Most of the times, when unusual activities happens within a wallet or platform, it is always right to contact the team on whatever social media channel they are active on and get first hand information about the issue, so far you are sure you did the right thing. Therefore, it would be wise to contact their customer service representative or team, you can start with telegram as it is always the fastest, and lay your complian and challenges. But coins can't just vanish, could be there is an update going on which is bringing up glitches or resulting in bugs, just be patient and contact the team..

As with every growing system, ecosystem, sector or technology, there is need to be updated with wherever and whatever you find yourself in, through constant follow up, else you might miss out on life changing opportunities. Actually, personal wallets can't be a thing of the past because till date it still offers the best method of personal security against theft and/or data breaches. Moreover, in most DEX nowadays, before you can trade on them, you will need to have the required assets right in your personal wallet before you can do so.
However, the concern is many people are yet to understand the importance of personal wallets and thus still using most exchanges for storage of their assets, while it has been said countless times that, you can only be sure of your assets if they are in your personal wallets.
Therefore, whatever coin you buy, if it is not on prominent wallets like Imtoken and the rest, do well to follow up on that project and their wallet where you stored your coins.

To say the truth, most of the times, many project team use that line, statement or response of they are working on the platform but on the background and that they need more time etc just to waste or delay the investors time thus making them lose interest, forget the project while the team slowly abandons or exit scam. 2018 to 2021 is a very long time for any team that are really serious to present something good to their investors at least if there are serious developments going on within the projects, investors will hold on, but listing on exchanges is also a very important driving force to more growth.
Therefore, I don't know what the team are working on and why it is taking them years to list on exchanges, well since you have been holding till now, it is clear you are already in long term, so you can as well hold on and keep following them to see what they will result to.
Lastly, this is the reason why it is important to always invest what you can afford in every project because the team can always change their mind. Good a thing ICO are no longer here, because this is one of the ugly experiences with them, nowadays it is IEO or IDO, where listing is already assured and investors can make their own choices.

If you say animal coins I presume you are referring to Meme coins, well actually you can say that, you can say it lead to shitcoins seasons, and even till today a lot are still coming up, also NFT and Meme projects are quite different I believe.
Nevertheless, NFT is still hot I would say moreover I would also say that the trend is somewhat new and as the bull run which looks like we are in already keeps gaining prominence, more attention will be going to NFTs and probably starting another shitcoin season. Also, it is very important to know that, in as much as NFT looks like it is already starting, you should be careful as well, because every trend presents scammers with new opportunities to create scam projects, therefore make sure you do your due diligence on every project before Investing.

Most of the times, there are two factors which will determine if you will make reasonable profit from a coin or not, the first is hype, this hype factor plays a very big role and that is why most projects spends heavily on it through promotions, this is most of the times done in such a way that even if the project have nothing to offer, hype will push it forward. The second factor is working products, which when actualized correctly will normally pull hype thus leading to price of the coin increasing.
Now talking about TRX and ADA, both are totally different both in working platform and the team, ADA has been pumping recently because of the smart contracts coming up soon, TRX on the other hand, nothing much have been heard from the team, thus comparing both and asking the possibility of TRX reaching $1 look hard to answer. Choose any coin you want to invest in, but let it be on good reasons.

BNB is good, the team are great and the platform as a whole is outstanding, but what was the price of BNB early this year of which is went up very high? Understanding that and what lead to that price or ATH will help figure out what contributed to such, and the simple answer is more use case and more people now using it for transactions, fees etc. Remember when the Meme projects were launching every now and then, a good number were leveraging the BSC network, via different swap platforms or Dex such pancakeswap, Apeswap and so on, all the transactions going through these Dex contributed to the growth of BNB, coupled with the team's or CEO constant acknowledgement of BNB on twitter.
So in other words the higher usability of a coin contributes to its growth since more people are now using it, therefore it is clear that BNB is good for long term. On the case of better store of value, yes it will be a good store of value but not better than ETH, ETH is constantly improving on their blockchain the London hard fork proved a lot about the ETH team and their expertise.

Most of these are not closely related to DeFi, nonetheless China ban has been on miners and not Bitcoin, India on the other hand, are yet to decide what they want, they have banning Bitcoin for years now but yet looks like they are not serious with it, so no need to bother about it.
DeFi on the other hand, is still much around but the hype has left it for another trend, but that doesn't mean it is no longer working or not in existence or dead, there are still many Defi platforms out there, some even have NFT features thus still making them very much active. Lastly, the reason nothing much is being heard about DeFi now is, NFT trend has taken over as seen everywhere in the crypto space, so little attention is paid on DeFi now.

The decision about holding Doge should first come from you, then with more opinions, you can be able to decide further, because if you are yet to decide what to do with your Doge, at the slightest idea you will dump it and many later regret or hold and still regret later. Nevertheless, I have never subscribed to the idea of dumping Bitcoin for Doge or any good coin like LTC for Doge, it is not a good idea, those two coins have better prospects than Doge, which only relies or mostly relies on tweets to pump. If you are still holding, you might consider holding a bit more since we are gradually crypting into a bull run, perhaps your friend was right about Mid-2021, therefore if bull run sets in again, Doge being among the top cryptocurrencies on coinmarketcap will also experience a pump, then you can further decide whether to sell or hold.

Meme coins just in a way contributed to the bull run, they kind of started the shitcoins season and where many made good profits others got trapped, and as the market dumps a lot dumped with it, with no sign of recovery, thus proving the case that, Meme coins have no use case backing them up, so yes, one needs to be careful of them.
Even the top Meme coin Dogecoin have no use case, what pumps the price is tweets and nothing more, even those that claimed to be working on one thing or the other, nothing has been heard so far about them. Now NFT is here, sooner than later, a lot of them will spring up again copying others, adding others name to theirs to get attention and so on. Therefore in all ramifications, it shows due diligence shouldn't be ignored when investing in any sort of project or coin.

I don't think there is any particular strategy when it comes to taking profit on altcoins, this is because what works for you might not work for another, some people are always okay with a certain percentage of profit while others are okay with long term holding with a very high expectations.
However, I would say, do well to know the type of altcoins you hold, their chances of lasting long term and their development rate; I think these can help someone to know when to take profit. There is always a saying, don't be greedy, but there are times one will see the nature of a market and decides to risk it by holding more, in some cases it works and in some it doesn't, thus why I said there is no particular strategy on this issue.
There are even people who buys at a very low price, see a good price but still holds, therefore I think it's better to know the genuineness of the coin you are holding, then deciding when to take profit. Unless of course it's a shitcoin you are taking a risk on.

In simple terms, gem coins are altcoins with good use case, good road map and experienced team, once any altcoins have all these, it will be growing in value with each development from the team and thus it can be regarded as a gem; gem, something that is of great value. Also, in the pursuit of gem coins, the investor or user should know that, it comes with a lot and lot of patience, and this patience comes from the fact that the team are working on something therefore needs time to develop it to perfection.
In the same way, extreme care should be taken because there are cases where the team runs out of idea and slowly abandons the project. Therefore, take your time to study a project and get all the neccessary facts right before investing.

I think in most bounties, a big allocation goes to the signature campaign, but most times if there are campaigns like content creations which involves articles and YouTube, then the bigger allocation goes to this section of campaign, so it all depends on the bounty manager, his aims and what he is working on achieving for the team. In the same way, there are bounties in which the signature campaign will be on a different thread with its own allocation, and other campaigns on another thread with their own allocation still about the same project and when you check most times, it can be seen that the allocation of the signature campaign is bigger. Lastly, I think the team have an influence on the campaign, because it seems there is a particular section or campaign they want to leverage on to draw more attention to their projects, hence the reason in most bounties, it is only signature campaign.

This space is unpredictable and that's the truth, let's start with Doge coin, many people didn't expect it to be where it is today but just like that, attention was moved to it and almost all top cryptocurrency exchanges has listed it. The thing is, there are many tokens which where worth nothing years ago but ended up giving their holders good profits this year. Some people abandoned their tokens in different exchanges only to login after a long time to meet good prices, in the same way, some people bought, held in private wallets only to meet a dead tokens after a long time.
But in all, I think the best way around it is, focusing on good coins alone because these ones will only take time to develop but the long term gain is most likely assured. Instead of holding random tokens which have no future and expecting them to turn out good, it better to put that effort towards good coins.  Thus I agree with your decision, holding good coins for future sake is better.

"Patience is really more important than any other factor" and I agree with you. This thing called holding, comes with immense amount of patience, of which it has made many people sell their coins at a very wonderful price, at the same time those who are quick to sell ends up regretting at the end. It is true that Bitcoin dropped badly few months ago, but what is the price today, the price today shows the reason why patience and holding should work hand in hand. Nevertheless, before thinking of being patient with a coin, you will need to understand if the coin is worth holding, because in as much as holding is good, it doesn't work in all cases, there coins or tokens which are not worth it, thus knowing when to sell is very important than being patient.
Therefore in all ramifications, for anyone who want to invest in this space, starting with holding good coins is the first step, then apply patience or be patient with it.

There are many worthless altcoins in the market and each trend gives rise to another countless worthless altcoins again. That is, few months when it was all about Meme coins we saw the way they kept coming up and a very good number of them ended up as scams, those that didn't exit scam earlier are now dead. Also, if you study the level of adoption coming into this space, you will see a good number is always limited to BTC and to an extent ETH, but as for others within top 10 on coinmarketcap, only few adoption comes their way; the reason is that BTC is and can be trusted but same can not be said of a good number of altcoins out there.
Lastly, some new coins can still grow it be worthwhile in the future, and these ones takes time to develop and hype is always far from them, until their working products are out. Considering the number of altcoins in existence, I think it will be hard pointing out the number of good altcoins but only very few and I would say 10% are good while the other aren't.

Both are the best, none is better than the other because both offers same thing, stability against crypto volatility, and also both are controlled by centralized entities.
BUSD is from Binance and Binance is known as a good exchange, thus they will make sure they protect their coin against all odds, also BUSD is gradually getting supported by a lot of exchanges and thus having a good trading volume and market cap. USDT on the other hand, is also supported by all exchanges as well as different blockchain networks, but in all, it still offers same thing with BUSD.
The only difference I can spot out between USDT and BUSD is, USDT have a bigger market cap and support by different blockchain networks than BUSD, but with time, BUSD will still catch up with it. Moreover, most exchanges are now developing their own stablecoins and therefore this will keep reducing the attention on USDT, hence since all will offer same thing, I can't say any is better than others.

I think i wouldn't use the word deteriorating because that doesn't happen in the crypto space, I think using that word means the crypto space is losing value which is not so, however I would prefer using the word we are all conservant with, which is dumping, yes the market was dumping or dumped badly few months ago. This dump, through following the news so far shows China ban on miners, Bitcoin energy fud and so others were a contributing factors to such dump, and recently now the market is taking a good and better shape, as Bitcoin and Ethereum keeps leading; thus the reason why I think using the word deteriorating wasn't really good but now the market is pumping.
Also, in the market are different phases, bear and bull, and that's the way it has been for years, you just need to understand it and work with it so as to make good decisions, normally those who bought the dump in price of some coins like Ethereum few months ago should be in profit now. So in all, the market is going up gradually, but making good decisions on good coins is very important in this stage.

From the look of things so far in the market, you are right with your suggestion about ETH. ETH has had a London hard fork which saw it increasing in price while attracting more attentions which is very vital to its growth, in addition the forthcoming Ethereum upgrade (ETH 2.0) is another factor which will bring more attention, users and investors to ETH, and the more this is happening, as more people keeps anticipating it, Ethereum will be in the minds of people thus making it a good pick or better option than BNB.
However, BNB is a good coin and owing to the fact that the team loves ideas which will keep making their exchange worth it, BNB will always remain a valuable coin as well. Nevertheless, with the current issues or news surrounding BNB seems to be what is making it look sidelined from the market, but on the long run it is still a good coin.

In as much as I have heard a lot about BAT and its potentials, I still have not gotten more into it, to invest in it or even participate in whatever reward program they have. Nevertheless, I always think that, whatever issue you face most times, one of the best places to start with is the project's Telegram group or discord group, where you will have the opportunity to ask the team or moderators questions and get instant answers.
So get started by joining their group to get the idea about the wallet you will need for storage; visit coinmarketcap, search BAT token and locate the appropriate links of which the chat group link will be there. Therefore, once in the group you can get answers you need and possible alternatives if any.

Starting with a question, if not for Bitcoin would there be a crypto space? Also, which blockchain is the most secure today? The answer is Bitcoin blockchain. Another question, which blockchain and coin started the main idea backing the crypto space till today? The answer is still Bitcoin, everything falls back to Bitcoin.
Let me explain further, Bitcoin brought about the idea of Peer-to-peer system of transactions which of course takes place in a very secure and decentralized manner; this idea is what many blockchains and platforms are still working with, developing on and improving on, because that's what is needed in the world today.
Yes, there are many other blockchains now but how many can you say is decentralized and trusted. Talking about trust, all these big players, organizations, cooperations coming into this space which coin are most of them buying? Is it not Bitcoin, what stops them from going for others, the simple answer is they know they can have their investments in Bitcoin and be sure of it. Therefore, the more they buy, the more the market cap keeps growing.