Now would be a great time to be getting started investing in crypto as the market has been pretty depressed for some time. Nearly all of the top 25 - 25 coins you will find on Coinmarketcap are down by between 60 and 75% so really anything you pick on there is going to reap a good return when the prices pick up.

I think that quite a few altcoins will last for 5 years and more, some of them have already been around for that long. But conversely, some of them will not even last for 12 months. This is what happens when you start a new business in any sector some are successful but a greater percentage (over 80% I think) will fold. Others will come along during this time to give you new opportunities to invest so if you can be lucky or smart enough to pick the right ones continuously you will be well set up.

With the prices so low at the moment, it presents a good opportunity to purchase more of the existing coins in your portfolio at a discount and reduce your cost average. If you are looking at new coins then buying now is a good move to realise some profits when the market recovers.

I suspect ICO fail for many reasons some that are obvious and some less so. The Bear market we are currently experiencing is not doing anyone any favours and the people are needing to be a lot more careful with where they are trying to invest their money. Many projects may fail to even reach softcap under these conditions. The other crucial element any ICO will need is a team with solid business experience outside of the technical and innovative requirements.

It doesn't always make the best financial sense to hold coins so it should be looked at on a case by case. Most campaigns that I have seen do not release the bounty coins at the same time as those bought by the ICO participants it is usually after. Early dumpers can often be people that bought with discounts or bonuses during the sale.

Your advice is well meant but likely to fall upon deaf ears, notwithstanding the fact you cannot dictate to other people that they should be following your strategy. There is often an initial drop in the price of a launching ICO coin when it hits the exchange which can be partially due to bounty hunters but also more so from quick profit hunters that decide to bail as there are no instant profits.

I don't see many challenges from your list to Ethereum as unless they are used as a platform for other tokens to launch then they have limited usage case. EOS is likely to become a good competitor for Ethereum once they establish the mainnet and work out their initial launch bugs and issues. NEO I also see as a potential competitor and has already launched several new tokens.

NEO looks to be a fantastic investment right now with the price hovering in between $39 and  $40. If we look at the recent price levels prior to the last large drop NEO was trading at levels of around $70 - $80 even if we ignore the previous levels when it was over $110. A conservative view tells us that an increase of 40 - 50% should be easily attained when the reversal of the market begins.

I do think that Ethereum can be useful as a long-term hold although at the moment its value is still closely tied with Bitcoin and the two generally move up or down together. With a decent recovery in Bitcoin back over $13,000, however, I think we could also see Ethereum being valued at between $1,500 and $2,000 as beyond its usage for ICO it is more transfer friendly as has greater utility.

We are nowhere near the start of a bull market yet, I have lost count of the number of false starts we have seen as each time the climb above $9,300 has been deflated. I think we will be waiting around until the end of 2018 or even into early 2019 before we see a proper recovery set in.

What do you mean by your question, which cryptocurrency will be the largest in market cap by the end of 2018 or which coin or token will be the largest gainer in value?

If it's option one then I would suggest it is still going to be Bitcoin, I don't see it being knocked off its top spot anytime soon. If it is option two then I have no idea it could be any random altcoin that moons after an ICO but I would suggest that most of the top alt coins right now will rise by 100 - 200% by the end of 2018 as long as we see a recovery take hold.

I think probably about 70-75% will not survive more than 18 months from their launch but the reasons for all of the failures will be different. Some will simply be unable to produce the project they originally envisaged, some will not have adequate business experience to manage and deliver after funding, some will become obsolete as another competing project does the same thing much better. We need to be sensible about choosing the projects to invest with going forward as the space becomes more competitive.

You should never invest anything in a project without seeing the whitepaper first. One of the most important things in the whitepaper is the Roadmap for development, without seeing this how can you know that you are not investing in a project that do not plan to produce anything for 1 or 2 years? Also there will be important definitions of the project scope and the distribution of tokens. Always read and understand a whitepaper first

If you don't want to go as far as downloading the NEO blockchain to your local storage then pick a lite wallet. I have been using the NEON one for a while, it is fairly basic but they release regular updates and its quite easy to use. https://neonwallet.com/

I think it had gone to crap towards the end of 2017 and earlier this year, however the Bear market that we are facing has made people a lot more selective about where they are thinking of investing their money. Everyone needs to raise their levels of due diligence listening to Youtube promoters alone is no real way to go about making reasoned decisions. My preference now it investing in proper companies sand projects with an already working product that are moving on to blockchain.

Any of the recognised altcoins you pick from the top 25 or so on Coinmarketcap should easily be able to generate 50 - 100% returns when the market has recovered. It looks like you have picked an excellent time to begin investing in crypto.

You can choose to take part in both Facebook and Twitter campaigns as long as you have a good number of genuine friends on your account. Some campaigns have a minimum requirement and some campaign will reward you larger stakes if you have more followers. Article writing is a great way to take party with bounties as many people tend to pass this over as too much work so the stakes are better.

If you are planning to invest this month for the very first time then you can probably pick any of the altcoins from the top 25 on coinmarketcap that are currently near lows for the year. When the market starts to pick up you should be able to easily get a 100% return from many of them as they are all down by around 75 - 80% as it stands.

If we get a proper recovery this year then I don't think it really matters which of the half decent alts you choose they are all at around 75 - 80% of their prices earlier in the year so 3 x would be the least you should be looking for from where we are now. If you want more than that then you need to dig deeper and find a hidden gem amongst the current projects out there.

I like the ICO rating sites for being able to give you a quick overview of a project and helping you to find the resource locations for a project. At the end of the day the review scores come from the opinions of the "experts" so I would still be inclined to do my own research to complement what I read from them.