All across the board, coins and tokens are at a discount price.
It really is the best time to buy up more coins.

As far as what you should by, well, that depends on what you think will have long term value.
If you don't know where to start, then first pick a category to look into that you think has value, like privacy coins, smart contract coins, or exchange tokens etc.
Then compare all of those types of coins together and buy up the one that you believe is the strongest and has the longest future.

As far as btc goes, it definitely is at a cheap price and it's good to buy now.
I personaly believe that btc has one or two more bull runs left in it, so there is a lot of profit that can be made short term.
I wouldn't bank on it long term though.
Eth will definitely last a lot longer than btc; after all, btc is already 9 years old.

I made a lot of mistake last year when I first started out.

Mostly, it was similar to yours.
I underestimated how far crypto could go and I would sell things early when I could have sold it for 3x more profit if I waited even a couple weeks.
One of the big ones for me was IOTA.
I had bought up a lot last year and was planning on holding.
Last nov/dec. when things started picking up, I got excited and sold it for $1.80 (I had bought in at 80 cents).
It was a huge profit for me.

But, of course, the huge bull run came in and iota ended up hitting all time highs of around $4.
I decided to really research more about timing and have adjusted my trading style since then.

It is important to not underestimate a good coin or the market.
but, it's also important not to be too greedy.

Most of the people who get scammed, actually didn't get scammed by the exchange itself.
The most common way people get scammed is through phishing links.
I just roll my eyes at someone that lost money because of this.
It's so simple to safeguard yourself against this.

As far as IDEX having weaknesses in it's platform that hackers can exploit, I'm pretty sure it does.
All exchanges do, centralized or decentralized.
I understand fully that I take risks whenever I trade.

But also, to think that IDEX is a scam because someone lost 16,000 dollars is laughable.
That is small money compared to how much they make through fees.
Why one earth would IDEX throw it away to purposeful take a measely 16k?

I don't think it's a secret at all and people are very open about wanting to make money.
It's not weird for people to talk about money and profit in a market where assets are traded.
In fact, it would be really weird if people didn't.

Of course, I'm here for money.
why else would I be?
Have you ever heard of someone who only talks about stocks, studies stocks, researches it, but never trades it?

bitcointalk is the place where almost everyone gets started.
I came here looking for more information and help.
Some of it was useful, most of it was not lol.

but now, I've evolved more where I can use it to make more profit.
Which, in the end, is really everyone's goal.

Why? You should probably put the reasons why you think it is better.

Are you talking from a tech standpoint?
They are identical except for one minor thing, bch has larger block sizes.
This has shown to not necessarily improve speed and fees at all.

Or, are you talking from an investment standpoint?
Btc has bch beat there.  There have been many times when bch has made a concerted effort to "kill" btc and become the "real" bitcoin.
They have failed everytime.
They fail because btc has something that bch will never have: legitimacy.
For better or for worse, miners and investors has declared btc the "Real" bitcoin.
Since the blockchain is distributed, unless it hits that critical 59% breaking point, btc will still kill bch.

Nowadays not so much.
I do more traditional trades when the market is bearish.
For example, I've been buying up btc and eth now that prices are so low.
When there are slight pumps, I use them to buy up a recently finished ico where the price of their token has crashed.

The crazy thing is, when the market is bullish, day trading is extremely profitable.
Last dec/jan I was making around 20 trades a day easily because there was so much volume.
The trades were micro trades with profit margins of 20 to 50 dollars.
Doing 20 of them a day ended up profiting me more than my day job lol.

But, of course, that wasn't sustainable.
as the market slowed down and crashed, that kind of volume is not possible

Thanks for the good list of resources.

Unfortunately, bounty programs are just not what they used to be.
We have every single business, person, neighbor, dog and cat doing icos and bounty programs now.  It's seriously ridiculous.
It's especially crazy when you think how much the market has bled this year yet new startups and ico have increased.

On top of that, you have this new wave of bounty hunters that just mass spam everything and plagiarize, copy, and steal.

The result?
I'm pretty sure you all have tons of useless tokens and coins in your wallet that never even got to an exchange.
Or, if it did, it's worth only like 1 satoshi.

Until the market becomes more healthy and new investment becomes stronger, I don't see this changing anytime soon.

Are you wondering if a project has more success if they run an ico vs. only doing airdrops?

Honestly, I think any startup that jumps into crypto now will most likely fail no matter how they start off.
The market conditions are just not right.

But, if we are to look at which has more chances of longterm success, it is an ico.

If a company only does airdrops, they are literally devaluing their own company before they even go to market.
No matter what people think, crypto isn't free money and you can't make value out of thin air.
A token or coin that has no function, purpose, or even platform to support it will have no volume and no value at all.
It will just sit on a dex or a very low volume exchange forever.
Take some time to look at the tokens on IDEX.  There are TONS of tokens there with literally ZERO trading volume.

Asking, "Can I trust crypto / digital currencies?" is like asking, "Can I trust the internet?"
The answer would be yes and no.

Certainly, just like the internet, there are things that can screw you over but there are a vast more things that are beneficial.
But, beyond good or bad or trust or no trust, the internet is just a fact of life and is essential.

That is how crypto will be, it really is that revolutionary.

You need to realize, that btc was never considered a digital currency when it first started.
It was seen as a way to ensure trustless p2p interactions that can't be hacked.
It's brilliant in it's simplicity.
It allows you to transact directly with someone else without having to go through any middlemen.
It wasn't until the notorious first btc purchase was made (a pizza lol) that it started being seen as a currency.

Of course, you could jump into bounties and try to build a portfolio.
But I would just take it step by step and be consistent and patient.

Take a good look at your monthly income and expenses.
specifically, look at the areas of your life where you spend money and sacrifice one of them.
Take the money you save every month and buy btc or eth.
It's important to start off with these two because they are the only two that are widely traded and can easily converted back to fiat.

Your goal is to work towards a basic balanced portfolio valued at least $2000.
Each month, you will use the btc or eth you have to buy an altcoin that you believe has future potential.
Do a lot of research on this.

A balanced portfolio will be 40 to 60% btc/eth, then the rest spread out among three to four coins, no more.

I just don't see anyway that bitcoin can last longer than one more year.
It's just too old and has too many problems.
Global markets would never use a tech that is slow, expensive, and resource consuming when there are better options out there.

I think last year december really showed btc's limitations.
It hasn't even come close to being used mainstream yet and at it's all time high, the blockchain was basically unusable.
At it's peak in early January, we were looking at $20 transaction fees and hours of confirmation time.

On top of that, the btc blockchain consumes more energy to maintain than some small countries.
It's just simply unsustainable.

Naturally, it looks like eth is set to overtake btc eventually.
But a year from now, I think we will see two to three dominant coins rather than just one.

I hope by now you have realized that crypto investment isn't that simple.

If you are committing to a coin to bring you profit, you shouldn't be worried about price, you should be worried about how much more capital you can grow.
In the case of crypto, that's easy.
If you want to invest in eth, you should be actively increasing the amount of eth you own.
It's not as simple as buy 1 eth for $500 then sell 1 eth next month for $600.
$100 profit! Woot!
No, because there are fees, price in relation to btc, and then the value of btc itself.

If you truly believe in eth, it is a good time to buy now.
But you should also be using that eth you have to make smart investment choices to increase your overall eth.
People do this through icos, day trading, micro trades, etc.

First, have you looked into what etc even is or what it's all about.

Way back when eth started out, they got hacked in a major way.
They decided to just fork the chain so they can devalue the original eth.
When you fork a blockchain, the original one doesn't disappear, so the original eth stayed around and eventually got called ethereum classic.
The "new" eth is what ethereum is today.

All of the major devs moved from the old one to the new one, but there were some people who stuck around for etc and that's why it is still alive today.
It wasn't until last year that major developments started to take place.

now, they are very different in their use and purpose.
If you feel that etc has a place in the future crypto world, then I would say yeah buy some now.
If you feel that it doesn't have much longevity, then just avoid it all together.

So, is your post an advertisement then?

You also don't seem to understand what decentralized means.
In fact, I think this term is thrown around a lot without people fully understanding it.
Blockchain is not decentralized, it is distributed.  There is a huge difference.
Today, I think a lot of people hear decentralized and they think it is not controlled by a government agency or board of directors or small group of stock holders.

The reality is, blockchain tech is tightly controlled by miners and people running nodes.
There is no freedom or lack of control like everybody imagines.
The key difference is transactions are distributed across nodes scattered around the world and the ledger is open for anyone to see.

From the beginning, it was a system designed to offer a way to do p2p interactions in a trustless environment.

So, tell me, how on earth does this have anything to do with ripple or kora?
Mostly, you are just using buzzwords to get people's attention.

It totally depends on what your financial goals are.

If your goal is to make a couple thousand dollars extra, then yes, of course I would sell it.
but if my goal is to earn a substantial amount, say 100,000usd or more, than it would be much different.

In that case, it is best to take advantage of crypto's volatility in price.
here's a simple example:

You bought btc at 10k, it rises to 12k, you sell it all for cash and keep that cash in a seperate bank account so you don't spend it.
Wait a couple weeks or month btc crashes down to 9k.
Then you take the 12k that you earned and use it all to buy btc at the new 9k price.

Very simple tactic that increases your capital at a steady pace; you bascially want to steadily increase the overall amount of crypto you have.
Then, you can eventually aim for a huge future selloff when you reach your financial goals.

I don't know, EOS, to me, is one of those projects that sounds great on paper, but in reality it hasn't worked out so well.
The release of the mainnet was a terrible mess with only around 20% of all eligible people actually participating and voting.
That is a horrible participation rate.
And any platform that has decentralization as it's core function needs way more participation than that.

Of  course, you can say that it is the market conditions and investors to blame, and not eos.
Certainly, the vast majority of eos holders have no idea what it is even all about.
But, reality is reality and I only see an uphill battle for now.

There are so many projects now that are finally going to be tested in the real world (ada, stellar, etc.).
I think people will realize quickly just how awesome eth is again instead of these other ones that might be better.
Experience and market penetration are not things you can just wish into existence.

It's certainly possible, but extremely short cited.

Depending upon how strong your social media presence is and your ability to choose strong projects, you can do this in as little as a month to as long as 6 months.
Typically, airdrops pay horribly and aren't worth your time.
For bounty programs, signature, media content, and translation campaigns pay a lot while facebook, twitter, and telegram pays little.
by combining the right kind of campaign with a strong project, you can earn a lot of tokens from a valuable company.
You can then, of course, sell those for btc, then sell your btc for fiat and cash out.

But, here's the thing: then what?
Yay? an extra thousand dollars?

Nah, you should be keeping it and using it to build up capital and the overall value of your assets.
In investing, it takes money to make money and it has an exponential effect.
The moment you cash out you kill all of that.

Actually, if you look at the spread of btc for the past 3 months and compare it to how it has been in the past, btc has stablized quite well lately.
Sure, it's not up to 15k like everyone wants, but stability is one of the best things for the crypto market now.

As far as media coverage goes, I don't know how it is in other countries, but in America the btc craze has definitely died down.
Last year and the beginning of this year, there was constant coverage.
First on its' astronomical rise and then on it's spectacular crash.
Now, it isn't that buzzworthy anymore.

This, again, is a good thing for the market.
Attracting inexperienced investors who are jumping in to crypto because of a news article is not a good thing.
As things stabalize, institutional investors are more likely to jump in which can bring volume and growth.

Wow, the OP was a year and a half ago.
It's interesting that he said LTC and DOGE would survive.
In a sense, yes, they are still surviving.

I think the market will really mature once we finally get out of this bearish market slump.
There's no way that investors will run back to wild speculation and throwing money around after learning the hard way this year.
So the alts that will survive and have a good future are the projects that have a real life use case and good market penetration.

Just off of those two simple things, I can tell you now that a lot of top 50 coins won't be around.
A lot of them simply because they don't have a product yet and others because they have no good business model.
Speculation is over, so the days of something like EOS being almost as valuable as ETH is over.
A company will need to have more than just promises and a whitepaper.

First, you should know about the difference between a coin and a token.

A coin refers to a crypto that has it's own blockchain (btc, ltc, ripple, etc)

A token refers to a crypto that is built on a platform like etherium or neo (omg, golem, etc.)

It's important because they can have very different functions.
A token has a lot more flexibility because it is part of the platform ecosystem.
So it can be used as payment, consensus, initiating smart contracts, or represent something of value.

A Utility token means it has a function in that ecosystem.
Most often this is a means to pay for services or voting rights or something like that.

A Security token directly correlates to something of value.
This can be real estate, luxury items, publishing rights, etc.