this is what i like to call a weird ass altcoin.
the charts look ridiculous and the exchange you linked is dead with no volume! otherwise someone would have already arbitraged the s**t out of it.

although it is possible that Hitbtc doesn't have the wallet for this coin so nobody can deposit!

it is a bit hard to understand what you are looking for.
but here is the link to their api doc page and the libraries that already exist: https://docs.gdax.com/#client-libraries
use one of these to fetch in information you want.
and if you are using a third party service/app then you have to ask the developer of that service/app to add this functionality i don't think there is anything you can do.

when a fork happens, all the coins that existed on old chain (all the unconfirmed transaction outputs) will exist on the new forked chain.

IF fork happens smoothly like the previous hard fork or other soft forks, then you won't even feel a thing. everything is going to continue as before.

IF the fork leads to a chain split. and two or more chains exist at the same time, all the coins that existed on the original chain will exist on the new chains too.
in this case if you have control over the private keys of those coins it means you can spend them on both chains. but if you don't have access to the private keys, you have no control over anything. your future is in the hands of the one controlling them for you in this case the exchanges or the coinbase wallet.

very interesting.
i have actually never thought about it this way. i guess i'll have to get more familiar with lightning network.

many have called altcoin market as Penny Stocks over the years and i kinda agree with them too but i also find a big difference between the two markets.
in Penny Stocks market, it is my understanding that you trade shares of real companies so there is some reality to it. there is a physical company that is doing something. there are jobs, employees, money going in an out, ...
but in altcoins you are trading mostly "tokens" and these are mostly virtual not real. granted there is the similar blockchain technology behind bitcoin and altcoins but the differentiating factor is usefulness. when there is absolute zero usage for most altcoins and nearly no usage for the rest then they become virtual tokens changing hand.

no it doesn't!
because simply put, everything is recorded publicly and you can't fake the records which are the transactions on the public ledger known as blockchain.

you can mix your coins but that is not helping the money laundering thing. you still put some money in and put some out it doesn't become clean. you should read what money laundering means.

yeah, doubly thanks

unless i am mixing the dates, i don't think that is correct. i know the recent one and how it caused the drop but the only thing from 2016 i could find was this https://themerkle.com/bitmain-ceo-jihan-wu-will-firmly-support-funding-of-bitcoin-unlimited/
which has the date as 20 November and by that date price didn't move unless you are calling $750 to $714 a crash

with that said, give a link to a news or a tweet or something reliable with dates and i will update the chart ASAP

people are only looking for money and the easier it is to earn that money the more interested they would be in joining in. and right now it seems like ICOs are the gambling game of the year. everyone is enjoying the bets they make on each of these ICOs and the developers of these are also enjoying all the free money for no work they are getting.

that is why there is not much of any innovation around. and everything is turning into copy paste.

i have to check out Xtrabytes to see what all the fuss is about since i have not gotten the chance to do it yet. but the fact that i keep seeing it advertised like this on this board does not look good at all.

this all are movements that will contribute to adoption of other things such as gold,... and among those we can see bitcoin.
the downside of this in my opinion is the fact that now is not the best timing for newcomers to invest in bitcoin. not because of the risk of going down but because of not knowing these fluctuations are normal.
a newcomer never knows a $100-$200 drop in bitcoin is considered a medium drop and will always be temporary!

when you talk about "long run" you shouldn't only look at the start and end price. you should instead look at all the mess that is going on in the middle too.
an investment is profitable as a long term investment only if it gains value over time in all that 18 months.

but when you look at all these altcoins (majority of them) they have been falling, have a tiny pump then fall, and suddenly in past 2-4 months they started getting big pumps.
in short NO they are not profitable in long run but they are in short.

there is still the issue of ICOs and the vast amount of funds they have. that is a huge amount that was bought slowly and little by little by a lot of users in order to invest in these ICOs.
now it is in the form of a big fund in the pocket of one person (each ICO developer) and they will want money very soon. as soon as their funds are out of the lock down period they will start dumping.

LOL the halving period was the most incident filled period of time last year. how can you say "nothing happened"!!

and it went "to the roof". it is a 60% rise before the halving because of hype and another 60% rise after the halving when actual "new scarcity" kicks in. what else do you want that is 120% rise in less than a year

here is summarized it:

because all of these altcoins are pump and dumps and after a pump there comes a dump. it doesn't really have to have some kind of strange reason to get dumped. it is just traders cashing out their profit to move on.

if you can make profit from this "shitcoins" then good for you. but in my experience it is a waste of time and money to try and trade these.
there was a short time recently when dead coins were being pumped one after another with obvious movements, which made it easy to spot and mush safer to invest in.
but what you are telling us here is just fake random pump and it is not possible to invest or make profit from any of these.

if we assume price will reach that high and if we assume all the speculation about satoshi's stash size of 1 million is correct then he will own $100,000,000,000,000 (i don't even know the English word for that number, is it trillion!)

do you think someone with that much money suddenly comes out and puts a "come attack me here" sign up for the world publicly to attack him?

even if they really had the market and it wasn't a bug, you shouldn't even care about the price of bitcoin (or anything else) on a random small exchange like that.
they are either too small with no volume, or have some kind of problem like no fiat deposit and withdrawals or worst of all they are scam!

if by bitfish you mean this https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/bitfish/
then it doesn't even have bitcoin market to "destroy btc price"! what are you talking about?
it just has 2 completely random altcoins !

not that many actually.
the prices don't look good to me at the moment and i can not find any proper altcoin with a nice future price or a pump ahead so far so i chose to stay away for a short while until i can find a more promising investment.

yes it certainly is dangerous and it had already happened with so many different exchanges that you should consider it a real possibility!

learn it!
it is not that hard. the hardware wallet that the brand new account above suggested is a good option. there are a couple of them created which you can choose one and buy it.

and to reduce your nervousness you can just use the wallet with a small amount of bitcoin and test things out to learn how they work. then move millions into it

if you want a simple wallet i suggest Electrum. go to their website electrum.org and read their wiki. it is easy to use and easy to learn.
you can also read these two links:
https://bitcoin.org/en/getting-started
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1631151.0