i don't get it! why do people repeat "hard fork" what is this hard fork that everyone repeats!
there is no hard fork.
the only hard forks in bitcoin are :
BU: which didn't go anywhere and is the same low support as it always was
SegWit2x: which has a plan for a 2MB hard fork in the far far future. and it needs to activate SegWit first (by the end of this month) then start thinking about the second part.

relevant or not, it is happening. and it is risky and the risk of split or what uninformed people call hard fork (because they think hard fork = split) comes from BIP148 and the fact that it has so little support.

this is irrelevant because BIP148 is in about 0.5 month or so but the hard fork you are talking about (Segwit2x) is not for another 6 months. and that has little support.

and people are not known to fear something that is in a very far future.

this is off topic!

if these panic sellers were panicking over something valid or even if they really understood why they are panicking i wouldn't be this angry
i see dumb people who don't even know why they are panicking! they sometimes look like a herd of sheep that is just following what others do!

and the worst part is there is no hard fork! LOL

there is just Segwit and that is a soft fork with majority's support! double LOL

whenever FUD is at its peak, it usually shows the end of the fall is very close. because an increase in FUD shows desperation for more profit, for more cheap coins,...
i always take it as a good sign.

you do realize that the risk of splitting bitcoin into 2 different coins is coming from BIP148 also known as UASF on August 1st not BIP141, not SegWit2x (what Jef Garzik is working on) not anything else....

at least that is the current threat to bitcoin.

if you keep your coins (hold them in your wallet without touching them) then your cold storage with electrum is excellent. you don't have anything to worry about.

and after that date. depending on how things will go you may need to do different things.
1. (highest possibility) there won't be any split and you simply continue doing what you were doing before
2. (very low possibility) there is a split. for that you need to wait and see what happens to the chains. it may not even last long enough for you to do anything.

for now read this topic: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2012799.0
and wait for that date to come and pass. and then keep an eye out for a new topic by theymos, as he promised to write a new one to guide through what to do then.

i have been affected by this also! and it was similarly on Yobit. the price difference was so big that i fell for it and forgot to check first.
later on i found out that most of their wallets are dead. it is ridiculous actually. every coin that you click on has a dead wallet! i wonder how much server space did they buy! 100 MB probably

setting up 1 price to buy at is not a good idea at all.
your first assumption in trading should always be that things will never be in your favor.
lets say you placed an order on $1700. two different scenarios will happen.
1. price will drop to $1990 and back up
2. price will drop to $1500 and back up.

in first case you are boned, majorly
in second case you have at least bought bitcoin but missed the bottom.

my proposal is to place multiple buy orders. if you think $1700 is the bottom (really speculate it not just guess a random number just because!) then set some orders around that number but spread them in a way to cover both scenario 1 and 2.

you are wrong about multiple things:
1. SegWit2x is not a hard fork it is a soft fork to activate SegWit at first and then based on their first article on medeum a hard fork to 2MB after 6 months.

2. 80% is not the probability of fork happening. it is only showing the current support that miners are showing and it is somewhere between 85% to 90% because of fluctuations.

just FYI, bitcoin had 1 hard fork and at least 1 soft fork that i am aware of in the past and each time it became even stronger than before. and the "trust" never went anywhere.

OP is just an idiot FUDster-wannabe!
you have to work much harder that that kiddo. you are new to the game so it is understandable how weak your arguments are. and you gave away the fact that you are bagholding ETH too soon. it made all your plans too obvious.

those who HODL usually don't even care about the price on August 1 despite being concerned about the result. they care about price on August 1s of 2030 and above.

and those who vote $2500 are probably doing it because a split is unlikely which means the chances of a rise becomes higher if that date comes and goes without a split happening. there probably will be a sharp rise with a long green candle on the chart because of FOMO

i think you are either very confused or want to say multiple contradicting stuff at the same time!
you want the price to go down so you can buy at your dreamy price so you say _indirectly_ bitcoin is dead and then at the same time _indirectly_ say bitcoin is going to go to the moon.

for example you say "multiple years of decline" then you are still "bullish" make up your mind man

and just FYI, bitcoin was at $2600  10 days ago. you waited this long to make this topic! weird!

WRONG.
you need to look at the bigger picture.
right now you are just looking at a short period of time where bitcoin price has came down a little. if you look at a couple of months you can see a rise from ~$880 to $2900 and right now it is sitting between $2200-$2400.

even if it falls more it will still be much much higher than the couple of months ago.

with that said, did you get your answer to why people hold bitcoin

haha, read a couple of other posts. it seems like this person already did that. but not on camera. i think he later on posted that picture (the real one not the scammy fake one) on his twitter and last time i checked his bitcoin address it had about 600 transactions of total of 6BTC

nobody has ever cared about a shitcoin with 0 real world usage. no merchant, no real services, businesses, .... even used ethereum and never will.
this means even if it splits into 100 other new forked altcoins and if they do 100 other DAO-like roll back, still nobody cares.

however a split in bitcoin is a very big threat. because it not only involves individuals investing in it but also it involves hundreds of thousands of businesses relying on it.

it is real
back up about 1 hour and a half in this video and you will see it (it is not possible to give a time stamp since this is live)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga3maNZ0x0w

edit: it is already viral
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/12/someone-held-up-a-buy-bitcoin-sign-during-yellens-testimony-to-congress.html

edit 2:
i love that guy's face, it is less than a second and he knows he is being naughty

when you trade on exchanges (buy bitcoin, sell bitcoin, exchange it for an alt,...) all of these actions are done off the chain inside your account on that platform. this means all of these actions are immediate. this means it will only take a second.

what takes time is your withdrawal or deposit which is on-chain.
the deposit is on you because you are the one paying the fees and as the other comment said it depends on the amount of fee.
the withdrawal is on the exchange and they always pay a high fee in their settings so you don't have to worry about it. the confirmation will take about 10 minutes on average for bitcoin.

your question is all wrong.
first thing is you say "Cryptocoins" but i guess you mean bitcoin. because of your poll. if you want altcoins also as diversification then it is a very different question

second thing i can tell you is that don't think about 1 price to buy at. that is not a good way of investing money in bitcoin in my opinion.
the price is always moving, and you can never say if it is the bottom or is it still going down, or is the rise going to stop or will it continue.

for that i always suggest everyone to buy in steps. you first come up with a price range that you speculate is the bottom or won't go lower than that. for example $1900 to $2100. then you start placing all your orders.
majority of them in this range. then you place some lower orders but smaller for example you place $8000 in total of 10 orders in that range then place 2-5 orders of total size $1000 in $1800 to $1900.
also you place some orders above the highest price for example at $2200 you place 2-5 orders of total size $1000.

this way you will surely invest but also never miss a chance. for example if price dropped to $2190 and reversed back up to $10000000 you still have bought $1000 worth of bitcoin and have not missed the chance.

or if the price dropped down to $2050 and then reversed back up to $100000000 then you have invested most of your money so you can be happy anyways.

play with the above numbers both price and volume to reach a more comfortable strategy, these numbers were completely hypothetical. it is important to choose that range ($1900 to $2100 in the example) right. if you lowball that range you will only hurt your chances, and if you choose it too high, again you will hurt your chances.

p.s. good news is that even if you buy at a higher price than you feel comfortable with, you can be fairly certain that bitcoin will rise to that price again in the long term.

no, there is no maybe. he is simply lying. check out his post history and you can see what i mean. he has been attacking bitcoin with this stupid reason for a while now.
we all know about the ongoing spam attack and the high fees but people like him are only using it to spread FUD and attack bitcoin for their personal gains.

i actually sent some bitcoin today with 0.00002000BTC = 0.046$ fee to see what happens and bump the fee using RBF if needs be and before i knew it the tx was confirmed in less than a minute.