I am not yet sure how this CME future markets for bitcoin is going to affect the real bitcoin market in the long run. I have heard different theories and some say it is bad for bitcoin in the long run and I kind of agree with it.

but in the short term the hype of it is going to be great. and now that there has been a proper correction and a big dump we can be sure that there will be big rally on the way. there is a lot of profit from the recent altcoin pumps that is waiting to come back to bitcoin when they make sure it is not a bull trap.
this means $10,000 is a possibility in 2 months.

you will never know with Chinese, there are a lot of fake news and lots of exaggerated news. these mining farms in China are one of the main reasons most of the electricity provides (specially the small ones) are alive, the government can not just cut them off and kill a large business like this and put hundreds or possibly thousands out of job. that will have a big impact on their economics. bitcoin mining is not just some dude in his underwear in the basement mining bitcoin, it has actually created lots of jobs and sustains lots of businesses.

as for solar panels, it is possible but it is always so much easier to transfer your farm to some place else out of the jurisdiction!

why does anyone ever perform identity fraud?


in addition to what was said about his company's bitcoin related patents  and other theories I do believe that this was a plan so that he can advertise bitcoin cash which he did a little in the beginning but since from early days of this false claim the community acted wisely and also since this kind of proof is easily debunked, he could never pull it off successfully.

you are correct about the bitcoin cash pump and the bitcoin drop but you are over-exaggerating things.

this recent drop was easily predicted by many speculators, there was absolutely nothing special about it and certainly it was nothing like the mtgox crap in the past. this was a small correction coinciding with the bitcoin cash FUD like hundreds of other FUD before it and the drop was also the same as those small FUD manipulation dumps.
this was nothing new and not at all like mtgox manipulation.

these sites are called "faucets" as others mentioned, and these days these sites force you to disable your ad blocks and they will require you to enable things such as JavaScript and even if they don't do it themselves, the ads they are running on their website  can be malicious. these can run scripts through your browser which can even infect your computer, download a malware on your system and lots more.

not to mention these days with the popular browser mining scripts you may even be giving them more than you bargained for! they can easily abuse your computer hardware to mine cryptocurrencies through your browser when you visit their website. which can damage your hardware too.

the other obvious danger which was also mentioned but not completely is "dust". when you claim these small amounts from faucets, you are filling your wallet/address with small transaction outputs. when you want to spend your bitcoins (what you earned) you will end up wit ha huge transaction size in byte and you will have to pay a lot of money (fee is satoshi / byte) to spend them.

OP is talking about "price" and the market being back on track or not. and it is back on track.
as far as price, it is already back up to nearly $7000 and soon it is going to be officially over. the bitcoin cash FUD is fading a way and the panic vanishes with it. and whales have been accumulating while weak hands slowly come back. current price is the bottom of a normal correction meaning back to normal or "back on track"/

regarding the unconfirmed transactions I have to say, we are also back on track on that front. because it is falling and the blocks are being mined like normal now that miners dropped mining bitcoin cash and have come back to mining bitcoin.
of course it will take time for it to reach zero since bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency that is being used a lot and that means new transactions are being added to the mempool every second.

and counting? fall continue?!!!!

there is this thing called "a chart", or "price history". it is a good idea if you check it out sometime before making statements like this. something like this would help: https://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/bitstamp/btcusd

the "fall" happened 2 days ago and it is already over and in the past ~48 hours the price has been rising.
here let me help you see it better on the charts:
as you can see, $1400 of this drop has already been recovered  and in about $300-$350 (4% more rise) we will be back at the price before the "fall" began.

because bitcoin is a new technology that is different from anything we have known so far.
because it is decentralized and nobody controls it.
because the price is volatile and that makes buying it risky.
because it has a lot of enemies including but not limited to banks that attack it by spreading lots of false information that creates panic.
because most people are too lazy to do some research and see what bitcoin really is and prefer to continue using the old familiar things instead.

I don't know why every other  comment before me said it is NOT over where it seems to be all over now!
price literary crashed down to $5555 and after that it has been rising and has stuck around in $6500 level which is 10% below what it should be!

additionally the bitcoin cash drama has officially ended as the price of BCH started crashing and that is only getting harder day by day. currently at 0.19BTC or $1250.
yeah if BCH could keep its price up at 0.3BTC and keep rising at least to 0.5BTC without this reversal then you could say it is not over but BCH is falling and with its difficulty rising ridiculously high things will get bad over that chain.

almost all of the altcoins are good options for trading, you just have to know "how" and "when" for each of them so that you can make the most out of them.
the "when" is actually the most important part. altcoins are mostly manipulated and get pumped and dumped a lot. that means if you get in before the pump ends you can make a lot of profit and if you get in too late you will become a bag holder losing a lot of money. this is the part which most people miss and that leads them to lose money or buy something and become a bag holder and that practically traps their money in something for a very long time until that thing is pumped again or is dumped hard enough for them to give it up.

well if you did really trade in other markets for that long a time then you should already know a thing or two about trading. it can be a profitable job as well as one with lots of losses. it is risky, and to earn a living from trading alone without any other source of income aka another job is going to be hard and risky. one day you may make a lot of money and another lose as much.

if you think you can manage your finances in a way to not lose in total and reduce the risks then go for it. there are people who are actually doing this for a living. but I personally prefer it as a secondary job to give me additional income.

maybe sad for newcomers and those who failed to study the history of what they have been investing in, but not for the rest! for them these past days were the best days full of potential and full of profit.

you see, this is not the first time a manipulation happens in bitcoin nor in the whole world generally speaking. this actually was one of the small manipulations. price only went down 29% (that is if you consider the ATH and the bottom not the starting price and resistance)! we have had pretty rough ones when price fell 50% and more. I'd say more people are catching on to the manipulation.

these things are usually predictable. specially when they are big.

nothing, they will continue believing in "bitcoin" and continue using all these opportunities to get more bitcoins.

all the things you said are not about bitcoin. bitcoin gets rid of the "man in the middle" when it comes to using it not to acquire it. you are talking about purchasing bitcoin. and doing it with "fiat" and when you use fiat you will have to abide by the fiat laws.
every system has it, a set of rules. these rules like asking for full registration and giving them your documents for verification,... is because you are using fiat! more precisely you are using banks to transfer money to and from exchanges so you'll have to accept all the nonsense that comes with that.

technically there already has been lots of corrections. or maybe you are ignoring all of them and just see the final result which is a big mistake. when you analyze the market you should consider all the movements not just start and end.
a correction is when people cash out their profit and price comes down a little compared to how much it has gone up.
for example recently price went up to $7888 and fell down to $5555! what do you call the drops like this if not corrections. although most of them are coming with FUD and lots of panic sells but they are still corrections.

as I said in the last line, everything will be back to normal soon.
the way difficulty works (even in bitcoin cash with their emergency adjustment and all the difficulty manipulation) is that it adjusts itself based on the hashrate. the plan is to set it to an amount which leads to 2016 blocks be found every 2 weeks. if hashrate goes up, blocks are found faster and difficulty increases to slow them down. and if hashrate goes down blocks are found slower so difficulty goes down to speed them up.

under normal circumstances hashrate doesn't just evaporate suddenly. it may go down a little and it may go up a little so the "speed" doesn't change much.
but when something like bitcoin cash exists and miners can switch easily, hashrate can drop fast. but as soon as difficulty on BCH adjusts and it becomes hard to mine it and also when its price drops, they will come back, at least most of them and things will be back to normal-ish.

we can't call this a correction anymore. I agree with the follow up about this being the same exact process which will lead to the next rally. we have seen it enough times now, it is clearly visible on the charts too if you zoom out to about a year at a time.
but all the previous speculations, at least what I said above was said for a normal situation without an ongoing attack against bitcoin. these attacks always change everything, intensify the drops and panics. but make up for good opportunities for lots of profit, BCH is not the only thing getting pumped these days, you can see how many altcoins are taking advantage and getting pumped.

fill your bags with enough bitcoin while you can ladies and gentlemen...

LOL, what did you expect?
when you change what works, meaning the way bitcoin difficulty should really work, you get yourself something very broken. right now bitcoin cash is mining between 40-50 blocks per hour and that is 8.3 times more than what it should be. all these difficulty manipulation has led to BCH being nearly lots of blocks ahead of bitcoin, aka what it should have been under normal circumstances.

pretty soon bitcoin cash will reach the halving date. a date that is supposed to happen on June 2020!
and the block reward will turn from 12.5 BCH down to 6.25 BCH. and I would love to see how many miners will mine bitcoin cash by then with no fees and low price and block reward half what it should be!

this is just temporary market manipulation like 100 times before.

bitcoin has risen too fast and too big but it was never in a bubble. the correction was down to $7000 and worse case scenario was to $6900 with a very strong resistance around $7000.
but with manipulation and force feeding people that it is a bubble, the fear was always there. with the SegWit2x being suspended, the FUD began which is led by bitcoin cash pumpers who want to redirect all the money to bitcoin cash market.

they have also manipulated the BCH difficulty in a way that it creates incentive for miners to go there and mine it. a miner who finds 1 block per hour is not finding 10 per hour on bitcoin cash so they obviously leave and that harms bitcoin temporarily.

and when all that is with lots of FUD and panic, the price crashes like this. but as you can see there are whales buying the cheap coins and will continue manipulating the market until this BCH attack comes to an end. by then there will be a jump back up above $6500 initially and then an accumulation phase and rise back to $7500+

summary of what happened:
- August 1st BCH was created to attack bitcoin, they implemented EDA or difficulty manipulation
- SegWit2x was suspended
- BCH pumpers used this to FUD bitcoin and pump BCH
- higher price of BCH + lower manipulated difficulty => incentive for miners to switch
- sudden lower hashrate on bitcoin + no difficulty manipulation => temporary harder to find blocks
- lower number of blocks found => bigger mempool => higher fees.

all will be fine soon
- difficulty adjustments will start + the BCH pump will end => incentive to mine BCH is removed

because it is harming bitcoin. you don't see people go around and say how they hate XYZ coin when they get pumped! that is because any other altcoin getting pumped just means that altcoin getting pumped and some traders shift and enjoy the profit.
but when bitcoin cash gets pumped that means hashrate travels from bitcoin to bitcoin cash and when hashrate drops on bitcoin network it leads to slower network so to speak. blocks are found slower and that leads to this huge back log and then the higher fees.

all damages caused by bitcoin cash. you can see be fore the BCH pump bitcoin was fine, no back log, empty mempool and extremely low fees!