Most coins are linked or dependent to BTC in some way; before you can get these alts, you must first get bitcoins in order to buy altcoins. Also, most altcoin traders are also bitcoin traders, so it could be that once a massive selloff has happened with bitcoin, they know that the same thing would happen to altcoins, thus creating a domino effect whenever bitcoin is down. And, since altcoins are valued using bitcoins, it's natural that altcoins would also devalue since its conversion unit has also devalued.

Common newbie mistakes: buy during the top and thinking of selling at a later date when the price 'hopefully' bumps even more. Most of the threads about losing money comes from newbies who bought near the top thinking that the price would even push further without taking into the account the amount of gains a certain investment have had in a short period of time. After the price dumps, they come out creating FUD about bitcoin and describes it as one of the worst investments there is because they haven't done their research. Charts would tell these newbies that bitcoin really is a profitable investment, if only they know how to read the data and when to enter the market. I myself have experienced tons of profit form the stash that I built since 2014. I've already created local businesses from the profit I've had during the insane bull run, so I don't stress too much even if bitcoin is losing value rapidly. If only there's a comprehensive guide for newbies on how to invest, that would be great.

Similar to what the CXO Advisory have found out: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3226897

There's no trouble n HODLing and at times, can be even more beneficial compared to intra-day trading. In holding, the risk of getting burned is lower compared to day-trading, as you have less tendencies to commit mistakes and make decisions based on emotions and the impulse to chase for losses. Also, based on the topic that I linked in  here, summertime usually is the laziest months of the year for trading any commodity, assets or cryptocurrency while mid Sept-Dec always provided stunning results.

First off: what kind of coins are you wanting to mine? If you want to mine bitcoin, then even if you have an array of the newest GTX 1080ti GPUs, you still wouldn't be able to break-even in a year's time. You need to purchase dedicated machines used solely for mining, so in this case you may want to employ the power of ASICs which is efficient and powerful enough to get you hashing bitcoin's with returns. However if you are looking to mine altcoins, GPUs are your bestfriend, with the lineups of AMD being the bang-for-the-buck in mining due to their efficiency and speed compared to nVIDIA GPUs. Also, "excessive" isn't a thing in mining because the difficulty constantly rises, and you want to make sure your machines keep up in order to make some profit.

There doesn't need to be any bad news in order to trigger a selloff. If the big boys behind the scenes decide to sell their investments, it will happen regardless if there are good news/bad news circulating around.

As for the recent price movements, there is indeed a resemblance on the pattern of the 2014 scenario after all the craze had died out on the 2013 ATH. But right now, the recent crash seems to exhibit some form of life around it compared to the 2014 crash which is followed by 2 years of stagnation. Support levels are @ $5500 and $5000 being the stronger of the two, and if those support levels are broken, all I can see is a reenactment of the 2014-2016 stagnation where it's a stalemate between the bears and the bulls. This is certainly not a dead cat's bounce--not yet.

That's not a bitter truth but rather a dumb and obvious one. People who invested back in November-Dec who believed that the market would be able to hold such an artificial pricing are the ones who are at fault of the crash, given that they added so much weight in to an already heavy and unstable pricing. No wonder whales were so happy during that run since they raked in a huge profit for themselves, dumping on the overly-optimistic ones who don't know anything about the markets but still decided to give it a go. Right now, the prices are in a slump, but we're still in a good shape considering that we are @ sub-$1000 only 2 years ago.

I'm pretty sure each exchange operators know that the crypto market is constantly changing and can one day have so much volume and the next day, no volume at all. At an employer's standpoint, why would I hire people who are not used to these kind of stress and only to fire them once I don't need them whereas I can only focus on my trusted employees to do the work for me and just raise their salaries in such high-pressure scenarios? That doesn't only save time, but also money on the part of exchange operators. Pretty sure that's also one of the reasons why most exchanges require 24 hours before they can get back to a certain ticket because they only have a few but capable people who get the job done.

Nowadays, people don't actually care for technological advancements and such but care more about profiting off of something while they can. Back in the days when bitcoin isn't influenced by speculation, most people here in this forum talks about problems, bugs, potential features to be added and other geeky stuff about improving bitcoin, but now all you see is people's concern about the price of 1 bitcoin and how would their investments be affected by such. The problem is within the user-base and not the tech itself, because as far as bitcoin is concerned, these traders capitalized on bitcoin's 'promise' to make a better system for all of us, and unfortunately that 'promise' only rang true to them.

Obviously no one can time the market; even investing gurus cannot do such, what more would you expect on the average investor? So far, the HODL strategy proved to be one of the best methods to profit, irregardless of the 'seasons' as projected by the CXO Advisory. Also, even their data proved that HODLing provided the best results in investing, so even in this case, bitcoin HODlers, on paper, outperforms those who try to time he markets which often find themselves burned in doing so.

My take: HODLing > trying to time the markets.

Personally I don't bother registering to trusted exchanges since it's within their guidelines before anyone can use their platform. However, what annoys me when trading crypto is the lag that often occurs in exchanges whenever a new top is forming, or whenever I want to sell near the peak. It has happened to me a lot of times now, most of the time these events only happen in a minute yet the market will somehow be 'closed' due to technicalities. Other than that, I don't have a problem in trading with cryptos.

The best thing one can do right now in this downfall is to wait it all out before something definite comes to light. For those who can afford to shell out some extra cash, buying wouldn't hurt if you're capable of waiting for the next few weeks. With this kind of selloff, the lower part of the food chain (weak hands) often bail out thinking that it is the best thing to do in order to avod further losses while the patient ones tend to bear the beatings and didn't lose faith along the way. It's easy to stay optimistic but harder to stay rational especially if you're losing money along the way.

It's quite a noob move if these large-scale mining operators run their machines with the general rate these countries' power providers offer. Most of the miners I know here in our country have a specialized contract with the power company that runs for 1 or 2 years before they can renew it. Also, some countries on the 'cheaper' end of the mining cost spectrum cannot deliver such power or it might affect a large portion of their communities' power needs, so it still isn't a viable place for mining operation even if electricity is dirt cheap. Nice list though, gives an insight and estimate on how much the maintenance would be for prospective miners.

That was in February when we touched $6000 and everyone also faced the same panic of that event. Right now, the drop seems to be subtle and doesn't exhibit and likelihood to the one in February, so this might mean something more and not just your 'normal' correction. Apparently, the latest crash also contained a huge volume along the drop, so it is possible that some big hands are already cashing out and just watching the sidelines in the mean time. If the last $5500 support is broken, then there's a tendency for the price to plummet all the way down to $4000 or even $2500, the projected "bottom" of the pit.

Cryptocurrencies' economy isn't really built up as of yet. There are only a few merchants willing to accept bitcoin in exchange for their goods due to the fact that the volatility is scaring them away to harbor any interest in integrating it into their business. As for the fees, you can always set the lowest possible fee that will confirm it in the next block at the given time. Most of the wallets right now have embedded this feature as well. The only restriction I can think of regarding crypto purchases is the cryptocurrency itself; will the merchant accept your payment or not?

So far, no ICOs have solved the same issue the big names of crypto have been trying to combat since they became big. In order for the crypto economy to flourish, businesses and merchants need to appear, which, so far, is not happening.

I'm just waiting on the sidelines currently, and with the way how things are going right now, it;s obviously not the best time to buy right now. This isn't like the February crash that had us at $6000. It feels more subtle compared to that crash, which makes me worry about this being a gradual decline over the course of a few weeks. There also seems to be no signs of life from the bulls in the mean time and the overall market sentiment is negative.  Strings of negatively-interpreted news also contributed to the gloom we are facing right now. Best thing to do is to don't do anything yet.

A fixed supply yet can be divided infinitesimally if necessary. Bitcoin is made this way in order for it to be scarce, thus creating some form of value due to scarcity. But that doesn't mean that the 21 million hard-cap restricts new people from coming in and getting their fair share of the pie. It's considered as money, so of course they need to work in order to take home some of the precious bits, and that is if they wanted to anyway. Also, on the 7.3 billion people, I don't think the vast majority would be glad to use bitcoins even in the next 5 years seeing that the development around the network has been slow--the economy of bitcoin has been in a slump and no new businesses are wanting to do anything with bitcoin as of late.

Without any incentive for the price to rise, there'd definitely be no push that's gonna happen anytime sooner. Besides, the craze has already died and there's no way the price could take a hard push after all the negativities surroounding bitcoin. Right now, if $5500 can't hold, we can see ourselves tumbling down all the way to $4000 or even lower, which is still a great starting point for future pushes.

Everyone must face the reality: regulations would always be there as long as there's money to be made on a certain thing, even if no central authority produces or controls it. Also, I don't even think regulations have something to do with the recent price crash. The price went up too much at an uncontrollable rate and everyone thinks it's normal. At some point, it needs to be corrected since you can't expect everyone to still keep on buying even at that high., and that's what's happening right now, sans the regulations expect.

I don't see why forcing these exchanges to improve their security is a bad thing. If there's anything this move promotes, it's actually the security and carefulness of exchanges since they're handling other people's money. This is also helping the cryptomarket mature since the government is helping out the exchanges to do the necessary things in order to prevent hacks. Most of the time, these exchanges get 'hacked' because they aren't regulated by the government and all they need is a license to operate and that's prretty much it.

Any relevant sources for this passage? Google hasn't released any public statements regarding their stance on cryptocurrencies but only about the ads. And yeah, it's kinda funny how they appear to be serious on their statements yet I still see cryptocurrency ads whenever I use their search engine. Apart from that, Facebook also has some little bits of the icky crypto ads on their sites which appears to be from some ICO. Are they really banning these ads or it's just another bluff? No matter what really is happening, bitcoin surely is losing steam right now.