Of course, it isn't. But I don't think there is a heavy punishment for that like a permanent ban unless perhaps if it's done over and over again and brazenly. Although it's possible, I'm not sure if there are indeed merit sellers or buyers here. What I noticed in the past is that there are a lot of merit beggars, merit hunters, and those who solicit merits from outside the forum like on Telegram and Discord channels. And it seems there are also users here who are scratching each other's back.   

This is absolutely true. And that's why saving in fiat could be very bad to you. Had you saved in Bitcoin, you would have already bought your dream car, possibly even two of them and the top of the line.

Anyway, I wonder, has your dream car not cheapen a little considering that there could already be new models on the market?

Had you known that inflation would wreak havoc to the purchasing value of your money, you would have taken a loan years ago and bought your dream car. At least you will be paying now with an amount with lesser value.

It's not that the Warriors are at an advantage because game 5 is to be played in their home court; it is that if they lose this game, it is over for them. For me, this is a more compelling reason for Kerr to be at his wisest point and for the players to be at their best performances, and for them to win. Home court or not, they will have to win this. Otherwise, it's the end for the defending champ. I guess I would still place even a moneyline bet on the Warriors even if this were played in the Lakers' home.

What are fair Bitcoin transactions? What if others are willing to pay terribly high fees for jpeg inscriptions thereby causing the network to clog? What if monetary transactions on the Bitcoin network are left pending for days in the mempool because memes are getting the priority? Can we perhaps bring this discussion into a more fundamental level, in the level which defines Bitcoin as an electronic cash system and not a network made for frog artworks?

Let's say you have been buying €30 of Bitcoin for the past 14 months. That means you already have €420 in Bitcoin. By the time the halving occurs sometime in April of next year, you will probably have twice as many, around €700-800 in Bitcoin. The next bull run I suppose will happen more or less a year after the halving. Let's say you will have €1,000 in the next bull run. If the price grows x4 in that bull run, you will have €4,000 in Bitcoin. Is that enough to make you financially independent from your family? And for how long?

I guess it's better if you continue to hodl what you have beyond the next bull run and forget wanting to be financially independent sooner rather than later. What you have will be a bigger help someday. You're working, after all. You can probably find another job online. I assume you're able enough to do some work-from-home jobs like virtual assistance.

Anyway, keep up the spirit! Your plans will materialize someday!

Well, at least there's a silver lining in this Ordinals fiasco. Thanks to it, the fees are growing exorbitant more than ever, pushing for centralized exchanges to finally support the Lightning network. In turn, when these centralized exchanges open up for Lightning deposits and withdrawals, they are also encouraging users to make use of the Lightning network. And when there are a number of users who are already into LN, surely wallets will also start integrating LN. This significantly drives up LN adoption.

However, I hope this doesn't mean that people would be satisfied and treat the high fees as a normal thing. Nothing beats on-chain transactions, after all.

It may have some truth, but this is actually a subjective thing. Although there must be some kind of a universal basis for happiness, when it comes to money, I guess it is not the be-all and end-all.

A month or two ago, I attended a gathering. At some point, the discussion came to money. And it was argued by my former boss that money can actually make you happy and that the old adage money can't buy you happiness is wrong. I nodded in agreement, but didn't care to elaborate. Deep within, I thought money could indeed make you happy but poor is the man who depends on it for his happiness. So it's not even about how you spend your money; happiness could be there without money.

I remember there were a number of Bitcoin supporters, even developers if I'm not mistaken, who brushed this Ordinals issue off when it was launched months ago saying it's not a big deal, that it will just die sooner rather than later, that they be allowed since they're paying fees for their transactions anyway, and so forth. Now, this issue has already escalated a lot and we seem to be taken back to step 1. Whether this now is a deliberate attack or not, bold steps should be taken. After all, it has already shaken the very core of Bitcoin. And I guess this transaction fee problem has not yet even reached its climax.

I actually don't have a problem if the payment is sent to either a native SegWit address or a Lightning network address. But it's because my payment will probably stay there for many months or even years. I guess I could even accept altcoins like LTC if the manager prefers.

But with the Lightning network, it will probably be a problem to many signature participants who have to immediately move their payment somewhere else before converting it to fiat. The company or manager will save on fees, but the burden will be transferred to the participants. I guess that isn't fair.

I haven't really been a fan of slots, although I have already experienced playing in a number of them both online and in a brick-and-mortar casino, shifting from one slot game to another, but I guess it never really mattered to me whether those were slots originally designed by the casinos themselves or those were slots provided to them by third parties. One thing that discourages me from slots is that it seems your fun and money are quick to vanish.

I hope you have learned your lessons. Cryptocurrency is a vast market. The risk is high. But if you minimize your playing field, you are also minimizing the risks as a result. If you do away with the ephemeral trends and hype and craze in the wider cryptocurrency market, which it has a lot, you will face a considerably lower probability of becoming a victim to a scam or a rug pull or a loss.

However, if your motivation is those luxury cars that your friends have, be wary with your crypto comeback. Tame down your goals and be realistic.

If you have some stablecoin and you also have some Bitcoin, what's the difference between spending the Bitcoin and spending the stablecoin? If you spend your Bitcoin, you could refill your wallet by converting your stablecoin to Bitcoin. That way, you're somehow helping Bitcoin's adoption as a currency and you still end up with the same amount of Bitcoin. If you spend your stablecoin, your Bitcoin remains intact but you missed contributing a little for Bitcoin's adoption.

But at this point particular point when even a low priority transaction means you will have to pay hundreds of Sats per vByte for your transaction fee, I guess you better spend your stablecoin. Anyway, the fiat currency on which its price is pegged is also losing value non-stop. It's pointless to keep them for a long time.

Frankly speaking, I doubt it. Even good posters, even those coming from the prestigious Chipmixer campaign who used to produce high numbers of posts when the maximum paid posts were 50 are now apparently adjusting to the maximum of their new campaigns. That, to me, however, is completely understandable. Those who claim otherwise, those who think that a user's posting habit and level of activity should be the same whether he/she is on a campaign or not are probably saying one thing and doing another. Although I believe that is true to a handful of respectable members here, probably the great majority aren't like that.

That your posts are paid entails responsibility. It may not stop you from taking a break and go on a vacation, but it is enough to actually compel you to make a post. But that doesn't mean you end up producing shit posts. That each of your valid post costs $5 means you are prodded to make one. Again, not necessarily a useless one written for the sake of compliance. But without that payment, it could be possible that such a constructive post wouldn't have been written. I think paid posts encourage and incentivize knowledgeable users here to participate in discussions, make valuable contributions.

Hypocrisy aside, I think that many of us here are counting posts, but that only happens because they are paid. If they weren't, we wouldn't have cared at all. If we are short 1 post, we go, "hey, that's a waste of $4, why shouldn't I start reading interesting threads and contribute my couple of Sats?"

If it's only economic, why not? Indeed, if the pasture is a lot greener out there and you're caught in a place where the economic situation is rather tight, moving abroad is a great option. But there certainly are other things that need to be considered also. And in my situation right now, I think I'd rather look for more ways to earn here in my country than move abroad and still follow orders. If working abroad offers the same level of toxicity, albeit with a bigger pay, I'd rather suffer it here.

That's a very long time ago, OP. Supposing your story is true and you spent 50 quid for some Bitcoin, you must have tens of thousands of coins. That should be worth hundreds of millions of dollars today. Indeed, that's worth all the efforts to try recover them. No stone should be left unturned.

Anyway, you must have used an email when you signed up to that forum? Try to recover that also. You might find some old confirmation messages from that forum.

But I still wonder how you could possibly retrieve those coins even if you recovered everything save for your keys.

I'm actually not sure if Satoshi Nakamoto really created Bitcoin because he/she/they were "fed up with government money" and "the corruption, the manipulation." Although Satoshi made some unfavorable remarks as to fiat's design and flaws, nowhere in the whitepaper did Satoshi mention that Bitcoin is a solution to government's failures.

As a matter of fact, I particularly like how the whitepaper appears pretty much neutral. If one is to read the whitepaper and appreciate it vis-à-vis the strong statements made by enthusiastic Bitcoin supporters against governments, one might begin to wonder whether they're on the same page. Bitcoin was created to solve a real-world problem; it was designed in such a way as to "allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution."^[1]

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[1] https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

I guess bettors who have been doing their thing for quite a while already have already won upset bets. That's normal. We don't bet on favorites all the time, after all. I can't remember how many times I have already won by upsets.

The last time I placed a bet on a heavy underdog, though, was on DOTA II. I placed a bet on T1. I forgot who they're up against but they've already lost on their first match. That was a TI qualifier game or a major, if I'm not mistaken. The odds was north of 7.0. That was a live bet and I made it because I was watching the picks and I was convinced that with their heroes T1 could have a very good chance.

I guess it's better to just avoid Noones and Paxful altogether.

I particularly am suspicious of Youssef. The guy seems manipulative and sneaky. Back when he announced that Paxful is shutting down, he wasn't honest and transparent. He only mentioned about "key staff departures" and the usual "regulatory challenges" before he moved on to a rather detailed promotion of Noones. It even came as a surprise that you can actually log on to Noones with your Paxful details, even your KYC. Your trades will also be reflected on the new platform.^[1]

With this new update, it seems Youssef's co-founder Artur Schaback's lawsuit against both Paxful and Youssef is gaining the upper hand. And now Youssef is badmouthing the very platform he used to protect. The guy's a dirty player.

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[1] https://twitter.com/greybtc/status/1643367997417947136?

There is more than one reason, of course. There's a number. One may be that they don't understand Bitcoin, or perhaps misunderstood it. Another would be that they haven't even heard of it. Another is that it is perceived as a scam or a form of an illegal or underground currency. Some others might also perceive Bitcoin as a risky investment option that could crumble any moment. Or perhaps some others don't really find any use of Bitcoin in their lives. So there's lack of education, understanding, interest. Many are passive about Bitcoin. But a day might come when they will somehow get compelled to confront Bitcoin face to face.

What does financial literacy mean to you? I don't think teachers don't know what it is to be financially literate. They don't have to be a financial advisor or an investment manager of a huge company or a billionaire, anyway. They just have to properly manage their own personal finances. I'm referring to the most basic of things. It's merely literacy, after all. You don't have to be very sophisticated.

Many of them failed on as basic as spending less than they earn. Don't they know that? They failed on as basic as setting priorities. They have a couple of expensive phones, one is the latest iPhone, and yet they're borrowing money because their take home pay is not enough for them. They travel to expensive tourist spots on a loan. Every time somebody sells or demonstrates whatever to them-- a vacuum, speakers, supplements, Tupperware, even floor wax-- for as long as it's months to pay, they'd buy. These things are basic in financial literacy.