Don't think bitcoin will ever become a stable currency, mostly due to the fact that bitcoin is actually a decentralized currency which means it isn't controlled by anything, which means the government can't stabilize it. It relies on the people.

Bitcoin is surely used on the dark net, and for a lot of bad stuff, but if the dark net does close down, which I don't think it will, Bitcoin will definitely take a big hit, but Bitcoin does not rely on the dark net for the price to go up, so I would expect Bitcoin to recover fairly soon.

And yes the exchange rate would go down, but stablise further on.

Well, the only signature campaign you will be able to join as a newbie would be join would be the whyfuture campaign, but if you have a bunch of followers on twitter and facebook you can apply for social media campaigns. You get like 14 activity a fortnight so just build up your account to full member and you can join some decent campaigns, and if your really desperate just buy an account.

If you have any skills to offer then offer those skills for money and you would probably earn more than a signature campaign for newbies.

Yep I agree, before when the price dropped to 1800 a lot of people panicked and FUD seemed to have dominated the entire forum, now we have recovered and the price is back to 2.8K. The people who panic sold their coins are not regretting it and the people who bought bitcoin for so low and ignored the FUD are rejoicing. Seems like bitcoin won't drop in price until after August first.

Don't listen to FUD people, that was one of the reasons why the drop in price snowballed so hard.

Well segwit is definitely required since it should fix a couple of things like lower transaction fees and faster confirmation times. It should pretty much 'update' the blockchain and also solve the scaling problem which is a big problem nowadays.
 I think the info graphic by Meuh6879 explains it better that me and it covers pretty much everything.
The one thing you need to keep in mind is that segwit will not make bitcoin centralized or cause other problems and it won't kill bitcoin.

Well, currently I have all of my funds distributed in 4 different wallets.
- This wallet has around 30 percent of my funds and it is my emergency fund which I will clean out whenever I have an emergency.
- This wallet is my cold storage with 40 percent of my funds.
-This has around 20 percent and I store all of it in electrum and I use this to do online shopping.
-My mobile wallet which I use whenever making purchases with my mobile.
I need to transfer then all to my cold storage for maximum safety.

Actually, when Bitcoin is going down, is when you want to buy bitcoin, especially if you are doing buy low sell high. When Bitcoin dropped to around 2000 USD, a lot of investors started rebuying bitcoin since they released it was so low, and then after so many people rebuying Bitcoin, the prices quickly grew and restabilised itself at 2300 USD. Now Bitcoin is still growing and the price of it is at 2400 USD now.

Unlucky, but you missed your chance to get some cheap bitcoin, now I don't think there will be a price drop that takes Bitcoin below 2000 USD anytime soon.

Well, I am pretty sure that there isn't but after checking an overview of signature campaigns (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=615953.0) I found one. Whyfuture offers a signature campaign for newbies and it is around 10 cents a post with a maximum of 40 posts. Currently there are 6 spots open for newbies to join their campaign.

On a side note, I would recommend you leveling up your account before joining a signature campaign, since 10 cents a post is barely anything. You can receive a max of 14 activity per week and one post equals 1 activity. Then for 30 activities which should be 3 weeks on the forum, you will be Junior member and you can coin 777 coin which offers around 15 cents per post with 80 posts a week.

Would recommend you also make good quality posts that have good grammar and only then when you get to full member (120 activity) you will be able to join better campaigns and when you get to senior member (240 activity) there will be campaigns that offer pretty good rates.

Well, in preparation for the hard fork that will most likely be happening on August the first, I have done some distribution of funds into 3 different wallets. I have listed them below.

1. This is my offline storage or cold storage and I use a Ledgerwallet Nano S to store the majority of my bitcoin. I store approximately 60 percent of all my funds there and I would recommend doing the same. It is super safe and I have had no issues for my entire lifetime of using it.

2. For approximately 20-30 percent of my funds, I use Electrum since it is paper weight and you can also set custom fees. I use this account for shopping and buying stuff at a discount, say steam gift cards for 70 percent of it's value.

3. For my 3rd wallet, I use Electrum for mobile and there is around 10 percent of funds loacted there. I use this for when I am on the go, and making a couple of trades.

 

It is possible ETH will have a higher market cap than Bitcoin, but that does not mean that the more people will use ETH than Bitcoin.

That may be true since China and India has the cheapest electricity prices, and the means most of the miners will probably be located in that countries.

At the state that Bitcoin is right now, Segwit is pretty much confirmed and there is a high chance of Segwit pumping Bitcoin to the moon, especially with the majority of our community supporting it.

Some miners in different parts of the world would be able to make a profit. For example in China and India, electricity is practically free, and most miners would be able to turn a profit. On other parts of the world, not much can be said.

Currently, there are 2 types of rewards that miners receive, block rewards and mining fees. The block rewards will slowly become less, due to the ever decreasing amount of available blocks to be mined. So the only alternative that can be done, are to increase the mining fees, and that will most likely be really bad for the everyday users of bitcoin.

Well, I guess we will have to cross that bridge when we get to it.

You have kinda answered your question by yourself there.

Supply goes up, price goes down. Supply goes down, price goes up. Demand goes up, price goes up. Demand goes down, price goes down. But one thing that has not been mentions was how media attention effectx bitcoin. The more people who know about bitcoin, the more people search for bitcoin on the web and therefore the higher the pice of bitcoin becomes. Also FUD can lower the price of bitcoin.
 

With the current state of Bitcoin, it seems to be around the 2.3K mark. Bitcoin will be heavily affected by the hard fork that will be coming on August the first. The hard fork can do one of a couple of things:

1. Quickly spike the price of Bitcoin up.
2. Drop Bitcoin below 2K again and from then on it will take a long time for Bitcoin to go back to where it is, or maybe it won't recover and Bitcoin will just die.
3. The hard fork doesn't go through and the price pretty much stays the same

I expect the price of bitcoin to end up around the 3K mark at the end of this year.

Did some digging and found that verification is actually optional. The rule itself of inactivity will block your account is just bs in itself. What if I had 3 btc in my account from 2013 and I wanted to sell them now. Pretty sure they have no right to do this and this might be worth reporting. In the next try store your coins in a more secure place.

I don't think this will work due to a couple of reasons:

1. It would be a whole new thing added to bitcoin, the price of the coin would affect bitcoin, and also what about the new security threats it could pose. How do we make that physical coin as safe as bitcoin itself, just doesnt seem possible. I think this would be pretty good if done on an ico, not a branch off bitcoin. This idea seems to be pretty good

2. The risk of losing it.

3. What do you need to have to use this coin?

No I wouldn't recommend this since bitcoin is more of a part time job (unless your developing an ico) and even though I think some people can make a living off this forum (signature managers, big escrows). Just work and do bitcoin stuff in the meantime, right now bitcoin is not able to support someone since the prices always change and there aren't many job opportunities that pay in bitcoin.

Bitcoin is an easy way to make money and anyone can use it as a way to make money. On this forum alone you can join signature campaigns, become a freelance writer, a coder or a graphic designer. Bitcoin is a good opportunity for a simple part time job and some people can even turn it into a full time job. I think bitcoin really does help unemployment, especially if that person is skilled in some areas.

Have you heard of supply and demand? If the demand for and item goes up, while the supply remains the same, the value of the items will rise. For example ledgerwallets are no longer available until September due to populate demand. After bitcoin runs out, the price of it will skyrocket and one  satoshi will probably be worth a bunch. The smallest units of bitcoin will probably be worth quite a bit. Can't wait for that to happen.

Since you do have access to all your private keys, you should be safe, just try not to make any transactions until August the first, since it might be unsafe until that date. No need to worry, you did well saving your private keys, although I would totally recommend swapping wallets to Electrum or a form of cold storage. They really are safer and more convenient and you already have your private keys so it should be quite easy to import wallets for you.

Seems like everyone is talking about the gambling aspect of chipmixer and I'll add my own input.

There are 2 aspects that adding gambling your chips can bring.

1. Further anonymity, say you deposited 0.05 onto chipmixer and then bet 0.01 of that and came out on top, you would be leaving with 0.06 and that would be harder to track than just putting 0.05 in and taking the same amount out.

2. It is fun and adds an aspect of gaining coins with mixing. Just don't bet all your coins.

You waited 8 years to come on this forum, to say crypto is going to die? Haven't you seen the amount of alt coins being made and introduced. Haven't you seen the price of bitcoin? Unless segwit kills bitcoin, there is no possible way bitcoin die. Trying reading and learning about bitcoin and then come back with an argument.