First of all, there have been quite a few institutions in the crypto world already that own large amounts of coins. It's not like companies are only now finding crypto currencies as a form of investment. ETF is just another layer for investors to participate on the crypto boom. Nobody is forcing us to sell our coins to the institutions, every investor makes their own decisions. And now with a Bitcoin price around the 50,000 USD levels there will be even people willing to take some profit and sell their coins. I don't think it's fair for us to sell our coins and then complain that big corporations are getting too many coins. It's up to all of the smaller investors to decide what we are going to do with our coins. The ETF companies are never getting their hands on the HODL investors coins. Just don't sell your soul guys, if you don't need the money. We are all free to choose what to do with our coins and our money.

I don't fully understand your question, you gambled won and withdraw the money from the account? And now you would just like to close that empty account to not be tempted to gamble again? So it's some kind of exclusion from the casino? I can understand the casino that they don't want to close your account so quickly after opening it. If it's written in the terms and conditions of the casino then there is nothing you can do about it. But why not just wait the 90 days and then ask again to close the account? As long as you don't have any money on the account you shouldn't worry about it. Another way is to change the password in a long phrase that you can't remember and don't save it in the browser. Like that you won't be able to ever login to the account.

I would be very careful when it comes to buying or selling gambling accounts that are KYCed. Just recently I got asked by a casino where I gamble for several years and where my account is already KYC verified, to re-upload my documents. I am not sure if this was something special to my account or for all users. Imagine being a situation where you don't use your own account. The risk of the account being locked and losing all my money would be too high. Also selling your account could lead to problem, if your account is being misused for money laundering. In the end it's our name on the account and we could be liable for any criminal activities. The question would be how much money is being paid for the accounts and does it really make sense. Creating our own new account has the benefit of getting welcome bonuses from the casino.

This is not realistic to have a world where every crypto trader is going to make a profit. Trading is a zero sum game, our profit is somebody else's loss. The rapid changing prices means that every day people will see their positions making a profit or a loss. This is still unrealized gains or losses and as long as the position is not sold the money is not realized. But still it won't be possible to have a world where everybody is making profits. The money has to come from somewhere. Also the crypto trading expert themselves are not going to be able to make a profit from every trade. There will always be losing periods, that's just part of the game. The important thing is to make sure that our winnings are larger than our losses.

Betting on low payout games is a good way to make a small but consistent return, the only problem is that once in a while these games going the other way and we are losing our money. It's important to keep remembering low risk doesn't mean no risk, things can always move against us. Which is why I would never bet all my money on one game alone. Better to spread out our money and use multiple of these low risk bets. Now using money that we can't afford to lose for gambling makes everything worse. On top of that breaking your own properties for no reason is very bad behavior. What good does it do to break your own TV? If you are frustrated and want to power yourself out to some sports or go for a walk.

Yes I have one of those stories involving bitcoin. It's actually my worst investment mistake I have made so far and every time the Bitcoin price jumps up 5-10% I keep thinking about it. Back in 2016 I first learned about bitcoin through my CSGO skin trading adventures. I was buying and selling quite a few skins on a regular basis and needed a way to quickly and cheaply cash out my money. From the online skin exchange I learned that bitcoin was the option to withdraw money with lowest amount of fees. My big mistake was that I quickly exchanged the bitcoin back to fiat. If I only had kept some coins back then, I would be in a completely different position today. Unfortunately we can't turn back time and the only thing to do is learn from our mistakes and to make sure but to repeat them. Which is now one important rule for all my future investing, to never sell all bitcoins again. It's fine to take profit with 10 or 20% of my holdings, but the majority I am going to keep.

Yes I am doing the same strategy when it comes to bitcoin purchases. DCA is in my opinion the best form to make purchases over a longer period of time. It's one thing if you have a large amount of money today and you are looking for the cheapest possible purchase price for your bitcoin. And something completely different if you only can set a side a smaller amount every month from your salary. With DCA we don't worry about the purchase price anymore and are going to make fixed purchases every month. Having more than 4 bitcoin already is amazing and depending on the country where he wants to retire should let him buy an apartment. Finding a cheap and safe country to retire in is also my dream, because that would allow me to retire much earlier. In my country I would likely have to work until 67 or even 70 to receive my government money.

I think that it's fine to try out new casinos from time to time, but I wouldn't start jumping casinos every week just to try and take advantage of all the newcomer bonuses. At least for me it's nice to stick to my regular casinos, because I know they are legit and I don't have to worry about getting scammed out of money. When using a lot of new casinos the risk is quite high to get to one that is not legit. Welcome bonuses are nice if we can fully take advantage of them, but having a reliable casino with a quick support team that resolves any issues is valuable too. Which is why I would only try out new casinos with a small amount and don't risk a lot of money. For any bigger bets and gambles I would stick to my casinos where I have played a lot in the past. My friends I would tell the same thing and tell them to be careful with new casinos where there are no reviews yet.

That is a good question. In my religion gambling is not forbidden but it also not encouraged. A good person shouldn't be gambling with money and also not consume too much alcohol, so I am probably a sinner in my own religion. Luckily I am not a religious person and don't take the Bible at face value. My grand parents where really religious, but among friends I don't know anybody that is religious and goes to church regularly. The books where written so long ago and we now live in a completely different world that I feel like we can't be forced into a type of life by them anymore. Looking back at religion in the past o feels like it was used to control the people. We should focus more on enjoying life at the moment and not pleasing our local priest. For me gambling is fine as long as I don't do anything bad to get the money for gambling. Stealing to have money for gambling is wrong, and so is lying.

This thread from mid 2023 did pretty well in not believing into all these negative news are facing for years. Except for the last part with a Bitcoin price above 100,000 USD all the points seem to be true and the world didn't collapse yet in a downward spiral. The Russia Ukraine war is still ongoing, but not swapping over to other countries. Inflation seems to have dropped back down to lower levels and the world economy avoided a recession. Even the war in Israel didn't push the world deeper into a world wide crisis. Both stocks and crypto prices recovered a lot in the last few month. So any pessimistic investor from mid 2023 did very poorly. It pays off to be optimistic and any hodl investor did very well. It's better not to fall into panic sentiment as many newspapers are promoting, for them it's a business strategy because bad news are selling better.

Personally I really enjoy reading success stories here on the forum. It's nice to see how other people got into crypto currencies and how they overcome their own struggles. For me these stories are not really so much about how many bitcoins someone owns today, but rather about people that believe in something and follow their strategies. If someone takes the risk of buying bitcoin than he should also be rewarded for that. I am not going to look at someone differently just because he owns 10 bitcoins and is bragging with that publicly. It's the same like meeting a person that directly tells you he is a millionaire, this is not something I care about and I don't see any benefit of sharing that information publicly. Because I don't even know if the information is true, and if it's true then this just puts a target on your back. There might be people that want to take advantage of your wealth and this could lead to big problems.

No, I don't think that increasing the minimum wage is going to do any good for the inflation, because the business owners are not going to pay their higher employee salaries out of their own pockets. All additional costs for the business will be added on top of the product and handed over to the consumer. This is just going to make products more expensive and put more money into circulation. The employee itself has more money to pay for all the expensive products and there is no pressure to lower prices again. In my opinion it would be a better approach to make it easier for competitor companies to enter the market and put more pressure on monopol business. New competition is going to push the prices down again and lower inflation. Unfortunately I don't see politicians doing it and are more concerned with handing out gifts to secure their next election.

This is a good summary of serious issues that gamblers can face when visiting online casinos. I would say that when it comes to new casinos without any track record and reviews available, all of these would be big red flags that let's me stay away from the casino. Since the online casino boom during the covid pandemic the landscape become much more competitive. We have now so many different casinos that all offer very similar games that it becomes important to make sure the gambler is not disrupted in his gambling experiences. All of your issues above are serious that shouldn't happen anymore in today's world and we as gamblers shouldn't accept them. Online casinos evolved a lot in the last few years and should demand the best possible services. Relying on trusted and well reviewed casinos is important and is going to make the online gambling experience more safe. In case we ever share such negative experiences it's important to share those stories online so that we can warn other gamblers. There shouldn't be any place left for suspicious casinos to operate and take advantage of gamblers.

First time I am hearing that the blue card will be finally introduced to football. This is definitely going to change the game a lot in the future. Red cards are not that common, in most games it's 11 players vs 11. Depending now how often the blue card is going to come into play the teams will have to adapt a lot. If this card is being used as regularly as yellow cards than this will be huge. Being down one player for 10 minutes can change everything. It depends a bit which player it is, but if your star striker sits on the bench then there won't be a lot of pressure on the enemy goal for a while. If it's your main defender, then there will be a big whole in your defense and you will likely fall behind. As long as all leagues adopt the card at the same time it will be fair for everybody and teams should adapt quickly. I am going to look forward to the world cup with a blue card.

I think this really depends on the personality of a person. Some people enjoy watching sports games and would never think about betting money on these games. Then there are people that are looking for more excitement and thrill and willing to bet on every game they watch. And then there is the category of gamblers that believe they have an advantage over others and want to make a profit from their bets. Most of us will likely be a mix of all those. Personally I am not going to bet on every match that I watch, but I find it more interesting if money is involved. Especially on big tournaments where the champion is not directly clear in the beginning, it's very exciting to have some longer lasting bets. People who follow their sports a lot and have deep insights can definitely make money from it, but I don't think it's 80%.

I agree with, the predictors have an easy game of they don't bet on their own predictions. I would always like to know how these experts make their money, is their most income coming from people paying for their predictions or from the predictions itself? For me it's a basic payoff analysis if it's worth it to pay for such services. We can calculate our average profits before using any services, when we did our own analysis and compare that to the profits we make with the help of the experts. On the one side we need to take into consideration that we have to pay the experts, and on the other side we also save time because we don't need to do our own detailed research anymore. For me these services never really paid off.

This weekend 3 games of the initial Swiss rounds of the PGL CS2 Major Copenhagen 2024 Europe are still being played. The top teams all already qualified and now it's up for the B teams to qualify directly or go into the Last Chance Qualifier matches. There is definitely some pressure there as it's going to be the first big major in CS2. The last chance qualifier matches are going to be played next weekend. The first match today is going to be 9 Pandas vs AMKAL, two teams I barely know anything about. It's two Russian teams playing against each other and I haven't watched a match yet of either of the two teams. Based on the bookmaker quotes the two teams are very similar in strength and it feels like a coin flip. Better to just skip that match and focus on the other two. The second match is going to be fnatic vs SAW, fnatic was a very strong European team several years ago but struggles since the old roaster stopped playing. Usually, I would have put my money on fnatic, but the Portuguese SAW team managed to beat NiP 2-0 this tournament and I think they can beat fnatic today. The last match of the day is Eternal Fire vs Bet Boom, where I don't see any chance of Eternal Fire losing that match. I am still a big fan of XANTARES and think he will carry his team to victory. Eternal Fire managed to beat NiP as well and only lost very closely against G2, they should be winning today.   

That is a cool idea, I am looking for forward to the interview. Is it going to be a video? Are me maybe able to see the the casino owner in the video, or just hear his voice? I expect many fellow gamblers to be interested. Disclosing the crypto casino name is a bit tricky I would say, one side you want to give the owner a platform to promote his business, but on the other side you don't want to create any issues for his business too. Anonymity in the crypto world is not only important for the gambler, but also for the casino owners. Questions I would like to ask would be:

- How long did it take from the beginning of the planning process of the crypto casino to finally being open for business? 
- Was there a long period of struggling in the beginning, where the operating cost where higher than the profit from the casino?
- Long did it take to really become a profitable casino business and how much money of your monthly revenues do you need to set aside for promotions and advertising?

I know he probably won't be able to answer in detail here, but maybe he can give some rough estimates to get a better understanding how difficult it is to open your own casino.     

There is no risk of being liquidated in the spot market. You own the underlying coins and hopefully keep them stored safely outside of the exchange. There is no contract that says you lose everything if the coin drops 50%. So as long as you are not actively selling your coin you are not realizing any loss. The only situation would be when the project is discontinued and removed from the exchange. You might not be able to trade anymore and the exchange liquidates any existing coins. What exactly is a BTC contract? If you are trading with x1 you should be buying bitcoins directly. It's not a contract, you own the coins and nobody can force you to liquidate your coins.

The main advantage of crypto currencies is that it offers the consumer an alternative to traditional banks. We can finally escape the fiat money system on a global scale and are not forced into using bank services anymore. I do like both bitcoins and banks, because the bank is where I get my monthly salary in and from where I pay all bills. And bitcoin is where I save my money for long term investing. It's not really possible yet to choose between the two, because there are very different for me.  Banking is a tool that I need to use every day and there is no way around it, Bitcoin is something that I believe in and hopefully one day will become the standard for everybody.  When it comes to paying bills and using money everyday bitcoin wouldn't really be efficient in the current form. On the other side when it comes to investing I would never invest in a bank itself. Their business model is highly dependent on general interest rate and a big crisis could trigger a bank run. So, crypto currencies is a system I believe in and bank not anymore. In the future banks will lose more and more business and become less relevant, whereas crypto currencies gain more importance and will take over eventually. We will increase our standard of living by being the early adopters.