This one is easy: Anything that isn't bitcoin is an altcoin (alternative coin).
It's not an official term at all, it just was used to describe coins besides btc in the early days and now everyone has adopted it.

So, with that in mind, that means that even eth and ripple are altcoins.
But nowadays, people use altcoin to generally describe other coins outside of the top 10 on cmc.
People rarely refer to the big coins as alts anymore and just call them by their names.

But something more confusing than the difference between altcoin and bitcoin, is a coin and a token.
An altcoin may not actually be a coin at all, but a token.  Here's the difference:

Coin: has it's own blockchain.  It's its own independent system.  But, of course, a lot of times they just stole it from something else (called a fork).
Examples: bitcoin, monero, ripple, etc.

Token: crypto that is built on a smart contract platform like eth or neo.  They can only exist within the platform's network.
Examples: omisego, wepower, tenx, etc.

I'm going to jump back into ICOs.
They have given me substantially more returns than just investing in an altcoin.
The last couple months have been tough though.
I did one last january and it was finally released this last month and the market conditions were absolutely horrible.
I barely made back my money.
If I had delayed even a little bit I would be sitting on below ico prices.

What I saw at the end of last year, was when the market is in a bull run, demand for ICOs and new tokens are insane.
Turnaround is fast, which means you have more capital to reinvest.
I was able to quadruple the total amount of btc I had each time I did an ico and then was able to reinvest that for even bigger returns.

Lately, people seem to be down on icos, but I think people are down in general.
Once the market picks up, eveyone will forget their gripes and start investing like crazy.
That is were the opportunity is.

Of course I'm afraid of hackers, and you should be too.
Well, maybe afraid is the wrong word, actually I'm paranoid.
That makes me go to extremes to protect my crypto and I have not had a single problem yet.

Recently, over in the bitcoin forum, there was a guy who had around 33k usd worth of crypto stolen from his Exodus wallet.
He had been using web wallets and thought to go more secure by using a desktop wallet.
It's worrisome because exodus is so popular and widely used, in fact, I used to use it too.
The way he got hacked was crazy, someone actually stole his phone number then used it to retrieve backup logs.
That could happen to anybody.

But now, I've got everything in paper wallets and a ledger nano.
I haven't gone so far as to get a safe in my house and put all my wallets in there, but I might even go that far someday.

Yes, it most certainly can go down to 5k.
In fact, it can go down to 2k.
This is a speculative market in its infancy so anything is possible.

However, I personally don't believe it will go down that low, but I've been wrong before.
Investors have seen it skyrocket to 19k last december and have been holding out the last three months.
I think that when it gets down to 6k is when people will start buying up btc.
Collectively, I don't see people just letting it drop.

For me, I am planning on buying if it gets down to 6k.
If not, I am just holding like everyone else.
It has been a difficult 2018 so far, but always, markets rebound and this extended slump will only do us good in the end.

Hmmmm...maybe you should change your wording?
People don't react kindly to crypto paired with "central bank".

The #1 most attractive thing about crypto is that it is decentralized.
Taking something that is at its best when it is open source, spread out over thousands of nodes accross the world, mined and maintained by people from all backgrounds, then trying to centralize it?
Yeah, that seems doomed to fail from the very beginning.

Instead, I would focus on using the benefits crypto has to offer rather than making it something it isn't.

If your goal is to consolidate the world of crypto to make it more accessible and easier to manage, then I would recommend approaching that from a decentralized angle.
People want their voices not only heard, but also their actions to impact what they are invested in.
They also don't want a "middleman" to take fees and time away from what they want to do.

Anyways, good luck I suppose, you are going to need it.

It really is crazy looking back on things.
It puts everything into perspective.
Also, when you look at the astronomical rise last year, I can come to two conclusions: Crypto can still grow even more and it can't sustain this growth.
So I'm thinking we will see BTC at around 40 to 50k by the end of the year, but this bubble is going to burst, just not this year.

Another thing is that it really helps to make it through the price corrections and hold steady.
It's been a full 3 going on 4 months now that the market has been sluggish at best and falling at worst.
But looking at trade histories, this just means that we are setting up for a fantastic bull run.
A lot of people are looking towards May, but I won't be surprised if it starts picking up next month in April.

I wonder, are we going to look back in 2019 at how crazy a year 2018 was?
It is definitely an exciting time to be in crypto!

I have some advice for you that is more about investing and crypto in general rather than about trx specifically.
Every now and then, there is someone that asks about becoming a millionare here on the forums.
While making a substantial profit from crypto is definitely possible, it is a lot more complicated than that.

It's not as simple as buy X coin at X price then sell at X price and be rich.
The reality of liquidating your crypto into actual money is a lot more involved than that.

First, you have to change your coin into btc or eth, whichever one you want to change into money.
And you need to do it at a time when not just your coin is up but when btc or eth is profitable to change into fiat also.
Turning that amount of crypto into money will also take time and logistics.

If you use an exchange, you will need to have the highest level of verification to reasonable convert btc to cash and move that cash into a bank account.
You could also use localbitcoins and sell directly to someone, but that will also take time to find buyers for all of your btc.

Then, there is the problem with taxes.  Depending on which country you live in, you may have to pay a huge chunk of that in taxes.
In america, if you decide to not pay taxes on it, and you are suddenly living the millionare life without having reported your additional income, prepare to be audited.

Also, a million dollars isn't really that much nowadays.  ARe you just going to save it, buy a house, reinvest it?

So, the best thing to do, instead of asking if tron will make you a millionare, is to research the path to actually becoming one and making plans for after you are one.

What a bunch of ignorant fools.

...ok, well, they aren't, the heads of the 20 most powerful countries are definitely not fools.

But, in the world of crypto, they are.
The very nature of blockchain is meant to disrupt financial stability.
Taking a look at the "marketcap", seeing that it is less than 1 percent of global economic output and deciding that it's not a risk, is flat out stupid.

Well, as far as the market though, I doubt it affects or will affect the market that much.
What the market really needs is not some average joe deciding to buy a couple thousand dollars worth of btc because of a news segment he saw.
What we need is institutional money to jump in, and they are not phased by such petty squabbles.

The market is poised for a huge bull run, and as many see the last couple months as a "crash" an institutional investor will see this as stability and be more inclined to jump in.
so, I don't expect much from these types of announcements at all.

Wow, that is terrible.

The sad thing about all of this, is that you can not get your funds back, it is gone.
I would be throwing up too.

If someone was able to hack your exodus wallet, then you most likely have a trojan horse or exe command buried deep in your computer.
then they would be able to manually access your wallet.

The other way, but to me more improbably way, is if there was spyware or some kind of phishing bot on your computer that was able to see your login password and also get access to your keys.  They would then be able to use exodus on any computer and back up your adresses and keys to your computer.

The first step is to clean up your computer.  Norton or McAffee just won't do.  I suggest taking it to an expert but at least start with something like malwarebytes.  But the problem is, a lot of these trojan horses are designed to be undetectable by anti virus programs so it's better to seek out an expert.

The next step is to seriously evaluate your financial situation and move forward.  You can basically treat this the same as getting mugged.  Listen, there might be some people who will be like, "You should have used a hardware wallet!" but you should never blame yourself in this situation.  When someone targets you, sometimes they will get what they want no matter what you do.

There was a guy in the altcoin forum a couple months ago who had put his entire life savings (around 50k) into crypto and lost it all.
He chronicled his recovery process for awhile, venting in these forums seemed to help.
But he basically had to reevaluate everything in his life to move on.

First off: WELCOME!

Second off: GRATS!

Deciding to invest in crypto is no small decision, even if you start off with just a couple hundred dollars.

For new investors, it is always the best advice to do the big stable coins.  It is tricky though, because a lot of the top coins on coinmarket cap aren't stable at all.
What you need is a coin that has high liquidability (it is easy to purchase and turn back into cash), has brand name recognition, and has working coin with product or real world use.

With that criteria, BTC, ETH, and XMR are great choices.
Out of those three, I would say either btc or eth.
yes, there is a lot of information out there, but consider the numbers:

In normal bubble markets with volatility (like the real estate boom or dot.com boom), the market reaches a value in the TRILLIONS of dollars.
In these economies, the anchors (for example, in the dot.com boom: ebay), can shoot up into the 700 to 800 billion dollar value.
BTC and ETH are the anchors of the crypto world and there is still insane room for growth.
On top of that, they are both relatively cheap now.
You are guaranteed to get profit if you merely buy and hold.

It is pretty depressing.  I think a lot of people were hoping that things would pick up in march.
We had a little bit of pump, then back in the 8000s and 9000s for btc.

When you put it in perspective, it makes total sense.
The market tripled in value in just one month at the end of 2017.
BTC shot from 5k to 19k, that is insane growth and totally unsustainable.
So a three to four month correction is normal and even healthy.

But for us, it is hard to be patient.  Of course I want the next bull run to happen!
I have found that the best way to deal with our current situation is to just completely forget about crypto.
Don't check cmc, don't check the exchanges, all that.
Updating yourself on it on a weekly basis saves tons of headaches.

There are lots of altcoins spreading in the blockchain. Well, that is an understatement, actually there are thousands!

Some are profitable, some are not and should be dumped.
 If you want to invest on a certain altcoin you should know its behavior so you can tell that you will earn more profit.
Try looking at more altcoins that have a small market cap with a working product.  You can get a sense of how small the market cap is by looking at the circulating coins and comparing it to a top 100 coin.
Then decide whether it will be a good alt for your investment.
Despite what people say, through research and informed trading choices, you actually can tell whether that coin will boom or bust.

One thing that is for sure though, is that I would say 80% of the top coins are incredibly overvalued.
I would avoid the top coins unless it has an actual product that is at market (like eth, neo, etc.)

NO WAY!

Any ico that requires KYC is actually a humongous red flag!
This shows that they do not have a solid legal team and are just following this horrific trend.

The only time an ICO should require a KYC is if their company is actually located and registered in Singapore or America.
These are countries that have specific laws that define tokens as securities that would require a KYC process.
(There might be other countries I'm not aware of).

Smart businesses will either:
Just not allow Chinese, Singaporean, or US citizens to participate and have you sign or check a disclaimer.
Or,
Just make sure their coin or token can be classified as a utility instead of a security.

Also, something important to note, NEVER give out your personal documents over the internet!
It is not paranoid to say that you can be a victim of identity theft.
It is real and you are just making yourself vulnerable by doing so.

First off, this topic is in the wrong thread.
Second, someone merited you for your op, is that your other alt account?
Third, those with the power to give a lot of merit hate people asking how to get merit.

How do I know this? Because I learned the hard way.
The merit system is designed to reduce spam and lesson the type of posts you posted.

But, here is some advice I can give you since we are at it:

There is very little merit being thrown around in the altcoin discussion boards.
Most of the merit is in the tech boards and btc boards.

For each merit you get, you get 1/2 smerit to give.
As soon as you get an smerit, give it out!

Posts that join a discussion and respond to others tend to get more merit.

Try posting in different threads with different types of response and see what works out best for you.

It looks like you are giving advice on buying into an ICO rather than any altcoin?

If it is for ICO, than you give good advice, although you are missing some things.
It is important to test out the actual product or platform.
If they don't have at least an MVP than stay far away.
Most companies leave their tech footprint on github.

If you are trying to give advice on generally buying an altcoin, then it is much more a matter of just crunching numbers.
First, look for three factors:

marketcap
amount of circulating coins
how much development

If a company has all three of these: a low market cap in proportion to the circulating coins and an actual useable product, then it is a goldmine.
If it doesn't have any, than it is ridiculously overvalued (cough cough, ahem: almost all of the top 20 coins...)

NOPE!

Any site that mass lists ICOs with "ratings" are not a good source at all.
However, they are quite useful.

See these sites like wikipedia, a great place to get general information but you would never use it as a source to back up legitimate decisions.
So in that sense, I actually use places like ICO bench or ICO drops quite frequently.
I use it to quickly look up dates and different type of ICOs.
My core research is never based off of what they say but it does lead me to ICO's websites where I start the real work of looking at their team and whitepaper and what not.

The main reason why you should not trust those ratings, is because they are almost always paid to do them.
That makes it incredibly biased and unreliable.

Also, nothing beats old fashioned research.
Yes, it takes more time, but for me, I have yet to fail on picking a good ICO simply because the process I go through guarantees that I weed out the bad ones.

Sorry to say, but EOS falls into the category of "Overly priced project with no product that is in the top 20 on cmc"

You will find that a lot of the top coins in the crypto world are actually shell or ghost companies.
They exist, have a lot of money, but on the inside their is suprisingly very little to hold them up.
They are like cotton candy, all puffed up and colorful but really being full of just sugar and hot air.

Guaranteed, these types of companies, will fail.
It is not a matter of speculation, it is pure mathematics.
Companies like EOS are taking a ridiculously long time to produce and create anything that is useable.
Not to mention actually implementing it into the market.
So instead, they pad their image through speculative announcements.
With the bubble like state and volatility of crypto, unless they have an actual working company, they will go bust.

So, if you are bullish on EOS, I would highly advise that you remain bullish for only up until the end of 2018.
And if they haven't made any significant development progess, then move on to something more substantial.

That's what the whole merit system was supposed to address.
Mostly, it is people making their post count for the week.
They don't have much time, so they find a topic that can be easily replied to.
Instead of going through the thread they just reply and leave.

How do I know this? Because I have done that quite often in the past.

I think the so far, the merit system has started to clean up the one word or one sentence spam posts that used to dominate.
As people start to realize that they can't get any merit, it will start to adjust.
My personally, I am interacting more with people and it has become more rewarding (rather than the post and leave of before).

But one of the problems is, there isn't a lot of merit being thrown around int he altcoin discussion forums.
Especially when you compare it to the bitcoin forums.
If there were an smerit admin regularly giving out merit here in the altcoin discussion threads, I think people will start to communicate and post better.

I have a confession to make: I started out as the FOMO.
Those were crazy times lol.  I used to have so much anxiety that I was "too late to the game" and made some pretty bad decisions.
I never did a pump and dump group, but I did have a period of time where I was buying up "cheap" coins lol.

Now, I have migrated into day trading.
I tried it out last fall just to see what it was like.
I managed to make a large profit in a short amount of time and was like WOOT!
Then there was that period where everyone was buying up btc because of the forks and alts were bleeding and I lost money.

When the december bull run hit, I tried it again and made huge returns everyday.
So I've combined what I learned from both experiences and manage to pull in gains around $100 to $150 usd a day now.
Needless to say, I am quite proud of myself haha.

Sounds totally scammy to me.
Who on earth would pay 3k for a newsletter? lol
I would rather take that 3k and put it into an ICO.

Also, I took a look at his website and it screams scam.
Some of it is laughable, like the "What real people like you are saying" section.

But, I did manage to learn some pretty interesting things.
I saw a short clip where he says he was in Puerto Rico and how a lot of crypto kings are moving there to avoid taxes.
I dug up some info and it turns out it is actually true, you are exempt from taxes on certain types of investments if you are a resident of Puerto Rico.

Also, I am skeptical of the exact date of May 14th, but I 100% believe there will be a bull run in Spring.
Blockchain tech is revolutionary, it is not just a fad, and it has insane potential to grow.