Bitcoin is perspective investment, and it is no wonder why many people would do almost anything to get their hands on more bitcoins. We must be careful when we are dealing with things that are almost to good to be truth, and that is why many people do not believe in bitcoin. They think bitcoin is some kind of scam, but those who learned even a little bit about blockchain and bitcoin also learned that bitcoin is not a scam. It is fortunate and good call from your side, your decision was right one. It is nice to hear that you didn't lose faith in bitcoin, hope more and more people will join bitcoin community. Let this story be a lesson to all of us! To remind us that as long as there is an ambition and greed in people, also there will be a people who will try to use those emotions for their own gain.

Mining bitcoin this days doesn't pay of unless you have really expensive rig, and all that is because difficulty is so high for mining bitcoin. But on the other hand mining altcoins could be profitable, if you chose good coin.
As far as rig is concerned, it all depends on how much money you have or are willing to spend. You can go and buy some ASIC miners (which i never used before), they are good from what i know but really expensive, at least from my point of view. On the other hand you can go for GPU mining, which could be cheaper and it could provide some earnings. To find out more about this topic, go to mining thread and you will find everything you need to know there. Hope this helped a bit.

I think that questioning bitcoin and its cause is normal thing. I think we ask our selves "Do we need this?" question almost always with new things.
For some Bitcoin will be nothing important, because they will not need it, or will not know how to use it, or will be unable to use it. At the end it all goes in same direction, and that is not using it. But Blockchain brought something new to us, decentralized network that could be used for so many things, from which Bitcoin were made. Currency that could be used in whole world, no matter where your from, or which currency you use. One currency for the world, which belongs to all of us. Bitcoin is so much, and i hope people will see that one day.
People that lived in era of Electricity probably thought "Do we really need electricity, it sounds dangerous?". And yet here we are, we would not be what we are if that didn't happen. Maybe it will be the same with Bitcoin.

Governments that want to ban bitcoin are afraid of it, because it could harm country economy and because bitcoin is decentralized. Most of governments do not like bitcoin because bitcoin is decentralized, which mean it belongs to no one and they do not have power over it. But i also agree that bitcoin could help the world, and that it would be stupid to ban bitcoin. Rather than ban, countries should regulate bitcoin. That would benefit country and users, if done properly.

Bitcoin is strongest and most supported crypto of them all, and because of that its no wonder why it have great impact on whole crypto-market. But to think that if bitcoin dies everything else would die too, well that is just wrong and absurd. Altcoin prices are tied to bitcoins, but if something happens to bitcoin and for some reason bitcoin dies (which is near to impossible), some altcoin will succeed it and will continue as number one crypto. Crypto market is tied to whole world, and i do not think that either Wall Street or some other organization can kill cryptos.

Knowledge is most precious of things in trading and i think you know that, also i see that you are on good path and you know what is important. I have not done much trading my self, but i try to know many different things. I think that investing in Ethereum would be good choice. Ethereum is one of strongest cryptos, it have good price and good possibility for rising too. Also like we could see from last month or so, when there is problem with bitcoin people turn to other possibilities, and most of them chose Ethereum. I believe that if something happens to bitcoin, ethereum will be the one to succeed it. Therefor i think that ethereum would be good choice. Think carefully. Wish you best of luck in the future.

Well because people has done it before, it doesn't mean it could be done again. And with $5000 it will be really hard to make $500,000 , you have some really high standard dream i must say. But back to the question. Which coin to chose... well you could invest into bitcoin, but because your on altcoin section i guess you do not want to invest into bitcoin. Second option that i would always recommend is Ethereum. I think that it has great potential and great rising possibility. Also its price is not to high so... why not. If not Ethereum, than maybe Litecoin. There are some speculations that Litecoin could make a deal with Facebook, which will bring its price high up.

Everything is possible, if something bad happen with bitcoin network or some new and far better coin comes out, it could lead to downfall of bitcoin. But for that to happen chances are... really low, near to impossible. If we look back a little bit, we will see fast rising of bitcoin. We will see that number of people that supports bitcoin rise as well, which lower chance of downfall.  And as far as fluctuation is concerned, price of bitcoin has always been fluctuating. Main reason for that is trading. A lot of people trade bitcoins for either altcoin or fiat currency and back, which lead to large market, and that have great impact on price.

There are only few options in that case. First you should check reputation of person you wish to trade with, if possible of course. That way you will minimize percent of shady people. Second, you can be the one who send after you receive what ever you should receive. And last and maybe best option, find third party which will garant success of trading.

People got rich over night because of bitcoin, and i guess that is good for them... there is no way of denying that. But that is not an answer to "why is bitcoin important". Most people can not see pass their greed, and it is not different with this situation, because most of people use bitcoin as an investment and not as an currency as its suppose to be. It makes me sad to see that most of people see bitcoin as mere instrument for getting rich. That is not its goal... bitcoin is much more, and i hope people will understand one day.

Story tells us that Adam and Eve were first humans, that is something that will stay with us no matter if we believe in it or not. It is similar with Bitcoin... Bitcoin as well was first of its kind and that is one thing why it is so special to us. Bitcoin opened new door for us, with view on the world of currency, which we could not see before. It showed us what currency could become one day... decentralized currency that belongs to no one and everyone. Bitcoin is the way for reducing scams with currency, it provide security on many levels. It's goal is noble one, to be world's currency for people to use it no matter where they are and where they from. Developers of Blockchain and Bitcoin brought new dawn for us. Now it is up to us if we will see the potential of Bitcoin and start using it, or we will stay ignorant and let something beautiful dies.

For me the risk is always the same. But if I could chose which one is better... I would definitely go with long terms. So far it has been proven as best choice, and i would stick with what is proven to be best. But that is mostly never possible for me, because every amount of crypto that i earn I need for somethings. Which mean I most hold my crypto for short terms. And as far as the risk goes and why its same to me, well all amounts of crypto that I earned was from jobs or campaigns. For that i have never had invested money, only my free time. Because of that, even if i lost part of my savings in crypto it would not be hard on me... because i do not have large amount 

To be honest, I make decisions along the road. Trying to stay open minded, and to think outside the box. I use my saving when i need money, and leave it on wallet when i don't. It has been a good plan so far, and I think I won't change it any time soon. Also there is only small amount of crypto on my wallet, which means i will not cash out because everything is going south.

Everything that big companies like Microsoft do, they do it for a good reason. And its same with bitcoin. It could be what you have been thinking or it could be something that we can not see, because we do not know everything about those companies. I think that it is a calculated risk on their side, they make good profit from short term holding. And in the meantime  they wait to see what will happen, because no one can predict future with 100 percent certainty.

Everyone that supports bitcoin hope that one day bitcoin will be accepted as legal way of payment in the whole world. But the price that we talk about here is just insane, even if bitcoin become fully accepted. When bitcoin becomes currency and people start to use it for daily things, price will not rise that much. It will go to one point and than it would stay there or it would move up really slowly. In that moment bitcoin would become similar to other currencies.

There are several ways to lose money from trading. First is the one you said, buy at one price and sell for lower than you paid, that is bad way to trade. There are few things that trader needs to have in mind:
First is price - remember price that you paid for coins and try not selling for lower than you paid
Scond is transaction fee - have in mind that you will need to pay that too
Third is how much will you lose after changing crypto into fiat
Therefor to have positive income you need to earn enough money to cover those expenses and a bit over that. I think that is the basic things for trading.

It is truth that bitcoin is unique on its own way, it is first crypto currency and that makes it important in history of crypto. Also because its first it has largest user base and supporters of all the crypto, also it has highest price because of those things. Those are some of the things that makes bitcoin stand out from the rest. But to be honest i doubt that its price could go up to $100,000 , that is near impossible. To me it is even ridiculous to think something like that... but that is just me, and i have been wrong about things before.

There is almost 100 percent chance that you will sell your bitcoins, than to see it goes up to $250,000. I got my coins when price was around $13,800 if i remember correctly. I will wait until i see that it is the right moment to sell, and that mean when i see that price will not rise any more. Or if i need money for some important things in life, in that case i will not wait. Also even if price drop under $10,000 i think it could recover, unless bitcoin is dying... in that case i would leave the boat.

For me there is no better learning than from your own experience. People say that smart man learn from other peoples mistakes, and i agree with that. Because most of the time people try something and they fail, and from that failure comes experience. Sometime it is a success, but most of the time when we entering unknown territory, we are bound to make a mistake. So at the end it is better to learn from others people mistakes than from your own. But we learn best from our own mistakes.
People should not fear making a mistake, because those "mistakes" teach us many great things and shape us in the people that we are now.

At the moment i do not have as much altcoin, in possession i have 3 altcoins, and non of them are big amounts. In the past i tried to deal with altcoins, and it was ok. From some i got profit and from some i got either nothing or negative income. But because all of them was low worth coins i didn't mind losing, experience that i got is worth a lot more. Now i only hold altcoins that don't demand too much of attention, and we shell see if it will pay off.