What? How do you come up with this stuff? First of all there is not going to be a war between Europe and USA. Why should there a war between western countries when the tensions are high between the middle east, China and Russia? There are so many big wars more likely than a USA vs Europe war. Secondly, why would central banks be buying bitcoins and other cryptos? It might be the case that the people lose all their trust in Euros and Dollars and would start buying cryptos. But once the price sky rockets I don't think it's going to keep attracting more investors. Also a war is never a permanent situation, eventually the war will be over and things will go back to normal. A price of 1bn for BTC seems unrealistic, even with high inflation for a few years.

All of the major companies rely on bonds to finance their operations. For the last 15 years the companies got used to cheap money, paying only 1-3% interest on most of their debt. Without the debt market there would be a huge issue for the companies to create new projects and invest in the future. The problem companies will face now is to roll all their existing debt into much higher interest debt for the next 3-10 years. This is going to put a lot of pressure on the financing department and will likely lead to some bankruptcy. Which is why the Fed already stopped raising rates and will likely lower rates again. If the whole economy is suffering the politicians will demand lower rates again, even if this means rising inflation again. The alternatives for us are bitcoins and gold, but gold is already at the ATH, I am not sure how much upside potential is left.

Sticking to sports betting and learning everything about our team, the league and the big tournaments will eventually give us an edge and should make us long term money. Everybody needs to decide for himself how much money he is willing to risk. Having a fixed budget in relation to our monthly income makes a lot of sense and I would only consider gambling more if my income or my bankroll goes up. It's all about statistics, because the more we gamble the closer we will get to our expected values. This doesn't mean that we can't get lucky and get a big win. It's just that the number of gamblers achieving that is very small, similar to the number of gamblers getting a big loss. The majority of gamblers will land in the middle of the distribution, either getting a small win or a small loss.

I never bet on virtual sports and will probably never do so in the future. For me it's all about betting games that I enjoy watching myself. Betting on something that I see, follow or watch the highlights after seems wrong to me. This probably also comes down to that I only bet on sports that I follow regularly and watch. In university I had a few friends that where all about fantasy league sports games and would actually bet money on it. Somehow it never interested me, because there are already so many different live games happening each week. It's also makes it harder to control our betting history if we bet on a wide range of games.

1. Yes, I definitely read casino reviews and try to get as much information as possible about new casinos. In case it's an older casino where I have been playing for a few years without any red flags, then I am not too worried about a bad review. Because there can always be a person that lost large and wants to say something bad about the casino. So, for me reviews are mostly important about new casinos that I never heard about.

2. Yes, some casino reviews are useful. When it's about new features or new promotions that I haven't heard about. Also, reviews that warn about delayed payments or issue with the support staff are very important. Any red flag that could lead to serious issues down the line could be a problem.

3.  A casino review should contain all the parts of the casino, how are the games, how is the process to deposit money and withdraw it again, how many promotions are there from time to time, how is the support staff and can you quickly to talk to person when there is an issue.

I think casino reviews are a bit tricky, because we don’t have any verification that all the claims are true. When it comes to the internet people can claim a lot of things, without being accountable for it. That is why we should try and read as many reviews as possible, because the more people share similar experience the more value we can put on them.

I have been gambling for so many years that is hard to tell which of my character traits are coming from gambling and which not. I would say that everybody changes over time depending on the things they are doing. The real question would be now if the changes where good or bad. The whole topic of anger came to me at a much younger age, probably around 12 years of age when I started gaming online. Especially when playing Dota or CSGO I got a lot of frustration after losing and needed to learn how to cope without getting angry so quickly. Which is probably why I never got angry later when I started gambling. Something that I learned through gambling and which helped later when I started to trade, was how budget my gambling money. Building a long term bankroll is very important especially in poker. Playing too quickly at higher stakes tables can lead to going broke during a losing streak. It also helped to work towards a long term plan and get some patience.

I think it all comes down to if you can trust someone or not. If a good friend for example tells me about his gambling experience and he mentions that he was lucky and won a good amount, then I definitely believe him. What is there for him to gain by not telling the truth about his gambling endeavours? In case I would find out that he was lying then our friendship would probably be over and since I know most of my friends for more than 10 years, I believe they will tell me the truth. And then there is the complete opposite, where strangers online sharing their gambling experience. If I don't know someone than I would be very cautious believing in how well they are gambling. A lot of the people on the internet are only after attention and in many cases don't earn their living through gambling directly, but rather the advertising people watch to follow the so called "influencers". 

It's true, there are definitely two types of debt, the good and the bad. I would make the classification a bit different, bad debt is the one that we use for consumption. It doesn't provide any additional value for us except a quick boost in consumption, but it won't make our long-term outlook better. The good debt on the other hand is going to create income and returns in the future that will make our situation better. In most cases I think that debt is unnecessary and should better be avoided, but there are also situations where using debt is unavoidable. For example, when buying a house or apartment the majority of people will be unable to make the purchase from their savings alone. For such a large purchase which we only make a few times in our lives we need to use debt. The debt in such a case should always be consider in relation to the benefit we get from it. With our own apartment we would save on paying rent which we then can afford to pay back our loan. So, we should be only using debt if we get something from it and if there is a benefit in the future. The only exception would be if we need money for a medical treatment, health is everything and comes before money.     

This would be one way to exclude yourself from gambling with your current balance, but what about just depositing new money? I have been in a similar situation in the past where I tried to reduce my gambling size and it was hard to control myself. What has helped me a lot is to drastically reduce my bankroll and really force myself to only stick to that size I can afford to bet with. There were a couple of setbacks when I added new money to the account, but over time I got better at controlling myself. I think this is something many traders and gamblers will have to learn. Another feature many casinos added is the panic button, which let's the gambler log out instantly and even lock the account for 24 hours, 7 days or 1 month.

Not really, I like to see what is happening and closing my eyes or looking away doesn't feel like it's going to impact my luck anyways. In the past I had issue where I was playing scratch cards and threw away a ticket where I thought all my numbers missed. But actually, I didn't fully scratch away all numbers and I misread the winning numbers. Luckily my friend double checked my ticket out of the bin and I won 20 Euros. After such a mistake I am now always triple checking my numbers, to make sure I am getting all my winnings. The only person that I know that seems a bit superstitious is a good friend of mine and every time he places a bet in Roulette he turns away and doesn't look at the it. He is also the only person that I know that won betting on the 0 couple of times already, but looking at the wheel or not doesn’t make a difference. Doing so regularly will just tell our brain that we have influence over the outcome which isn’t the case.       

Don't focus so much on the moment, FOMO is always going to be an issue if we focus only on the small picture. It's better to take a step back and look at the whole story. We should remind ourselves where the bitcoin journey started and that it's not going to end any time soon. The bitcoin price had such a good last few months and seems to be holding his gains quite well. After the jump above 40,000 USD I was a bit afraid that many investors would take profits and dumb most of their coins. Luckily this wasn't the case and investors believe in higher prices in the future. There will always be a few people that need money quickly and will sell there coins when there is a good opportunity. For me, I would try to look at the bigger picture. We are still far away from the ATH, there is a lot of upside potential left in the market. Also, the halving is coming up next year putting more pressure on bitcoin to rise. On top of that is the economic outlook for 2024 not that great, if there are issues with economy or another crisis, people will have to put their money someone. Selling stocks seems like the instant reaction, but cash is not attractive with the high inflation and gold is at it's ATH. Crypto currencies and especially bitcoin seem like the only real alternative.

No, I would argue against high liquidity meaning high volatility. High liquidity means that there is a large number of buy or sell counterparts that would fill my order. It's not only about the number of traders, but also the quantity of traders. It could be that there are a lot of small buy or sell orders that would be filled by one single large trade and taking out all the liquidity from the market. Just because we can trade small amounts of cryptos all the time doesn't mean the exchange could handle a large order as well. Volatility comes into play when there are news coming out that have a big impact on the markets or economy. For example, the slow down of central banks to keep increasing rates means that risky assets become more attractive anymore. Many investors already expect rates to fall again next year to support the economy. When bonds and savings accounts don't offer interest rates anymore, investors will go back into stocks and cryptos. A constant rise or drop in prices doesn't mean high volatility, that comes from people taking profit and tryinh to get out of the market. Liquidity is people's willingness to trade and volatility is uncertainty and short term noise in the market.

Question 3 is a clear no for me, I will always gamble within my means and not spend more than I can afford to lose. I can't understand people that would gamble and recklessly, it just doesn't make any sense. Let's you are profitable at sports betting, why would bet more than you can afford. Just wait a few months and build up your bankroll from your winnings. And if you are not profitable then any additional spending will just increase your losses. As for the profit, I don't have a particular profit that I am aiming for, every win is great and I appreciate it. My focus is more on the risk, I want to avoid losing large sums of my bankroll. My bankroll depends on the type of game I play, for poker I have 500 USD and I only withdraw when I go above 1,000 USD. For sports betting I usually stick to 100-200 USD, except if there is big tournament then I might bet a little more.

   

I fully agree with you, having a mindset that focuses on growth is much better than a fixed mindset. The world is evolving every single day, new technologies are being developed and new products are being invented, which brings the world forward and we need to go with the time. It's so easy to get lost in time and think that the world hasn't changed much, but once you look at a review from 10 or 20 years ago, we see how far the world come in such a short period of time. A fixed mindset assumes that we learn everything important in school and university and after that we don't have to learn anything new anymore. Which is obviously wrong and will lead to us falling back as the world moves on. Standing still during a forward moving world is like going backwards, we should be trying to learn something new every month and go with the time. For that we need to a dynamic and growth mindset and not a fixed one. Once we become older and go towards retirement it’s fine to switch to a fixed mindset.

I definitely prefer to watch sports game where I have a stake in it. Placing a bet on my favourite team before a big match makes me even more hyped and enjoy the game. Becoming stressful during a game because of a bet, usually means for me that I bet too much money and are not comfortable anymore. Which is why I try to bet smaller sizes on a larger number of bets than to focus just on a few games where I would bet a lot of money. Usually I watch football, some basketball and of course some esport games like CSGO and Dota2. For me it’s fun to watch all those games, and if I had no more fun from one particular sport, I would start looking for an alternative. Losing bets is part of the game and I stopped to worry so much about losing a single bet, it’s all about the law of large numbers and making sure on average to 55-60% of the bets. Nobody can achieve a 100%-win rate in sports betting, there will always be surprises and we need to live with them. If there is no more fun for you in betting and watching the gamers, you should maybe try to change things up and make it more interesting again for you.

Not a big surprise that they majority people here on the forum trust Bitcoins over their banks. After the 2008 financial crisis with the collapse of several big banks I am quite careful when it comes to storing larger amounts of money at the banks. I am still required to use banks every day for my transactions, because I get my salary in FIAT money and also have to pay my bills in FIAT money. Our whole economy is based on using banks and quite a few stores are stopping to accept larger amounts of cash. Before the covid pandemic I only used to pay with cash and leave my debit card at home, but now it becomes harder and harder to only rely on cash. It would be nice to switch to only use Bitcoins, unfortunately most stores still don't accept cryptos. I do get a lot of scam mails every week from my "bank" which wants me to open suspicious links. But since my bank has their own App, I would never receive such legit emails directly. From crypto hackers I didn't receive any emails so far and I am trying to be cautious as much as possible. Banks are definitely not as safe as Bitcoins, my solution for that is to spread my money out across multiple banks and never rely only on one bank.

No I don't think I have a gambling problem. Even though I have been enjoying casinos since I am 18, I wouldn't call it a problem. Gambling for me is not my main focus in life and I can still control my spending habits. My finances are okay, my family knows about gambling activities and my mood is good after I finally managed to quit smoking and cut down on my alcohol consumption. Looking back at my younger days it's crazy how much money I spend during a night out on the weekends. Comparing 200 Euros for food and drinks in one night, to spending the same in a month on gambling is an easy to choice to me now. Especially when you have the chance to make a profit in gambling, whereas going out just gives you a hangover on the next day.

This is a tricky question and I would only consider it for a few good of my friends and even then I feel like it's not a good idea. In the past I got asked by friends for money for gambling and I normally don't have an issue with it, as long as I am getting paid back later. Participating on the potential winnings of my friends doesn't seem like a good deal, because then I could be just gambling myself. When I go to our local casino with my friends, we only take cash and leave all credit cards at home. This is the best way for us to make sure we stay within our limits and don't spend more money than we are comfortable with it. The only issue is if you go broke early in the evening you can't gamble anymore at all. Which is when you start asking friends for a small loan. In my opinion, this should be always small amounts to only give a few more bets at the minimum bet size. I had never any issues with it, because my friends will pay me back no matter what. Gambling should be financed through our normal job, where we can save some money each week and use it for our entertainment.

I fully agree with you, we should never be gambling at our job. The risk is just way to high that a colleague or our boss will find out about our other activities and we will have negative consequences at work. At my company we are not allowed to even check social media from our work laptops. There is some websites being blocked and there is also some checking on the internet history by the IT department from time to time. In case you really want to gamble during a long day at work, you should limit it down to your breaks at least. And even it then it seems not right, to just gamble for 10 minutes before going back to work. Why not wait to finish work and relax in the evening where we have more time and don’t face nay issues. For me the number rule of gambling is always going to be: Only use money that you can afford to lose.

Yes, I still have a demo account and use it from time to time to check strategies and also have a live watchlist. Demo accounts are free and in my opinion everybody should use them to get better at trading. When developing new strategies and trying out new ideas we tend to focus on past data and analyse it as much possible. Finding the best possible strategy for historic data is good, but it's no guarantee that the future prices are going to follow the same pattern. When testing new ideas, I would recommend to have some historic data test and also some live testing in a demo account. Before putting money into our new strategy, we can let it run for a few weeks in our demo accounts and see how well it performs. Also, in the demo accounts we can make small changes to our strategies without paying transaction fees directly. For me demo accounts are a free tool that I try to use as much as possible.