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> 450 million and counting people would still prefer to live and work in the EU than anywhere else

majority of population of any given country doesn't emigrate ever, even inside EU where it would be extremely easy


> majority of population of any given country doesn't emigrate ever, even inside EU where it would be extremely easy

Because unlike the US, we don't speak the same language. If there would have been a real push to have a common EU language since its inception, we would have been more mobile and more US like. But no...


> Because unlike the US, we don't speak the same language.

The majority of Europeans, and especially those of recent generations speak incredibly good English.

Most Europeans speak 2–3 languages anyway, so there is always a common language to be found. No need for one to be forced on you.


Yes, they might, but in practice and with the exception of multinational corporations and some start-ups, everyone speaks their own language. And it's all fun and games that you can speak english in restaurants, cafes, train stations and the like, and then when you want to find a job in an EU country you get hit with "do you speak our language? no? ah, we're sorry then."

There's a big difference between being a tourist in Europe and actually living here.


Well, if you insist on not learning a non-English European language, last time I checked Ireland was still in the EU and they speak English.

But honestly, I'm not sure what the problem is. As previously mentioned by other people on this discussion, vast swathes of Eastern Europeans live and work in the West and have had no trouble whatsoever picking up the local language. As they say, the best way to learn a language is by immersion.

Most Europeans will have gone to a school where they typically learnt a minimum of one extra language and often two extra languages.

With the exception of Finnish, the majority of Western European languages are not that difficult. Its not like Chinese or Japanese which are simply impenetrable unless you went to school there or you are super-smart and managed to pick it up in later life through sheer brain power.


Common language works for employment and business, but then you go to government bureau (or want to fill government form) and they will insist on official language.

That is why english as secondary official language would be beneficial.


But evidence shows that they do emigrate in mass when there's a reason, it's one of the core issues of the last decade and the reason why fascists gained power all over the world. If fact its the reason why masked people in USA are hunting down immigrants.

Its also factual that there's a large scale migration intra-EU, with people from poorer countries moving to rich ones to seek jobs. Bulgaria, Romania and Poland are prime examples for that.

Its also well documented that those same people stop migrating and even coming back once their counties level up with the rest of the EU, again Poland and Bulgaria are good examples for this in the last years.

EU is trying to make sure that the poorer countries receive the help they need to catch up and it looks like its working.


> But evidence shows that they do emigrate in mass when there's a reason

If you go to the CNN website there are lots of articles on there right now (e.g. https://edition.cnn.com/travel/us-woman-moved-to-germany) about US peeps who have emigrated to Europe recently and are thoroughly enjoying their new life with no plans to return to the motherland in the foreseeable future.

I can't possibly think why. ;)


no :)


Comparison/benchmark to other alternatives?


Direct link to the indictment https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/chairman-prince-group-i...

Cambodia's specifically 30-50% of the economy can be directly attributed to scamming plus casinos

This one of the other organizations / major bank used for money laundering directly linked to Hun Sen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huione_Group

> The company is linked to Cambodia's ruling Hun family, which includes the current prime minister, Hun Manet.[4] His cousin Hun To is a major shareholder and director of Huione Pay


> Cambodia's specifically 30-50% of the economy can be directly attributed to scamming plus casinos

Are you saying that 30-50% of Cambodia's economy can be directly attributed to scamming and casinos? I find that shocking and hard to believe. Do you have a source for that statement?


It's a small / under developed country

the economy is not that big to start with :)

GDP $49.8 Billion (nominal; 2025)

Some examples

https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/cambodia...


Formal estimates range from $12.5 to $19 billion dollars per year, equivalent to as much as 60% of the country’s formal GDP

Formal estimates by who? Given that the GDP is around $50B, these (unsourced) numbers don't even make sense.


First off, the amount seized was not necessarily made in a year.

Second, most of the money would not make it to the Cambodian economy. It is likely laundered abroad. The whole operation is likely multinational, with only the workforce located in Cambodia.


Cambodia is also big player in money laundering

(not only for these cambodia originated crimes)

Also keep in mind all the bribes, all the money laundering mentioned in the article by the 100s of affiliated subsidiares of the criminal group all in Cambodia

the big casinos which directly and indirectly support additional laundering

https://www.fincen.gov/system/files/2025-10/Huione-Group-Fin...

https://www.kharon.com/brief/huione-group-cambodia-treasury-...

Every business has revenue / costs

The indictment mentions they were doing 30M/day ~ 10B / year, could be an old message when they were smaller

Guessing that's revenue

They're just one of many organizations in the "industry"


You don't have to launder money when the leader of the country is involved.


My first experience stepping off the plane in Cambodia was being scammed by the official issuing visas. It was $20, I gave him $50, and he didn't want to give any change back. Scams were the defining part of the tourist experience there.


Haha, it reminded me 20+ years back when I was a kid travelling by train in India where the ticket dispenser did not give me 8 Rs back on a 152 Rs ticket when I paid 160, sounds small but is a big deal for poor. Tangential but that is one thing I really thank digital payments and digitization of ticket dispensing for.


My comment is going to be like a tangent to a tangent, but since it's about Bitcoin it sort of comes back to the original topic.

I agree about digital payments, but one of the things that I found disappointingly complex about Bitcoin is needing to receive change when making a payment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unspent_transaction_output).

I only made a few Bitcoin transactions because I found the whole experience did not feel like the future. That was a while ago now, and as other commentors have pointed out, it not seems obvious that the real value in Bitcoin lies elsewhere.


It's not hard to believe that a small country can have a vastly oversized economy due to finance - legal or illegal.


An example of a legal one is the UK


Or Ireland with the nominally headquartered multinationals there.


Unsurprisingly the UK was enabling this guy before he got too much heat. From a BBC article:

"The UK government says it has frozen assets owned by his network, including 19 properties in London - one of which is worth nearly £100m ($133m)."


> the UK was enabling this guy before he got too much heat.

How does this quote indicate that the UK was enabling Zhi?


Presumably GP means enabling by not seizing him or his assets earlier? Which I find to be a bit of a stretch.


The UK may not have been enabling this guy in particular, but he's not exactly the only one who has been stashing ill-gotten gains in London real estate. Apparently crooks still think it's a great deal despite some of them getting it seized once in a while.


This thread is making Cambodia sound like an oversized Cayman Islands.


Cambodia is a small country with no natural resources of any kind. Even to grow rice you need diesel for tractors and fertilizers that are produced from natural gas using energy (which Cambodia lacks).

There's very few opportunities for a small country without resources.


And to grow rice you need to somehow get rid of US bombs that majority of Cambodia soil is very well fertilized with.

Between 1965 and 1973 US dropped 2,756,941 tones of bombs on 113,717 sites in Cambidia. Thats more bombs than all allies together used in all of World War II.

Tens of people still getting killed by them every year.

https://gsp.yale.edu/sites/default/files/walrus_cambodiabomb...


Those are democratic bombs bringing freedom. Can't be a bad thing.


It's true. They have daily flights to Cambodia. Go there and look at it. It's all casinos and scams and dust.


The amount of bitcoin siezed here is about 30% of the Cambodia GDP...


Presumably they didn’t accumulate it all in one year?


Still, if it was accumulated over three years it seems significant.


They don't have a source because it's total bullshit.


Cambodia's specifically 30-50% of the economy can be directly attributed to scamming plus casinos

This is ridiculously false.


> dissuade the public from digital currency.

Did you read the article?

The reason to move to ECB would be for ECB garanteed deposits, which many could find safer than their local bank

> Flight to safety would see 13 banks out of cash


Yeah, my point is the article and study itself are FUD for the public to dissuade them from supporting a digital currency.



> By July, 3 million accounts have been closed

this wasn't a swift action overnight

they could be blocking this many accounts on a yearly basis just from scam reports at the police station

or more which seems to be the case recently, but not overnight

this is bad article


that doesn't account for personal income tax


> Though the next steps are planned, uncertainties in the team's scientific funding have put them on hold

take my money!


personally Hetzner SX295 that has 14x 22 TB on a ZFS setup

It ingests 70k lines per second without a sweat

reads are just as fast


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