And today is April 1st.

Darknet is largely a hype. A heaven for scammers. Less real work and more frauds. Difficult to use for layman users. Hated by government due to difficulty in tracking and used for illegal activities and scaming.
Cryptocurrency are ditto.

This year's April 1st joke was easier to recognize. 

For easiness of forking and maintaining a coin, Scrypt would be the best one. It's one of the most forked coin with a large number of documentation on the process and troubleshooting any problems. If you want to run a mineable blockchain, Scrypt is easier choice.

Ethereum, as 90% of every new tokens and 95% of ICOs are being hosted in its blockchain. It's the most transacted coin and the largest utility coin.
As of Bitcoin, it's more like gold rather than a currency, limited in supply, high in price and difficult to mine.

Ripple is trying hard to prove itself as a worthy coin but all of their promises and approach to be integrated to banks and their internal and external transfers to date have failed. They once called themselves an alternative to swift or even the western union but are now forced to buy fake accounts to write praise for themselves.

No you don't pay taxes to any government but the exchange do take a fees for helping you to carry out the exchange. That fees would be the operating profit of the exchange and the exchange itself don't pay tax for it. But in some cases, you are likely to pay taxes when you are withdrawing your crypto into fiat.

Identifying whether an ICO is legit or scam is getting more complicated everyday. Yet, if we are investing our money in something, we should be well aware of where is it going.
The best way to know whether an ICO is scam or not is to identify the person behind it, know their personal experience, their economic and social background and whether they are really an specialist about the project are just pretending to be.

ICOs are not as easy money as they were used to be in 2017.
The token economy took a Ponzi ride at that time where issuer and early investor got profit on any coins leading to a pyramid scheme affecting the late buyers.
At current time the market has matured so the investors are selective in choosing the right investment option. If you are able to identify the project you need, you'll still be in profit buying an ICO.

Considering altcoin as every coin and King is the most significant one, Ethereum would be the best candidate.
Ethereum not only is highest for marketcap among alts, it also is a pioneer of another generation of coins and a successful side chain platform and smart contracts. They are also one of the most decentralised coin and has one of the largest involvement.

Hi,
I've been looking to place some bets on IPL matches using cryptos but IPL is not included in the sportsbook I'm used to.
What would be the best odds providing sportsbook I can bet on IPL? I'm not very fond of in game betting and would love to seem  multiple options to bet on like the number of runs scored or wickets taken.

There are varieties of variables that are responsible for the success of a project.
But the prime one is the project itself. Every investors wants to see the project they got involved be a success.
The next thing is to deliver the success as a profit to the investors.
And the team works as a mediator to balance between capital and profit.

At current time even the oldest of coins have failed to perform.
In reality, there's no need of categorizing coins and news and old for their worthness. The worthy coins were in the past are in the present and would come in the future as well the worthless coins.

Like every speculative market, the real success lies in earning with the price movement rather than holding for a long time. Though if you are holding blue chips than you'd likely be earning a low stable profit but the real trading occurs with the potential coins.

If you are thinking for the future, then it would be beneficial for you to get a potential coin in cheap price.
But the overall price prospective over a span of time would also provide the worthiness of a coin.
For an investors, price is actually everything to be concerned about.

It is a general tendency for price of every coin to increase in a rapid rise. It's also due to the huge order sheet on place as the price of the paired currency increases. But the next bull run unlike the previous one would be less exponential and more calculated growth.

Cryptopia was always a place for lesser know and used coins. Most of them stopped working just because the dev abandoned the project or no miners to relay the transactions. Even now they are just a dump place for useless tokens and a easy pay to get listed exchange.
Don't have a data about their security issues but the ownership had changed a few times.

Classifying ICOs based on their soft cap and hard cap and Generalizing them as one being better than other is not a bright idea.
The projects and their caps depends on various estimations and goals. The success and failure depends on the projects ethics and dedication.

After the burst of bubble in late 2017 and correction period of early 2018, people started realizing the cryptocurrency trend is moving in the wrong direction and needed newness and innovative ideas to make people feel secure about cryptocurrency, its use and future.
The market is improving ever since but as you said in a very slow pace.

And now we are entering in the age of regulated ICOs.
There are already a number of ICOs being regulated by respective branches of local government in several countries.
Regulated exchanges and regulated ICOs are going to make crypto economics useful for the overall population.