As a fellow newbie I would recommend you to keep on participating in the forum in a constructive way to keep on increasing your rank to at least JR member, so you can try to participate in some worthwhile bounty, although you also have the option of airdrops, like privcy that are accepting newbies, you can search them right here in the forum, I recommend them.

I don't think they are better, but we have to take into account that bitcoin has stabilized a little, so we will not see gains of x100 as in December last year, however, altcoins still has the possibility of generating those gains, also have to take into account that many alts techs are totally different, we can't really make comparison here

I think it will be quite beneficial, if it doesn't alter the essence of the cryptos themselves, but in reality there are too many scams going on and we need something to regulate the market to avoid scaring away the people who are learning, if every time someone comes into this world they are going to get scammed it can became in a very negative image in this environment.

Of course, I think one of the main reasons to invest is to make it into a product that you think will work, and if the ICO has a demo or model that they can reveal is much better, those ICOs rarely fail and I'm always looking to put my money into ICOs like that.

I believe that there are two types of people who invest in altcoins, the first are those who believe in new technologies and decide to help in some investment and the second are those who are here for the money, the altcoins if you invest well can generate much more income than the stock market, because it is much more volatile.

uhmm if I had to bet, I would bet on NEO, because it has a technology similar to ETH but improved, also has Chinese support, so as soon as the cryptos are regulated in China and open the market, we will see how this currency will grow like foam, as the Chinese market is one of the largest in the world (even the largest)

I think that it's going to grow, as you say, it's not only a currency with a speculative value, it's a whole platform where you can develop other projects without any problems, although I believe in ETH and hodl a lot I think that waiting for its price to rise from 450 to 5000 at the end of the years are dreams of moon and lambos, it's unrealistic, especially with the drop we're seeing these days, I'll be more than happy if we reach 1000$ at the end of the year.

While you have a point, I think a repeat of 2014 is unlikely bc despite the recent bear market, crypto environment today is much more developed compared to 2014. Back in 2014, the existence of blockchain tech itself was questioned whereas now even crypto bashers admit that blockchain tech itself is definitely here to stay. While survival and adoption of blockchain don’t necessarily mean cryptocurrencies and tokens will equally survive and thrive, I think the probability of thriving, bounce back in token prices should correlate to continued blockchain tech adoption and acceptance.

The volatility we are witnessing is the trading/finance side of blockchain getting ahead of the tech in 2017 so now we are correcting. But to think we will see a near 100% retrace in prices while blockchain tech is progressing seems unlikely to me. Once the mkt find a balance between tech and trading/finance we should see continued growth again in token prices.

I've always been suspicious of the ICOs that ask for KYC because I think it goes against the principle of cryptocurrencies, which were security and anonymity, now if you are going to participate in such a project and are willing to risk your identity the best thing would be to give the real ID, because that way you will have no problems when receiving your investment, but if you think that the project will use your personal information for suspicious purposes, the best thing would be that you do not even participate in that ICO, I don't think it is worth it.

I really value my privacy. I believe that digital, nontraceable cash is super important, both philosophical and in practical real-world use. Being able to store and transfer money privately will only be more important in the future. So I started to look into dash, zcash, pivx and monero. I Googled, read around and searched hackernews among other news sources/forum. Quickly found that monero had a friendly and competent community, was well respected and cared not only for privacy (not 'instant is super important' as e.g. pivx). Then i read about pow vs pos, and since I like things decentralized a pow CPU mine was ideal. Only monero had that. so picked a bunch of them and keep interested in the project.

I think the first thing you have to see is if you are investing to earn money or to look for a project that will awaken your interest in a new technology, that will make your investment easier, and will add a different approach, because if it is just for profit you have to look for a token that brings together a lot of people and a lot of investment so that at the end of the ICO the token has a fairly high value when they leave the exchange, now if you go for the technology look for a team with experience in what they do and passionate about the project, that is looking out for the community and regular updates.

Does anyone remember what 2008 was like? Does anyone remember hearing about 401k accounts losing insane amounts of value? How many people freaked out and withdrew everything from their accounts back then? If they would have just waited it out, they would have earned their funds back and some.

Have some perspective. Selling at a loss at a time where the market is finally consolidating is a bad call. The legitimate currencies will still be around when the dust settles. If you invested for the right reason, you should not be scared. It is why I chose to sink my money in XRP over Bitcoin. I believe this company will survive and XRP will come out leading the pack.

Lot of coins will start to decouple from BTC so i can see BTC going -50% but lot of alts, mainly those who will have working products will go only 10-20%. They will be more valuable than they are now. Maybe wont go lower at all. We have seen ETH slowly crossing BTC dominance and i think during the next bullrun it will overrun BTC just because it will be actually more used than BTC (smartcontract in a wider usage instead of only icos)

Do you have many other types of investments?

Whilst they may seem good, putting all your eggs in one or two baskets is unnecessarily risky. You can mitigate the risk by spreading your portfolio. This will temper losses and gains and will lead your investment to grow with crypto more broadly, rather than you betting on the one thing.

If it were me, I'd spread the 10k over 15ish coins. Weight it towards the top in terms of highest popularity, but spread it around.

I'm still sitting in ELIX and Upfiring expecting them to do another x10. $100M-$500M feels like a proper evaluation for these projects. Then I plan to move a larger part of savings to IOTA. Hopefully, it's price will still be suppressed by that time.

Meanwhile, I was looking from time to time for similar undervalued projects in the range <$10M. The only one I don't dislike is Network Token NTWK. They don't have whitepaper yet but that project grew out from a specific problem - lack of understanding blockchain technology among newcomers on cryptomarkets. That's project with concrete demanded use case and active development. Lots of positive comments on bitcointalk topic too.

Also, HAT still has some room to grow.

While it is easy to say or predict the project will deliver over a 10 year period, the question remains will it perform better or worse than comparable projects or even BTC and ETH (as platforms and ecosystem)? What effect can have a new competition that will learn from the mistakes of early attempts? The war for users/adoption is rarely won by the best product itself (marketing, PR, support, documentation,etc. - all becomes relevant), will the future team be able to fight successfully for this goals and build a relevant userbase around the protocol? While I am sure the blockchain and smart contract platforms (including interoperability) are here to stay and grow it is hard or impossible to predict which projects will prevail, especially when talking about a 10 year period.

I don't think they are scams, because there are very good airdrops now, check airdrops alert, telegram groups or forums specialized in airdrops and you will see a few that can give you about 10$ per week, of course, they will not be airdrops that you register and be ready, you will have to do several activities, practically they are bounties but simpler, good luck!

I don't think people are as logical as you hope they will be, especially when confronted with the possibility of loss. Humans naturally experience fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the face of ever declining prices. For there to be a market bottom, panic must set in first and I think widespread panic has not happened yet. So, how about sell now, and buy back later at lower prices?

I think we will hit over 12k if we are lucky. The general public isn't interested in bitcoin like last year anymore. Unless there is a breakthrough and there is a huge turn around in the media. Cnn facebook abc nbc need to blast the news that crypto is making some serious gains. Otherwise, we will be in a more stabilized market.

Look for the best projects which will have a true functional utility for the use of the tokens. The value of the cryptocurrency over time will be pegged to the correlation of the fixed supply and the supply and demand for the tokens within that specified market. Communities that form around technology projects are a good indication on how successful an ICO may be. Go through the forums, ask people about specific ICO.