with the current bitcoin price drop and all the price manipulation that is going on today, you may want to hold off making any kind of decision because these days the market is not so good and if the drop doesn't stop there altcoins will tank very hard and you may lost a lot of money.

it is funny though, all this time people have been fighting over why bitcoin is dropping and arguing about whether it is a bubble or not and talking statistics and whatnot. and all the while Indians have been buying bitcoin because their economy is bad and their government is corrupt so they saw the exit sign and they are using it. they don't care about any of the things we are arguing about. they keep buying bitcoin more and more every day even if the "stats" don't show all of it. because simply put: they understand what bitcoin is offering them.

as a trader you have to be aware of the market fluctuations at all times and be capable of making decisions based on those movements. it is not a guessing game despite what some people believe, you are not gambling! if you can not do that then simply invest in a good thing such as bitcoin, gold, ... and hold it.

for trading cryptocurrencies you have to use an exchange and that can pose risks because none the exchanges that are available are not trusted. we use them because we have no other choice. and they keep scamming us.

i don't see any reason for anonymous altcoins to become any more popular than normal in 2018. they have certain audience and as time goes by they increase their popularity by a little, specially old and good coins such as Monero. but not much is happening that can change that. the article is also mostly explaining and introducing these coins, i still don't see any particular reason there either.

well historically speaking LTC has always followed BTC and yeah not just in USD but also in BTC. last year as bitcoin went from $1000 to the moon. LTC also went from $4 to the moon.

but you are correct, its LN and also the LitPay and i also believe Litecoin Cash contributed to this current rise.

regarding LN i have to say its adoption is important. otherwise it will start successfully since it is basically the same as bitcoin!
i am mostly excited about Atomic Swaps because it means anywhere that is accepting bitcoin can also accept litecoin and that helps with its adoption a lot.

since you are new to this i suggest sticking to bitcoin alone for now and slowly familiarizing yourself with the rest of them and then start first by investing in altcoins that already exist and finally move to higher risk investments such as ICOs.
i think this is a best way of getting involved with this market, slowly and with more caution.

sorry if i "read" uncalm
all i am trying to say is that i have yet to see any ICO project that delivers something of use a couple of months after they are done releasing and distributing,... there are lots of "good" projects out there but despite them being around for a long time you only hear about them before their ICO and everyone forgets about them after a while since they no longer do anything. development seems to stop

so you are basically saying a good ICO is an ICO that gives you more money, am i right?
it doesn't matter if it is really a good project or even if it has some utility or a product. as long as it is going higher (getting pumped) and gives you profit, it is considered good?!!!


well, with your definition above "fraudsters" are automatically drawn to ICOs. it is like a welcome sign for them!

basically yeah. it is just a coll-looking idea. it doesn't have to actually be a useful idea either. it just have to attract attention and you get money for it.
in fact ICO is the new and much easier form of premine where the developer simply premines the crap out of his coin before release so he has a lot of money at hand out of thin air.

the only reason why litecoin is rising right now is because bitcoin is rising and LTC has always been following bitcoin. for now i think with the constant and slow rise of bitcoin there is a good chance that litecoin also follows that trend and continues going up and reaches $300 at least.

for any higher price it may need some more good news like Atomic Swaps and its own Lightning Network growing.

any altcoin that has another project's name in it, specially bitcoin's name will only last a little while and get pumped a couple of times before they die. they have nothing to offer to sustain them in long term. they are pure hype and hype doesn't last long.
and the more they create these types of coins the less their prices are going to be.

i have no idea how you made that conclusion from what i said!
but think of it this way, do you agree with increase of supply? how many do you think would like that to happen? obviously majority of people including miners and big players or whatever, prefer this limited supply and they like the scarcity of bitcoin. specially those that are heavily invested in it such as miners. so they would never change it to anything higher.

real coins are always 1000 times better to invest in rather than any ICO even if some ICO could get lucky and give you a lot more profit, that still doesn't make it a better option. that only makes you lucky.

not to mention that when you invest in ICOs after a while your total result will be a big loss instead of a big win. but in investing in altcoins your total can be a big win instead.

can it be changed? yes
will it be changed? most probably not.

not quite right.
supply of cryptocurrency is like saying supply of number of stocks in the whole stock market!
and individually speaking it depends on the coin. some coins like ETH and Doge have limitless supply (no cap) but some coins like bitcoin and most others have a cap so it is not limitless.

not exactly.
miners are only 1 part of the network. take a look at UASF (BIP148 and 149) if you want to see what i mean.

you need majority of the whole network not just miners.

no it can not be exploited.

i don't know what supporting a dead coin means! but  i have bought dead coins or better said i have traded dead coins and what i learned is that even dead coins can be pumped and if you buy them at the correct time, you can make a nice profit from their pumps.

this is probably the most asked question on bitcointalk by newbies!
and i think it is because they advertise ETH a lot that these newbies fall for it over and over.

the fact is you can not really compare bitcoin and ethereum. bitcoin has a lot of real world usage while ETH only has smart contracts going on for it and being the biggest advertised altcoin gives it a lot of publicity.
but the bad news for ETH bag holders is that with second layers such as RSK on bitcoin the only advantage that ETH has (the smart contracts and ICOs) will die because bitcoin also has that!

whenever some altcoin is too small but at the same time has some small features that gives it potential, it can go up a lot. for example you can not expect ETH which is already in a bubble an it is too big to go from 0.1BTC to 10BTC which is a 10x rise.

but you can absolutely expect a small altcoin with potential to go up 10x which means going from 0.0001BTC to 0.001BTC and it won't even end there it can go up 100x to 0.01BTC.
look at LTC for example it went from $4 to $300+

litecoin has always move with bitcoin. last year bitcoin went from $900 to $20000 so litecoin went up from $4 to $200 (i forgot what the ATH of it was).
this year with bitcoin continuing its rally and going up more and more, it is not unrealistic for litecoin to reach $1000+ following bitcoin's rise.

i am also sure that when LN became more popular and atomic swaps started happening, there will be a boom in LTC price.

good effort but there are already websites that keep track of ALL the airdrops and are updated more regularly than you can keep updating a topic that can be buried under a lot of topics in a couple of hours.

here is an example website: http://airdropalert.com/

be very careful about this current litecoin price rise. it started with a nice hype after the Litepay announcement and also accompanied by the bitcoin price recovery and we all know that litecoin always follows bitcoin. but the ending part of it was because of the upcoming litecoin cash fork which is basically free money for LTC holders. and that may end with a big dump right as the fork is happening.