We already had a similar crash. In 2016, the exchange rate of BTC went down to almost $200 per coin. It represents a dip of more than 85% from the peak valuation of $1,230 per coin in 2013. Now we are in a recovery phase, as the exchange rates have increased from $200 per coin to almost $7,800 per coin.

Obviously altcoins can never be as safe as Bitcoins, since many of them are copycats of BTC. Also, most of the alts depend upon Bitcoin for their survival. This is evident from the fact that most of the trading volumes for altcoins come from alt vs BTC trading, rather than alt vs fiat trades.

It is not a stupid decision to invest all your money in to a single asset, if that asset is not very risky. There are several examples of such assets, such as bullion metals (gold, silver, platinum.etc), United States treasury bonds, bank deposits.etc. But Bitcoin is a very high risk asset and investing solely in it can be a very bad decision.

That is much better than keeping the coins for your kids. I am also planning to do the same. I will convert some of my coins to fiat cash in the near future and keep it in an account for my kids. Since Bitcoin is a digital asset, holding them for long term is associated with a lot of risks.

IMO, you have mainly two options.

1. Find a buyer from Localbitcoins and sell your coins for fiat. Ask the buyer to deposit fiat cash in your bank account.

2. Purchase pre-paid debit cards which can be loaded with BTC. Load them with Bitcoin and then withdraw fiat cash from any bank ATM.

That is quite possible. Some 20% to 25% of the crypto trade volume was originally from mainland China. The closure of the Chinese market affected Bitcoin and more so the altcoins such as Ethereum and Ripple. The most important market for ETH was China. And the lack of access to China has resulted in the ETH exchange rates dropping by as much as 50%.

The effect will be insignificant. For someone with zero money, Bitcoins doesn't matter much. He may not be having a bank account and he may never think about creating a Bitcoin wallet. As a currency/asset, Bitcoins are more suited for the middle class and the rich elite.

Then number of unconfirmed transactions have gone below the 50K mark for BTC, which is still quite high IMO. For every block newly mined, the BTC miners are getting somewhere between BTC14.50 to BTC20.00 due to the high fees. For the BCH miners, it is in the range of 12.5-12.7 BCH per block. I am not sure which one is now more profitable to mine, given the very high fee component with the BTC blocks.

The volatility in the exchange rates is a big concern. But the merchants can minimize their risk by using a payment processor (such as Coinbase). Another issue with direct Bitcoin payment is the high fees and the delay in getting the necessary confirmations.

Yeah... even I would love to use ETH or LTC, but the problem is that Localbitcoins don't accept these alts (it doesn't even accept BCH). So every time I want to sell my BTC on localbitcoins, I have to pay a horrendous transaction fee (usually around $8 to $12) on top of the LBC deposit fee.

Seems so. There is still a lot of uncertainty surrounding this fork, and the guys behind this are not very active lately. Perhaps they were forced to change their plans after the cancellation of the SegWit2X fork. But if it happens, then I will be happy. More free coins for me. Bitcoin clones are better than altcoins.

By now, you guys must have got the answer for that question. China ban didn't had any long-term effect on the exchange rates. If you remember, then the exchange rates went down to $3,000 per coin (from $4,500 per coin) when the news about the China ban came out. But now the exchange rates are close to $8,000 per coin.

Seems like you will be having your Christmas present. We may witness 10K by this month itself. Actually, it is already close to 10K, if you add the value of coins such as Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold and other future clones. I got free BCH coins in August and they are still in my wallet. If you add up the BCH and BTG value then the net worth of 1 BTC is close to $9,500 right now.

But right now they are having a minimal effect. In 2010, there were a total of 1.015 billion motor vehicles in use in the world. Out of this, just around 0.2% are electric driven. The rest are either gasoline/diesel/CNG powered or hybrid vehicles.

The vast majority of the funding for various terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State and the Al Nusra Front are sourced in the form of the United States Dollar. Some of the funding also comes in the form of other fiat currencies such as the Iraqi Dinar and Syrian Pound, in addition to gold. When the ISIS captured Mosul, they had stolen some 500 billion Iraqi Dinars from the central bank there.

My choice would go to Bitcoin Cash (BCH). It's exchange rate has increased by almost 400% during the last four weeks. Also, the future looks bright, after the SegWit2X proposal was abandoned due to lack of consensus. There is even a chance that it can overtake BTC in terms of market capitalization.

Let bygones be bygones. You will not gain anything by thinking about the lost opportunities in the past. Look at the future. Even now, it is not too late to invest in Bitcoins. Right now we have only around 10 million users. You will definitely profit out of it, when when the user base increases to 100 million, or in extreme cases 1 billion.

Have you checked the BCH exchange rates recently? The coin seems to have stabilized at BTC0.200 - BTC0.250 range (~1,500 per coin). And that represents a 400% increase from the exchange rates in late October. East Asian investors are going ballistic after BCH (just like they went ballistic after Ethereum a few months back).

I wouldn't label BCH as pump and dump, but the trading pattern of that coin for the last 72 hours have been quite suspicious. Almost 40% of the daily volumes came from just one exchange - Bithumb. The other Korean exchanges, such as Korbit and Coinone are also reporting quite heavy BCH volumes. Now I am suspecting that this pump is a result of investors from mainland China, who have joined the Korean exchanges since late September.

Those who had Bitcoins in their wallets before August 1 would have got the equivalent amount of BCH coins on that date. So many of us may be having equal amounts of BTC and BCH in our wallets right now. Therefore, I don't think that there is any need to purchase additional amounts of BCH.