We are sorry for your loss. Why didn't you start with buying a hardware wallet? In my opinion, even 0.5 BTC is worth buying one! Next time use software which is open-source so you can check if there aren't any backdoors. Trezor is one of the most popular hardware wallets and its software is available for everyone to review. Did you try to contact the owner of this website? Are you sure that your paper wallet wasn't exposed to anyone else?

Most importantly, do not panic. A lot of people tend to sell what they have bought only because Bitcoin value decreased a bit after they had invested. Bitcoin will recover soon. Something similar has already happened a few times in the past. Lightning Network is slowly being pushed to the mainnet so it is a matter of time before the price skyrockets again.

It is really difficult to recommend you something. You should make decision on your own because in case of money loss, you won't blame us. In my opinion, Bcash won't grow much after more Lightning Nodes become available on the Bitcoin network. Ethereum is quite good, its price has grown recently. Ripple also might get pumped in the near future. Everything depends on how much you would like to invest. It is good idea to split your investment between a few altcoins.

Unfortunately, you won't be able to spend your money if you don't have any channel open. Lightning Network was designed to handle small transactions. The only thing you have to do is to find a LN node which has a lot of opened channels and has connection to other popular nodes. Your transaction will be routed through other channels for a small fee which is usually a couple of satoshis.

We definitely should not be afraid of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a huge chance for us to finally get rid of banks which keep life savings of money people "securely". Cryptocurrencies with limited supply are great for getting rid of inflation. Not enough coins? Instead of adding new ones we could add more decimals by introducing a hard fork. It sounds safe and easy, doesn't it? Right now, only banks, governments are afraid of Bitcoin because it can be a threat to current system.

There are plenty of ways to earn Bitcoin these days. People often try they luck in mining because many GPUs in modern computers are capable of earning quite a lot of money if you take their cost in the consideration. Due to rapidly growing Bitcoin price it is really difficult to get one Bitcoin. Fortunately, Bitcoin is dividable up to 8 decimals so you can still earn on doing some translation jobs, participating in a signature campaign or even trading small amounts of money.

In my opinion, there is no point right now in investing in only one mining rig. It looks like investing directly in cryptocurrencies is the most profitable option right now. I wouldn't recommend you trading because it is quite easy to lose your money in a couple of days. If I were you I would invest in Bitcoin and Ethereum. Other people prefer to buy new altcoins which have high chances to become more expensive in the future. However, it is not easy to find a project which may succeed.

Many people actually think that Bitcoin is completely anonymous which is obviously false. Bitcoin is pseudo anonymous, everyone can view transaction details. Staying anonymous is really important because someone could use information about your wealth against you. I'm not surprised that quite a lot people decided to switch to Monero or Zcash. They both support fully-anonymous transactions. We should focus on making transaction fees lower. Then we can work on this issue.

Technically, it is possible to control Bitcoin by having at least 51% of the hashrate but I still think that Bitcoin is more secure than current banking system. Bitcoin has no leader (satoshi disappeared) and isn't centralized. Unfortunately, Bitcoin is not perfect and has some serious problems such as pseudoanonymity and huge transaction fees. I'm not sure when we will see Confidential Transactions but Lightning Network is almost here and it should solve the second biggest problem of Bitcoin.

I'm not going to sell my bitcoins any time soon. It is because I believe that Bitcoin due to its revolutionary idea will become a new, digital gold which will be much more expensive in the future. Even if I won't use them in my life, I will keep them in order to pay for my children's education which will be expensive. It's been quite a long time since Bitcoin was created and it is not perfect. We should not abandon it, we should help it to become faster and cheaper in use.

Certain media are controlled by the government or other private investors, that is why I no longer use television. I have heard a lot of misinformation in my national TV about Bitcoin. People who are interested in cryptocurrencies are mocking these news programs because they are spreading false information and seem to know nothing about them at all. Why don't they do any research before they attempt to make a serious announcement about cryptocurrencies? Are banks connected with this?

It will take a lot of time before Bitcoin will be taught in IT classes. Most of the teachers will continue to teach working with Microsoft Excel and Word for the next few years. It would be great to see Bitcoin in the classroom. We should make our children aware of problems with banks which could be easily solved by introducing cryptocurrencies. However, governments won't give up so that's why we might not see Bitcoin in the classroom for a long time.

Bitcoin won't eliminate unemployment completely but it has already helped to create new jobs. Many people are working full-time on running exchanges, minings farms, trading, designing new ASICs and hardware wallets. Some people even focus on trading cryptocurrencies. A lot of people have gained opportunity to earn a lot of money not only by buying but also by helping the community. Many people still don't know about Bitcoin or don't want to use it so it won't help them in any way.

I wouldn't be surprised if China was doing all this mess again in order to make people sell their BTC for a lower price. It would allow China to buy BTC really cheap and then they could announce that they are not going to forbid exchanging and using Bitcoin which would probably affect the price in the positive way. Why are you falling for it once again? Don't you think that most of the governments around the world started to take Bitcoin seriously as a potential threat?

I'm surprised that many people actually believe in this. Many people think that Bitcoin is just a number in a computer which can be changed by anyone. What about governments who print more money every time they don't have enough of it to cover expenses? Why people are not against of online banking which in my opinion is less secure than Bitcoin because banks are responsible for the security of your money. If Bitcoin is money created out of air then fiats are too.

It would be great if we could have more years like the last one. However, huge amount of new users allowed us to realize that Bitcoin isn't ready to be used for daily, small transactions. That's why we should focus more on making Bitcoin faster this year. Many people are working on this issue, some claim that they have fixed it by simply increasing the blocksize - well... goodluck with that. I'm personally waiting for a wider Lightning Network adaptation which is really close.

Aren't we in the middle of correction right now? In my opinion, it is good that the price become stable lately. A lot of people have been saying that Bitcoin will fall due to the price surge. I doubt that the price will drop below $10k. Lightning Network is already here, we just have to wait for wallet updates and more merchants to accept it. As far as I know, TorGuard started accepting Lightning payments. I can't wait for the update which will allow me to test it out on the mainnet.

As far as I know, this data could be somehow manipulated if someone had more than 50% of the hashrate. However, it is very unlike to happen. If you are worried about your huge investment then hardware wallet is the best choice right now. As other people said, human error is the most common here. Hardware wallets help you not to expose your private key.

What do you exactly mean? You can treat Bitcoin as a currency or a long-term investment. I understand that you might be scared of losing your money in case Bitcoin value drops dramatically but every kind of investment has a risk factor. You can't earn a lot of money without taking a risk. Many people who invest in Bitcoin blame it when we are in the middle of the correction. Why they can't simply wait?  Don't invest if you don't know anything about BTC and if you don't want to lose anything.

It is not easy to convince someone that Bitcoin is better than fiat. Many people think that Bitcoin is a worthless number stored on the computer! That's hilarious because fiat isn't worth anything, government can print more money any time they want. I would start with explaining how Bitcoin works: ability to store your money on your own - no need to use bank, ease of use, decentralization and so on. Don't focus on potential profit, people care too much about growing/declining value of Bitcoin.