Nope, I disagree. There is a definite pattern lately. It will go down aggressively to a new low and then a correction phase starts within a margin of about $1000 from the previous low. If you have perfect timing, you can buy on the dip and make a daily profit of $1000 per coin on the correction phase.

In my opinion someone is definitely manipulating the price crash and they are making money doing this. The aggressive dip is a scare tactic to force down the price. <This increase their profits on the upswing>

The people should not blame the Bitcoin token, when third party services fail. Nobody has ever hacked the Bitcoin protocol. <Software> but the services that use the token, has been hacked. People are the weakest link in the chain, because they make mistakes. <They fail to activate 2FA or use weak passwords or they are fooled to access spoofed sites.>

The other weak link is software that are being developed by third party services, which is riddled with exploits. Hackers know that the Bitcoin protocol is impossible to hack, so they focus on these third party exploits.  

Previously news like this would have pushed the price upwards, but there are so much negative news to counter balance this. The Chinese and Asian news caused a wave of negativity and the SEC's bullish news are just a ripple in the lake. I think the combined affect of all the negative news, caused a perfect storm in the Bitcoin community.

Let's just Hodl up and ride out the storm. The Sun will shine again and the upside will be that we will have loads of cheap coins to sell.

Strange how this word, "Bubble" pop up with every dip we have in the price. People ignore the global stock market crash and think that it will not have an impact on the Bitcoin price. People should consider the bigger global picture, before they smack talk Bitcoin. ^grrrrrrr^

Keep the "Tulip mania" and the "Bubble" smack talk for the global markets, because they are long overdue for a correction. I predict that some more "blood" will flow on global markets.

Global markets have sold off aggressively in the last three days.

There are sixteen stock exchanges (bourse) in the world that have a market capitalization of over US$1 trillion each. They are sometimes referred to as the "$1 Trillion Club".

The global stock sell-off is continuing, with Tuesday seeing significant falls at exchanges in Asia and Europe. The day after the U.S. stock market fell by its largest amount in six years, Japan's Nikkei index was down by 6.5% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng was down more than 6%.

Previously, when there were some economic turbulence, some investors turned to Bitcoin as a store of value or a Safe haven, but it seems as though the table has turned and Gold prices jumped to a 14-Month High.

Gold Prices Today Per Ounce :

Today
Per Ounce $1,326.90
Per Gram $42.66
Per Kilo $42,660.79

Bitcoin price : $7400

What explanation do we have for that? 

This is why I suggested a pencil holder with a hidden compartment for the Ledger wallet or any other object that might look normal in a room. <or any other desk accessory, like a novelty pen or mug with a hidden compartment or a lamp stand or a flower vase>

Any decorative object that would not look out of place or too unique or expensive. <You do not want someone to steal your object, because it was recognizable or valuable.>

I would stay away from bright colours, because they would attract too much attention. <It should fit into the background and most desks are brown, black or white.>

Glad to see that you went retail with this. Good luck. ^smile^

Welcome to the forum.

I think you will get a wide variety of responses from this forum, from the polite <Thank you for your service> to the private hate mail in your PM. <We have a mix group of mongrels on this forum, but one thing we have in common is BITCOIN>

One thing that I might suggest is for you to calm down and to split your questions into separate threads. It is a bit overwhelming for people to read a wall of text and to answer multiple questions in one thread. ^smile^

On this forum Blockheads and Nerds are friends and we make no distinction between jocks and Geeks. A lot of people here are also Libertarians and anti-government, so be warned. 

I will answer one of your questions for now.  " Is Bitcoin really a currency or a store of value or both?  Why? "

Bitcoin is what you want it to be. It does not fit the mould for any specific definition. It's definition is closely linked to it's use case. If you bought bitcoins as a long-term investment, you possibly saw some potential for it to be a store of value. Some people buy bitcoins to trade and they use it as a commodity.

A lot of people bought bitcoins to use as a medium of payment, because they lost faith in centralized payment methods. <Credit cards are hacked and accounts are compromised with other payment options, like PayPal> In this instance, Bitcoin will be the alternative "currency" to these payment options.

I hope this answers one of your questions. ^smile^

My advice, get new friends. These friends are obviously lavishing in your demise and misfortune and should not be part of your life. My friends are supportive, because they believed in me, and they even bought coins at $6000 and then sold at $18 000, when I told them to.

Friends should help and support each other, not kick you when you are down. They most probably were jealous when you had bitcoins when the price was at $19 000. Time for you to move on and to find some real friends. ^smile^

Think how stupid you will feel, if you panicked now. I sold some bitcoins at $5000 last year, thinking that it was the highest it would go and later regretted it, when it went all the way up to $19 000. We do not have a crystal ball, but I think someone is taking us for a ride. <They are dumping coins to push down the price, because they know that most people will panic and then they will have loads of cash reserves to buy up all these cheap coins.>

I will hoard and even use this opportunity to buy some of these cheap coins. ^smile^

Do not hold your breath that Blockchain.info would implement SegWit, because Roger Ver is heavily invested there from the start. Coinbase has to adapt, because a lot of people are leaving to signup with services that supports SegWit. Most people know that SegWit is linked to the Lightning Network and they saw how fast and cheap the Lightning Network was.

Why would you stay with a service that are sabotaging Bitcoin?

Disclaimer : I do not follow this strategy with credit, but rather with disposable savings. I would not recommend this strategy for people who are funding their Bitcoin investment with credit.

It is a very bad idea to fund any investment with credit and any other form of debt. Bitcoin is a very high risk investment and this strategy fall in the same category.

DO NOT fund your Bitcoin investment strategy with DEBT!

Unfortunately, people make poor financial decisions and they do not listen to good advice and then they want to complain when things fall apart. A lot of us are constantly telling people not to finance their bitcoin investment with dept. Crypto currency investment is a HIGH risk investment.

What is your monthly instalment on that credit?

If you did not buy bitcoins with credit, I would have suggested this strategy, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2878321.msg29569366#msg29569366 but it is even more risky at this stage, because it might put you in deeper trouble if you financed this with debt.

The only thing to do now, if you cannot afford to pay the debt, is to sell say 1 of the coins and to pay the debt with that money. Then you must hope that the price might recover and that the remaining coin or coins will cover the losses.

I can still remember last year in February, people were complaining that the price was too stable at $1015. Wow, how things changed since then. A year later and people are angry because the price is stable between $8000 and $9000. ^lol^

If we start this year at $8000 and the same thing happens this year, then we might see a $26 000 bitcoin price at the end of this year. < Take note, I highlighted the word, "might" for a reason, because nothing is guaranteed in this game. >

Bitcoin is still a high risk investment, with the potential for large profits. ^smile^

The topic is ClickBait. These Banks did not BAN Bitcoin, they simply banned the buying of bitcoins with Credit cards issued by them. The Banks are protecting people from themselves. A lot of people are buying bitcoins with money that they do not have and this is just stupid. < We always tell people NOT to do that >

This will not stop people from buying physical assets and selling that at a loss and then buying bitcoins with that. These Banks are just doing this to wash their hands, so when the government step in later, they can say that they banned Bitcoin purchases with their credit cards. ^lol^

I am a bit of a risk taker, so I tried this strategy. I bought a coin at $16k when the price was going up last year. Then I went on holiday for a few weeks and when I returned, I saw that the price went down considerably. <$10k> So, I had a choice :

1. Hoard and wait for the price to recover to $16k or,
2. Day trade on the small dip & corrections, within a $400 to $500 margin and reduce my potential losses on the $16k.

I decided to try option 2. It took some good timing, but I managed to trade my way out of trouble and I managed to make a little profit. <I might have been lucky, but it worked>

The current price is floating between $8000 and $9000, so there are some room for profits, if you know what you are doing.

I believe that this is pure market manipulation at this stage. There are some major speculators with lots of money that entered the market lately and these guys have bought enough bitcoins to manipulate the market. They are slowly dumping these coins and artificially forcing the price to go down. ^grrrrrrr^

The South Korean government already announced that they are only going to regulate Bitcoin more, and they are not planning to ban it and the same goes for India. This tells me that there are other things pushing the price down and the only thing that can do that, is the institutional capital that has entered Bitcoin. ^hmmmmm^ 

Bitcoin cannot be called a Alt coin, because it was the first Crypto currency. The Market cap or the value cannot change the fact that it is the original coin and all coins developed after that are called Alt coins. Even if the value of bitcoins goes to $1, it will still be the original coin.

No amount of money or forks can change that, even if Roger Ver preach that to his minions. ^lol^  Just get all this nonsense out of your head, Bitcoin is the only original coin and Alt coins spawned from it.

The confirmation times are really not that bad and the fees has come down significantly since SegWit are being used more frequently now. The Lightning Network will even improve on that even more, so I cannot see why this is going to be such a issue for people.

I did a SegWit to SegWit transaction this past weekend and it took 6 min to confirm and it cost me $0.24 in fees. ^smile^ I am not saying this is the norm, but it is much faster and cheaper now.

The most common answer to this question will be to hoard and to wait for the correction to reduce or elimate your potential losses. <You only lose money, when you sell at a lower price than what you bought it at, right>

My suggestion to reduce potential losses, might sound a bit controversial, but it might just work in the current environment.

What I have noticed lately, is that the price is dropping within a $500 margin daily and then recovers. <lots of mini crashes and mini corrections>

So in theory, If you were one of the people who bought coins at say $18 000, and IF you sold now at say $9000, you would have lost more or less $9000. <Some people panic and sell at a loss>

My suggestion : Use these daily crashes to your advantage. Buy more coins when the price falls with $500 and sell when the price goes up with $500 again. After trading fees, your profit will be anywhere between $450 to $490 per coin/day.

Take the profit, put it aside and repeat this strategy until you have chipped away at the potential loss that you would have made.

Day 1   - $9000
Day 2   - $8550
Day 3   - $8100
Day 4   - $7650
Day 5   - $7200
Day 6   - $6750
Day 7   - $6300
Day 8   - $5850
Day 9   - $5400
Day 10 - $4950
Day 11 - $4500
Day 12 - $4050
Day 13 - $3600
Day 14 - $3150
Day 15 - $2700
Day 16 - $2250
Day 17 - $1800
Day 18 - $1350
Day 19 - $ 900
Day 20 - $ 450
Day 21 - $ 0

In 3 weeks, you can eliminate any possible losses, if you follow this example. This is definately not a guaranteed recipe for success, but given the current situation, this might just work.  

Bitcoin is volatile, because we have a uneven distribution of coins in the market. You still have huge Bitcoin whales that are dumping large amounts of coins to manipulate the price and then buying large amounts of coins to pump the price.

When these coins are bought by more people, the coins get re-distributed to more people and this effectively takes the manipulation power away from these whales.

Global Reserve currencies like the US Dollar and the Euro are also being manipulated, but the people manipulating these currencies are the government. <Controlling money supply and printing Fiat cash, like toilet paper>