well with lending there are ways to reduce the risk and even to reduce it to nearly zero risk. for example you can check the history of who you are giving the loan to as your first step.
the second step which is the most important is to ask for a valid collateral and if you get something worth 10% more than the loaned amount you have nothing to worry about.

7% ? isn't it a bit high? may i ask what is the inflation rate in your country.

anyways, if we are only considering bitcoin as an investment then it has been performing pretty good compared to other investments that are available to us. and it is one of the safest ways to store money.

and another big reason for buying bitcoin, is to use bitcoin as a currency which most people overlook. bitcoin is actually a very good currency when you start using it.

my prediction is that after $1000 there will be a drop and it is even possible to see some FUDsters start working hard again and we may see a drop back to $900 but the good news is that whenever this happens in any market there will be a much bigger rise. which means $1200 right after.

the rich people and those who are good at trading are not hanging around here and certainly won't waste their time teaching others unless they want to have someone who they can dump on.

the solution is to learn "how to trade" not "hot to trade bitcoin". that way you learn a lot more and you can find so many different resources and you may find legit teachers or even courses in real world teaching trading and all there is to know about it.
and the rest is only experience which you have to build on your own.

all of the early adopters are going to be filthy rich and it is all about when you get in. if you got in back in 2009 you could have gained $1200 per coin, if 2014-2015 you could have gained $700 per coin and if 2016 you could have gained ~$300 and so on.

and soon there will be a day when people are going to regret not getting in today either because price is going to be 10K

people are going to always complain and spread their nonsense about anything. most of the time it is because of being buthurt and the rest of the time it is mostly because they want to spread some FUD to enjoy some panic sells

i don't see OP mentioning the site which freemanjackal is asking about, and OP is a throwaway account made only to advertise that link of his and possibly get some people send him an email to scam them out of their money.

and to answer freemanjackal, no i have not heard of it and if it is a "wiki" really and you like its content then use it, and if it is offering more and it looks shady to you then stay away, it is easy!

a bitcoin node is also a computer with a public IP address and DDoS is (simply put) flooding that link to that computer so it can no longer give service to anything else (deny services) so yeah i believe it should be possible.

why do you ask?

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses#Denial_of_Service_.28DoS.29_attacks

if the bold part is what you seek then stay away from all the alternative cryptocurrencies (altcoins) because they are only for speculation and trading.

if you want to use something as store of value then look for Gold, or even Real Estate!
if you insist on investing in something crypto related then don't think about anything other than "bitcoin" and remember that bitcoin price is still risky.

we can never be sure about the next high price in 2017 and certainly we can not talk about $2000 at this point because it is too far away and is in uncharted waters!

but one thing is for sure, and that is the fact that we will see $1000+ next year and it may be a long and slow rise but it will rise steadily throughout next year.

bitcoin didn't crash, it is not technically correct to say that the same way it is never right to say bitcoin is dead or going to die.
what happened was a bubble and like any other market in the whole world when a bubble takes shape, there is always a burst coming after it and none of those bubble bursts in other markets are called "crash" so it shouldn't be called crash here either.

and about being dead or going to die, yeah i have been saying it is bullshit when price was down and am still saying it when price went up nothing has changed bitcoin is still strong.

the price that were being reported from India and 1000 USD was from localbitcoins and that is the reason why it even went that high because they don't have many proper exchanges. as far as i know there is only one and most people are not even trading there, they use localbitcoins and on LB prices are always much higher than market price. so since the demand went up suddenly in India sellers there took advantage and put up a much higher price. and it didn't last much either!

there really isn't a magical answer to your questions that you ask here that can help you 100% of the time and help with 100% certainty. the best you can get is always less than 10%

and to be honest i am mostly looking for some kind of news around the internet that may lead to a pump and other times i am investing in good altcoins that have either potential like litecoin and monero or trade the pump and dump coins like etehreum short term for profit.

but my main investment is always going to be bitcoin.

well i have always been selling and then buying back again and this time is going to be no different.

i always have some coins in my cold storage and from that stash i always sell some portion when the price goes really high and does it fast and then buy it back at a correction and move the initial amount with the earned profit back to the cold storage making it bigger and bigger each time i do this.

the way bitcoin is by design gives it power and all the rest such as regulation, adoption, ... are only contributing to a potential that is not yet found.

and actually this is the only reason why bitcoin could have survived all these years and with all these attacks thrown at it by the banks, .... so many FUD and it is still going on strong.

there are only one or two countries that have strict rules against bitcoin in their law. and there are so many others (mostly developing countries) that do not have any idea that bitcoin exist or know but since it is not really being used there, nobody cares much about it.
and the big countries that matter are already bitcoin friendly and that is what counts these days for bitcoin and its future.

i strongly disagree with this chart what you imply here.
first of all we are not at the end of that line that your chart ends. we have returned to the mean (dashed line) and we have been there for a while now if you look at a bitcoin chart and then the situation right now is nothing like 2013 and we are far off from it. because the mean has gone up, so the top if you want to look at them similarly is also higher somewhere above $2000 and we get there then you are right we are back to 2013 bubble.

that is completely right but also usually when people are complaining about not being able to afford 1 whole bitcoin in fact they are complaining about missing out because of being ignorant. in other words they are complaining to themselves for missing the chance to buy bitcoin when the rest of us were thinking ahead and buying cheap.

yeah i am also well aware of the fact that the illegal usage of bitcoin (or bad if you want to call it) exists and many are using it.
but for porn! there actually is no major porn site that accepts bitcoin until today. there are some random live cams which were advertising in here and most of those topics like this one: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=957629.0
are filled with their spam and other signature spammers.

and about drugs and dark net, these days it is mostly Monero that is being used there not bitcoin because of the anonymity that XMR offers instead of BTC!

in my opinion the majority of usage people get from bitcoin is only as an investment and for trading. then the second place is for payment and third with close rank is gambling. the rest are a very small percentage.

nice catch and posting here. good job,
but it really doesn't matter how many times you say it, again people are going to start falling for all the bullshit in a short while and buy into the whales sell orders and get dumped on.

and when they decide to pump ethereum again they wait for bitcoin rise to stop like every other time so far then they are going to pay someone else like Gavin Andereson like last time to start talking crap about bitcoin and praise ethereum,.... and you know the rest.