there is order in chaos!
not because of chaos theory but i say it because there are times that we don't understand something so we guess it is chaotic but when we learn more about that subject we see that it is perfectly logical and it couldn't have been any more perfect even if you tried.

in case of altcoins it is pump and dumps. if you look past the emotional feeling when they dump and you lose money you can see that it is perfectly natural thing to happen.

from what i have seen majority of the countries in the world have not done anything about ICOs which means neither legalized nor illegalized them. but they are all against ICO in one way or another because of the large number of scams that keep on happening in this market and most important of all is the fact that the whole market is out of control and unregulated.

then you don't know what trading or strategy means!
hodl is not a trading strategy. it is an investment. and you only invest in stomething that is growing not something that is falling and sinking. in other words you want your investment to grow, but when you invest in an altcoin and hold it you see it melt away as you have been in the past year.

sadly i don't think this is true. because i have never seen actual competition between different altcoins and bitcoin. there is always advertisement of competition but then they just get pumped for a little while and as soon as the pump is done everything is forgotten.

for instance if you find topics of last year during first quarter of 2017 you can find many topics talking about how Dash is replacing bitcoin. it got pumped A LOT and then .... nothing.... back to death and silence from this coin. like many others.

the word is "different" not special. ethereum is not a currency, it is a platform used for creating games like cryptokitties. bitcoin is a currency meant to be used for payments like fiat. saying ethereum is better than bitcoin is like saying shoe is better than a hamburger
not to mention that in its own category (platform for smart contracts) ethereum is not considered the best thing available.

this is one of the oldest questions that the newbies always ask. i am surprised that you started a website post about this!
bitcion was never meant to be the world's currency and denounce all other fiat. bitcoin is only meant to be used as a currency all around the world by people who want the freedom it gives them.

the next bitcoin bull run will deffinitely be in 2018 but the halving is irrelevant here not only because halving is in 2020 but also because halving rise is always a small rise compared to the big rallies that bitcoin has and it is only for a short time. other than that we have a lot of positive news for bitcoin and currently bitcoin being at the bottom resisting any more drop is a very positive sign for near future rises.

in order for litecoin to rise it needs some sort of big news to come and get it pumped specially in this current situation when there is dumping in the market and there is no more newbies left to buy any coins to make them pump up.

the only reason why Tether got big was because of the last year's pumps and the fact that most big exchanges (altcoin exchanges and also bitfinex itself) only had USDT listed for exchanging most coins and when the dumps began a lot of people wanted a stable coin to stay in while the altcoins were getting dumped.
as they cash out or go back to bitcoin the value of Tether drops and now with all the coins in circulation there is a sell pressure pushing the price below $1.

as for total collapse, i think it will eventually happen because it is a centralized company and the world won't let it grow too big, specially US since they are using their dollar in a way.

i am starting to think that your website that you keep advertising in there (trackcoinmarket), in it you are posting any kind of imagination you have or any kind of rumor you hear in form of a "news" and then post the link to it here to generate some backlinks and some traffic for your website.... just know that you are ruining the reputation of yourself and the site by doing so and the small traffic you gain won't last long. you need to focus on quality and legitimacy of what you post not quantity of spam you make to get some traffic.

the aim of bitcoin has never been to be anonymous. the main goals have always been to be decentralized and be a transparent ledger that has all the transactions on it. with a little care, even without usage of bitcoin mixers you can stay anonymous enough from the prying eyes. of course there is always the big question of who you are hiding from! and depending on that answer the methods are very different.

technically there is no difference between the two. they are both an act of giving away some coins for free to participants as a form of promotion and distribution of the tokens that were created in the premine action.

but practically people use it differently for instance airdrops have turned into a labor! where you have to take certain steps and do some job to receive the free tokens! usually that job is advertising the coin. so effectively they are hiring you to do something and paying you but call it "airdrop".

funny you mentioned SegWit here. recently i found out that a while ago they have already implemented the new cashaddress format for bitcoin cash in their wallet which is basically the same format as bech32 addresses but they have not yet implemented anything of SegWit

ETH  ETF has never been a serious thing. if you look at the news that mentions it, you can clearly see that it is a biased news trying so hard to use the bitcoin ETF hype to pump ethereum price up. specifically pay attention to the dates which all coincide with the time when bitcoin ETF hype was at its height. and this lie was forgotten as fast as it was created.

besides SEC is never going to approve ETF for a centralized token that had an ICO and is a breeding ground for lots of ICO scams.

this is a bit misleading, specially that title that OP chose.

what happens is that a whale CAN crash a market easily. for most markets it doesn't even take much to do it. they can easily crash them. but what comes next is the important defining factor that will determine the final price after the crash.

what comes next is the rest of the market. when something has real value like bitcoin for example, no matter how much you manipulate it and how much you dump and crash, that asset will continue having its underlying value.
it is like gold, if you dump it and crash it, at the end it is still gold and is useful. like bitcoin. in the end it is still the only decentralized currency that passed the test of time. so it has the demand and it will rise back up.

but when the asset has no value, when it is dumped there is no reason for anyone to buy it back. so when it crashes it won't ever  come back up again. hence creating the term pump and dump. that when an altcoin is pumped and dumped after the dump it dies unless they pump it again and eventually dies after a couple of p&d.

i think we need to start a serious study about how many people lost how much money because of what OP is telling them, that is "Patience".

in this pump and dump market the only thing that you should NOT have is patience. in other words in this altcoin market you need to be super fast and be capable of going in and out of the market at a moment's notice. because the market is not going to wait for you to wake up and make a lazy ass move. it moves fast and before you know it, you will be in a huge loss.

one of the biggest problems that you will encounter when trying to invest in a new coin is that the new coin has no history so you can never analyze it to be able to come up with an educated decision. as a result you will end up making a bet in a new coin and because of the bad history of altcoins and their pump and dumps these types of bets never end well for you in the long run.
with that said the preference is obviously always to invest in an altcoin that has at least some amount of history so you can make a better decision based on analysis of the pump and dumps that happed so far.

most of them times these people whom you call "experts" are no more than newbies trying to gain some fame and make themselves be heard or sometimes try to manipulate the masses into something that benefits them.

right now we have no reason to expect a bull run in short term. there will be a big bull run eventually and price will hit a new ATH, possibly near $100k this time but the start of it is not clear.

this statement is a little exaggerated but it is not all wrong either. in fact i have been saying the same thing for a long time now and if you really study different cryptocurrencies you will come up with a similar conclusion that a lot of altcoins (majority of them even) are completely worthless and shouldn't even have a value.
and this is one of the main reasons why altcoins are always going down in the long term.

i don't think the Chinese government is dumb enough to think they can control bitcoin. specially when they release their altcoin ranking every now and then it is completely clear that they already know they can not control it which is why they are so happy about the centralized altcoins that they have more control over.