that was not a fail in SegWit2x, that was more like an attack by someone with hashrate who threw at the testnet to force the deadline for hardfork happen faster than planned (on testnet) they mined a ridiculous number of blocks and it was reached fast. and the same problem will NOT happen on the mainnet.

also SegWit2x 2 MB hardfork is not for 6 months after the activation and I believe it is not really needed if SegWit is activated. and on top of that we don't need a 2 MB hard fork since the spam attack stopped.

I don't know if I prefer SegWit2x or not, yet. there are multiple things that I have doubts about when it comes to this.
I prefer SegWit but that didn't go anywhere, the support is stuck at a low percentage!

p.s. however if I have to choose between bad and worse, I will choose bad. because the bad currently has between 85%-90% support from hash power and the risk of splitting is zero.

this has nothing to do with your question (title)!
all the banks around the whole world have issued "warnings" to their user about cryptocurrencies. and the warning is pretty clear. they are warning them about investing in a highly volatile thing. if you take a look at some of the altcoins or even bitcoin at times you can see how they can run wild.
there is a lot of shitty advertisement like the news sites telling people how ethereum will be big and stuff, then not-so-bright people fall for it and invest, then those who were advertising dump on their heads and these poor bastards lose more than half of their money.
this is what banks are warning people about.

I would characterize current altcoin market as unpredictable at best. and this means if you want to catch a falling knife like this at after a -50% drop it is best to be ready to throw that knife as soon as you catch it both if it drops more or if it rises back up because the market that I am seeing has a higher chance of bigger drop and entering a dead bear market than it has chance for rising.

you should also consider the worse case scenario too if you want to make an investment like that:
- bitcoin splits, price goes down:
in this case altcoins will most probably crash harder. we see everytime bitcoin goes down small like 5%, altcoins drop bigger like >20%

- bitcoin splits, but it is resolved fast enough as the other chain dies fast because of lack of interest or support:
in this case altcoins drop as I said before but bitcoin will recover as there is only one chain in this scenario after a short time. so bitcoin recovers fast and now that the risk of split is over it goes up fast and big. altcoins again will drop some more.

- worse case scenario for your investment: bitcoin never splits, it is either a smooth activation or nothing happens:
altcoins drop because bitcoin is now scaling well enough and the drama is finally over and now bitcoin price is rising fast and all the money is exiting altcoins to come join the bitcoin biggest rally in order not to miss out.

that's what I have been saying when a ~$7 simply turns into ~$90 in 2 years you know what huge potential bitcoin has. and the good part is that we have not yet seen even the smallest percentage of the bitcoin's total potential. there is a lot more room to grow into. as more adoption happens and the demand for bitcoin which is very scarce, increases the price will only keep rising.



you can also see the 1 in a million stats over the years here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1790863.0

what does someone with a video claiming to have 2.2 million bitcoin have anything to do with Satoshi and how much bitcoin Satoshi owns, I fail to see the relationship.

and the said video is only valid if the person signs a message with timestamp and a clear text showing it is for the purpose of that video and share that signed message. any other thing is invalid and can easily be faked.

this was a good advice, I just disagree with these two.
small profit:
this is a good suggestion if you are already in with a big amount of money. you take 3-5% profit and enjoy it. but when you invest a small amount like $25 then 3% is $0.75 and that is lower than transaction fees.
also while trading altcoins it is possible to go bigger most of the times.

splitting orders:
the same reason. when you invest $25 splitting it is going to be hard. investing in 10 coins means $2.5 each and the orders sometimes can go even lower than the allowed order size.
I say it is best to invest in 1 specially if you are a beginner in trading. learn how things work. possibly even lose some money and after a while start making profit then increase the investment then go big.
it is all step by step. going big and investing in 10 different coins is going to be a headache to keep up with all of them as a beginner.

this is just another wave of FUD which is causing the panic throughout the community once again and people always sell to be safe when they are scared.
this is not the first time and it won't be the last for many years to come. this is the temporary manipulative effect that we need to accept and instead of being afraid of it we need to learn how to use it to our own advantage to make more money. this means to be in the same group as the market maker not the newbie panic sellers.

you can see it all over the charts and history of bitcoin. it is nearly like a Déjà vu
and it happens over and over again

this is not "criticizing" this is someone who doesn't even know what that particular issue was about and is overly happy because he thinks he has found an "issue" with it. and now (knowingly or unknowingly) is contributing to the drama by spreading even more FUD.

to be honest I have more respect for those supporting BU,... (despite disagreeing with them) than I have for OP. because at least they know what they are doing which is mainly a hostile takeover.

if you want to move funds in order to do arbitrage trading then there is no way of doing that and still make profit. you will be  crushed under the fees, specially the fiat withdrawal fees and the deposit fees afterwards.

but if you are just planning on moving funds from one exchange to another in order to have your funds in your other account and lose nothing in this process or at least lose the smallest amount then a cryptocurrency is your best option. for that you must choose the most stable altcoin with the lowest fee. I have found that litecoin and sometimes Dogecoin are the best choices although Doge is a bit riskier but cheaper. because of its low price the changes will cause a big percentage loss.

haha, the bitcoin market dominance never went anywhere though. it is still the same big thing as ever. it is just the altcoin's farts being cleared out with the wind, and now we can breath again
now I am counting the days until shietherum goes back down to $10 so we can see the real market caps.

all  I am going to say is that all this drama and bullshit is just going to kill bitcoin. at some point it no longer will matter if chain splits or not. the merchants and all the rest will simply move to a less dramatic altcoin. why do you think all this time there has been a lot of pump, a lot of advertising the altcoins, .... it is because they all saw "an opening" that we created for them.

the first rule is always to invest what you can afford to lose. and if you have already done that then there is no reason to ask this here. just keep your investment.
and "hedging" against altcoins is not that good a idea in my opinion. it is best if you just use altcoins to earn profit short term. although a couple of them may be  better choices.

it is  hard to say.
the recent massive pump of altcoins was because of bitcoin's troubles but the thing is you can not use the same thing twice this soon. right now there are so many wounded newbies lying in the streets, bloody
And they won't just come back and invest in the pumps this soon.

got some reference for that?
maybe I missed it but I can't recall anybody apart from Gavin Andresen to back him up.

and I did a search right now and found 2 names only: Gavin Andresen and Jon Matonis who flew to London in order to meet CW. and surprisingly (not really) Jon Matonis now has the executive position (Vice President) in the nChain firm!

here is all the proof I need:

[chronological order]
- there is a block size debate going on.
- CW contacts a couple of known bitcoin devs and asks them to privately see his proof and publicly announce they have seen it and his claims are true
- these devs obviously reject him because it is fishy. (you can see statements of a couple of them around)
- 1 person backs him up. none other than Gavin Anderesson.
- CW goes big, contacts big news sites to publish his claims.
- later we find out the signature or proof provided by CW was a fake and a big lie
- to cover up the lie he refuses to provide public proof but promises to soon move coins
- this bluff is also becomes clear with passage of time
- to cover that up he says something about community treating me bad so I am going away and won't move anything.
- things remain silent for a while
- scaling debate grows bigger. turns into fight over taking over bitcoin by BU camp and a deadline set by UASF
- CW comes out again with his buddies and his nChain trying to use the fake lies to his advantage

- certain accounts become active again here saying CW is Satoshi.

now you tell me this is all coincidences...

---

and by the way this is how you prove you are creator of something:
simple but at the same time verifiable by anyone (although it is best to include timestamp)

source: https://twitter.com/SatoshiLite/status/727157971428331520
https://medium.com/@SatoshiLite/satoshilite-1e2dad89a017

learning takes time and effort. start with google! search for anything you want to learn, use different keywords, spend some time and if you didn't find the answer to your questions or if the answer you found was not clear enough and you still had doubts then come back here and ask a clear and specific question.
asking "I want to learn about bitcoin and blockchain" is a very broad question that does not have any answer.

you can aslo start by reading the bitcoin.org website, bitcoin wiki, and some of the articles on coindesk which are about basics of bitcoin like how it works, how mining works, what is a wallet, where to buy, where to spend, ...

and price is a completely different topic. you need to learn about things affecting the market, learn about trading, and possibly learn more about technical analysis and how to read charts,...

edit:
Date Registered:  2013-11-30
did you really?

I am trying a new thing with litecoin, I don't yet know how good or bad this strategy is but I will share it here.

I basically have one major investment which I bought at 0.016BTC and I will hold this "major" investment for a longer period irregardless of all the fluctuations. lets say it is about 80% of my investment. my sell target will be a high price or a big fast rise.

the minor investment of mine will be the remaining 20% and I am doing short term trades with it. I buy in the dips and sell when price goes up to a certain profit. my target here is about 5% profit.

things have been good so far.

I blame fappening! ever since it happened everyone is inventing these meaningless words to mean something they don't even understand themselves
and in case of "flipenning" it has nothing to do with market cap. it was an advertising technique used by ethereum shills to pump their coin by pretending it will replace bitcoin and you no longer hear it ever since eth price started dropping.

I agree with this.
more investors investing in bitcoin doesn't change anything and I don't think we can expect 10K and above prices with just more speculators. these people only want profit and they will dump bitcoin after a rise and short it on the way down for more $$$ profit.
but with more real adoption, and real usage such as what this comments suggested, we get more demand which will stay around and when price reaches a higher level (even 10K) it won't come down because this demand is not going anywhere.

dollar doesn't magically go in that exchange, it needs to go through a bank. and banks have blocked bitfinex accounts by the time this topic was created (I don't have any updates on how this has changed though). so no it is not possible.

some exchanges however have an option called "codes" like btc-e codes which you can buy off the market and peer to peer and use that to fund your account. you need to check bitfinex, if they have this option then you can use that. I have used this method a couple of times to deposit fiat on btc-e by buying btc-e USD code with my local currency.


also last time I checked they never had any problems with any of the cryptocurrencies. and you could deposit and withdraw all of them including bitcoin.