It's difficult to identify truly independent analysis of an ICO, so I think the best you can do is look at the some of the many websites that list all upcoming ICOs, and find one that you think looks good... then the important bit is to do your own research. So first look to make sure it's genuine - check out the team, try to confirm to yourself that it is a genuine team and not just a load of copy/pasted images from elsewhere, have a skim through the white paper to make sure it makes sense and it's not just buzzword soup, make sure the website looks professional, check that development is active if you can... then if it checks out, go into more detail on the research, the use case, the roadmap, etc.

A few days on, and it's happening as normal now. The first sign of a major bull run is that Bitcoin increases dramatically, whilst alts move up less. Now we have reached the next phase, where Bitcoin starts to level off and alts have dramatic price increases. It is the same as usually happens when the markets start to move upwards: first BTC, then alts.
Personally I'm just glad we're out of that bear.

I think it's only a matter of time before alts rally. If you remember, this is what happened in 2017 - BTC had a huge surge, and then when that started to slow down, we had an equivalent surge in alts. It is just that BTC often leads the way in a bull market, and alts follow.

I hold more than trade. My trades are mainly just when the markets are falling, and I move some money to USDT and hold for a while before buying back in lower down. It's a bit cautious I suppose, and I'm certainly not maximising my gains by doing this, but at the same time the risk is quite a lot less.

It's an interesting time. Whilst the huge percentage gains across the market are very welcome, and the volumes are unprecedented, dwarfing even those of Dec 2017 / Jan 2018... everyone is very well aware of what happened last time, and how the huge gain then turned into a long bear market that lasted over a year.
Will that memory affect how the bull market moves?

I believe this as well, however I don't think the time to switch to alts is just yet. BTC is still rising fast, and whilst some alts are also rising, they are not all rising as fast as BTC. So I would say BTC remains the safer bet for the short-term, and then once it starts to slow down it would be the time to move to alts... but that might just be me being a bit risk-averse

Difficult, but I would say on balance USDT is the best. Mostly because it has big markets. Yes it has struggled to maintain the dollar peg on occasion, and yes it seems to be continually mired in controversy, but... it is still there as a top 10 coin, still at or around $1, still has big markets.

The standard advice not to keep your coins on exchanges applies to USDT as well though, a stablecoin isn't 100% safe, it's still crypto wherever you store it, and there is no cast iron guarantee that the coin will always remain stable.

I would echo what others have said, that the price drop in NEO is mostly a symptom of the overall market trend, which for the last year and a bit has been for prices to fall everywhere. What we are seeing now is the beginnings of a bull run... these often start with BTC rising quickly, after which alts will also rise.

So at the moment we are in the stage where BTC rises fast. In the past the pattern has been that once BTC slows down, people move into alts and alt prices increase too... so I think it is mostly just a matter of time.

There has been a lot of speculation that BTC will encounter solid resistance around $6400. This is the previous support line that held for so long in the second half of last year. Now we are approaching it from beneath, and it may take a while to punch through. So the next few days are probably quite important - will BTC burst through $6400 and hold to establish support again, or will it hover around the $6400 mark, or will it rebound back downwards? We will have to wait and see... but I think even if prices drop a bit, the overall market is still bullish and it's only a matter of time before BTC goes through $6400 and on towards $7000.

I think that Binance will be fine and will remain a very important exchange. Yes this has certainly been bad publicity, but they have responded reasonably well. I would expect the coin and the exchange to recover in the not-too-distant future.

I cannot disagree more with the original comment. A strong BTC definitely doesn't mean the end for all alts. This would only be the case if all functionality offered by all alts was available via BTC in a superior way - and that is not the case at all.
BTC doesn't offer smart contracts for example - so for a strong BTC to mean the end of ETH, ADA, EOS and so on, it would also mean a strong BTC means the end of smart contracts - and that just won't happen. There are plenty of coins out there that have real use-cases where BTC is not and will never be the answer.
Yes, BTC market dominance is increasing - as it often does during a bear run as BTC is more resilient. Similarly at the start of a bull-run BTC gets stronger as more money comes into crypto via the BTC gateway. But as a bull-run goes on, BTC tails off and alts grow stronger again.

Now is not too late. Look at the price charts, and how prices have dropped since 2017. The current price is a good entry point if you're not in already. There is a chance in the short-term that prices could drop a bit as BTC experiences resistance around $6400, but in the mid- to long-term the outlook is very very good. You are certainly not too late.

BTC often leads a price recovery, and alts follow... so I would normally say wait until BTC starts to slow down a bit, then that is likely when alts will start to grow.
However what complicates this at the moment is there is the expectation that BTC will encounter huge resistance around $6400, which could mean that alts won't rise when BTC stops, as the whole market could be struggling to rise at that point.

Often BTC and alts move together, especially if the movement is over a long period of time. However one thing to note is that it is usually BTC that starts the move, with alts following after a short delay. So often if we see BTC go up, it can mean alts are about to go up too, and if we see BTC go down, it can means alts will also fall.

Note this is 'often' not 'always' !

It is certainly true that good trading is more profitable than holding, but equally holding is more profitable than bad trading.
It is easy to buy in at a high point, and then find the market falling away to leave you at a loss. For those that are good at trading, then trading is the best strategy, for those who aren't good at it or don't want to risk it, then holding is viable - you accept lower profit along with lower risk.

Competition in any sphere is generally a good thing, and crypto is no different. I can't see any new start-up coin competing with BTC though. A lot of what BTC has can't really be replicated or improved - its history and market dominance mean that it is so solidly established that many people outside crypto think that crypto = BTC. And we must also add to that the fact that nothing in crypto stands still. BTC has its problems, yes, but these can be addressed as the coin is under continuous development. I can't see any new coin supplanting BTC as number one.

I'm surprised that BTC blasted straight through $6000 without experiencing any real resistance. It is looking encouraging.
Also looking at the whole market, in the last couple of months the upwards rise has been stopped a few times at around $185b... thanks to BTC the market has now pushed through that to $189b, so it's looking good for all coins really at the moment.
I'm hoping for a big price increase now, but that is tempered by the memory of the last year and a half, so perhaps it would be more sustainable to have a slow and steady increase instead.

It may affect BNB negatively, but hasn't done yet. Not sure if they have halted trading whilst they sort out the mess - if so, then BNB may drop once it restarts.
For wider crypto and alts, I would expect that the bad news would have caused a major price drop across all coins. The fact that it hasn't augurs well for continuation of the bullish sentiment that we've had for a couple of months now. If prices can survive a major exchange hack relatively unscathed, then I would expect BTC to push onwards to $6k once things settle down again, and alts to follow with more upwards price movement.

The idea of attempting a rollback does seem quite shocking, effectively Binance launching their own 51% attack.
Thankfully they decided against it and mentioned that it would damage the credibility of bitcoin. The question remains though as to whether they would seriously try this if the losses they suffered had been much larger... the inference has to be that they would - with bigger losses, they would surely be more likely to attempt a rollback.

Personally, I think the market recovery is underway, and ETH is heading back upwards. We saw prices as low as $80 late last year, and we're back to more than double that now. Plus the latest whole market price rally was led by ETH, with BTC riding along on the wave, which is a good indication of the strength of ETH.
I expect price rises across crypto to continue in the near future. The psychological barriers of $6,000 for BTC and $200 billion for the whole market are both getting close now...