Usually it is, beacause there is nothing interesting ahead. Just months, if not years of hard work from the dev team. So hodlers hodl and price doesn't do much before the team delivers some progress and news.

Both. EOS for users and companies that don't mind centralization.
Ethereum for everyone else. I don't see much space for other big players. There will be a lot of minor successful platforms over the next few years, but then the sector will go in consolidation.

In short - volatility, insfrastructure and user experience.
These long addresses should be replaced with something user friendly. I can't believe I haven't made a mistake for half an year when transacting.
Volatility - merchants can't price goods in something that changes 10% in a day. Most businesses have 10-20% margins of profit.
For alts with smaller volumes volatility is ever bigger.

I completely agree about Essentia and Shivom. Essentia is a great infrastructure project and everything seems to be made very professional by the team.
Shivom already got 25M$. I have no doubt the ICO will be a huge success, but in terms of adoption and usability, we will probably have to wait a bit before it takes off.
XYO is also very promising.

Not the product, nor the vision. But whether they create something that is needed and solves a problem. Currently, this is limited only to blockchain infrastructure projects, because nothing else is really needed now. The people that have crypto and wallets are just a drop in the ocean. It is too early for consumer applications.

The situation seems the same as it was with the DNS EtherDelta hack a few months ago.
A small number of users and regions are concerned. And there probably isn't any risk in using it, but just in case, it is better to wait until official announcement.

ZCash sounds the best to me, and it also got some acknowledgements from Edward Snowden. This guy doesn't speak up unprepared.
I am curious to see whether BTC and ETH will catch up with the privacy features, though. I know there are proposals and it is already being worked on implementations.

Altcoins always perform better than the top 5 when fresh money are coming into the market.
Most money are kept in top 5. When they surge, people are profit taking and going either in fiat or alts. The hardcore crypto hodlers will never go in fiat, so they go into the alts.

First of all, a difficulty adjustment in the Bitcoin network is coming. The bitcoin whales need the price to go up, so miners stay and mine instead of leaving for Bitcoin Cash for example. So they pump the price.
Second, The Consensus conference is coming in May. The masses think that we will see a second moon, just like it started from there last year.
And probably many more reasons.

Masternodes are fine if you have the money for it. Eventually, I suspect they will become cheaper and cheaper as the networks and number of participants grow over a certain threshold.
But for now, rich are getting richer, which is no innovation.

I think it is pretty much independent for a long time. I joined in September and I am entering/existing through Ether every time. Never touched Bitcoin, except the one I am holding.

You can easily add the coins you want in a portfolio at CryptoCompare. It then shows you info just for these coins on one page with price, daily movements and portfolio value since the date you added the coins. It is very convenient for me.
The only limitation is that the coins should be listed on CryptoCompare.

The permissioned blockchains of course. That's what governments and banks know as a system. But they will probable create their own. I don't think any of the existing coins will benefit much.

I don't agree with the OP that ICOs require less monitoring.
The information in the charts (day trading) is in front of everyones eyes.
ICO research requires much more deeper research and various skill sets.
While in day trading, you just load a few indicators and you are ready to go.

I don't think that the line of thinking a coin should be implemented by third parties and existing businesses is the correct one.
A coin will be valuable if the project behind it needs it. If the project develops and enters the culture of the real world, then the coin goes along with it.

It just doesn't make sense something that is a derivative from other thing to be the big deal.
Imagine if a company is called Facebook X or Google Something. Branding just doesn't work this way. People will always stick with the original.

I am not positive about the long term potential of Bitcoin Cash. If they succeed in keeping the Bitcoin brand long enough, it may work. But if they are viewed just as a fork, they are pretty much foredoomed.

It's easy. If someone reaches out for you first - I won't even bother replying.
We are all so busy. Especially on Telegram. Who would waste their time in contacting strangers? Only the scammers. Because we are their customers.
ICO team will never sell tokens in PMs.

It's neither good or bad. It is the normal flow of things. Bitcoin is one. And altcoins are getting more and more with every single day. Most of them are junk, but a lot have value. As more and more of them pop up, the money in the ecosystem will spread.

Everyone can create an ICO in a day. This is not the challenge. The real challenge is to provide a product or a service that has value.
If you create value, people will support you with their investment money.
Try your friends and neighbours first. If they are not willing to invest in you, chances are strangers on the internet won't too.