I don't think there always has to be a reason, there doesn't have to be something in the news that the markets are responding to. Often movements are just because sell or buy pressure has been exhausted. You can't see the pressure building up just in dollar prices on CMC as these remain unchanged - all that you see on CMC is when the floodgates open and the price rockets up or plunges down. You have to actually look on exchanges to see buy and sell walls getting eroded down.

I think we'll be back to $20k in 2020. The fallout from the last ATH of BTC and alts was long and hard... but the recovery has begun, prices are growing slowly and patiently, and have been for much of 2019. Confidence will return, and with it prices will rise. BTC still has a great future, but there are always bumps in the road. Next year I think, sufficient time will have passed for the markets to be more bullish, and to look towards new ATHs. Beyond that, more rises, more drops, but the trend generally to remain upwards. God, I sound like a weather forecaster.

I'd agree. I would say put your money in crypto. I first got into crypto because of a similar lack of faith in my own local currency (the UK decided to destroy its economy by leaving the EU).

Crypto is obviously hugely volatile, which is why some people would suggest to buy USD instead of crypto... but I would still say crypto is preferable. We do have stablecoins that are equivalent to USD, so you can put your money there if you are concerned about losses. But if you are talking about somewhere to keep your money for the longer-term, then bitcoin is as good a place as any, and possibly better than any alternative.

An indicator is just a suggestion that something might happen, it's never proof.
For me the thing that triggers alt season is when a) prices have risen and there is sufficient confidence in the market for people to move out from BTC into the alternatives, and probably more important: b) that gap between BTC and alts has extended further and reached the point where alts look so under-priced that people just have to start moving in.

Facebook would never use someone else's product. If they see something they want, they either buy them out and take it over, or else they build their own version and drive the original into the dirt. They can't take over Bitcoin, and they can't destroy it either, so they will never use it. they are 100% set on building a competitor.

It's not just crypto they are competing with, Facebook's basic aim is to take over the world. I expect they are going after the US dollar as much as they are going after Bitcoin.

I do kind of agree with this, but at the same time the fact that China is pushing ahead is sure to trigger some alarm bells in the US and other big economies, and it could lead to a new wave of crypto development across the globe.

I do think a lot of new projects are not really necessary. It is often a case of thinking 'I want to make money from crypto, how can I set up an ICO and get into the market?' rather than genuine technological innovation, or any real need to the solution to involve crypto at all.

I suppose this is inevitable as the money in the sector grows. There is certainly room for further innovation and new solutions - but these are drowned out by the flood of new coins that either don't offer anything, or else offer something that is unnecessary and can be delivered already by an existing coin.

XRP price behaviour is a bit of an outlier.  Often the whole market, or at least the whole alt market, moves together. But XRP tends to do its own thing. Whether this is due to Ripple releasing huge numbers of new tokens or not, I don't know.  But I do think that this is probably the most difficult coin amongst top alts to predict price movements for.
It looks low at the moment, so I'd expect a big rise at some point. But who knows?

Yes, I think this is good news, and other countries will follow. It is the same with companies as with countries - it only needs one to adopt crypto, and the rest can either follow the same path or else get left behind.

Crypto offers such huge advantages over existing solutions, so whoever (country or company) adopts it will be at a competitive advantage. Whoever doesn't adopt it will therefore be at a disadvantage.

It only takes one big economy to take the first step. I'm sure others will follow.

Totally agree that at the moment it is not a very good store of value because of the price fluctuations, and also agree that things will improve and the volatility will fade as the market matures.
But I would say it is a store of value right now, otherwise why are people holding it? It is a store of value that currently has some big problems that will be resolved in the longer-term, but it is still a store of value.

I think we need to accept that KYC is inevitable if we want crypto to go mainstream. Regulation is inevitable, and KYC is a part of that. As crypto grows and becomes more visible to government, they take steps to ensure that it complies with laws. It may have its negative side, but there are positives to this as well, such as consumer protection.

Xtrabytes I remember from a couple of years ago, it was one of those coins that had some huge hype behind it. I would in general recommend to stay away from those coins, as it can be difficult to determine what (if any) value they actually have.

Always do as much research as possible before considering buying into a new project. But the fundamentals are a) what is their use-case? and b) how likely are they to succeed?
Of course these each bring further questions such as competitors, potential obstacles, team, track record, and so on - but the basis underlying everything is what are they trying to do, and can they do it.
It is easier to spot something that will fail than something that will succeed. As you do your research, you can come across any number of question marks, omissions/misdirection and red flags... but you may not find any, and that isn't of course a guarantee of success.

It is a bad time for bounties compared to the good old days of 2017. This is not the fault of the projects themselves, but a consequence of the market trend. The insane hype and everything hitting hardcap and ICOs selling out within minutes has gone now, that is a thing of the past. Perhaps it is better now as sales are more realistic. Yes prices tend to drop when the coins hit exchanges, so I think it is a good idea to choose bounty campaigns not for the rewards they say they offer (which are usually dependent on hitting hardcap, which rarely happens now), but instead choose them purely on the basis of whether you think it is a solid long-term project. That way your coins will retain some value, and you will get some return for your bounty work.

XRP has an extremely strong use-case and huge potential marketcap. I know there is often disagreement about the distinction between Ripple the company and XRP the coin, but it's difficult to deny that XRP could potentially transform international banking.  I would say it has a chance to become number two in cap, but we must remember that Ethereum also has huge untapped potential, so it will be difficult for XRP but not impossible.

I would say the first thing to do with any sudden price movement is to take a look at the price charts over a longer timescale, maybe 1 year, in order to get some perspective. It is easy to get excited or panic about a rise or drop of say 10%, but it is important to get some context by looking at the longer term patterns. Even quite large movements can become unimportant over the longer term.

I also expect volatility to decrease over time. The question really is what timescales we are talking about. I think when crypto is fully established in society and BTC has become widely recognised as a store of value, then volatility will have dropped a lot by that point - but I do think this is years away. I would imagine volatility will continue for the next few years at least.

No, I don't think this drop had anything to do with any news. The same as today's rises (26th Oct) don't have any deep underlying reason. What happened was that prices were holding in quite a narrow range, and had held there for a while. A breakout either way was due, and it turned out there was more downwards pressure than upwards, so prices fell through the support level and dropped until they hit a new lower support. We then had a bit of holding around that point, followed by a sharp recovery back up to the previous support line. Or thereabouts. Not exact, but close enough. There doesn't have to be a news-trigger to cause abrupt price changes. They just happen, it's a volatile market as we all know, and it is highly speculative. Small initial movements often get wildly overblown through FOMO or panic-selling. In this instance, nothing of concern has happened. I wouldn't be worried or overjoyed at the moment.

It's just normal market movement. There doesn't have to be big news behind every minor up and down in price. Support levels were being tested, and they held. Prices bounced back upwards. It's not an insane 2017 style upwards trajectory, we've just returned to where we were a few days ago. It's nothing dramatic really. It's certainly welcome all the same, but I don't think we need to dig around for reasons behind it.

Bitcoin address: 18EkKoT6smDHMF9z9FUrSgsye6DFmKpu8F