I think of course Ripple will be growing, but as already said it is not really decentralized and I prefer more Stellar than Ripple, but I think I will hold both after BTC correction. Ripple & Stellar & NEM are competitors, but that doesn't mean that some of them will not grow.. they will grow all - the question is which one will grow more and faster?)

Ripple has the most promising future as has been proved in many field, the product will be spread more widely in the future.

The deposit should be there, you just won't be able to withdraw it (most exchanges work like that). Try to contact the support though, It's possible that they give your bitcoins back since you didn't do any trades etc.

Who are they? if they say next year is not the right time to invest you will believe it? Investment in cryptocurrency is very risky especially if you don't understand about the world of cryptocurrency it isn't recommended. A little advice from me is if you want to invest in the world of crypto at least you have to understand the first place that you will invest. I think that is the best way to start investing, this forum is enough as a reference.

My second suggestion is that if you already understand at least the world of crypto, i have a good coin suggestion to make an investment. The coin name is Ripple, please you research about ripple i think you will like it. Apart from a few days yesterday bitcoin prices and altcoin prices decreased. But what happens to the ripple is experiencing a price increase is the reason why ripple is worth to try to invest.

I don't know how much truth there is about the pump of Alts, but definitely all coins that sir John McAfee publishes in his twitter will be pumped)

I've got 12 Bitcoins as well but I just leave them in my Bitcoin Core Wallet and invest or trade with other coins. Just wondering how you managed to turn 0.1 BTC in to 12? Is it all through buying and Selling BTC or did you do it some other way 

I have 12 Bitcoins. I am not a whale. I started about 6 months ago with 0.01 Bitcoins and $1000. I turned it into 12 Bitcoins so far and am pretty proud to say the least.

My question is, what do I do now?

As far as I can see, I have 4 options;

1) Hold the Bitcoin

2) Invest in altcoins and leave a little in Bitcoin

3) Fund a project and start my own cryptocurrency that solves a problem that current currencies face (scalability, Tx fees etc.). With the funds, I would be able to assemble a team, start a marketing campaign, get listed on exchanges etc. I am also a programmer which helps.

4) Convert it to fiat (probably the dumbest idea)

Edit: I should also add, I dropped out of school and have all the time in the world so can fully commit to any idea. I will earn my living of cryptocurrencies.

A few people have asked how I made my money so, if you are interested, here is a short summary:

Initially, I put it all into Bitcoin during the massive FUD of the fork around June when Bitcoin dipped to $1,900. Then I put half my money into NEO before all of the hype at around $12 and cashed out at $40. Then I invested in a couple ICO's and turned a pretty good profit of off the hype. After that, I got back in on NEO as soon as China announced the regulations regarding ICO's and rode the wave back from around $20 to $40 (I can't quite remember). Then, I rode the hype of Ethereum Dark, eBitcoin and a few other airdrop scams. Finally, I got in on Wincoin before it got to coinmarketcap and turned a 20x profit.

Would running each wallet/miner in a different virtual machine with virtualbox prevent the effects of this kind of malware?