I like both of your picks. TenX is the most likely candidate for mainstream crypto payment adoption (credit cards/debit cards) and QTUM provides a good infrastructure to combine various blockchains and to launch apps. What other options you have, which are worth looking at in my opinoin is XRP (they by far the most integrated solution is banking and in the Japanese market, which is one of the biggest crypto markets out there) which has a good chance of still appreciating in the long-short term. Other good holding are ETH and BTC. ETH is the main decentralized app platform, which will be huge in the future and Ethereum is the current leader in that field, and BTC to hedge against all the altcoins you're invested in (they usually move the oposite direction, so if they go down, BTC goes up and vice versa).

NEO has some good benefits besides being considered only a copycat of Ethereum (even though they are followers). First of all the serve the Asian market, which is huge. Local products and services are always more attractive to the locals of that region and serve better the market and consumers, so that's one big thing. A second thing which is essential, even though NEO does basically the same as ETH, they are doing it more efficiently, for example, Ethereum is having the scalability issue, where they are not able to process more than 8 transactions per second, while NEO has already reached over 500 hundred I believe. If adoption is going to be fast and ETH lacks behind, NEO can take a huge market share of ETH and even ETC and make it work for them. It's a good hedge against ETH as it is its closest rival and owning some NEO therefore will guarantee that you are covered in the smart-contract sector.

Tezos become quite interesting, especially laltely. Not sure if you kept up with all the new updates, but the foundation has been running in some difficulties lately. The founders are having certain disputes with the foundation's council (Tezos decided to create a Swiss non-profit organization under the control of an "independent body") and what is happening now, is that they can't settle a dispute about whether to reconcile all the business activities under a seperate company Tezos AG. It's really complicated and the price has dropped about 80% since the news popped out, which is pretty bad. The board of the non-profit foundation definitely needs more members, as the board is currently at three if I'm not mistaken, transparency and audits are necessary too, to have an idea of the progress the project is making. There aren't any news on the websites because the domains are owned by the founders and they are waiting to settle the dispute until they start updating things. Until this is resolved, I'd be cautious investing in Tezos.

You can have a wallet that supports all kind of currencies, including ETH and BTC, but that depends on the wallet provider. They basically decide what coins to support, so you'll have to find a provider that offers both of these options, it shouldn't be difficult though as there are many out there. There used to be only Bitcoin wallets and as crypto's became more popular there are now multi-wallets available that even have exchange features integrated, it's quite neat. Check out these wallets:

https://www.exodus.io/
https://jaxx.io/

Remember to user this wallets only as "hot wallets", what this means is that you shouldn't keep all your holdings in them, but only smaller amounts

Keep all of your holdings always in offline wallets, and send from your offline wallets to Exodus or Jaxx to make transactions

it's wothwhile, maybe not for the mining but the entire crypto landscape offers a lot of opporunities besides that. The technology itself is worth getting into and you can for sure find some case study that you're interested in, and in which blockchain can be applied to. Since February 2016 things have seriously taken off and you can see the market cap going from about 10-20 billion to over 150, so you get an idea of what growth we're talking about. There are alot of activities you can get involved in, helping projects, trading, moderating communities - that all depends on how much time you have and to what degree you want to commit. Buy and hold is still as important as it was back in the days when you used to mine, so that'd be my suggestion to you as well

Russia right now is in kinda a grey zone, it's a bit difficult to determine the current legal status, as there have been many who are for the integration of cryptocurrencies (Russia's finance minister) and other who later lambasted them (such as Putin). If I were you I'd keep the coins for now and try to cash out after things have kinda clarified and settled down. Keep in mind that the exchange you mentioned closed for the same reasons, and in such an uncertain environment I'd recommend to be careful about doing these transactions (you might be asked to pay taxes, as Russia has recently announced that digital Rubles will be taxed at 13% if their orginin is uknown).

Check out the "Altcoin" section, you will see many projects posting their ideas and potential (future) coins there. Whitepaper's and technical information (websites, codes, smart contracts etc.) are usually linked within the thread itself.

the crypto markets are quite similar to the FX markets (both are coins/currencies). So a good spot to start would be an "FX trading guide", there are of course differences to the two, so after learning the fundamentals of the FX markets, you can specialize and focus on the crypto charateristics (volatility, exchange characteristics etc.). What I would recommend is to join a trading channel, where you can discuss with other traders about technical indicators and how they affect the short-long term volatility of the currecy, there are several such groups available on Telegram or Tradingview.com - have a look

this really depends on how you want to buy BTC. Do you want to buy BTC with FIAT money (USD, EUR, YEN etc.) or do you want to buy them with a cryptocurrency that you already own, such as ETH, LTC etc.

Buying BTC with crypto money is fairly easy.. as there are no KYC restrictions and can be easily done within a couple of steps, check: shapeshift.io

Regarding FIAT payments, things get a bit more complicated, because the exchange from which you'll buy from will need your personal information to complete their KYC process. Depending on the country you live in you might have several options, which will increase your chances to buy BTC in a better rate. You should expect about 2-3% fees either way, which is normal

Bitcoin is already being used to launder money, maybe not to the extent that the media are suggesting, but it's definitely playing it's part on the dark web market. It's an inevitable effect of a digital currency that is widely available and popular as Bitcoin. Even if transactions can be detected, there are already a number of services that "hide" these tracks by using so called "mixers" where essentially, you send your BTC and receive someone's elses BTC, that natural is attractive to crinimals and leads to corruption

I'd recommend that you hold whatever you earn from mining. BTC is on a bullish trend right now and surpassed 5k recently (which might be as well a good indicator to sell), but as you've already had costs incurred (electricity) from mining, you're better off holding it for a while and let it appreciate even further. Try to set yourself a timelimit, or timeline on when you'd like to cash out, instead of having to ask each timer whether to buy/sell

maybe it can used as a good case study.. even though the development of BTC is still ongoing, it offers some intereing insights on how the economy works (supply/demand etc.) What I would like to see, is them teaching about Blockchain itself, the underlying technology. More people need to familiarize with the concept and the possibilities it offers.

crypto hedge funds are doing quite okay, you might have heard of TAAS or BlackMoon, both of them offer awesome products and quarter dividens. So by buying their coins, you are entitled to about 50% of the funds profits (in TAAS case) and 25% of are re-invested in the token itself, which increases it's Net Asset Value. BlackMoon offers more variety, like choosing different products depedning on your risk tolerance, both are quite cool IMO

BTC definely not.. it's "decentralized" and the government wouldn't have any control over it. We might witness a digital currency, but it will definitely be issued by the government itself. They need to have the ability to adjust the supply depending on how the economy is growing (increase/decrease in inflation, liquidity etc.)

"best" on what? Transaction time? Availability? Fees?
BTC has the highest adoption currently, which makes it safer than the rest (by no means a save investment though, it's quite risky)
XRP has many ties with financial institutions in Japan, which makes it the most integrated coin
ETH is the best platform coin for decentralized dapps

etc. etc.

Paper money will be banned entirely? - Definitely not. It might get replaced by digital money, but the government will always have some control over it - otherwise the economy can't function

How long do you think that happens? - 2025 to 2030 we'll see the mainstream using digital money (if you think about it, debit/credit cards is already digital money)

would it work? - They'll probably issue new regulations and slowly integrate it to the economy (district by district)

What security and privacy risks would it raise? - By that time we'll have come up with some tight security, no govermental body would release a solution if it's not secure

And how would public and privately issued monies interact? - Private money stems for public money, so.. not sure what that's about

There are many, but if I'd like to be conservative, I'd convert every quarter a portion of my profits to FIAT. In other words, don't keep 100% of your investments in the cryptospace. Have you made some money? Great! Cash out a portion of it (10 - 20%). That all depends on your risk tolerance though, if you are risk appetite you might as well not convert anything. If you are risk averse, convering some crypto to FIAT is the best advice IMO

frauds and scams are markets as well, just like legal markets, these are categorized as "illegal" and as every market, you can always make money out of it. Blockchain offered a great chance for scammers to make money, due, since it's so "focused" on technology. New users who don't understand the basics and had not a lot of experience online are vulnurable targets.

Another thing: like the drug market, so the scam market has very big profit margins (the difference between expenses and profits). Which means that, a scammer is essentially only "spending" time, as they usually don't buy expensive software, so anything beyond the time wasted will be a profit to them.

the thing about BTC is that it has the "first mover" advantage. Since it's the first of its kind, it's set as an example and is leading the entire crypto market (uptrends/downtrends). You might notice that altcoins move along with BTC (when BTC is gaining, ETH is gaining etc.) It will be very difficult for BTC to lose this top position and highly unlikely, even if there are other options availalbe, BTC had the time to establish trust which is the most important aspect of any crypto

the likelihood that everyone sell (bringing the price of the cryptocyrrency to zero) is highly unlikely - it might lose a big portion of it's value, even 60-70% as it has in the past, but the entire value? No way