Altcoins tend to crash to death because primarily, they're worth cannot be stated. Considering the market for altcoins is crowded, and most of these so called coins offer nothing of real value to be holded by investors, makes them prone to irrecoverable death. Their basically useless in the sense, but not all of them. ETH and other top altcoins still has something in them. Just don't expect altcoins to continue to grow or even surpass bitcoin in the next few years because it's highly unlikely to happen.

It could be a possibility, however we can't tell whose agenda is it. We don't really know what's in store to these institutions and what they're planning to crash the bitcoin price. However, ehat we could do is to educate people here in the forum and other holders that we shouldn't really be afraid of this "quantum supremacy" as they say. There are some videos online dedicated to explaining if quantum computers could really break encryption, and the answer is no. We need to encourage them not to get driven by these news. Or maybe it's a cooperation of a whale and media site to dip the price? No one knows.

It's a good article to read and an eye-opener to the type of possible attacks to the bitcoin network. I never really thought of that idea but it's clever when you look at it and the simple logic behind. The main victim here would be the exchange that would provide cash outs of the thieves. Another drawback if this would happen is that this would surely be another headliner to media and negativity would surround cryptocurrency, in which bitcoin would be affected. I think the main thing to reduce the possibility of such attack is for exchanges to tighten up their policies in exchanging large amounts and implement thorough KYC to prevent huge loss.

China has been a favored place for miners because of its climate and labor and electricity prices. If what OP's post is true that a large percentage of mining farms are in China, and a ban would be implemented, it would definitely shake the market and the network. But that's as far as we can know. We cannot tell if people would start to panic as price drops, or they would remain and hold their bitcoins, potentially increasing price because supply cannot keep up with demand, since fewer rigs means slower generation of new blocks, and new bitcoins too.

That's not quite surprising. Online and hot wallets are one of the most vulnerable wallets in the market. And this exploit, though clever, should be pinned down. A seemingly harmless bitcoin address generator could steal your precious bitcoins in an instant. It's a good read and warning for newcomers. Storing bitcoin should be treated as a real asset, that is, to carefully store and manage your bitcoins. Cold storage and hardware wallets are still more secured than these hot wallets.

Please read the OP for the second time around. He is not making assumptions, in fact, he is asking "why are the other people are making that assumption?". We all know that it has nothing to do with the price dips lately. The price could be manipulated by the whales, its purely by demand and supply, which is dictated by the consumers themselves. I also don't think having Libra is making people dump bitcoin since it's just another altcoin that's going into market. Cryptocurrency is not only bitcoin, it's every blockchain-powered coin out there.

I agree to his standpoint. All these other altcoins need to get traction in order to gain some demand, in which marketing experts as they say, would hype up an altcoin so people would want to buy them. However, most altcoins and such projects quite often disappears in the market, they don't really bring such promise and end up being useless. Bitcoin truely does not need them because bitcoin had already proven itself, it's just waiting for worldwide acceptance that would definitely happen if not only the government would oppress its progress.

Too much volatility which makes bitcoin high risk, yet high reward. As of now, it dips right below to $7,500. I don't know if my computation is wrong or you're late in your post. The dip happened somewhat around 1100 UTC. It's still a bear run to me, but we can't really say. Whales could have sold off which drove the prices down. Good thing is as of now, it remains sideways and we can't really say when is the next bull run. Still, it's not enough to panic and we shouldn't be, bitcoin won't go away.

We can run the numbers but we cannot predict the future. There are more factors that may affect the price. Ome of them is the counterpart of supply, which is demand. Even if supply slows down in the market, if demand does not catch up with the supply growth, minimal changes will only occur. People would still trade bitcoin, buying and selling depending on personal factors. However, if hype comes up too much to bitcoin, and digital currencies gain market attention, it may be possible. But there's still a lot of factors to consider, from government policies to market trust.

Explaining to a close-minded person would lead me to nothing. Everything you say to them, they'll just throw you off with arguments in which even if you can explain it, they'll just have another question. Commonly the elderlies who are more inclined into investing to real, liquid assets, are harder to educate regarding bitcoin. Most younger generations are easier to educste since they have the basic knowledge of how the digital world functions and they could grasp the idea and remove trust issues while learning.

Aside from what OP has said, computer and internet literacy is also one of the factors that affect the chances of getting scammed. There are several possible attacks online not by scammers, but by thieves. One example is through phishing, if one investor thinks a mock website made by a hacker is legitimate and made him input sensitive data such as private keys, thefts are made and it's one way to lose funds. Other factors also said by the OP is greed, mainly by luring the victim by advertisements that tricks the minds of investors to send funds, which are irreversible.

It's good to hear that such adoption is in the making. More mining nodes will make transactions faster, and considering the next halving would estimatedly happen next year, production of blocks would be faster, supply would near its end, and investors would be more attracted because of faster transaction times. And jobs would be opened for the maintenance of the rigs. They could also provide investment for investors to buy or rent rigs with reasonable profits.

That's why it's deflationary, and I'm seeing bitcoin prices would increase significantly once the supply is maximized. I think the time it would not be enough for all is once the digital means to payment is worldwide accepted in all classes of society. But we're still far from that, and by that time, another cryptocurrency might already be made to occupy all the demand. But as of now, few selected parts of the society are only capable of transacting with bitcoin, so I don't think it would not be enough.

Great article to enlist exit scams that existed in the market. New people in crypto could learn about these scams in advance to further prevent having bad image to cryptocurrencies and related projects. This is one of the reasons having a central institution regulating and implementing policies to these services and ICOs would be beneficial in consumer's part. Scams would lessen since they someone would punish them if they're promises never made, or when consumer's rights are violated.

We can't really say for sure. However, I think top 10 at least would survive the market. Even though bitcoin still wins the race of crypto, altcoins still plays an essential role to bitcoins market activity. It opens up exchanges to different altcoins and to bitcoin, making the demand still exist. However, due to the given fact that there are too many altcoins in the market with no real value in the real world. Their features sure promise something but the credibility isn't still there. Only some proves to have use, ETH and such, but I don't really think other altcoins would survive once bitcoin gained more relevance in the future years.

With all these buzz about quantum computer's threat to current encryption techniques, we could also use quantum computing against itself. I recently watched a good video, which is 15 minutes long, regarding these encryption techniques and how quantum computers can protect itself from other attackers.

"Will Quantum Computers break encryption?" -  https://youtu.be/6H_9l9N3IXU

And another thing to mention, quantum computer made by Google is nowhere near the needed qubits to break current encryption. I think Google's quantum computer is somewhere 50, while the needed to break is near 250.

This is true, but only if you hold bitcoins. Companies can still use it to accept payments, but only if they develop a system that would instantly convert bitcoin to fiat. For example, instead of paying through kiosks or other methods of payment for a specific bill or service, which often includes high transaction fees depending on local banking policies, consumers could pay to a bitcoin address of the company on exact amounts, without requiring that much fee since there are no intermediary except your wallet service provider. After the transfer is complete, it would automatically convert it to fiat to prevent volatility loss.

TLDR; It can still be a mode of payment if not holded as bitcoins. Fiat would still be the basis of value, but the mode of transfer is through bitcoins (depends on $ to BTC conversion at the moment of purchase), and then instantly converting BTC to $, to avoid fees of banks.

Bitcoin cannot be integrated to other altcoins. They are using different blockchain technologies, some are more advanced than bitcoin has. I think what you're trying to convey is that bitcoin would adopt what other coins have 'features' in them and implement it to bitcoin. While this is not impossible, adoption is slow and better because it's good for decreasing risks of exploits, rather than adopting fast and increasing the risk of breakdown of the bitcoin blockchain. Always remember that new technologies comes with a risk, so developers need to plan and polish it before implementing it to our current blockchain, because if it goes wrong, it may be the starting point of bitcoin's death if not resolved.

It's no question that bitcoin, and other crypto would become more popular as time passes by. We see continuous adoption by providers and retailers, even by some governments. The next halving would also occur estimated by 2020, so higher chances are it would create another pump in the prices. This is due to its increased scarcity/rarity, slower generation of blocks that provide new BTC, decreasing supply whilst maintaining high demand would likely increase the prices. People would also start to hodl more, refusing to sell their bitcoins because of its high value. Other miners may also give up, making it harder for mining pools to generate new blocks, potentially increasing the price because supply cannot keep up with the demand.

I don't think it's made for mining. Mining is the act of making new blocks as far as I know, and these full nodes aren't responsible for making those blocks. They are the ones who only validate transactions using their computing power and relay their validation to the network. They are the ones who want to help make transactions validated faster because the more nodes connected to the network, the less queue time transactions need to go through because there are more available computing resources in total. I don't think they're made to profit, it's just like donating/contributing something to the network.