Controlling is bit harsh or ambitious way to put the bitcoin use. It is better to assume that in future world economy will be centered around bitcoin and its backend technology like blockchain. As far as dominance is concerned then bitcoin is bit easy to control or manipulate if a company has deep deep pockets to accumulate the huge chunk of bitcoin. Any example, recently biggest drop in the bitcoin market was direct result of JPMorgan chief warning, threatening people against bitcoin. From the 5k dollars bitcoin dropped to 32k dollars.
Bitcoin in its current format has strongest and evolutionary way of transfer of money or value from one to other. Sooner or later bitcoin or at least the vision being the bitcoin, crypto currency from the Satoshi will rule the economy.

South Korea has banned ICOs. If you google the south korea banned ICO you will get the results confirming OPs statement. [1] The reasons are same as many would have thought in the crypto world. Potential financial scams. Yes, the financial scam is potent and plausible reason for banning the ICO for banning ICO. Note that it is not that they have blocked the crypto currencies but the ICO. There are various examples are such fraudulent practices from the companies people employed to garner money and cheat the people.
Personally these kind of moves make clear statement about being responsible in your business.


[1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/28/south-korea-has-banned-icos/

From different perspective, few years earlier only Arab countries were major supplier, exporter of the oil. However things changed rapidly when other countries also found the oil reserves in their countries (some countries found under seabed).  However as per some theories majority of oil price drop was result of global politics to crush the economies of some countries. Some say that Countries like Venezuela, Iran (these two heavily depends on their oil trade) and Russia who depend on the oil trade were targeted with oil price drops from saudi. Today you could see that venezuela is almost bankrupt and Iran, Russia also facing problem with lowered prices.
Till now USA was one of major importer of oil however USA also has discovered vast reserve of oil in their own country. So there are less chances of price surging 100 dollars per barrel in near future, given that many alternatives are available to oil based products.

Given the situation of hard forks in near future, difference in various developer caps are showing up. Many are believing that the bitcoin cash might be the nearest to bitcoin after hardfork. By nearest to bitcoin mean what satoshi intended, described in his whitepaper. It is true that bitcoin has been pumped and dumped so that many were left high and dry. However if you see the progress so far, bitcoin cash has not faded away as failed project or fake one. bitcoin cash is still in top 5 crypto currency from market capital perspective.
Right now there is too much confusion considering what would happen after the hard fork. People need to be very careful during this period of bitcoin forking and time after that.

Bitcoin is a digital crypto currency. It is not a wealth distribution scheme. People who have the cash and awareness about cutting edge tech in economics are in this crypto world. Even in bitcoin world early adopters are very few and the amount of bitcoin they hold is crazy. It is like traditional economy wealth distibution where top 5 to 10 percent are holding 90 percent of the wealth.
Bitcoin is not different from that. Bitcoin is freedom from the regulation and control of banks, govt on your own money, wealth.
In a way bitcoin is providing fair opportunity to all who are in bitcoin to be controller of their wealth.

Current price of Antminer S9 is around 3000 USD, next the Antminer R4 which comes around 1000 USD, rest are based on there efficiency n has power varies from 1000 USD to 150 usd. If you have the experience with the mining already then you might have known that the electricity prices for mining are very crucial when it comes to the mining profit. The complexity is considerably higher. Thus With 1000 USD for investment, it is better to buy some coins and HODL for long time.
About the cloud mining, every sane person from bitcoin world would be like: ALWAY STAY AWAY FROM CLOUD MINING. sorry for capital letters. many of the cloud mining are simply scams and nothing else. Those who are genuine cloud mining services yield very less profit. Thus buy and HODL.

First point, many governments do not think about crypto currency as beneficial to the economy. Governments at this stage have not sorted out the bitcoin or for that matter the crypto phenomenon fully. There is lot of confusion about the crypto or bitcoin. Bitcoin has been targeted by many paid news media (that is 99.99%) media in the mainstream world. They have constantly portrayed bitcoin as threat to the establishment and economy in general. It is all about whether govt has proper think tanks which evaluate the bitcoin or crypto correctly.

Bitcoin or crypto currencies can make life easier for people who want to transfer their money to their relative from overseas. This is the best case scenario for bitcoin at its best. Because if you go by the traditional way then it takes a lot of time to get the money. There are huge charges on the sending money and overall this transaction doesn't yield much. That the cost of transfering money from one to other country is high. And these financial institutes had monopoly so far on this area. Bitcoin and other crypto are making big splash in this area. Where money can be transferred to the person from different country in record less time (considering you are paying bit high transaction fees) and securely. The high transaction charges for the bitcoin is still less compared to the traditional ways.

earning bitcoin from faucet is not good idea. Stay away from them as they make more money for people who are running it.

At this stage, people have realized that the Price of bitcoin is fluctuates a lot. Thus anyone who is living on income from the bitcoin only (considering amount of bitcoin is less) is living on edge. It is better to have main earning job or business and as side income bitcoin is functioning.  Fluctuation is part and parcel of the bitcoin life. There are many price corrections happens when bitcoin reaches to the new all time high. However after some time a new peak is in sight of bitcoin.
Thus there is no point in going for panic selling mode just because of price drop. In fact these drops are to be treated as low price buying opportunities. Someone said that best time to buy is when there is blood on the street ( price are dirt cheap ).

Fiat currency can crash. And it has crashed already in countries like Zimbabwe, Greece, Venezuela. To be specific the top countries where currency crashed are:
* Argentina
* Germany (after world war)
* Peru
* Chile
* Zimbabwe

Now you could see that there are instances of currency crashes in history. Currently there are some countries who are on blink of same. When finance dept of a country goes berserk, currency/economy crash is evident.
When currency of a country crashes prices of products and services sky-rockets. If you follow the news of greece and venezuela you will get the idea.

Main reason for these kind of observation is that cryptocurrency world is not oragnized or regularized as other markets are. There are few restrictions on how exchange works. Next thing is amount of coins and there price depends on people who use that exchange. If kraken has more user then you will find more coins and if bittrex has more users then coins will be more there.
The flow of coins from one exchange to other happens when there is considerable amount of premium. That is what compel people to move coins from one to other exchange and make profit.

In the online wallets you could store the bitcoin and ethereum. However it is better to store them in a wallet whose private keys are with you. Any wallet who private keys are not with you is not safe for long time. It is better to have different wallet for ether and bitcoin. When you use the native bitcoin wallet then you get better control over options. Same goes for native wallets from ethereum as we.  The extra efforts you are putting here will go long way in future.

First thing, bitcoin is not only digital currency, it is 'digital crypto currency'. There is this difference. When we say online transaction what is that isn't it a digital money. Earlier plastic money (credit card) was there. It is still being used. Now mobile paying technologies are there. So people are using digital payment systems. With complete digital where there is no chance of seeing you money like fiat (actual you could see you bitcoin in paper if you convert in in paper wallet, this is closest to the physical form of crypto). There wont be much problem for people once they get used to the concept. there many tokens available with different purpose in purchase.
Once the transaction time is lowered withing minute or so, majority people will find it easy to operate with.

Every time is good time to buy or invest in the bitcoin. Though the bitcoin is at 55k dollars, who knows it may climb up to 6k dollars or 7k dollars as well. More and more people are joining the bitcoin world. There are big financial houses who are slowly and steadily entering or entered the bitcoin market. Many are joining. They see the potential of profit. The amount of profit which only this coin could return. Unlike stock market, rules and regulation on bitcoin market makes it highly volatile than other. That is why rate of change of market is greater compared to other markets.
Irrespective of time that you should have bought the coins when they were 1200 dollar and not it is too high, as useless. Invest in bitcoin without any doubt.

Metals being used as store of value. Gold, silver, copper were used as currency. Over the period of time the value of these metal surpassed the value they supported in form of coin. That is a silver coin of legal tender value 1 dollar was underpriced. Anyone melting that silver coin could fetch more value from the metal. Internet banking is more profitable for banks as for them it is better manageable. Without even liquidating assets or currency they juggle the amount from one account to other. Basic banking works on very principle that out of 1000 people operates their account only 4 or 5 will ask for cash or withdraw in cash. Most of the time people will put their money in bank and then bank will use that money to lend to other person at higher interest rate.
Time to invest in the metal is long gone. This is the era of crypto currency.

Correct. If a person has some doubts then be gradual in purchasing coins instead of purchasing in lot. There is no point in stopping to buy the coin as people who thought bitcoin may never cross 15000 dollar mark have realised that it took bitcoin few months to jump 5500 dollar. Thus if you have buffer money dont stop keep buying.
In fact at this stage rates are comparatively low that is around 53k dollars. This is good chance to have some more coins. Rates will not stop the 55k dollar as upper target. Soon bicoin will go in to 6k dollar circuit. Be brave, and buy some more coins.

Japan has accepted and recognized the bitcoin as currency. There are other countries on list which have accepted the bitcoin. The small distinction is that many countries have recognized the bitcoin asset and not as currency. Like Israel or India they have marked bitcoin as asset so tax on bitcoin will be levied accordingly.
Recently some countries are banning the ICO, that is good step because most of them are frauds. These steps will save some.

For newbie it is not recommended to go directly into the ICO offering. It is better to get used to the crypto world first. Let is grow on you. Understand how crypto world works. If you have basic understanding of blockchain then try to read more about crypto currencies with different purpose. Like bitcoin is a crypto currency however ripple is not. Some are just tokens. Understand their purpose, what purpose they serve to. Read the whitepapers from the developers.
Check the team behind a coin or token. Check their reputation. With whatever amount of money you have, invest them in bitcoin. Bitcoin is global currency in crypto world. Everybody like to have a trade in bitcoins.

Doesn't a person need to be a smart in order to be a strategist. Or for that matter to create a good strategy person need be smart. Why we call a person smart, because he is the one who know current situation, based on his comprehension anticipates future event. And prepares the action plan accordingly. A person with no strategy or shitty strategy is not considered as smart. Having knowledge is different thing, Being intelligent is different and being smart is different. Thus this question does not make sense at all.

First thing bound to happen is: whoever controlling (printer, mint) this global currency will rule the world.  If in case currency is readily available to everyone and decentralized then With global currency in place a dominance of one nation will end. Overseas job drain will be stopped immediately. There will be end of forex. It would be interesting to see how currency is being managed in these kind of scenario. Depending on that factor everything will shape up.