Ripple is the technology they are going to use to make their own thing based on it. Ripple (XRP) is a coin based on this technology which has nothing to do with this news or any other news that is similar to this one.

it is somewhat similar to when they say they are adopting blockchain technology and creating their coin altcoin and some people confuse that with them using bitcoin.

it seems like everyone is doing it this days! so it seems like a possible thing that we see a new coin called Switzerland coin at some point. but i think it is just a short term hype and it will die off.

what will remain is the adoption of bitcoin which these decisions will help become bigger.

you are missing the big picture here. each time price drops, it drops to a higher low. for  example it first goes to $9000 then rises above $10k then drops down to $9200 then rises, then drops to $9500 and so on. and each time it rises the high it reaches is also higher.
this means it is sideways but with a tendency to rise.

it needs time more than anything else. LN will surely help but before it price will soar

read again!
it is not crypto to crypto transactions that the news is talking about it is crypto to goods. for example if you buy a phone or a camera or a car or a cup of coffee with bitcoin, you don't have to pay any additional taxes.

this will create a huge incentive for merchants to adopt bitcoin. and if you like to know the effects of it, look at Japan and last year's growth in number of merchants (lots of offline stores) in Japan accepting bitcoin.

you wrote (copy pasted) a big wall of text here describing one of the most useless forks of bitcoin which was created pre-SegWit only because bitcoin was facing a lot of Drama before August and they used that to create a coin with a 20 MB block and SegWit at the same time.

utility = zero!

i am sorry to disappoint you but that is not something that can happen whether you like it or not.
bitcoin is constantly growing and because of that the price is constantly rising. sometimes this rise is huge and fast which means it should be followed by a correction (which is basically a drop) but even during drops the adoption is growing and the bottom of it is growing (a higher low).

if they really "educate" their citizens not just waste their time and brainwash them into thinking Petrol (the coin they created) is only thing that matters, then soon enough their Petrol and any future government created crypto currency they pull out of their asses will fail. because nobody wants a centralized pump and dump ICO coin when there are good decentralized cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin!

why do you want to know what others are doing and how much?!!
if you want to invest in stocks then see if the market in your country is in a good shape or not. i may be making a lot of money from the stocks market where i live because it is in a bull mode and the economy is good but you may find the opposite to be true where you live and lose money if you enter!
it is not global like bitcoin...

wrong analogy. the only thing stored on the blockchain are transactions which have nothing to do with address, password or anything like that.
the security also has nothing to do with the blockchain. it comes from the cryptography that bitcoin uses.

first of all ETH is not scarce. there is 6 times more supply of ETH than there is supply of bitcoin and also ETH has no cap while bitcoin is capped at 21 million and that cap is the scarcity

second, forks does not change anything about scarcity of bitcoin. they are poor copies of something good.

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so far none of these 3 had anything to do with your title!

again this has nothing to do with decentralization.
exchanges are third parties that are using the technology to offer some services. they don't define the ecosystem.

did you create this topic to advertise this ICO?

haha, funny topic.
i hope you realize that you can see the price history of bitcoin anytime you wish. just visit any exchange or google price history and look at the charts.

last year price was less than $2000 at this point and now it is $10,000+ which is 5+ times more. how do you consider that as "decrease">!!!!

contact Localbitcoins support (https://localbitcoins.com/support/
) and tell them what you are telling us here but also in your ticket include the transaction ID and both addresses and wait for them to respond.

usually the services will solve your problem if the amount was big enough that makes the effort worth it. but if it is too small they will ignore you.

bitcoin is always full of surprises so it is possible to see a big rise soon before the month ends but so far we have no indication of any kind of upcoming rises. there are simply no signs so there probably won't be any kind of high prices except the same ups and downs.

the article sounds more like an FUD than an honest investment advice.
an honest advice says you can lose everything in cryptos but doesn't pretend other assets are safe. and doesn't even include the comparison between the two markets in it.

no it can't.
the same way going down to $9400 was not an indication of a big drop, rise to $10400 is not an indication of a rise. both of these are side way movement of the market which will probably be the case until the end of this month.

when it breaks $12k or $8k you can call it recovery or big drop respectively.

i call this the uncertainty phase
right now nobody knows if we are going to start a rise or start a fall. so price is stuck between two prices, one upper resistance and a lower support and keeps testing both of them over and over again.

there is no "mark" during this phase to be off it or not. there is these upper and lower prices only and if price breaks any of them, by that time the real direction becomes clear.

for now i doubt that the follow up trend would be down. despite all the dumps they are doing these days.

haha, you think 9 GB is big! bitcoin blockchain size is over 160 GB right now and number of full nodes are increasing!
why? because people want to use bitcoin and it has actual usage and value.

it depends on its usage. altcoins are not really used, there are usually no transactions because people only buy them on exchanges and dump them there. nobody buys them to use or store.
so in 20-30 years there won't be much of an increase. you should see how big the blocks with only 1 transaction (the coinbase tx) are and multiply that by the number of blocks per day * number of days in 20 years and you will get the minimum rise in the size.

if people want to use it, then they will run a full node and store its blockchain. as i said 9 GB, 100 GB, ... are not issues and will be less of an issue in the future if the rise is not too big and out of control like ETH blockchain size rise.

as an end user you don't need to run a full node. you can use them in pruned mode which takes up less space (if they altcoin implements it of course) or use SPV wallets.

if bitcoin shoots up soon, that means altcoins will get dumped and people refer to this massive dump as "altcoin winter", it is a dumb phrase to use but some people like it.

and it is not a new thing for altcoins to get dumped like this after a big pumping season that they had last year. somebody needs to clean up the mess after all those pumps and as whales cash out, newbies panic and crash the altcoin market.
it is more like a cycle over there and happens every couple of months.

any reward system that you are describing MUST be small otherwise that coin is not even worth your "holding".

it is a very simple supply and demand rule here too. if you distribute a lot of coins for free among people who are simply holding some amount, that means you are flooding the market with a large amount of supply. and that can kill the price.

in other words if you find a coin that gives you profit for holding and that amount is high, there is a pretty good chance that in long run you will lose a lot of money because the price of it will tank hard in long term.

usually these guesses that are saying they are speculating about bitcoin price in the future and give a huge number are only making a pure guess and want to reach some agenda. and it is not just about when they predict rise, it also works when they predict a fall.

whenever you see a ridiculous speculation like saying it will reach $1 million or it will drop to $2000, know that the person saying it is trying to sell and make profit or short and make profit respectively.

of course they seem honest. how else would you expect them to seem like? no scammer is ever going to tell you "i am a scammer, stay away from me". they will do everything to look legit instead.
they lure you in like this and then take your money. in fact the only way a pump group can make profit is when you believe them.