So Elon is back with his manipulative tactics? Yesterday I was checking the prices and I could see a decline of 40% in the Dogecoin exchange rates. And just when it looked like Dogecoin prices may crash further, Elon came up with his latest tweet, which pumped the prices and reduced the net loss. My question is, for how long he is going to manipulate the prices like this? And for how much time the SEC is just going to sit back and silently watch what is going on? I have to say that Elon is walking on a tightrope here.

Why it always has to be a test-playing nation? If other test playing nations were not available, then Pakistan could have played against Afghanistan or Ireland. And I am sure that these two teams could have performed much better than Zimbabwe. And there are associate nations, who deserve a chance of playing against a test nation. I am talking about teams such as Nepal, Netherlands, Kenya and Scotland. Given the pathetic performance put up by Zimbabwe, I don't think that these teams could have performed any worse.

The BCCI needs a resumption of the IPL, sometime before the T20 World Cup. The amount of money involved is too huge to cancel the tournament. According to Sourav Ganguly, BCCI will incur a loss of ₹25 billion if the remainder of the tournament is not held. I don't think they can afford that, because even before the start of the new financial year they were in difficult financial condition. But if the tournament resumes within the next 2-3 months, then I expect a lot of players to pull out.

Apart from Mumbai Indians, the other franchises were of the opinion that the BCCI should arrange chartered flights for the players. Now they are justified in saying so, because it was the ego and stupidity of the BCCI which resulted in this situation. But I read in an online portal that the franchises want to keep their players happy and are likely to pay the full amount rather than going for a payment based on pro-rata. BTW, is there any truth in the rumors of fight between David Warner and Michael Slater?

I am sad that in the end it is the domestic players and the lower level non-playing staff who are going to suffer. Ranji Trophy was cancelled for consecutive seasons and this tournament provided around 60%-70% of the salary for the domestic players. Now the BCCI has got the excuse to further reduce their salaries. And from what I have heard, the IPL players may not be impacted even if the tournament is called off. The franchises are likely to pay them the full amount.

I would recommend selling at least a part of your ETH holdings at this level. Because in the long term, things doesn't look very good for Ethereum. New projects are moving away to other chains, due to high fees and low security. ETH 2.0 now looks more like a delaying tactic to slow down this shift. The Ethereum developers are simply not listening to the users and this has left a lot of room for the competitors such as BSC and Cardano. I would recommend selling a part of the ETH holdings and then moving to Cardano or Polkadot. BNB could have been an option, but right now it looks overpriced.

Do you really think that the Dogecoin investors really care about the cap? Most of those who make their investment with Dogecoin are relatively inexperienced in the cryptocurrency domain. They are attracted to Dogecoin, due to propaganda in the social media and as a result of tweets from people like Elon Musk. I am damn sure that only a small minority among them knows the difference between the fundamentals of Dogecoin and Bitcoin. And when the prices are going up, they will listen to none of your arguments. Only when the bubble bursts, they will listen to others.

The chances of an outbreak occurring among the athletes is very low, because the Pfizer vaccine claims to have an efficacy of 95%. On top of that, the athletes will be placed inside a bio-bubble, and the chances of them coming in to contact with some COVID 19 positive person will be very low. But they need to take all the precautions and need to make sure that all the athletes receive two doses of the vaccine on time. Any mistake here will prove very costly at a later stage.

LOL.. same here. I knew this was about to happen. A cryptocurrency can't go up for an indefinite period of time, just because of hype. There needs to be a corresponding increase in adoption and acceptability. In case of Dogecoin, the latter part never happened. Now the dump has started, and I won't be surprised if the prices drop by 80% or more (If I am not wrong, during the last 24 hours the exchange rates have fallen by 40%). I had warned everyone about Doge for the last few weeks (check my previous posts). Those who mocked me back then will be crying now. 

BNB market cap has hit $100 billion for the first time. Logic doesn't work in the cryptocurrency market anymore and we have entered the bubble zone. Now we have too many altcoins valued at anywhere from 2x to 100x of their fair value. At this point, I would say that the only safe coin for investment seems to be Bitcoin. And the sad thing is that once the altcoin bubble bursts, it is going to negatively impact the Bitcoin prices as well. And there are hints already showing up. Today the Dogecoin prices have fallen by around 40%.

Why this thread is still up? From what I heard, the fight between Manny Pacquiao and Terence Crawford is called off and now Pacquiao is trying to arrange a match with Garcia. Or is there any chance of this match going ahead, as planned earlier? A week back, Bob Arum explicitly stated that this fight was "dead". And he further made it clear that the fight couldn't realize due to disputes related to the purse. I don't want to comment on the purse, and don't want to say whether it was too low or too high. But mark my words - the chances of Pacquiao getting a fight this year is low. He demands too much, and now the circumstances are not exactly suited for bargaining.

UAE makes perfect economical sense. England or Australia is out of question, because the expenses are way too high. On top of that, the BCCI don't want to share the revenue with these boards. If I remember correctly, South Africa hosted one season of the IPL and that was a grand success. But right now South Africa is also out of contention, because that country is undergoing a third wave of COVID 19 infections. So for now, UAE is the only viable option left on the table.

The ICC will be least bothered about this. What have they done to improve the situation in Zimbabwe? For the last 10-15 years, it is clear that at least 90% of the ICC annual funding to Zimbabwe is getting stolen by the corrupt officials. This is the reason why many of the promising players quit Zimbabwe and migrated to other countries such as England and New Zealand. ICC just want to maintain the status quo and they don't want to take any concrete action.

The players seems to be exhausted after what happened in the IPL. Multiple players have tested positive and many others are awaiting test results. A number of players and match officials are taking care of their loved ones who are sick. At this point if the BCCI squeeze in more fixtures, there will be a rebellion from the players and some of the regular names would even pull out. The BCCI will be in a dilemma here. They need one or two additional tours this year, to lessen the impact of the losses from IPL.

The pandemic has been ravaging India for the last 14 months. There was a brief lull during January-February 2021, but even during this period a lot of people were dying from COVID. Ideally all the sporting events should have been called off. The BCCI did the right thing by scheduling the IPL 2020 in United Arab Emirates. UAE is not crowded like the Indian cities and therefore the risk of virus spreading as a result of the tournament was low. But aftre the success of IPL 2020, I guess the BCCI bosses got overconfident. It was the mistake of their lives to schedule IPL 2021 in India. I just hope that they will not repeat this mistake anytime during this year.

Here is my vote: Reserve for resume or next IPL

Personally I assume that the IPL will be resumed before the T20 World Cup (scheduled for October 2021). 31 matches are remaining and if these matches are called off, then the BCCI will suffer a huge financial loss. So they will try hard to resume the tournament in the next 2-3 months. Delaying it further will cause issues, as IPL 2022 is scheduled for February-March 2022. So resuming the IPL after the world cup is unlikely.

In this case I have to agree with Royse. These two tournaments are very different from each other and it may not be right to move the funds to this pool. Indications are that the tournament will resume in the next 2-3 months, with the matches taking place probably in the UAE. We've been around here for many years now, so I don't think that waiting for a few months is going to cause too many issues. But if a vote is required to confirm this step, then I am in favor of that as well.

I am not going to disagree. But Nita Ambani was under no obligation to arrange chartered flights. Still she spent money out of her pocket to arrange them. The other franchises are also headed by billionaires. For example, RCB is owned by Vijay Mallya and Punjab Kings is owned by Ness Wadia. Sun TV Network is the owner of SRH, while the richest Indian actor (Shah Rukh Khan) owns the Kolkata Knight Riders franchise. Delhi Capitals is owned by the family of Savitri Jindal (whose net wealth is estimated at $13 billion).

Only 5-6 countries have managed to vaccinate more than half of their population. Among them are United States and United Kingdom, and some smaller nations such as Israel, Seychelles and Bhutan. For the more populous countries such as India and Indonesia, the proportion of people who got both the doses are as low as 2% or 3%, and in case of countries such as Pakistan and Vietnam it is less than 1%. At this rate, it looks like 5 years may be a more realistic target.

China is an important buyer for various minerals from Australia, especially coal, iron ore and bauxite. The problem for Australia is that it will be very difficult for them to find another buyer for these minerals, while China can easily source them from Russia or other countries such as Indonesia. The best thing to do for Australia would be to maintain the status quo and for that they need to stop interfering in China's internal affairs (especially in Hong Kong).