3) Litecoin
4) Monero
Those are no newcommers so will endure a two years timespan, too. This Nr.3 seems to be present at any bigger bitcoin mining location kinda as a hedge for asic investments.
And Nr.4 beeing the fallback if centralized mining was the wrong answer on all decentralisation matters.

More options for the adventurous:
5) Zcash as an alternative to Nr.4 if you can stand mining subsidy.
6) IOTA if they survive their infancies which is looking worser every day.
7) Waves, Komodo, Ardor but that seems to meander, not so sure about these.
8 up until 15) Stuff small change into different ICO gambles. Remember NXT!

And the service is darely needed. There had been rumors reaching newspapers (Welt, and Deepdotweb too) regarding Amazon accepting Bitcoin payments. They had been along the tune of "this month" which is officially ending on Halloween today. Timed out.

Would have been one way only so maybe doesn't matter. The right approach has to be "Any store can buy, sell and accept Cryptocurrency" as in any currency, both directions.
Once that works out in practice Amazon will just have to reevaluate their decision.

edit: probably first time source https://squawker.org/technology/breaking-amazon-will-accept-bitcoin-by-october/

And then there is Mayer Amschel who successfully morphed 47BTC into 40BTC (!!)
Which isn't a worse performance if those 47 got bought at $900 and 40 remaining got sold $6000 each. Underperforming all HODLing, outperforming any classical stocks.

The challenge will be the direction of thinking about the portfolio's value. Do you measure success in dollars, or do you do count in bitcoins.
If the ralley continues there is no chance pocketing in 50 BTC in between twelve monthes. Just in a bear market the btc number grows on each rebuy on a lower level. The fork could change the general trend direction.

I would love reading the strategie persumed as a weekly digest.

Reassuring that $5000 support (former local ATH) could confirm the trend. $4.5k are a breakthrough of that base and would not leave the best impression upon a bullish future. A bearish turn requires at least -20% drop which $4.5k would do archive.
Again, beeing bullish just because ya wanna ain't enough! There needs to be some confirmation, some fundamentals. The fork turning out into a single pathway to continue, instead of a continual civil war *that* would be a change.
Bitcoin allready could be like $10.000 without those struggles.

Exactly depending on that. And any doubts are highly justified. Always just cheering for the cheering cause alone brings us nowhere at all. It's stupid repetitive behavior.
Those $3000 as a support had been acknowledged one time, the higher support would be like $5000 but confirmation still pending.

There are many reasons for a downtrend, never forget we are in the mess of a civil war.

Best to do a worst case TA as a guideline. I tend to start at the 3/25/2017 at $916, ignoring the mid July dip since it was highly artificiall, but taking the $3000 of 9/15/2017 since that has been reassuring the preceeding ATH as a support line. Those $3000 mark the floor from now on.
That line predicts you $4300 for New Year's Eve. So nearing that value would trigger a bullish take on markets. Right now we are kinda high, more in a selling position.

They have teached us to buy into the fatal dips lasting days.
They teached us to not fear the forks, because of free altcoin distribution. Gold, Cash, whatsnot.

Since you said "a little money" where is your risk? Why wait? A more Gung-ho attitude and do it today, since waiting doesn't increase it's value anyways. Remember fiat getting dilluted by central banks on a daily base.

All of the above are pretty right, but have forgotten to account timing. You have money for how long?
Short term speculation and Longtime investing.

On a short timescale there is probably Bitcoin again since we learned from past experiences that a fork of Bitcoin results into an altcoin airdrop like Cash, Gold. Due next month again.
On the other hand BTC makes a perfect long always. 50% into BTC.

The midrange of topmarketcaps you would have to nannysit on a daily base, watching charts and reading TA. 25% into that, if you can do the task.

If you are completely up for a gamble, ready to just burn it all, than go for something completely out of the blue. Alts traded on small sites like Yobit, Allcoin, Liqui (tradesides complete overview at https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/volume/24-hour/all/ )
You can even take a go on "longterm gambling" which is called differently here, I think one calls that an ICO
25% for that if you are up to loosing those 25%, or love to gamble.

That creates three possible playing fields. Choose and weight according to your own preferences, nobody else can tell you to like this or that more than the other approach.

And there lies their trouble. All three are trying to get a share of Ethereums success. All three therefore are lacking solid economic grounds. Disrupting the disruptor? Vulture culture is a measly meal.
Some aren't even operational (only partially implemented) for assumed target area. They cannot attract, nobody would do any ICO based on Stratis, Waves or Lisk.

Poor stricken chicken golden eggs weight a ton
Any reliable numbers regarding taxes that officially allready changed hands? Miners field service personnel, beeing officially employed, has to get paid and taxes going on top of that. But that is chicken feed from the reportages that are officially published.
Equipment manufaction can only get taxed like any hardware manufactoring. Govs know there is musik inside those products, but cannot stretch out their hands utilizing common legislative rules.
They first have to invent their new rules.

There is hope when looking at Russia since they made the first move in trying to tax miners. And Joeksei Averageowitch over there is commonly used and trained to doge things like that, they aren't that easy to rule people (compare the Chinese). China might want to watch these experiences beforehand, deciding their own move somewhat later. Give this one additional year, at least.

The biggest seem to be Mongolia located and somewhere on this forum there is a very extensive photo report about a mine located somewhere in the far easts. They moved truckloads of miners across the whole country. Locations aren't that cut in stone at all.
However private miners inside people's home would be harder to control by a central authority.
Safe to assume that money changes pockets since a while ongoing. Biggest miners having to pay their highest fees to local authorities, small miners able to avoid that. Equillibrium of that kind can redistribute hashrate across locations.

Fred, pay special attention onto that quote regarding the same email addresses reused for your recovery account. Easy mistake, might mess up your day.
There is a whole board dedicated to all forum internals, better place to ask
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=24.0

Nobody could really deny stuff like that actually happens.       

Maybe not today that much, if I got that picture right... is Mr. Sessions falling back to DDOS practises?           
When they gave that testimony about the dark web I wounder if they are more stricken up in drawing lines between dark, deep, clear webs, and everclear in their jar.         

The GPU miners did Ethereum in 2017, so ETH turning to POS will have a bigger influence than any bitcoin fork of the week could accomplish.
Your second option would be XMR which is not forking, they got some continual upgrade process for changing their code.

The correlation would imply the sum of both beeing a constant. 2017 has proven that we can soar instead.

We should be looking out for the total size of the 'coinomy. Total sum of alts and bitcoin added together.
If whales dump their alts for dollars, for pumping bitcoin onto a new ATH we are actually loosing total substance in the process. And then, that correlation is observable. And those news about ATH fizzle fast, people calling "Bubble" and stuff.

...right now BTC dropped down below that $5650 starting point from 10/20/17 which is, have to admit, stressfull for me to take. I was looking at futures (biweekly) who had been looking bullish.
Maybe the topshelf alts are worth a look again, ETH, XMR of course, ZEC even? Found a really obscure DAG based alt but their dev team just splitted into halves

That ballance update trouble seems home made, there has been pasteable javascript code for that wallet's console capable to update that ballance inside a small loop. There is no explanation why that code has not made it into the official github, still!
For the IoT application the IRI component is crucial, not the GUI. There was some (I think Python) implementation for command line access to data on the tangle. When first applications pop up at that area, we are back into the buyzone.
Exchangers dont really matter. Binance was necessary for US residents to access IOT/BTC markets, since Finex tries to evade anything US related cause of legal issues. One tradeside is a requirement, more are merely luxury.

Billy you seem to be snappy and active, I'll just line up behind you doing the same. There should be a spreadsheet for members to view, maybe sending out that url using IMs?
On standby now, ready to join!
Thanks in advance.

Interested in joining. Might not reach the required amount of postings each week, but if that's okay, I'll apply.

Bitcoin Talk Name: e-coinomist
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Not exactly. Gambling ends each round, while mining is a continuous revenue. There is no moment where your have lost your equipment. And the value of coins gained ... just hodl them.
Definitely mining needs deep pockets to endure a longer timespan.
Gambling needs deep pockets to not feel the losses, who will come for sure.

Feeling similar. Ethereum got pointed at a lot in all these replies, but it is the most experimental coin of them all. The tech frontier.
I can still remember the DAO desaster, and the fork (and Vitaliks annual cellebration of the fork, in the kitchen with table forks all musketeer style LOL)
But we need a save heaven of sorts, to trade. As long as there is no solid ground visible the U.S. Dollar as a world currency will still keep that role, be assured. There comes Tether.