Stocks has been around before cryptocurrencies, so I don’t think cryptocurrencies will be able to compete with them. Another thing for sure is that stocks attracts more investors than Bitcoin and I believe that lots of profits comes from it. Even in trading, people trade a lot of stocks thancryptos. I’m a fan ofcryptos,cause it favors me a lot than stocks.

Every single sign that we're seeing seems to be indicating this is going to be a very difficult year for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, the previous year was pretty good and it's unlikely this year is going to be like the last one, probably many persons are going to sell their bitcoin for a bad price because they're going to get desperate because they do not see any kind of change in the price so the most important thing to remember is to not get desperate about it not every year can be year in which we establish an all time high so make sure you're holding your coins and do not sell them no matter what.

After spending many years as a financial advisor, I find the ravings of many "experts" today as banal. There are those that speak of coins as a "Ponzi" scheme and denounce the validity of the new form of economy. There are also some that want this world to go back to the 50s, and with it all the junk that we have been working to rid ourselves of.
Looking at the new order, I can see many similarities to the monetary base that we are used to. Our economic base is not tied to any metals or valuables, but believed to be of value and tradeable as though it were tangible treasure. We have not backed our currency for many years (since 1971) but our currency has been the standard of the world.
Why then are these "old-timers" so afraid of crypto? Because they are afraid of change. The same reason that we still have racism in this country and others, the same reason that we still have wars. The world has changed, and not everyone is comfortable with that. But to not change with it is socialogical death.
Yes, it is prone to swings in value. Anything that has potential is. But we need to have a universally accepted basis so that sane commerce can prevail. It is the future, and there will always be something that is new. But by understanding it and working within it, one can determine whether it is something to stick with or ignore. I choose to stick.

AND you need to be born in the good family. You don't necessarily need to be rich (but it helps A LOT) but what you really need is a great environment in which growing up. Just because what you learn when you grow up can hardly be caught up afterwards. Your family will transmit culture, behaviour, opinions, way of being with other people. That may not seem a big deal but it is.

And if you pay attention to those "great stories" of people starting from nothing and inventing something truly amazing... Well, actually in most cases they grew up in families that had no big issues with money and that had enough to allow them go to school. Even if they chose to drop school, they had financial means to go. And that makes a huge difference!

To attract more investors to the cryptocurrency market, it is necessary to have such strong fluctuations that many investors can buy into the crypto that they like. Bitcoin if continuous value over $ 10k then many investors will be very anxious and do not want to invest in it but if bitcoin is priced 4k - $ 5k then there will be more money than buying bitcoin, then new market can grow stronger.

You are absolutely right, and as many have pointed out these corrections are healthy for the growing market. If we look to examples from traditional and mature markets for example the corrections that occurred as result of the housing bubble 'burst' of 08. The markets than were boated with repackaged, triple A rated mortgaged backed securities which many knew were full of subprime mortgages (we could relate this to coins such as S**tCoin or Coinye West). Since these toxic assets were racking in billions of dollars a year for the banks and investors much like seen in our own ecosystem, it was only till a few negative events occurred like the bankruptcy of New Century (a mortage lender) where the downward spiral of the markets began, for us that was our Tether or Mt Gox moments. These crashes recreate a healthy ecosystem, and make worthless coins, worthless. We talk about store of value, however the only thing we could use to place as a value of the coin, is the work need to produce that coin. So in that, coins that rely on PoW should in theory have more value than PoS coins as they are more energy intensive. That is my two cents.

I could have given this post a merit,but you have already received them thrice and I am running low on merits. You are a guy with really good posting quality and really good in getting merits. But why are you offering them rarely to posts? I suggest you to merit people frequently so that others too could get them.

From what i see and hear and alsk have had experience, there are several mistakes that investors always do, first is they tend to think that they already know what they are doing without relying on the charts, they tend to speculate more rather than do analysis. Second, they tend to be greedy, they rely on their speculation that a certain coin will go high in value, but failed to do further research on the coin, they might bought it at a low price, but it may not go higher than they think, and they might just be set up for a trap. Third one that is see, is they go with the flow, they invest on the hottest coin and again failed to research the coin as well, theh never see to it, when is the best time to buy and sell, that's the reason why people loose a lot of money. The main reason that i see why investors makes major mistakes is that they fail to do research and in all cases, that is the reason they loose, be it a new investor or an old one.

I have seen a tip from somewhere that in order for you to be become successful always in your trading, you have to to a sniper rather than a machine gunner.. If you trade always see all opportunity, every indicator, every momentum, etc. before starting to trade. Don't be hasty to trade every signal day. You just have to find that one trade that can bring you good profits and not painful losses.

Lol. One thing I have noticed with trading is as long as you can manage yourself in the market to trade safely, then you should be fine. However, a lot of people only gamble the market, until they realize that they are totally wrong.

At least, we have somethings to look out for to know if the whales are looking to direct a market upward, look for available resistance and play with that, and at the end, that gives you some undisputed advantage as well over someone who does not have the skills.

I honestly like the last aspect of OP where he said losing to someone who has an undisputed advantage over him and the market. I consider all these groups as whales anyway and whether we leave it or not, they control the market and they will always have the highest advantage, and the only thing is to make use of this to roll along with them and see where it leads which gives the learned trader an edge over the ones who just see gambling as 100% luck. One way or the other, someone would be smarter than the other.

The only reasong why we need crashes and panic sell offs is for the new comer to come in the scene.  with all the advertisement and promotion, people gets aware that Bitcoin exist but with high price, investors are quire afraid to enter or worst they cannot afford to enter anymore.  With price crashes and sell off bitcoin goes down in price and with that short span of items getting cheaper, buyer or investors flocks in with the new funds with them pushing the price to go up.

But anyway if seen from the basic of the effort, it's really not a gamble, it's more dependent on the expertise in analyzing the prices over time as well as choosing the right coins to be used as a trading effort. This is not a game such as in a gambling, which's only dependent on lucky (not strategy), and I think the luckies in trading depends on expertise on the price analys, it's different with a gambling that's just dependent on the game which's really randomly and testing our luckies.

Yes i believe we need the weak hands to give up their investments when the bictoin starts to plunge so that we can buy bitcoin at a lower price. If all people hold their bitcoin then there will be no fluctuations in price. We need these fluctuations for the value of bitcoin to increase. These newbie investors are the ones helping us gain more by giving up when they're at a loss.

Many people have reported that they noticed a lot of shady behavior on the part of exchanges, and here I want to discuss specific methods which many, if not all, exchanges employ to steal our money. I know of at least 2 risk-free methods which are in the store ready to be used on trading folk:

1. Exchange sees a big sell or buy order entering the system which would fill a lot of orders in the orderbook at prices higher or below the price set by the trader. In this case, exchange can itself sell or buy all these orders first and then fill the entering order at its specific price. The effect is that the exchange earns profit while the trader gets his order filled at maximum or minimum possible price. This method works exceptionally well with market orders filled at the current market price. Guess what price it will be.

2. Exchange can set arbitrary delays while adding new orders. For example, WEX (former Btc-e) officially sets a 2 second delay within which a trader doesn't know what's going on at the exchange. In this case, if exchange sees a big order, it can delay adding it waiting for another big order to arrive. If these orders are offsetting each other, exchange can then fill them itself and put the spread in the pocket. This approach works particularly well with exchanges that have lots of liquidity.

If you know of other dirty tricks that exchanges use, share them here.

But the problem is while that would be the logical thing to do many do not think like that, after losing money in the market they cannot let it go, they wan to recover the money they lost, but since their abilities are limited then they never do and they enter in a vicious cycle from which they never recover without understanding that if they just held not only they would not have lost that money but in fact got greater profits.

In the literal sense of what gambling means, we may attribute it a little bit to that, since it is mainly speculation and you are acting based on what indicators and charts are telling you and EXPECTING a positive outcome, but at the end, as long as you know what you are doing while doing proper analysis, your chances of having more profit than loss is guaranteed, which you cannot be able to have in dice, blackjack and co that is totally based on luck. Trading only becomes 100% gambling when you have no strategy and you are making bets on the market relying on luck, while it is far more than that.

I want to straighten it out, trading is not a gamble. Well, if you are just guessing in trading it can be said as gambling.
But here trading requires the expertise of the analyst so you do not lose.
Only a few people who think commerce is gambling because of the lack of science in trade, they just do their luck.

Ill analyze gambling vs poker vs trading in three different dimensions

-1: House edge and winning odds-
A. Gambling: The house has a fixed edge of 10% or so, there is no skill, and you will always lose in the long run
B. Poker: The house still has an edge of 10% via the rake, but you are playing other players so if you are 10% better than other players (or 20% depending on the maths here), then you will win in the long run. Its very hard to get this kind of skill but its possible.
C. Trading: The house has a rake of 0.4% via commissions, and the game is based on skill. So its much easier to beat the game than poker if you are only 0.4% better than the other players.

-2: Risk-
A. Gambling: Typically betting 100% of your money which can be instantly lost
B. Poker: Typically bettering 100% of your money which can be instantly lost
C: Trading: Uness you are using margin, the loss is rarely 100%. A typical crypto loss is around 5-10%. On the worst of days, bitcoin goes down maybe 50% before having a hard rebound and if you have patience you wont even need to take that loss. You control your risk. You can set stop losses, you can catch rebounds. A good trader only takes losses of less than 1-5%, and makes wins of 50%+. Youd have to be in dozens of these losing trades in a row to lose your money.

-3: Bitcoin X factor -
Bitcoin has historically been in a bull market. Even with the 'rake' and even as a bad trader, the odds are always highly in favor of investors. Its still a zero sum game but the people who pay are going to be the big time investors that buy at the very top of $1M (or maybe it was $20K). So if all you do is make long trades, it is very hard to lose fiat (but easy to lose coins). This of course will no longer be the case once bitcoin finally fails.