I don't understand, you hate gambling and only want to do it as entertainment from now on? Or you quit completely and will never touch it again? Good luck to you, but to me it sounds a bit like you tried to make money with gambling and you lost. Now you try to convince others to stop gambling too, which might be very hard on a forum that is for gambling. There are so many post on this forums which warn people against only going into gambling to make money. The casino has a house edge over you which lets you lose in the long run. It is the best way to look as gambling as a form of entertainment and only use money that you can afford to lose.

I heard these arguments in my country too and I always find them misleading. It's not like a huge number of scammers just came out of nowhere with the rise of crypto currencies. The scammers where here before and used fiat money to scam people. And there would nobody say we need to stop using fiat money because of the scammers. Everybody can get scammed out of his money, it doesn't matter what currency he is using. Instead of trying to stop people using certain currencies the government should work on educating their people better. Only when the citizens are aware of the risk of scammers they can be more cautious. Bitcoin has survived for so long now that critics should stop doubting the success and rather be more open to it.

It's a good point to ask ourselves what would we have done with our money if we didn't spend it on gambling or sports betting. Everybody feels remorse from time to time, but we need to think carefully about it and see if it's true or our brain just playing tricks on us. Because it's not like the alternative to gambling is sitting at home do nothing. Some nights I stayed home gambling I would have went out with friends for a beer or watch a movie. So there are opportunity costs and it's not like all the lost money would still be in my wallet if I didn't gamble. On the other side we also need to think about the times we made profits when we feel remorse. It's not like we can only get rid of the bad things of gambling and keep our profits.

I think that Demo Accounts are a great way to try out new trading strategies and any beginner should use it before starting to trade with real money. It's true that there are no consequences for trading with demo accounts, but that is also a good thing, any big loss is not a real loss and we can still learn from our mistakes. We shouldn't feel bad about any profit we make that it's not real, rather be happy that our strategies are working. When it comes to demo accounts it's up to us to make it as realistic as possible. For example we can set a personal goal that we need to reach 25% profit before we start trading with real money. Or we could make a challenge with friends and see who runs the best portfolio over a month. There are a lot of possibilities with demo accounts, it's up to us to use them.

In general a person that doesn't pay taxes is a bad person, because he uses the free services the government offers us like infrastructure and healthcare and doesn't help to finance it. If someone does it over a longer period of time in large scale he could even go to prison for it. But in most cases it's not that east to cheat the government out of its money. At least in my country the employer directly pays taxes and healthcare out of my salary, so there is no real option to hold the money back. When it comes to investment income it's a bit easier to try and avoid paying taxes, but I don't think it's worth the risk to get fined by the government. These fines have a huge interest and if we don't have the money anymore we could be stuck in debt for a long time. In case we are happy with our schools, public transportation, hospitals and doctors than I don't think we should try and trick the government out of our tax income.

I started gambling only after my 18th birthday, so I can't really tell if casinos would allow underage gambling. But so far I haven't seen any articles where parents complain that their underage children where accepted at an online casino. I really hope that casinos take the age restrictions serious and don't allow any children to sign up at their websites. This doesn't include children that use fake IDs to try and get access to online gambling. When it comes to alcohol and gambling, there is a reason why we need to be at least 18 to do those things. In both cases there is a risk of becoming addicted and especially at younger age the risks are higher. Another question would be also why casino always ask for KYC documents if they don't follow them anyways.  I do think that most casinos are serious about their age restrictions and don't want any children on their website to gamble. Also kids usually don't have any regular income, so it's hard to gamble regularly for them. If casinos would deliberately accept children to gamble then the parents could take legal action against them ask for the money back the children lost. 

Very interesting challenge, thank you for posting it here and giving us some insights into your sports betting career. So far you had a bumpy start and already got wiped out once. I am wondering now, how many bullets do you have available for your challenge? Is there like a fixed number of tries you plan to do or will you decide it as you go on. Your first two bets where great as you got above 100k USD really quickly, unfortunately you lost it again afterwards. In your first two bets you paced all your money and only after 2 wins you took out the 40k USD again. Is there like a fixed rule for when to bet everything and when to only bet a smaller amounts? I am always interested in seeing new sports betting strategies. Thanks again for sharing your betting history with us.

Selling a property to have money to invest in bitcoin seems like the opposite most crypto investors would do. At least for me and my friends the dream would be to one day buy our own house or apartment with out crypto coins. If I ever manage to save so much money that I could afford my own property I would sell my coins. This would let me save so much money on rent and also be a great protection against higher inflation. As for the savings I agree with you, don't put all your money into one basket. It's much better to diversify and spread out our money across multiple different asset classes. Like that we face lower risks during a bear market that all our assets will drop in value.

First time I am hearing the term black tax, when I first read your thread I thought you were meaning back tax. The meaning of black tax I would bring in connection with lottery winners, where someone becomes a millionaire overnight and has to give some of his money to his family. Nothing wrong with helping your family if you can afford it. In the crypto community I find this a bit harder to do, because would you give your family members some crypto coins even though they don't own any. Or should we sell some of our coins and give them fiat money? In my family we don't really talk so much about money in detail. I don't know how wealthy my siblings really are and they don't know how much money I have invested in cryptos. They all know that I am interested in crypto currencies for several years now, but I don't say when I buy or sell coins. If I ever manage to become a millionaire through cryptos then I would definitely make some nice gifts to my family, but right now this seems very unrealistic.

The thing with financial markets is that they are always forward looking, so being in a recession right now is not really affecting the prices of financial assets that much as long as the outlook for the future is strong. When the war in Ukraine started the world looked doomed at first and the outlook was very bad, leading to recessions in many countries due to the high energy prices and rising inflation. But now we are 1.5 years later and world is getting back to normal, people are relieved that the worst is behind us and will focus on the future. It is not only crypto currencies that are doing well, the big stock indices are all up this year too. On one side the economic might not look so good as it did 3 years ago, but with high inflation people need to invest their money somewhere. It's not really a option to leave our money in the savings account with 2-3% interest rate when the inflation rate is at 7-10%. So don't worry too much about the state of the economy in the first 6 month of the year, rather at the outlook for the next 6 month.

Aa a trader I have used technical analysis for over 5 years now. I visited a seminar on trading signals in the stock market organized by my university and bought a few books afterwards. Most financial assets move in cycles, there are bull and bear markets which can be identified by technical analysis. There are plenty of trading signals coming out of technical analysis than give a good indication if we should be buying or selling. I am confident that there will always be signals available we can use, the question is how reliable these signals are going to be. During times of high volatility in the markets we might see completely different signals by various indicators. The question than will be which we trust the most. Personally I find the short term trading signals the most unreliable and prefer to look at more medium focused indicators. These trading signals are always just a recommendation and I think that we also should focus on fundamentals to get a general idea of the current state of the markets.

It's true that esports is growing a lot, especially during the pandemic and the lock downs we saw a large number of people to start gaming more regularly. With new games coming out each month there is a huge market for developers, and organizing tournaments is a great way to try and keep your game relevant. Just look at how old Dota 2 is and still with help of Valve it has the biggest online tournaments in the world. Just winning one of these tournaments is life changing for the players and makes up for the thousands hours put into the game. But with the rise of esports it's also harder to stay on top of the various. Just because there are games every day we can bet money on, doesn't mean we should actually do so. There is a lot of money to be made with online betting, as long as we some advantage. At least for me it's best to stick to two popular games, mainly Dota2 and CSGO and focus the big games there. With so many different opportunities to bet on I am afraid to lose focus and bet without any advantages.

Today and tomorrow is the semi and grand finals of the Lorgar Cup 2023 with some not so popular European teams. As I am not really familiar with the teams playing there I probably won't be placing any bets on the three matches. Instead I am focusing on the Blast Premier Fall Group Stage which is starting on Thursday and Friday next week. Already with the first game there will be Vitality playing against Evil Geniuses which is going to be a save win for Vitality. The second match with NiP vs Complexity is going to be more close, but should be won by NiP over 3 maps. On the second day we have Heroic vs BIG, which is another one sided match for Heroic as it's currently the strongest team in CSGO. NaVi is going to play against the new Astralis roster, which doesn't have any experience playing together, so NaVi should take that match without any problems. And the last match of the day will be FaZe vs OG, which should be won by FaZe without much trouble. It some exciting games coming up next week with quite a few strong teams having the chance to dominate in the first qualifications.

I am the exact opposite to you, I never really use stable coins and rather spend Bitcoins and Fiat money for my gambling activities.  The whole motivation for me behind it is to either take profits or add to my crypto holdings with gambling. So when the Bitcoin price is high like right now it's a good opportunity to use gambling as a way to try and get some return on my coins. As a Hodl investors my coins don't bring any income for a long time, so using them during times of high prices can lead to some additional profits. And last year was the opposite when the Bitcoin price was around the 16-20k USD levels I wouldn't touch any of my coins for gambling. I only deposited money with Fiat and used my gambling winnings to withdraw in bitcoin. Like that it's a good way for me to keep adding to my portfolio while the prices are quite cheap.

I fully agree with you, it makes no real sense to try and push our children to become crypto investors in their teens. As teenagers you want to have fun and enjoy your time with friends outside. School is already enough learning that is forced upon your kids and most children struggle with finding the right interest in life that leads to a good career. Just because we as parents want our kids to be active crypto investors doesn't mean it's going to happen. We shouldn't also forget that almost any child will have a rebel phase where it doesn't want to do what the parents tell him to do. During such a phase it seems nearly impossible to get our kids to become crypto investors. In my opinion it's much better to make a small portfolio for them and transfer some coins into it. If they are interest in it then teach them, if not then it's okay too. It can be that the interest only comes later after high school and having already a portfolio in their name can make their start much easier. 

While on paper the two might seem very similar they are in fact not actually so similar. Technical analysis is a great tool to help us trade financial securities, it doesn't really matter if it is Stocks, Cryptos or Forex. As long as the financial assets have trends that we can identify with the technical analysis we can make a profit. The big difference in Forex and Crypto trading is in the fundamentals, which is probably why big Forex traders are not switching into the crypto world easily. When it comes to Forex trading it is very important to look at the local interest rates in a country, because you replicate any Forex trade with low risk government securities in a country. For example, if you trade US Dollars vs Euros, you already know today how the price will be in the future. Because you can sell your Dollar today and buy Euros, then invest them in government bonds with almost no risk for 1 year and get let's say 4% back. The profit you make then you can already today covert back with a contract in 1 year to USD to make a fixed profit. On the other side you have the US government bonds which for example make you 8% in one year. With that relationship you know today already that the USD in 1 year needs to rise more than the Euro because it offers higher interest rates. These relationships unfortunately don't are in the crypto world as we don't get any risk free interest with our coins. It's better to focus on one sector of the two and not at both at the same time in my opinion.   

Over the years I made quite a few purchases with bitcoin, I bought most of my latest PC games with bitcoin and also my last PC upgrade was paid with bitcoin. In CSGO I bought and sold a lot of skins with bitcoin, but all of these purchases were nothing special. My only real special purchase with BTC  was my bicycle, which makes me happy every time I use it. Now during summer I use it almost every day and it reminds me of the good things coming from the crypto world. My dream would be to maybe one day buy my own apartment or house with bitcoins, which is a dream that is so far away right now and could take a lifetime to achieve.

The fact that an AI that only focuses on gambling will never stop gambling is a big problem in the long run for the users. It would require constant human oversight to ensure that the AI is not gambling away all his winnings. The self learning aspect of the AI would let it try out all possible strategies and only stick to the most profitable ones. But the main purpose of the AI is to make money, which can only happen if it actually games. So it would need to increase the amount of bets or number of games played to constantly increase profits. This is a huge risk as we can't control the AI anymore when it gets too large and it could lead to big losses if there is an error in the coding.

That is a really good question, because I think that many of the long term Bitcoin holders have set a specific goal in their minds at which they would start thinking about selling their coins. 100,000 USD seems like the first major milestone where some of the older investors who are holding bitcoins for years would consider selling some of their coins. Personally I had planned to sell 10% of my coins when we reach a new ATH above 100k to buy something nice for me and my family. The question is of course, who would buy all these coins then and can the price maintain a such high levels. If all of sudden the exchanges get flooded with sell orders then the price should drop considerably. The only solution would be if the future outlook for Bitcoin is so strong that investors would expect to rise much higher in a short period of time. Then there could be some larger corporations trying to acquire more Bitcoins leading to strong upward pressure in the market.

Let's see if this fight is really going to happen, if it does it's definitely going to be the highlight of the year. I think many people are hyped to see Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg fighting it out. There is already potential betting happening and in the future I would expect many people to try and place their own bets. The question of who would win is a bit hard to answer, because both of them would get the best personal trainers you can buy for money. I would expect Elon Musk to be the big fan favourite as Zuckerberg has a lot of negative press, but with the age difference between the two I would think that Zuckerberg has the advantage. Also from their appearances Zuckerberg looks more in shape that Musk. As for a possible influence in the crypto or stock markets I don't think so. Why should such a high public fight have any implications, it's not like they are betting for anything.