How can you trust USDT, when it is not 100% backed up with real cash. Only 2.94% of the reserves is made up of cash. The remainder is made up of fiduciary deposits (18.36%) and various bonds and stocks. The biggest share is made up of "Commercial Paper" (49.60%) and it is this section that worries me the most. They haven't provided any further breakdown on this, and I will be very worried if they are mostly composed of unsecured loans and stocks. The fact that Tether is refusing to provide the breakdown makes me suspicious.

Look at the usage of the coin, rather than looking at who is promoting it. As we have seen earlier, people like John McAfee promotes shitcoins in return for a payment. So investing in a coin, solely because some celebrity is promoting it will be a wrong strategy to follow. If you want to invest in a new coin, look for uniqueness in the white paper and check the rate of adoption for the last 2-3 months. And if it is listed in some of the major exchanges such as Binance, carefully analyze the trade volumes for at least one month.

The clubs taking part in the Dhaka Premier Division Cricket League are independent clubs and not franchises. They have existed for many years, with clubs such as Brothers Union and Abahani Limited dating back to at least 5 decades. They formed the backbone of Bangladesh cricket during the old days. Now with BCB exercising more control over the cricketing structure, many of these clubs are losing their significance. And obviously some of them have resorted to match fixing and other avenues to improve their financial situation. 

So far it looks as if England is completely dominating the match. They have almost 64% possession and all the Croatian players are in defensive. Just a few minutes ago, a good shot from Kalvin Phillips was saved by the Croatian goalkeeper. So far, I guess Croatia should be happy that they haven't conceded a goal. It is going to be really tough for them. Playing in Wembley, in front of thousands of English fans, against one of the top teams in the world. But I am still hopeful of an upset. Let's see how it progresses.

Cryptocurrency market works in a strange way. During the last 12 months, some of the coins that have appreciated the most doesn't have a supply limit. Ethereum is one example. ETH has no maximum supply. It has a fixed fresh annual supply of 18 million coins. The prices are going up, because the demand is higher than this annual supply. In case of Bitcoin, the principle used is of controlled supply, with the fresh supply getting lower as time passes. And then we have Dogecoin, which doesn't have any sort of control on the maximum supply. Ironically this coin has gone up much more than either BTC or ETH during the last few months.

Those who invest in shitcoins believe that they are smarter when compared to the other users. They know that eventually these coins will become worthless. But there will be one or more pump-and-dump cycles before this and the investors believe that they will be able to dump their coins or tokens during this phase. But in many cases this doesn't happen. By the time they make their investment, the pump might have already occurred and in the end these users will be stuck with their worthless coins or tokens in their wallet. 

I am just waiting for the T20 World Cup to start. IPL has become too money-minded anyways. What worries me is that the ICC hasn't yet confirmed the schedule and the fixtures. There is a real chance that the tournament may be postponed yet again, to accommodate the BCCI. That would be real tragedy, as it was already postponed once. It is such a packed calendar now. PSL is ongoing, and once it ends the CPL will begin. And after that we will have the IPL. Ideally the franchise leagues should be moved to make room for the international events. But in cricket it is the other way around.

Croatia do have a history of committing upsets against the giants. And this time also, I would at least say that they have a fair chance. The advantage for England here is that they are in relatively good form recently, while their opponents have struggled (Croatia has won just two of their last 9 games). For England, a few tough choices need to be made for selection especially for the forwards. Harry Kane and Raheem Sterling are confirmed, but choosing the remaining players for FW and MF is going to be hard. It will be tough to leave out Jadon Sancho, Jack Grealish and Ben Chilwell.

That depends on the valuation and future prospects. If the valuation is fair, and the prospect of future revenue growth is looking good, then the prices will go up. Take the case of AMZN, MSFT or GOGL. These stocks have been going up for more than two decades now. No one really expects them to have a correction sometime soon, because their businesses are still growing. The same can be said about BTC. And in case of BTC, it is still only 12 years old. The bearish phase is at least 1-2 decades away, IMO.

Back in 2017 and 2018, I lost some of my money to such scams. Back then I was new to the cryptocurrency sector and I trusted a lot of projects blindly. I could have been more careful about them, but not much can be done now. Anyway, now I have moved on and treat these incidents as learning steps. In every sector, there will be scammers who try to take advantage of the relatively new and inexperienced users. And in this sector the proportion will be higher, because a large percentage of the users are new.

Social media bounty is the least rewarding type of bounty campaign, because a lot of people use fake social media profiles to take part in it. And many of the campaigns demand too much, such as 10-15 posts per week. If you do this using your real social media account, then you can easily get flagged for spam. Not many people are willing to do this in return for a payment of $20 or $30. So in most cases, those who participate in these campaigns will be using a social media account that is either hacked or purchased.

In the past most of the payments were made through online fiat modes, such as LibertyReserve and pre-paid credit cards. Now at least a section of these criminals have started using cryptocurrency. But IMO, this is not going to last long. The authorities have devised methods to track the payments and seize the funds, as seen from the recovery of BTC from the pipeline hackers. So very soon these hackers will shift to some other method, which they believe is more anonymous and difficult for the authorities to track.

El Salvador doesn't have a national currency and that is how they could implement this policy with such easiness. Before 2001, Salvadoran Colon was the national currency, but then they decided to go for Dollarization. For all practical purposes, USD became the national currency from that date. If another currency becomes the legal tender, the competition is for US Dollar and it doesn't directly affect the government or the economy of El Salvador. In most of the other countries, that is not the case and they have their own national currencies.

Inflation is never temporary. Once the prices go up, it stays there. The rate of increase may go down when the economic recovery occurs, but the inflation rate never goes to negative. The influx of fiat money can never be taken back. During various stimulus measures, huge amounts of banknotes are printed and distributed. These banknotes are never recalled. So the inflation rate never goes back to the previous levels. And with the pandemic justifying big spending moves by governments, we can forget about the era when inflation rate was below 2%. 

I have been thinking about it for the last couple of days. El Salvador government is saying that they will provide permanent residency to anyone who invest at least BTC3 in to the local economy. When compared to the other permanent residence schemes that we have from countries such as Dominica and Antigua, this one looks attractive. But my concerns are about bureaucracy and crime rate. For sure El Salvador is not the safest country in Latin America. And I have heard that the corruption levels are also quite high.

Binance is like Tesla in the field of cryptocurrency. The valuation doesn't correspond to the annual revenues or profit of the exchange, but is based on a futuristic scenario. Now the issue here is that a lot of people assume that the monopoly will be maintained infinitely, which may or may not hold true. Take the case of Tesla. They are now facing stiff competition from other automobile manufacturers, and as a result the share prices have dropped. And for BNB, the threat comes not just from the competitors, but also from the regulators as well.

Apart from BTC (which makes up for more than 90% of my cryptocurrency portfolio) the only coins that I have in significant amounts (>$1,000) are ETH and BCH. I own around a dozen different cryptocurrencies, but apart from these three coins, the rest are very insignificant if the total value is taken. And back in 2018, I had around three dozen different cryptocurrencies. But then I decided to sell most of them, as the altcoins were faring poorly when compared to BTC. Back then I sold coins such as BSD, DNR and GBYTE. It was a good decision. Now these coins are close to worthless.

I haven't participated in airdrops for such a long time, so need to ask this question. What is the success percentage of airdrops nowadays? If we are participating in 20 airdrops, can we expect at least one to give good rewards? Yesterday I talked to one of my friends. He is claiming that he received a few thousands of USD worth of coins by participating in the ICP airdrop. The amount is very significant and I want to confirm that such rewards are possible nowadays (they were common back in 2018).

TRX is a very strange choice. I hardly hear about that coin nowadays. Even the promoters seems to have abandoned it. From where did you found this coin all of a sudden? It was trading with a market cap of less than $1 billion, before the recent rally took it to ~$10 billion. Now it is once again declining, with 50% of the value lost in the last couple of weeks. And regarding XRP, I would be wary of their legal battle against the SEC. Right now they seems to be having an upper hand, but the situation can change at any time.

You are shifting the goal post. No one here is defending Trump. The issue here is that Twitter is selective in banning the users. Trump may or may not deserve a ban, as he refused to condemn the capitol rioters. So he has only himself to blame. But far worse tweets have been made by those to the left of the political spectrum. The former prime minister of Malaysia threatened to massacre tens of millions of French. And the last time I checked, his Twitter account was intact. Twitter refused to act against such people.


The tweet from Mahathir Mohamad got thousands of likes and it was viewed by hundreds of thousands of users. Anyway, it is ridiculous to claim that users need to be banned only of they are popular.