Everything about the altcoin market is uncertain and this includes campaigns.

OP mentioned Hex as a profitable campaign but this was a scam coin. You profited because the scam profited and many stupid people converted their ETH into that shitcoin allowing Heart to earn millions of USD and you with your shilling hot a small share of that profit.

I also learned the hard way. Not as hard as OP but still things did not go the way I wanted them to.

I wanted to buy Bitcoin but I was under the impression that it's too expensive and that I need to have a Bitcoin to fully benefit from it and I barely had enough to buy one at the time so I turned to altcoin trading and investing and barely made a profit. Once I earned on one coin I lost it by investing in a different one.

My advice to you all is once you get some BTC don't risk it! Hold it!

Ever heard of trading O? Because you're acting like you hae not.

Many people make a living of such trades. They're called day traders and they buy, wait for a few minutes, sometimes a few hours and in the end of the day have a profit of $100 with a very small risk and capital usually like 20 thousand dollars or something. They do the same thing the next day and so on earning a few thousand every month. It's a normal job for them.

Some people even do arbitrage trading buying on one exchange and  selling on a different one to take advantage of the premium.

There are two types of investors those who want to play it safe and those who like to gamble and know that reward is usually proportional to the risk. Bitcoin is a high risk and high reward investment and many people see it and try to get more whenever they can.

It's normal that safe investments like bonds that barely pay anything are more popular among people bacause they are afraid of the risk and want to be able to say that their money is working for them and that they have some "investments" but they don't get that an investment with 1.5% yearly profit is a joke.

Main pro for me: independence. I can take my money and move anywhere I want without paying a tax or explaining how I got the money.

Main con: vulnerable to price manipulation and volatile. Exchanges fake trades and use wash trading to manipulate the markets and USDt a huge vulnerability.

And this is a mistake many crypto investors do.

You shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket is a quote used to describe types of investments. You shouldn't have all your money tied in real estate because a crash on that market will make you lose it all, so put some into stocks and commodities as well and hold some cash at hand.

Bitcoin and altcoins are still the same basket!

You overpaid.
https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_fee
As you can see the average tx fee is below 2.5 USD so it's possible to send coins much cheaper than for $5.

I know that sometimes you don't have a choice and have to pay whatever the business you're dealing with is charging you for a transaction but most of us use our own wallets and can adjust the fee.

Let's not mix the fees we pay in a casino to withdraw with the network fees for a normal transaction.

There are many reasons why rewards are low. One of them is they became popular in poor countries as a way of making money.

In countries like Eritrea, Liberia, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Pakistan that $5 OP is calling a low reward is a normal reward. That amount will feed you for a few days since people there earn less for a whole day of hard physical work.

If you live in a country where people are paid around $5 for an hour or work bounty hunting is not for you. It's very simple.

You won't be able to stop for long

Once you reach your goal in BTC you will want to have more and more.

It's like a collector's item nowadays. Don't stop if you can afford to continue. Get 1BTC and come back to tell us how it went.

While paper wallets are fine, you have to consider the weak points of paper. It can burn, be eaten by rodents, torn by children or your pets, destroyed by prolonged exposure to moisture.

A paper wallet is never safe all by itself. It should be laminated and stored in a fireproof safe. If that's too much for you get a stainless steel plate and etch the key onto it to make it fire and water proof.

Sorry for your loss bit money can always be earned back. I'd prefer to lose all my coins than my family. I wish you were able to make that choice.

What makes you think that 1 or 2 halvings from now China will still control over 50% of the mining power?

Even if the government took over all mines in their area by force it wouldn't mean the centralization of Bitcoin.

If more than 50% of mining is done bu one entity there's a risk of an attack on the network but such attack would be very expensive and would destabilize BTC making all your mining machies and coins mined by them almost worthless. If you gained coins by attacking the network you wouldn't be able to sell them with profit.

Taking over 51% of hashpower and attacking the network is like buying a small country to burn it to the ground with napalm.

All markets have whales but not all markets are as volatile.

Bitcoin's problem is fake stable coins like USDt that pump it however they want and low exchange liquidity. Not even 50% of all coins is traded and the price is based on a small part of that 50% that is traded on a few biggest exchanges.

As long as it continues the price will keep jumping and falling. 

I'd rather say if they continue to call it a pandemic. There's too little death cases to be calling it a real pandemic and to justify the destruction of tourism and transport.

I also think it will take some time for them to recover even if all the restrictions are lifted next month but those who survive will have an easy time making money a year from now because the competition will mostly be out of the picture.

Warren missed some money trains in his life especially in tech sector. He has so much money that he can play it safe and still make more. His exit doesn't mean the stock will get destroyed in the next few months.

It's unpredictable because it's manipulated.

There was a recent study done by a group of economists that showed both gold and bitcoin markets were manipulated to drop in March.

With Bitcoin it was pointed out that bitmex had a lot to do with that crash. It's not bitcoin it self that crashed but one exchange did and that caused international panic.

I'm sure that 10 thousand will be broken soon. We are coming back to this telev too often and it weakens the resistance.

So the makers of these coins are trying to deter people from spending and make a token for holders where whoever goes first loses?

If you hold the coin you have a chance of it going up in value but only if other people spend and burn their coins first. If everyone holds nobody gets any profit and the price remains the same? It's an interesting concept for researchers because they defy typical market logic. I don't think they are useful aside from that.

As you can see people who bought at 9000 dollars last week already got profit. I'm sure Bitcoin will not stay at 10 thousand but one day be worth much more, even if it only happens in the form of another bubble.

There's always a small chance that it will go down and eventually become worthless because that's what happens with technology and this is the risk you have to be prepared for.

The steam trains were once a big thing but then came trains running on oil and electricity and now we're going towards magnetic levitation so even old railroad tracks will become obsolete. Bitcoin can become obsolete one day like other technological advancements but it will have its bubbles before it happens.

It's normal for those coins they're trying to squeeze as much from the holders as possible. They always say high cap is made to secure the network but really they don't care if you make money from it so they're not trying to make the system user friendly.

Look at Dash and how expensive it is to run a node there. It's not PoS but the idea is very similar to make it affordable only for a few wealthy individuals.

A bunch of those coins came out in 3-4 years ago and they weren't doing too good in the bear market.

Take a look at storj https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/storj
It went from €2.1 to €0.1. That's a devastating drop if you compare to Bitcoin that lost 85% and recovered back to 50% of ATH. Storj lost 98%! Are you saying that those coins are what we should be putting our money into instead of PoW or PoS coins?

If they haven't paid you for 2 years don't expect them to cough up the money all of a sudden.

I agree that old and forgotten projects can sometimes experience pumps and make the holders profit but it's very rare. 2 years is a long time for an altcoin. If it has not shown anything this long you may have 1% chance that it ever will.

I went a long way since I started trading. I fisrt got into trading altcoins because I thought I should differentiate and hold more than one coin and Bitcoin looked expensive.

Later I grew up gained experience and begun to understand the market better. Got rid of most altcoins that I held and bought Bitcoin. Started trading it and then went through another phase where I stopped trading and turned into a Bitcoin hodler because I was finally able to afford my first bitcoin.

I'm not going back to trading. Sometimes I do it for fun with a small amount of money but holding was what brought me the biggest profit.