there is no easy explanation for this, only speculation and guesses.

for starters you should know that altcoin market is treated like penny stocks [1]. and people know it is a short term big profit and not much else. with that in mind, my speculation is that whenever the big guy (being bitcoin) is performing well, traders are start to focus their attentions (their money) on bitcoin to make the most profit and leave altcoins alone.
there is also the effect of USD value of altcoins which creates some kind of sell pressure on the their value and speeds up the dumping process.

[1] www.investopedia.com/terms/p/pennystock.asp

Russia has been interested in blockchain technology for a very long time. probably longer than most countries. in fact one of the biggest conferences on blockchain technology takes place in Moscow every year.
the only thing they have been behind was regulating bitcoin, and that is starting to change now after Japan regulated bitcoin.

since you are able to log in using your 2FA that means your 2FA and your clock on your phone has no issues, it is working well. there must be a problem with your withdrawal.

try contacting support they can check your account and tell you what the problem is: https://support.bittrex.com/hc/en-us

they also have a topic here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=463202.0

since this key is already burnt and the thieve already has the key, would you mind sharing the password for the brain wallet you used, it may help people see where the problem was coming from.

sorry for your loss by the way.

well those of us who have been around for a while have already bought bitcoin at much cheaper prices and those of us who wanted the profit have already sold some to buy back after the dip.
this is probably the correction that we were waiting for. if so, it will take a while to reach the bottom. i wouldn't dare short bitcoin but that is also an option.

if someone is new they can wait it out and buy when the dip was finished and things became stable and then buy and brace themselves for $5000

i'm sorry but i can not understand the relationship between faster internet connection and you earning bitcoin!
may i know what you are doing to earn bitcoin that is greatly affected by the speed of internet? are you by any chance performing some high speed trading that needs execution of orders with lowest latency?

well that is a fact which is happening and there is absolutely nothing we can do to prevent it. the altcoins are simply manipulation tools!
but this doesn't mean we should go away. no. instead we should learn to take advantage of the situation.

first you need to accept they exist.
second you need to learn not to fall for their emotional tactics to foll you
third you need to learn good timing. and with that you buy after the pump started but dump before the original players start to dump and get out with the biggest profit possible.

first of all that is purely luck of your friend. look at the chart of that coin! a dead altcoin for a couple of years which was worth 12 sat went down until reached 1 satoshi. suddenly this year literary every single altcoin was pumped and XVG was also pumped and your friend got his profit.

secondly as you can see on the charts it is a short term pump. so why keep altcoins for long term? you go in at the foot of the pump and get out at the top make the same profit but in a couple of weeks instead of couple of years.

note 0: look at who is making the topic (you can check the post history if you don't know him).

note 0.1: this is not the first time this happened and won't be the last because simply there is no rule for time between blocks apart from the 2016 in about 2 weeks.

technically there is no way to even say price of something is in a bubble. read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_bubble

a bubble is usually called to a fast rise of asset prices followed by a contraction. the fast price rise is unwarranted by the fundamentals of the asset and driven by exuberant market behavior.[1]

the issue is you can never say what the price really should be. and unless it drops you can not call it a bubble. and the drop must be a huge drop not a small one. a small drop is a simple correction of price which is a natural market movement.
and when we are talking about bitcoin price, we are talking about its adoption. and that has been growing this year ever since Japan mass adopted bitcoin and legalized it.

[1] www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bubble.asp

you have very good points here. but at times like this i am never certain of this "pull-out" and most of the times i am right.
you see, this "pull-out" or dump or whales manipulating, or 100 other names have always been accompanied with some news, some FUD or something that helps speed up the "pull-out" and make it bigger so they can make the most profit.

when there is an uprise and market is on the rise, ready for it 110% you can't really go against it and dump. and right now it seems more ready for it than ever.

in spite of what i said the dump is happening though it is small. the worst was $3841 on bitstamp.

from your comment i can tell your "knowledge" seems to be all over the place! i think you should focus your attention on one thing only or be more clear about what you know and what you want to achieve.

if trading is what you are aiming for then there are already some good answers and i don't want to repeat them. i just want to add that you should remember that things are different in bitcoin market. and when it comes to altcoins things become more different and the smaller that altcoin becomes the bigger that difference will be.

and that difference is the ability to speculate the market. you learn TA and then speculate stocks market for example then you come to bitcoin and see you can apply it there but to less effect.
then you go to altoins and see everything you knew is useless there because it is a small and highly manipulated market. but highly profitable at the same time!

things are just getting started. people are always happy during rallies and when price is going up and like always as soon as the rise stops even if it doesn't fall they start being depressed about it for some weird reason!

in any case bitcoin has been on the path to at least $10000 for a very long time. and those who have seen this have been accumulating bitcoin on every turn as much as they can. and each month we can afford to buy less bitcoin as it becomes more expensive because more people figured this out!

and there is always the fact about bitcoin's scarcity...

yes there is and the process is called "correction". when price goes up too fast and too high, it comes down afterwards. but the drop won't be big or fast. it will be a small and slow drop as traders make a profit by selling on top.
then the rise continues.

if someone is holding bitcoin as a long term investment they will continue to do so. a good investor has a clear plan and sticks to it within reason.

if someone is investing for short term or generally day trading then the drop is because of them. and as i said above they are simply selling to take the short term profit out and be able to buy back with their money + profit at the bottom.

since you are sending from yourself to yourself there are a lot of options you can choose as long as you own the private keys!

the first thing is to double spend the transaction this time with higher fee. it may be hard because double spent transactions are mostly rejected and also you need to go through console usually to make these.

the other thing is CPFP (which i recommend).
assume you sent bitcoin from first address to second address and that is pending.
use a third address from your wallet and send the funds from your second address to your third (new address) and pay extra fee as much as it covers 2 transactions (the one that is unconfirmed + the new one) and broadcast it.

read more here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1802212.0

this is what i also said  a couple of months ago, foreseeing this day and future days when price keeps going up.

but the problem is, you can not force these things to happen. it is a community choice. if people like bitcoin they say it in bitcoin, if mBTC, Bits, satoshi, uBTC,.... they do that. and so far majority is still on bitcoin.
i personally prefer satoshi

there is always a correction after each rise, it is impossible to have "only" price rise. the correction is just traders selling what they have bought to take the profit out. and there has already been a couple of small corrections.

we are once again on the rocket to the moon and it has not yet showed any signs of slowing down. i say it will continue going up for some more before any bigger corrections.

"bags of Bitcoin"? really?
and it is not really a bad thing to sell you know. it should always be a risk management kind of thing.
you invest what you can afford to lose, price goes up you can sell a little to take some profit. the same thing is also true when there is a risk of a drop, you sell something to be able to take the opportunity to buy at the bottom.

your question should be "did you sell at the bottom", otherwise selling around $2500-$2700 before the $1800 drop was a very good idea.

different speculations (or better say opinions) are always available everywhere. some are more right that others, some are just bullshit, some have hidden agenda, ... you have to look at all of it as information and then form your own opinion about bitcoin price.

there is absolutely no reason for including shortened urls in this. why would you even do it?

also with electron cash you do two things that i prefer differently:
1. the wallet creation:
which is best to be done on a completely separate and isolated machine. so that you cut its access to your main machine and files, specially if you have Electrum installed.
(also preferably compile from repo not download the binaries)

2. the wallet import,
you don't need to first sweep and then send. just make a new wallet and instead of letting it generate seed, select "i have private keys" and import them directly and spend those.
you will save up on precious time and money since blocks are slow still and you have to pay fees twice.