Addition of smart contact and first ICO surely is a worthy news and Stratis would certainly increase in value. But the 2x things are misleading and inappropriate claim.

You lack the fundamental knowledge of democracy and Independence.
No countries and no leader are totally democratic or dictator.
You can argue anyone to be a dictator or not.
Similarly you can argue about the use of crypto.

Don't convert every of them, keeping 25% of bitcoin would be a good buffer in any scenario, I've sold my all stocks of Litecoin and Dogecoin in favor of them.
Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero, Neo and EOS are now my base currency.

We are clearly heading towards a controlled and uncontrolled cryptocurrency market. They would make it difficult to convert the crypto from uncontrolled market to fiat but with the nature of crypto, there would be a plenty of loopholes to venture.

We would need faster coins with low transaction fees for the operation of such machines. And as the profit for machines comes from the product itself, they should not charge extra to the customers. The thing that killed bitcoin ATM was insanely high transaction fees and high commission fees.

There are many categorizes of altcoin based on both functionality and profit.
The established ones are a safe bet, promising one are for good profit while you should jump into new ones for the ultimate profit.

Best in what way?
Ethereum is probably the most used altcoin. They have larger number of transactions than any other.
Largest userbase and largest number of dependent project. That's makes it the number 1.

It was Paypal. It blocked access to my account in 2012 and I looked for it's alternative and found bitcoin.
I used bitcoin as a payment method and didn't realized it was an good investment.
Though I holded some bitcoin and Litecoin to profit me.

Dogecoin is a good coin but not as an investment. Though they have crest and trough, the price of dogecoin against other cryptos like bitcoin has relatively decreased and is decreasing. I sold all of my dogecoin holdings at 99 satoshi per coin a year ago. Now it's around 50.

Bitcoin is a pioneer of the technology and as an initial experiment has its limitations.
On the other hand the crypto and blockchain technology is improving and soon the world will embrace it as an alternative to fiat currency.
The authorities would issues such coins the way they issue fiat though they won't be on the form of notes and coins.

If you want huge profit low market cap coins are the choice.
The top coins are still a good and safe investment but they have already multiplied many folds from their initial price and with a large cap, has a relatively stable price that does not change rapidly. So, you can't aspect a daily x10 rise from them.

Motives of the team plays a role in it. With current situation, it's not a difficult task to come up with an Idea and an ICO to fund it. But the success of the token lies in how the team make use of it and how the token derives it's value. Most of the coins we seen are purely speculative and have nothing to do with actual progress of the project.

Tether is indeed the virtual USD. And if you feel to convert your crypto to fiat for short time than they are a solution.
Yes, buying ether while the market is going down would save your currency value in USD but if you were not able to buy back on increase than you might even miss the rise.

EOS is lot more than cloud computing network. They are basically the platform for blockchain applications with higher scalability and easier intra and inter blockchain communication through smart contracts.

They've finally made the smartcontract. A huge leap for the platform and people are buying it like crazy. But with a lot of competition in the sector, I don't find such slow progress of the platform would yield any profit to late investors.

It takes some time and some refreshes for it to display your new avatar. Just check it back after a couple of hours.
I guess it's the fault in the forum but it is like this for years.

I've heard something called Mithril which is an experimental social network on the ethereum blockchain.
Don't have a clear idea about how they works but they promises to reward for you likes and shares.
https://mith.io/whitepaper.pdf

They have been selling it and is one of the reasons for fueling the price dip. But the periodic selling and the decreasing amount and effect of it can't have a large influence on the price anymore.

After selling more than 35K BTC in the short period of time, we still have a sustaining BTC price.

They believe it's DNS hijacking and there's nothing on their side to prevent it but said are working to solve the issue. Users should be careful while using the wallet and better not use it until the problem is resolved.
https://t.co/xwxRJ4H4i8

This is another step in the roadmap of the coin. And one step further for implementing decentralised exchange with BNB as the fuel currency.
So, BNB is still one of the safest investment opportunity which saw rise even in this period of depression.