It's still quite unclear.

What you said in OP should be very common knowledge, but the fact is that the tax code as well as a lot of classification of cryptocurrencies (whether as a commodity, security, or whatever else they decide to call it) is very ambigious and unclear, making double taxation as well as certain restrictions being in place that fail to address the needs of crypto users.

If the US doesn't step of their game soon I think it'll be inevitable they're overtaken by a more forward country soon as a crypto hub.

It's hard to say.

I think that LTC may be entering a period of long term bullishness because of the fact that it was hit especially hard in the bear market, despite the fact that many of its fundamentals still remain the same and it is still one of the most liquid coins (which is what investors seek, above all) with the most markets.

Also, it has one of the lowest transaction fees, so it should get a boost in demand once the market gets heated and major coins transaction fees on average skyrocket.

I mean, both are good picks.

Especially with ETH, I think that in recent days ETH has really been struggling for absolutely no reason, just because the market sentiment right now is low which is the primary reason behind why Ethereum price growth has really been struggling. The fundamentals have improved for the better.

BNB is an interesting one. I wouldn't necessarily hold it for the long run but it's a nice proxy to invest in the wider markets as their profits are determined by the amount of fees they collect.

Honestly don't think that this is a wise move.

I thought that Qatar was quite developed in their financial sector, but outlawing these crypto services will simply do more harm than any good. Government will lose out of revenue and the local economy will pay the prices especially when other countries are choosing to embrace these international companies.

In the near future, countries who choose to be forward thinking in crypto policy will get a significant edge on those who don't.

It doesn't matter what regulation or compliance an exchange does. There is still significant risk for identity theft and leak of personal info.

Especially when you can't track down exactly where the leak or theft occurred, because of the fact that these kind of crimes are simply untraceable. And for smaller exchanges, your information could in fact be used against you to hold funds involuntarily or whatnot (as we have seen countless times, in exchanges such as HitBTC).

So yeah, there is a reason behind people not trusting this system.

XRP may be a good choice in the short run given the fact that there is significant institutional use for it already, and the fact that it has a large market cap which means that the downside risks are relatively little compared to what you'd see with other coins.

However, honestly, it's not the best long term bet.

The best long term bet imo is still ETH, because it is more decentralized than XRP and has a lot of ICOs hosted on it.

I don't think that you can necessarily compare them. It's like comparing apples to oranges.

Institutions are going to continue to issue their own private sector crypto tokens. Is that a bad thing? Absolutely not. But it obviously does not contribute to the economic wellbeing of all the same way that decentralized, public blockchains do due to the fact that they can reach a wider audience.

But private blockchains still play a big role in a company's internal finances and whatnot, no doubt about that.

You're talking about derivatives trading right?

I would highly recommend that newbies stay away from trading these derivatives, especially on leverage. Unless you are experienced the downside risks are simply too great for newbies to dabble with.

Your entire mindset when you're trading derivatives completely shifts, and there is no prospect of long term holding if you find yourself buying in an inopportune time. That's just my 2 cents.

There are people that have been made rich from investing in the ETH ICO or whatnot, and putting all their eggs in one basket.

There's no denying that. But the chances that YOU are going to be the next person to succeed in doing something like that is slim to none, especially in this day and age where markets are much more mature and the prospects of a significant rally in the market the size of ETH's ICO price to now is significantly lessened.

Great warning to keep in mind. Diversification is key.

And we're still waiting for the end of Chinese New Year, which seems to be a bullish period for bitcoin on a yearly basis for whatever reason.

It is likely just due to psychological factors, and nothing tangible. But still, we do experience bull runs so the markets expect such a thing to occur, and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

But yes, 2020 has been very bullish so far and even though I do expect corrections in the short term, the long run of this year is looking very healthy. With things like the halving coming up which are also quite bullish events in themselves, I wouldn't be surprised if we eclipsed 5 digits once again some time this year.

I don't think that there is necessarily some magical threshold of trading volume that you need to hit in order to say that this market is comfortably liquid for you to get in and out of the market.

You need to look at a variety of factors, including the market cap of the coin itself and its markets elsewhere outside of Binance, the spreads of the market on Binance, as well as whether or not it has sufficient volume for it to handle large sell orders.

Combine these together and you get a much better bigger picture of the markets.

I wouldn't short.

Even if there was to be a dump, you can't time it perfectly. And taking out a short position would mean that your position could get liquidated way before you even see any signs of bearishness come back into the market, especially when BTC just breached $8k.

So no, I think this is a legitimate bull run. Perhaps this isn't the bull market yet, but this is definitely the start of one.

I don't think that markets are necessarily ready for $10k yet despite what some people may tell you.

There is likely so more time to go before that becomes a reality. But what is a reality already is the fact that we're experiencing bullishness that hasn't really been experienced for a while, and we've also found support at $7k.

All of that combined imo point towards the inevitable bull run this year. How high it goes no one knows but I think that its likelihood is extremely high.

Their stances are obviously in their own interests - otherwise, why take them out of ads that could be otherwise generating revenue for their company?

Expect other search engines (except for a few like Duckduckgo, who truly care about privacy and all that) to follow suit as a matter of time, in my opinion.

Google's censorship is honestly disgusting given the circumstances - and they call themselves innovative somehow.

Yes, but probably for different reasons.

For bitcoin, the main event that will drive bullish price action is likely going to be the halving that is soon coming up this year.

Gold is much more driven by geopolitical risks. Whenever there is a risk on the horizon of a potential black swan event, gold will rally, and this is exactly what we are seeing right now. You could make the argument that BTC will also benefit, which could be true to an extent, but it's definitely not the driving force behind any BTC bull market imo.

Why not?

ETH has always been a favourite for projects to use due to their ERC20 platform that allows projects to create security tokens or utility tokens (whatever you call them) very easily. And there isn't signs of ETH slowing down any time soon.

So as long as there are new ICOs there will probably be demand for ETH's platform. Even though TRON and EOS are taking some of the market share it's nowhere near substantial enough to threaten ETH's status.

Not a great look for Poloniex at the start of the year at all.

They're already having reputation issues with their previous issues with support tickets and all that that earned them a bad name, and they're just trying to rebrand themselves after Circle. This happening will definitely set back their progress quite a bit, to say the least.

At the end of the day though, as a user, you need to protect yourself and to be safe, you shouldn't be keeping any significant sum of money on such exchanges anyhow.

I certainly agree.

However when it comes to the issue of KYC (if that is what OP is worried about) then I think the chances that LBC will budge will be relatively slim, due to the fact that they'll constantly refer back to the significance of KYC/AML procedures. There is no point going the legal route either because a) the amounts involved are so small and b) you will have to obviously identify yourself.

And I'm sure that there are clauses in the old T&Cs that state they can request KYC docs any time, which makes the situation more sticky. The best you can do is negotiate at this point.

Probably not too far from what you'd get from simply holding bitcoin.

Unless, of course, you have some kind of proven strategy or trading bot (and I'm not talking about random Telegram signals, I'm talking about bots like Gunbot that actually has somewhat of a track record and you can program in your own strategies). But even then, I think that you're limited by the volatility of the market overall, because even shorting BTC requires at least some level of market volatility to make it worthwhile.

So no, I wouldn't put a numerical figure on it. But extravagant gains would require extravagant circumstances and strategy to be sustainable in the long run.

Ethereum.

All the bullish prospects are there. For instance, a hard fork that is promised will likely bring about a bullish surge if it turned out to be successful, especially when it addresses the fundamental concern of the fact that ETH should be based of PoS and not PoW.

Also, institutions will likely see ETH as a stable enough coin for their portfolio, which is an added bonus.