Or when there are strong emotions running in you. If you are depressed, you should not be gambling. If you are consumed with anger or with big problems whether at work or at home, gambling is also not the best activity for you. I think this would even apply to positive emotions. If you are extremely ecstatic or very happy over something, it might not be good to gamble. Strong emotions would only take away your concentration. They would make you unreasonable and careless, unmindful of your limits.

I know it's not. But Tether has always been controversial. I remember there was a bugging question as to Tether's reserve, or capacity to mint tens of billions of coins, for many years. They then released an audit report. But the report somehow raised more questions than answers. It didn't satisfy the public. It didn't allay their suspicions and doubts. It even questioned the reputation of the auditing party. But succeeding audit reports were released since then. This one is the latest. I'm not sure if this is the same auditing firm that first made Tether's audit years ago.

Although it's good to hear that some problems are already resolved, it seems the situation in your country as regards Binance remains highly volatile. You're the one who's in there so you can properly gauge the gravity of the situation, but is it possible that Binance will stop serving Nigerians any moment from now? In which case, even using VPN might be futile.

It's unfortunate that your government, your central bank in particular, is pointing fingers at the wrong actors. I don't understand why the likes of Binance, Kraken, and Coinbase are to be blamed for the falling naira. Whatever happened to financial and economic management and policies? People choosing cryptocurrencies is the result of the Nigerian naira fast losing value; it can't be the cause.

You're dropping such advice as if it's a very easy thing to do. To move to another country isn't as trivial as you made it sound. You can't just say, "Oh, my country has a very fertile land; I need to move to a barren country." Surely, it isn't as simple as that. That's your home country where you are born and grew up, where your parents and forefathers thrived and made a life. It is where your comfort is, where your friends are, where the language is native to your tongue.

This isn't also logical. You might end up trying to relocate to as far as Botswana or Mozambique or Equatorial Guinea. That's not only hard; that's next to impossible.

It seems there is this perception that cockfighting is somehow a dirty gambling while lottery is not. Cockfighting is frowned upon by many people and they even dislike others who are fond of it. But they probably don't find those who bet on lottery equally disgusting.

But what makes cockfighting worse than betting on lottery is that it could drain your money fast. In lottery, you don't have to bring so much money. As a matter of fact, you only need a few dollars to be able to bet. And it also doesn't take much time from you. Cockfighting, on the other hand, requires you to have more money and you will also leave your family to enjoy it.

If I'm not mistaken, closing of accounts on Binance is irreversible. So you probably can't just close and open and close and open an account as you deem convenient.

If your intention is to hide from tax authorities, then Binance is definitely not your best platform. Not only is Binance centralized and compliant to governments and their agencies, it is also keeping a set of your personal information. A mere request could mean information about you and your account, which you intend to hide, end up on your tax authority's table.

Further, just as others have pointed out, Binance retains your personal data. You agreed to this upon signing up. The minimum retention time is 5 years. So, in reality, it could keep it beyond that.

Thanks for this. Another set of reading for my vacant time.

Anyway, I'm a little bit surprised to know that despite the popular belief that Satoshi Nakamoto disappeared since December 12, 2010, these emails are saying it isn't true. Satoshi actually continued to respond to emails even in 2011. The last email coming from Satoshi in this compilation alone was already in February of 2011. And there must probably be more. God knows who else Satoshi corresponded with away from the public.

It seems there's still a lot more to uncover. This appears to be the silver lining of all these lawsuits initiated by the clown CSW.

Even without knowing exactly how many new coins are added to the circulating supply, it's actually easy to conclude that the price of Bitcoin is directed nowhere else but up. Adoption itself is still low. Despite that, however, the price has already reached tens of thousands. The potential market is still too huge. How many people in the world are actually interested in having Bitcoin? Less than 10% probably? What if it grows to 40%? What if it grows to 80%?

Besides, we know that people are only taking cue from the decisions of powerful individuals and companies. They may call Bitcoin a Ponzi or whatever, but it only takes a Jeff Bezos to consider Bitcoin legit for thousands to immediately get converted. And this is slowly happening. Even Trump who used to call Bitcoin a scam is now recognizing that "many people are embracing it", that he's "seeing people wanting to pay Bitcoin", and so "I can live with it one way or the other.” To a solid Trump supporter who doesn't like Bitcoin, would he/she not reconsider simply because of this?

Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV, and others are not branches of Bitcoin. To call them branches would essentially mean they are part of Bitcoin, which they are not. These altcoins are totally independent and separate from Bitcoin. They have their own blockchain. They have their own protocol. They have their own rules. They operate on their own. They are not part of Bitcoin; they are mere copies of Bitcoin, albeit not exact.

They can't be compared with the different branches of economics.

Tether has actually released audit reports. Just last month, it has released its 4th quarter report. They reported billions in profit. Accordingly, there is even an excess in cash reserves. This was done by an independent auditing firm. As to whether we trust it or not, it would be up to us.

Anyway, who would hodl USDT? USDT may be a good coin for traders as it provides them a stable option and it represents fiat, which is not available in many trading platforms, but it isn't a coin worth hodling. If you want to hodl USDT, you better hodl real USD. USD in cash is much better than USDT.

In general, it's always the casinos who win over the gamblers. I think it's not a question of who wins more between gamblers and casinos because it's obvious. If the gamblers actually win more, then casinos wouldn't have survived.

In reality casinos are getting bigger and bigger. They're growing in numbers. More tables and games are added. Casino resorts have become more and more amazing and expensive. The gambling industry has grown into hundreds of billions. It has now thrived offline and online.

Although there may be a handful of gamblers who won more against casinos, the rest are all contributing to the casinos' revenue.

The difference is that people don't have to learn about fiat. They don't have to understand how it works. There's a powerful order coming from no less than the government to use it so they have to use it. They don't have a choice anyway. Whether they understand it or not, accept it or not, trust it or not, it is everybody's money. It's probably more convenient to not even try understand it; you'll have to use it anyway.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, is just an alternative. If you want to use it, you'll have to exert effort to understand it. You have to have intention. You have to be willing to understand it in order to understand it.

This isn't entirely new. At least we've already known prior to this that Adam Back had correspondence with Satoshi Nakamoto.

But I'm a little bit surprised that Satoshi was already ready for Bitcoin's whitepaper release when he/she/they learned of Wei Dei's B-money. I thought Wei Dei's early work played a vital role early on while Satoshi was still conceiving Bitcoin. If not for Adam Back, Bitcoin would have been created entirely oblivious of B-money.

I have this suspicion that Satoshi wasn't well-connected with the rest of the gang. Of course, there wasn't only The Cryptography Mailing List, that Satoshi was part of, where the development of an electronic cash is abundantly discussed. There were several other lists. Satoshi might not be part of many of those.


It has actually surprised me that a good number of solid Cypherpunks have actually revealed their identities. While they're strong advocates of privacy, they're not actually hiding or working in the shadows. The likes of Adam Back, Wei Dei, Hal Finney, Nick Szabo, and others are public. Even the Cypherpunk's Manifesto was written by Eric Hughes. Eric's co-founders of the Cypherpunk movement, Timothy May and John Gilmore, are also personally known.

And they're also not just communicating online and anonymously. They also had face-to-face meetings. I wonder if Satoshi, albeit unknown, turned up even once. Of perhaps one of them is indeed Satoshi.

It actually depends. A weak currency doesn't necessarily mean the country won't anymore engage in global trades. As a matter of fact, a weak currency could actually be designed on purpose. It could actually be intended by way of a policy to be used as a strategy in order to increase trades, exports in particular. In which case, since the currency is weak, exports are cheaper, making them more attractive for buyers compared to their competitors. Of course, there's also a need to balance since a weak currency would also mean imports are expensive.

It's probably about time that we accept that there's no way to eradicate poverty. And there's no effort pure enough to really desire its eradication. Even UNDP is a big hypocrite. When I was a development worker, I once dreamed of joining them. The reason is that they have big salaries, stay in hotels, drive around with their expensive cars with blue plates, and just boss around even in disaster areas with their useless multi-pocket vests that come with that huge agency name powerfully printed at the backs.

To me, it's better to stop looking at poverty in the grand scheme of things and start taking care of those in our own backyard.

I wonder how the rising David Benavidez would end up fighting Olexandr Gvozdyk. Well, if this is the only way for him to face either Bivol or Beterbiev, and if Canelo is this fearful of him, then so be it. But it seems the fight is too lop-sided.

I'm not taking anything from Gvozdyk but I doubt he is his old self. Yeah, he probably had shaken off much of his ring rust after more than 3 years of inactivity since he also had 3 fights last year alone, but he wasn't really facing top caliber fighters. Obando even had more defeats than wins. And, in boxing, age matters.

Anyway, this is just the alternative in case Canelo doesn't stop running from Benavidez despite a juicy offer. But possibilities are still open. In the meantime, I think the technicality of Bivol will keep him safe from Beterbiev's power and he will survive and win by UD.

Well, if this is their form of entertainment or relaxation, that amount may be worth it for as long as they aren't spending what is supposed to be spent on something else.

After all, if they aren't gambling, they will still be spending more or less the same amount on something else. They may go to the movies, bars, restaurants, and so on. Gambling is a leisure activity. Each one of us has his/her own leisure activities. And we have no choice but to spend on them.

Yeah, that's true. A lot of people may wish that they could turn back time when the price of Bitcoin was very cheap and their $1 could already buy many coins. But if that happens, would they buy? Probably not. By turning back time, they also go back to the point when they couldn't care less about a currency that only geeks know.

They can only say that because they have already seen how the price have risen a lot. If life could rewind 10 years back, they would probably still not buy because of their doubts, because they would still dismiss Bitcoin as a Ponzi. So there's really no point regretting. We have now, anyway.

History may repeat but not all.

Although the astounding growth of Bitcoin is true, it can hardly be used to encourage somebody to invest at this point. Because it simply won't repeat. Not the level of growth, not the speed of such growth, not the profit. We have to be realistic and trim down our expectations. A decade from now, will Bitcoin grow 34,600% percent? I can say with certainty that it won't. There will still be profit, of course, but we probably can't even grow x10 anymore.

Some history doesn't repeat again and again. The train will leave at some point. And we can actually miss it just as we've missed Bitcoin at $0.001.

Has there been such time with USDT? Unlike Bitcoin and so many altcoins, USDT's price is not volatile. It doesn't fluctuate much often. And it's because its price is actually pegged on the US dollar, which is of course a lot more stable than any cryptocurrency.

As I've been saying with Bitcoin, and contrary to what others are saying, time isn't actually on our side. While others are saying that you can hop on the bus anytime and you don't have to buy a whole Bitcoin anyway; you can always buy a fraction of Bitcoin, the fact is that the growth slows over time.