very interesting information you have gathered here but i believe the source of it (Linkedin) is not the best way of getting statistics. it is based on what people claim to have done. and unless you have actually gone through their resumes and verified if they have done anything meaningful in the field their claims are not reliable.

i was also half expected to see  countries like India there since their people are always among programmers anyways.

there are two different things here to talk about.
bitcoin and the predictions, altcoin and the predictions. i completely expected the altcoin drops to continue this long and i actually expect it to go on for a longer time even after bitcoin price rise eventually begins. it is always like this. when they pump and then dump the altcoins, that dump makes many newbies to either go away entirely or they stop investing in altcoins. in both cases the next pump will take a longer time to start.

bitcoin is a separate thing. i did not expect the bear market to last this long but i am still glad that the "drop" part of the bear market was very short (a couple of months) and it has been over for a long time now. the stability that we had for over 2 months shows the end of that bear market and that is a good sign.

things aren't that easy though
it will all come down to  the balance of opposing forces. it is not just one whale pushing a button like some of the centralized altcoins are. right now there is a general incentive that is to accumulate at this level and a fear in others who prefer waiting.
as soon as this market incentive changes, the balance of forces will also change and no matter what, if a whale goes against that trend he will be crushed.

you don't deposit bitcoin in your bank account! you can not do that. what you deposit is fiat. and that is the problem. you probably made an unusual deposit (possibly size of it) or it is possible that the money came from a bitcoin exchange and now your account is flagged.
your best solution is to consult a professional that is also familiar with the laws in your country like a lawyer. we can not help you much here.

there is nothing strange about it. it is only new to YOU.
otherwise you can see that this kind of stable phase has happened before. for example the most obvious one which was actually one of the longest periods of time when price was stable AFAIK, was back in 2015 when price was around $250. the situation was exactly the same as today and newcomers were surprised about that kind of stability!

bitcoin price does not depend on ICOs or any other shitcoin that is created in the altcoin market. it may take some effects from time to time when the situation is severe over there like a massive dump going on, but generally there is no effects.

to choose altcoins you need to be a day trader, an experienced one.

yeah, newcomers are usually like this. they start and then fall for some altcoin scam and get dumped on and lose their cool. but they will all eventually learn

nothing new has happened for ages apart from FUD in the media.

it is called stability during an accumulation phase!

what you are missing is that not all the history of bitcoin (10 years) have been the big rises. it only happened for a portion of 2017 and it happens from time to time. other times however, the price is stable or rising slowly. and now is that time. it in fact is still glorious to see it stable and be accumulated to get ready for the upcoming rise.

yes, unfortunately if the transaction is confirmed* then there is no way to reverse it.

* a confirmed transaction will show up with a green check mark beside it and in its details it will show "status: {a number larger than 6} confirmations"

you will need to also download the signature file which is found alongside the wallet installation file you downloaded. it is a .asc file. for instance this is the link to this signature for "windows installer" file:
https://download.electrum.org/3.2.3/electrum-3.2.3-setup.exe.asc

then you also need the public key of the signer (Thomas V.) who is the developer of Electrum. the key hash is found on https://electrum.org and it is 0x2BD5824B7F9470E6

now depending on what kind of OS you have you need a program that can verify this signature. for linux it is most probably already installed. only use:
gpg --verify {signature.asc} {file.tar.gz or file.exe}
and it should read "good signature" in the result.

for windows use gpg4win https://www.gpg4win.org/ and read this article: https://bitzuma.com/posts/how-to-verify-an-electrum-download-on-windows/

$9720

i think there will be a FOMO buy because of Bakkt, which will probably start before the release and right now all the groundwork is being put in place with the accumulation...

when did the transaction occur? all the transactions that are mined in a block, have a timestamp. if you see the details of them in your wallet or on a block explorer you can see that time.

if this happened in the past when you created the wallet that means your seed was compromised then. possibly because either you downloaded a fake Electrum or you had some malware on your computer that stole it (did you verify the signature back then?)

if the transaction happened the  day you recovered your wallet with Seed then it means this new wallet was possibly fake or you have a malware now. (did you verify the signature of the downloaded wallet now?)

- if it is stolen then no there is nothing you can do about it.

they aren't actually getting into cryptocurrency. they are just using the current existing hype to make some money!
unfortunately these days blockchain technology and cryptocurrency have turned into some buzzwords that people use whenever they want to attract some hype and increase their revenue and with silly things such as ICOs the process has been made easy for them!

there is no limit of how big a number you can use in programming. lookup big numbers in each programming language and you can find a set of functions that deals with them. if you wanted a coin with a much larger supply all you needed to do was to set a different kind of variable for the amount!

besides there are many different methods of representing a number too. you don't have to stick to one fixed sized already-defined variable.
for instance you could have a number as big as n*Uint64 like this:
[1byte telling us the length][8byte UInt64][...n times...]
for instance:
[1][8bytes]
or
[2][8byte][8byte]
or
[3][8byte][8byte][8byte]

i would say it depends on the reason for the volatility of t hat cryptocurrency.
for instance for bitcoin the reason is because it is still a new technology that is growing and the adoption for it is increasing so the price which is determined in a small marketplace (the exchanges) is pretty volatile. this is not a bad thing because this will eventually go away as bitcoin grows bigger.
if any other cryptocurrency were like this then the same would apply.

but most of the times the reason for volatility of most cryptocurrencies is pump and dumps and that is in fact a bad thing because it is never a natural price nor a natural price change.


in other words this is another topic encouraging newbies to become altcoin bag holders and lose money

what i said above is about the cryptocurrency market in general not bitcoin market. otherwise i agree with you that bitcoin price is not particularly manipulated although manipulations exist in bitcoin always attempting to sway the price in their own favor.

as for other altcoins it is depending on the  coin itself. i would disagree with saying ETH is not manipulated, in fact i believe it is one of the most manipulated coins in the market at the moment mainly because it is centralized and the foundation's livelihood depends on ethereum's livelihood and that is (in the current newbie-filled market) determined by having high market cap which is guaranteed by having a huge supply and a rather high price.

the biggest problem here is that you can not answer this question yourself and that is what you should become capable of, before making any kind of investment. otherwise if you are inexperienced in this market then it most probably doesn't matter what you choose to invest in, you will lose money.

and 10x profit is nothing, it is possible to make a lot bigger than that in the altcoin market but as long as you know how to ride the pumps. for instance last year shitcoins such as XRP had more than 70x rise! and smaller shitcoins with unknown names had more than 150x rises.
but the problem as i said is not existence of these pumps, any shitcoin will pump at some point. the problem is YOU and whether YOU are capable of making profit from these pumps and be experienced enough not to become a bag holder and lose 90% of your money just because of greed like hundreds of others who did this year by holding the same  coins that got pumped that much but eventually also got dumped.

this is like the safest speculation that you can make about bitcoin that will have the highest chance of coming true!

in any case, what i think is that the rising trend will start pretty soon and we will see the bull run follow it up as soon as the fear went out of the market. this can simply be early 2019 bull run and mid 2019 we can see the previous ATH close.

the biggest force behind the 2013 bubble was Mt Gox and their fake pump of the bitcoin price with the power that they had at the time thanks to them controlling near 80% of the total market volume.

this again is one of those false comparisons that people make between bitcoin and something else. you really can't compare bitcoin and blockchain technology in general with much else because it is one of a kind.

in this case the security is different. when using banks there is certain security since bank, as a financial institute, is responsible for handling your money and in case of any security issues they are obligated by the law to compensate you. but at the same time there are other security risks such as numerous cases of credit card frauds,... using bitcoin you gain a different kind of security but then again it is decentralized and has irreversible transactions. if your money (bitcoin) is stolen, it is most probably gone for good and there is nobody to go to and cry for help!

^ this
but i believe that this is not a phase that goes away. it is more like a cyclical phase. and it happens every now and then with every rally and it is most palpable during the ATH bubbles because by that time there is the most number of people in bitcoin that are in it because of the profit they dreamed of.