Everything that includes risk can ruin you, there is no guarantee for success when it comes to gambling, trading or many other things in life. We are taking risks every day just by walking out of the door, there is no real risk-free world. We need to decide for ourselves what kind of risks we are happy to take and live with comfortably. Some people can’t handle stress and risk at all, for them trading is not a good idea and they are better of to just buy ETFs or give their money to an investment manager. Whereas other people are risk seekers and are looking for the highest possible return. The thing we need to understand that without any risk there is also no return. Trying to achieve higher returns that what we can get on a savings account means to take in risks that could lead to losses. For me it’s important to make a difference between realised and unrealised losses. Just because the price of our investment drops in a day doesn’t mean we should be selling immediately and realise our loss. Crypto markets are quite volatile at the moment with Bitcoins being up 30% in a month.

I don't think this is the best investment you can make with your money. Why would you lend your money someone that has no more money and still wants to gamble? First of all, if they lost all their money through gambling then their strategies and risk management is not really the best and the chances are high that they are just going to lose all your money as well. Making a contract and requiring interest is a good thing, this gives you at least some form of protection. However, a contract alone is no guarantee that you actually will get your money back. Let’s look at the worst-case scenario where the gambler loses all your money and still needs to pay you back. What happens if he doesn’t have a job, or only a job that doesn’t pay a lot of money? Even if you go to the courts and ask for your money back, it could take years for you to recover your principal. In my opinion a better approach, if you want to invest in gambling, would be to look for a casino that is looking for a new partner and you could invest your money there. There will always be people trying to sell their shares in casino and if you have enough money, you could buy their shares.

I don't really remember how high the actual bitcoin price was at the time I started trading actively. When I first came into contact with crypto currencies was in 2016, back then the bitcoin price was around 4k USD, but I wasn't really trading it. Bitcoins where just another currency for me, with which I could withdraw money from CSGO skin trading sites quickly and cheaply. I wasn't really interested in keeping any of my coins and converted them back to Fiat money again. This was probably the biggest investment mistake I ever made. In 2017/8 I got more interested in bitcoins and started trading in small scale, the price was around 12,000 USD. But really interested in other crypto currencies I became in 2020 and trading Bitcoin more actively then was when the bitcoin price was already around the 20k USD levels. A lot of missed opportunities to make money, but there is no real point on feeling bad because we can't turn back time. The only way is forward, learn from the mistakes and not repeat them.

This is not really a general thing I would say. I have met rich people who don't spend any money at all and check prices on everything. Owning multiple house and having enough money for the rest of their life and still they only buy the cheapest clothes and eat a lot of fast food. And there is the opposite, people who don't have a lot of money but want to seem rich and spend a lot to seem like they don't care about the price tags. This comes down to your upbringing and how money was generally treated in your family. Whenever I buy something there are two factors I look at, quality and price. There needs to be a strict  relationship between the two and even if I had millions on my bank account I would still check the two before any bigger purchase. It's fine to pay a high price for a product as long as it's high quality and is going to last long time. Saving money to buy a cheap product that breaks down after a few months is not going to be worth it. The same goes for expensive products that are unnecessary, just because I have a lot of money doesn't mean I need to spend it all.

1.) No, I don't think the family went to far here. They love their son and brother and want to help him as much as possible. Selling all your private property to gamble is extreme and he definitely needs help. The problem is that once you are above the legal age to gamble your family can't do much to stop it. Treating the casinos is one thing, but I am sure they know better and can't really refuse people just because the parents told them so. Also, if the young man really wants to gamble than he can find other ways like online gambling. The family should make an intervention and try their son to start a therapy. In such a severe case it would be best to visit a clinic for a few wwwks to make a hard break.

2.) Of course I would share my success with my family, why shouldn't I? My siblings and parents only want the best for me and their concern over my well-being just shows their love. In case I win millions I would give every family member some money. It's my parents who paid for me all my life, now it's my turn to return some money. I think that if my brother or father would win the lottery they would also give me money.

I can understand your friend and his reservation towards Bitcoin. Back in the days you could aquire a large amount of bitcoins very cheaply and quickly. These so called whales have a huge power over the bitcoin market and influence price considerably. However, this is not really something new, in the stock market there are huge investment managers and hedge funds than hold large parts of companies and can influence the prices heavily too. If someone like Warren Buffet decides to buy or a sell a company this is going to send the price flying. In my opinion this is not necessarily a bad thing, just because a few rich people own large parts of bitcoin doesn't mean that they want to push the price down. Long term the whales are interested in high prices as they can sell some of their coins and make huge profits. A low bitcoin price doesn't help the whales and price manipulation are not going to last forever.

I don't really spend a lot of time checking the numbers of the lottery. If it's not my numbers then I just throw the slip away and move on, there isn't really any point thinking about why I didn't pick that particular number. When it comes to lottery I don't have a fixed set of numbers that I always pick, for me it's always random numbers. Like that I don't have the issue to feel bad that if ever my numbers would win the jackpot, but I didn't play that week. It's different if you play lottery every single week, then having the same numbers are fine as you will never miss out on winning with your numbers. My grandfather for example played lottery for more than 30 years and picked always the same numbers. Maybe you believe in lucky numbers and think that this is going to increase your chances. I would always look at it from a statistics point of view, our winning chances in the lottery are always the same whatever number we pick. I am kind of glad that I don't know how close I came to winning a jackpot, because I also could have lost sleepless nights over it. Even though if it doesn't really matter if 1 number was just off by 1 or if all the numbers where wrong completely, you can either win or not win the jackpot, there is no inbetween.

It's nice to save and investment at a young age, because your portfolio will grow much larger over time. The only issue that we don't have a lot of capital at hand at such a young age. Which is not really going to change in the 30s. At least for me it’s hard to pay for my family and save on a regular basis. Without financial help from my family, it would be even harder and I am not even considering buying my own apartment. The next big step would be to look for my own place instead of renting, but in my current financial situation it’s not an option. Being independent from our families is one thing, doing very well in life and being on track to become financial free is something completely different. My goal would be to achieve some form of financial freedom at the age of 55-60 so that I could retire a bit earlier and also don’t have to worry about money anymore. Maybe if I end up lucky and my investment portfolio does exceptionally well it could be a few years earlier, but in my 30s I am still struggling.

This probably depends on the lottery rules in every country, but I can't believe that your face and name has to be published publicly for you to receive your lottery winnings. 500,000 USD is a life changing amount and we would all be happy to receive one time in life such a profit from gambling. The problem with becoming a public figure depends also on the crime statistics in our countries. If it's a general safe country than I would be less concerned. On the one side I can understand the lottery company that always wants to make a big public event out of jackpot winners, it's great marketing and will attract more customers in the future. On the other side our privacy should be respected as well. I have seen quite a few lottery winners accept their money wearing a mask which seems like a fair compromise. Also in my country they usually just reveal the age and where the lottery ticket was bought, no name or picture. Stating the first name publicly seems fine to me, but the last name should be kept out of the public.

When gambling streams were newer, I was surprised how lucky they are and wondered if I could get the same returns when following their actions. In the end I mostly lost money following the strategies of streamers and stopped watching them for a while. Now I am watching them again, but only for entertainment purposes and I don't trust blindly what I am seeing. A few of my friends started to gamble more regularly after watching gambling streams, none of them made any big profits. It's hard to know what's going on behind the scenes and I feel like gambling influencers and streamers are getting special accounts by the casinos to promote their websites and casino games. If the money you gamble with is not your own you are much more open to take high risks.

Diversification is key to successful portfolio management, it doesn't really matter if it's 1q, 1, 1 or even commodities. Spreading our money across a wider variety of assets reduces risk considerably and should be done by any investors. It's also not really about short or longterm gains, because we don't know the future. Even with the best possible research and forecasts we are still only making guesses about the future. Having different assets in our portfolio helps a lot to not be affected so severely when there is a bad month, as not all assets are going to drop in value at the same time. It also helpe when we want to take profit and can choose from a broader list of assets to sell. Managing risk is for me even more important than achieving the highest possible return, and diversification is the perfect tool for that.

I don't think there a special trick that let's you gain confidence overnight and become a good trader. In my opinion the only real way to progress from a newbie is to go and start trading yourself. Reading books about trading and learning all the technical aspects is important and is going to make a difference longterm. But it's not going to take away the need for real work trading experience. Confidence is important as well, if our trading strategy has proven itself. Having confidence without any experience is dangerous, just because we believe something is going to work doesn't mean this is actually the case. Trading doesn't depend on size, you can start small and see how well your strategies are doing. And even if you have no savings at all you could start running a demo account with real world prices. Once you see that your trades are geverating profits the confidence will come on its own.

The recent 30% gain in the Bitcoin market seems really nice and I would expect that many investors are thinking about taking some profit. I wouldn't sell any of my coins at the moment,  because I don't need the money right now and don't really have a good alternative investment to put my money in. Both stocks and bonds doesn't seem like a good idea at the moment, same goes for holding FIAT cash. The inflation is still high in my country and all my savings should be invested to grow over time. In case someone needs money today then it's fine to sell some of his Bitcoin, but for an investment I would recommend to hold. We should be looking at the bigger picture here, even above 30,000 USD Bitcoin is still 50% below its ATH and selling now could lead to missing out on profits in the future. The halving is only coming next year and with the Bitcoin ETFs it's not going to be a one time event where investors going to put their money in. Bitcoin ETFs just mean that the investment in Bitcoins becomes easier and there will likely be many new investors join the party.

There seems to be a rise of gambling addiction related topics again here on the forum. I am wondering if really more people are struggling with an addiction now or if the older topics are just not so present anymore. You can find a lot of material here that will help against your struggles. Personally, I don't have any real experience with gambling addictions, but we had other cases of addictions in my family. I know a few people who gamble a lot and even I gamble regularly since i turned 18, but it's not really an addiction. I can take breaks from gambling without having the urge to gamble. From what I learned from other addictions is that you need a clean break at least for a few years. It's hard to get back to a normal routine without the addiction and the risk of falling back is quite high.

In my opinion drugs are much more dagnerous when it comes to addiction than gambling. The main issue here is that drugs are chemicals that actually change your body and brain. I have met a few drugs addicts in my life, but never a gambling addict. So, it's a bit hard to know exactly how severe a gambling addiction can become. With drug abusers it's that their body is slowly going to change and there are a lot of physical issues after many years of drug using. I think that gambling addictions are mostly in the mind and will control our behaviour. With drugs however you can see withdrawal symptoms that are really strong. My cousin was addicted to drugs when he was younger and it was terrible how it changed him. I remember that he tried to get rid of it a few times on his own and could sleep for days, was sweating every night and in the end always had a relapse. Any form of addiction is terrible, but it's one thing to fight the mental addictions, and something completely different to try and repair your body after many years of substance abuses. In the worst case it might not even possible to recover and all the damage done to your body is permanent.

This weekend there is Pari Please 2023 happening, a B tournament where 8 CSGO teams that we haven't seen regularly are playing against each other. I used to follow a lot the Brazilian CSGO teams in the past and it's nice to see them compete internationally again. Furia is playing today against Aurora and should be winning that match. The team is based around FalleN, one of my alltime favourite CSGO player. The two teams already played against each other in the tournament and Furia won 2-1. The will likely repeat their win and move on to the semi finals tomorrow. The second match today is MIBR vs BetBoom, where the Russian team has the upper hand. BetBoom is a decent team that played quite well for their experience during the IEM Sydney tournament. The favourite for the whole tournament in my opinion is Eternal Fire, they played really well during the last ESL season winning against teams like Liquid and Cloud9, also they didn't lose a single map yet during the tournament. 

I don't know if really everybody wants to become a billionaire. For me this is not really a goal in life and also from my close friends I haven't heard them dreaming of being a billionaire. That's way too much money for one single person, sure a few million USD would be nice to have and would provide financial freedom. But, I would rather have a happy and healthy family than a lot of money in my bank account. There are things in life we can't buy for money and once you lose them it will be impossible to get them back. Forcing billionaires to give up their money is a difficult subject, because even if a country makes new laws to not allow citizens to hold so much wealth. They can just immigrate to another country with better laws and be safe from prosecution. I remember reading about American hedge fund managers giving up their US citizenship and relocated to Ireland where they didn't have to pay such high taxes. A billionaire busting scheme would only work if the whole world would work together and promote similar laws without loopholes.

During high inflation periods cash is one the worst investment choices we can make. We are just going to lose value each year with the rising inflation. Investing into anything fixed rates like bonds or savings account is not going to do much better. The central bank will likely keep rising interest rates to combat and inflation, which decrease the value of our fixed payments in the future. Stocks is definitely a better idea to invest, if the business is not hit hard by inflation themselves. As long as the company can charge the customers with the higher inflation their business model is not at risk. Crypto currencies seem like one of the best solutions, because they are independent of your country and the value should not be affected by your local inflation. This all depends on how much money you can save and if you might need it short term. In case you can't invest longterm you could also consider switch some money into USD, like many people in Argentina are doing to escape their struggling high inflation.

This is a hard question and since there is a lot of money involved you should definitely work a good lawyer. Depending on the inheritance you should get the best possible lawyer available, because there might be a chance to overturn the will of your parents and still get all your money. One issue here is if you have many siblings? It could be that they will try to fight you for it as it's their share of your parents’ money that gets lower. In my country the law is very different. Parents could disown you without any reason, as long as there is a will, they could give all their money to charity. However, there is a certain amount which belongs to the children even if the parents don't want to give it to them. That money any court would give you without an issue. Another issue is if all the people involved in the will say it's invalid, then the will would be discarded and the standard regulation would apply. Maybe in your country there is a similar special law, then you could work together with all your siblings to get the will annulated. In any case, gambling alone should never be an issue for our parents to disown us and you should talk to your parents, maybe you can change your mind. Is this something both your mother and father want or is it maybe just your father or mother alone pushing the subject?

Gambling itself is not an illicit activity, the problem is that it can be misused for illegal activities quite easily and even protection like KYC is not a guarantee that people are trying to take advantage of the laws of the country they live in. The issue here is that everybody who is 18 (or 21 in some countries) can go and visit a casino and start playing. When we would deposit large sums of money at our bank the government becomes interested in us and wants to know where the money is coming from. Paying taxes is one issue, but the government will also make sure that the money we have is not coming from illegal activities. The casino is not going to ask the gambler where the money is coming from. They will accept bets from all people and are happy for new customers. After winning in the casino, we can then use that money to deposit at our bank account and have a proof of origin for the money. So, gambling itself is not illicit it's just that it's easy for criminals to use it to launder their money.