with the famous Pachinko slot machines. I am not really sure why Japan has that strict laws on gambling, they seem to have come in 1907 which is more than 100 years ago. To me the laws seem outdated and today it's clear that many people would like to gamble more freely. I was two times in Japan already and every time I visited a Pachinko it was packed with people. Like in any society there is some people who enjoy gambling, in Japan they have a restricted chance to gamble only for goodies and not money itself. This seems like a unnecessary step as there are still ways to exploit the system and the government is fully aware of it. It seems that the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan tries for more than 20 years to change the laws and allow big casinos to be opened up. Japan is a fast growing population with a lot of old people around, they are selling more diapers for old people than for babies. Maybe the government is afraid that older people would punish them if they legalise gambling again, or maybe the Japanese people got so used to the limited form of gambling they have that they don't want it to change anymore.  

Welcome to the forum, it's great that you took the first steps in the crypto community and signed up here. Like you the first few times I heard about cryptos I was very cautious and didn't think this would last. Now with hindsight I wish I would have joined much early the crypto world and also had been more active right from the start when I first got involved. The forum here is the past place in my opinion to learn about cryptos. You can learn about trading and investing bitcoins or alt coins with a lot of different users here. You are absolutely right that we need to constantly learn to evolve and become better in all aspects of life. Stopping to learn something new each month means that we are standing still and since the world of changing so rapidly we are moving backwards. Keeping uptodate with all the new trends is hard. Good luck with your endeavours in the crypto community, I hope you will stick around.

Definitely a good strategy, who ever bought bitcoins right after FTX bankruptcy must already be a happy investor today. You need to a have a strong stomach to buy when everybody is selling. The main issue is that we don't know how low the price is going to drop. I am sure there were quite a few investors who hoped the price would drop down to 10,000 USD and would have bought a lot of coins then. It's hard to really predict where the bottom is and when prices are going to rise again. I kind of stopped trying to find the exact points where to buy and sell. For me it's much more relaxing to buy my coins over a longer period of time. So instead of making one big purchase, I rather make 3-4 smaller purchases over 3 months. That might result in a slightly higher average purchase price, but I save some time on doing research to find the perfect time to buy.

I have never hit that hand myself, but I saw it two times already in the past. One time was around 6 years ago at a friendly poker game with my friends. We had to preflop all ins and my friend with Al in spades hit a Royal Flush. It was a huge sensation and we took a photo for Facebook even though there wasn't a lot of money involved in the hand. The other time was on a online poker sit and go table last year. I wasn't involved in the hand myself and only watched as one player lost it all on a flush against the royal flush. And then there are the famous YouTube videos where you can see the professional players get lucky on TV. My best hand was a straight flush, but it's been a while since I got one. Getting 4 of a kind is much more common, the only problem with these monster hands is that you are not getting paid most of the time. For really profitable hands you want your opponent to hit a good hand where he is going to call you down, but not good enough to actually beat you.

Being cautious is good to a certain extend, but if we worry to much about all the things that could go wrong then we might miss out completely on the next big trend. It's still another year for the next halving, and it's true that many things could happen until then. The real question is if you expect crypto prices to drop much lower if something bad in the world happens again. In my opinion we are not going to see prices much lower than the 16,000 USD level. Who ever bought bitcoins in the last few years will be very happy by the end of 2024. I would rather stay invested and face the risk of short term price drops, then selling all my position and be at risk of missing out on the next big rally.

To a certain extend any country could profit from investing in bitcoins, as long as the long term price trend is positive. The problem of course for a country in bankruptcy is that they don't have any money to buy bitcoins in the first place. They could try and print more of their fiat money and buy bitcoins, but nobody would be selling his bitcoins for the inflated fiat money. The bankruptcy comes from not meeting financial obligations that have been given in the past. Somehow Sri Lanka needs to work on restructuring their debt first and try to get their budget in order. Otherwise it will be hard to get foreign investors to help and rebuild the country. Switching to bitcoins as a form of payment could be helpful as well for Sri Lanka. As long as all the people have access to bitcoins it could be a good alternative for the people, but the government will probably not agree. Once switching to bitcoins as a legal tender the government has no influence over the money supply and can't print new money freely.

It's true that once you register at a casino you will get notifications and promotions via email. In case your account hasn't been active for a while then they might motivate you again to come back. That seems like a normal marketing campaign to attract old customers. The question would be now if they filter through what kind of customer you are. If you only played 2-3 times at the casino and never deposited a lot of money it might not be worth it for the casino to try and get you back. Another thing what I noticed is that the best promotion you can get at the casino is usually when you sign up. The first time deposit bonus of 200-300% is a huge bonus when you deposit larger sums that it's hard to compete with free spins or other promotions. That's why I would not recommend to sign up at many online casinos and waste the bonus with a small deposit only to try and take advantage of new promotions at a later stage.

Wow that is crazy, betting 1.4m USD on a single bet no matter the odds. Betting such a huge amount on a single bet always has the risk of going wrong eventually. Personally I am a big fan of betting on such low payout games because you can slowly build up your bankroll overtime with very limited risks. The problem of course is that the underdog can eventually win and lead to a big loss if we don't split up our money across multiple bets. When the odds are so low like 1.008 then we need to bet a large amount to make a profit, but betting 1.4m USD is just too much money. I mean he bets so much money to get only a profit of 11.2k USD it's not worth it in my opinion. He would need to make the same bet 125 times and win every time to only make his principal money back. But then again we don't know how much money they gambler actually has and maybe a 1.4m USD bet for him is what is for us a 100 USD bet. The most important thing is to be able to live with the bets we make and not feel bad about it for a long time if things go wrong.

I would go for casino B as most people here on the forum it seems. Poker is my favourite card game that I have been playing a lot since I was 18. During university I spend so many evenings drinking and playing with friends, it was the best time. I still remember visiting my first casino and taking part in a poker tournament, or going the first time to Las Vegas and seeing the big casinos. Roulette and Black Jack are also fun for me and I play them regularly, but if I had to choose between all the games I would always pick Poker first. Also 100 USD is my usual bankroll with what I start in poker, it's a the best amount for me where I don't feel bad losing a few all ins and you are still very happy when making a profit. All the other games you mentioned here like Rummy or Monopoly I played a lot too, but never for money. Would be nice to see such games in an active casino environment with a lot of players playing for money.

Your first and fifth point both involve saving, which I don't think is a good idea during high inflation periods. Right now the inflation rate in my country is at 9% while the interest I am getting on my savings account is less than 1%. Some smaller and more risky banks offer 2% which is the highest you can get at the moment for your savings account. It just doesn't make sense to save money when you lose 7% purchasing power in one year. What would be better in my opinion is to make the necessary purchases you have to do this year as fast possible. For example you need a new washing machine or a new fridge, then I would recommend to make the purchase as fast possible and don't wait with it. Any larger purchase that is essential will become much more expensive the longer we wait. It makes more sense to use our money today then wait a few months until our money losses more value. The only real alternative is to invest our money into assets that give higher returns or at least match the inflation rate.

I am not sure if futures trading is really the best way to achieve a stable income every day. When trading with futures we have a leveraged position that moves stronger than the actual underlying asset. Bitcoins for example is up 25% over the last month, so who ever holds some BTC futures should have made a lot of money in the last few month. Which is already a big move in my opinion. But it's true that alt coins tend to move much more quickly than bitcoins. So any investor who is looking for the highest returns will have to invest in altcoins instead of bitcoins. The problem with the extra high return is that they also come from the most risky projects. We can't expect stable and constant income when trading those coins and futures on those coins. The chance of facing a loss are much higher then when investing in the bitcoin market.