it consists of two parts:
1. decentralized: which is a bit complicated to define these days, for example what other poster said, ethereum is not decentralized because of many reasons. but basically a decentralized system is where decision making is put to the network and requires majority's agreement on everything and no one entity should control anything including the code, the forks, and the supply. in ethereum case they control 80% of the supply with premine, the code and also the network is becoming centralized every day as people can no longer run its full node

2. smart contracts, which means any cryptocurrency that has a scripting language that allows you to create contracts with it. so any coin that has forked from bitcoin or copied its technology has the smart contract ability inherited from bitcoin. some of them like ethereum added more functionality to it because they wanted to not be a currency (like bitcoin is) and only be a platform focusing on smart contracts.

they already did this, if i recall correctly this FUD was spread before they forked BSV and caused the panic in bitcoin which led to crash from $6k to $3k. in fact the main reason for that crash was: 1. the market was still undecided and the fear was present, 2. the whales took the opportunity to manipulate the market and crash the price.

as you can see CSW's only achievement was a short term drama that succeeded only because it was timed correctly and the market was in the same direction. this won't be repeated for at least another 2 years because we have entered the bull market and FUD like that can not change this direction anymoer.

every time i start thinking price has stabilized the next day there is a price rise to a new short term high level which is indicating the very strong momentum that has shaped up in the market that can not be slowed down anymore. but i still remain skeptical about breaking $10k resistance and going above that market to set a new high at $11.5k because i believe that this resistance is going to prove to be stronger than you think which means it will take a lot longer to break.

sometimes even change in government body doesn't mean certain rules would change. they can remain the same if the future governments share the same views as the previous ones. but also that doesn't mean bitcoin adoption would stop, rules can change. the government can only slow it down so much before they realize that they can't stop it and have to give up and accept it.

i would stay away from any ICO/IEO or basically any token that replies on another platform since all they do is create a useless token, sell it and take a lot of money!

if you want actual projects and "ideas" then you have to check out stand alone blockchains. i personally have a similar idea and in my list i have a couple of DAG coins to research and see how they do things because that technology really interests me but have not yet had the time to do it so i wouldn't name any coins but you can easily find them.
additionally i have another group in my list which is anonymous coins, Monero if you aren't already familiar with the "idea" and then GRIN are the two i have my eye on.

ps. you won't make any decent profit if you invest in decent projects because shitcoins get pumped not good projects and pumps give the most profit while good coins may not even rise.

beware that disconnecting the internet is not going to provide you any security if your computer is already compromised (like having a malware already on it). to have a proper cold storage you must be on a clean computer that has never been connected to the internet and will never be. to do that using a live Linux on a DVD is the easiest thing to do.

in order to do what you want, you simply install each wallet software, generate a new key pair, print it on a paper and you have yourself a paper wallet. now you only have to send coins to the address of that key pair.
make sure to test the setup first with a small amount to find if you have made any mistakes.

in my opinion there is a difference between what Buffet says about bitcoin from a perspective of an old investor who only invests in things that have a physical "product" that he understand and with those who are calling bitcoin a "pyramid scheme".
the first one is understandable and is a view of its own but the second is just dumb people on the internet spreading bullshit.

if you want to be brain dead and gullible that is your choice and Craig's chance to empty your pocket. 

my speculation is a slower rise from here to $10k which may take a while and then a "breakout" happens but not before. which means talking about $11.5k is not really important for me, i care mostly about the $10k target and when that is going to be broken because when it does we can easily see a big rise follow that up right away in which case $15k is a more possible next target.
but then again up until that point can take a couple of months.

i don't see why $100k couldn't happen., considering the  way bubbles have been in the past and also the way money sometimes flows in the market like crazy, it is not that unlikely to see a price like $100k.
in the end it all comes down to supply and demand. bitcoin has a scarce supply and the adoption so far has been minuscule (less than 1% of the world) and it has not stopped or slowed down, instead it has only been speeding up so if that 1% grows to 5% we should see a price much higher than $100k. it may not happen this fast (2020) but it is not an unlikely target.

the reason is because this has ALWAYS been the pattern while people want to remain in denial.

when bitcoin rises, altcoins get dumped.
when bitcoin falls, altcoins get dumped more.
and when like now, bitcoin is stable, altcoins get pumped.

the reason for that is because of the way people truly think about bitcoin and altcoins despite what they publicly might say. what they truly think is that they believe in bitcoin while they have no faith in altcoins. all they want from altcoins is profit on their bitcoin stash which is why they always dump altcoins while bitcoin is making a big move and that is why they move to altcoins to make profit by pumping them while bitcoin is not making any move.

airdrop (in its true meaning no the new altered meaning) was meant to "give away" some coins for free to people who are interested in the project to test things out and see if they like what the project itself offers, find bugs, give suggestions,... in short participate in development of the decentralized project.
for example in  early years people who had some bitcoins would give away those coins to others to "spread the word" the most known example is the 10000 bitcoin for pizza story which was a type of "spreading the word".

but then the new meaning changed into fooling people to advertise your useless token for you and pay them less than minimum vague to work for you and call that "airdrop" then when they advertised you dump your premined huge stash and make a lot of money and go away.
this also explains why they pay these newbies so little because they want to be the biggest controller of the price as long as they are around, after they dump they no longer care because they move on to next scam.

"victim"?!!
bitcoin is not even affected by this trade war between US and China let alone be the "victim" of it. that could have been a concern if bitcoin was really being used as a currency for trades on a big scale but we all know that bitcoin is used as a currency but only on a very small scale and it is still treated mostly as an investment.
so the connection you are trying to make here doesn't even make sense.

that chart is good but it is not showing the true trends because of the halving mainly because the 2017 rise is dwarfing all the previous rises and with the type of zoom this chart has and its low quality it is not possible to see the real thing that happened at those times.
for example if you zoom in the 2012 halving you can see that there was a very big rally at the time due to halving. and the 2013 big rise may not have had much to do with halving both because we already had the rise and also because it is far away from the halving itself. same with 2016 halving and 2017 big rise.

a company like Facebook creating their own centralized and possibly closed sourced and closed (private) blockchain cryptocurrency should not be confused with bitcoin and its acceptance as payment by other companies.
the first one is meaningless to use because it is simply a big corporation making money from the hype but the second one is important to us because it increases bitcoin adoption.

the biggest problem with masternodes is exactly the fact that you have to lock up a large amount of money in an online wallet when large amounts should always be locked up in an "offline wallet" instead. this also has another big risk which sometimes is ignored is that you are going to be bag holding a large amount of an altcoin, an altcoin that is going to enter its dumping phase sooner or later and when it does you will end up losing a lot of money because you have a bigger money at "stake".

we are behind the $8k price because this is the real resistance and all the previous levels which people thought were "resistances" were really only a price on the way to this point. not to mention that because of the dumps earlier this year price was below the real intrinsic value and it needed to "jump" back up to this point which should have been reached months ago.
and that is why i don't see any drops without any really serious drama!

halving and its effect is two parts. the first one that comes before the halving is the hype up part where people who think they are going to miss out are going to buy bitcoin with such an enthusiasm that will push the price up a lot. that is why we always see a rather big rise in 2 months before the halving.
and the second part is after the actual halving of the reward which is reduction of new coins that enter the market which technically should reduce the sell pressure and help with the rise. which is why a couple of months after the halving we always see a smooth rise.

lets first refine your question better, you want to know which coin is going to be pumped next.
well that is impossible to tell because that is something that the pumpers know and they will NEVER tell others about it before they buy in themselves and start the pump otherwise there would be no profit in it for them.

the only thing you can do is to try and find the symptoms of a pump. for example the BSV pump was because of a fake news that started yesterday prior to the pump about the scammer known as Craig Wright being the real Satoshi Nakamoto according to US government. while this was obviously a fake news and a big lie and even though CW is a scammer, the news was a pumping fuel that pumpers used to pump this shitcoin.
cases like this are all over the market, they release some fake news like Microsoft adopting ETH, banks using XRP,... and a lot more that they use to pump these shitcoins up.

other symptoms are the price rise and volume rise itself which you can only find by looking at the charts. not all the pumps are by news and many of them are out of nowhere when the pumping team picks up that shitcoin and starts pumping it. this method is harder but it is possible to find these shitcoins at the right time and jump in but you have to always be careful to sell them at the right time too before the coin gets dumped and you lose money.

unfortunately in 99% of the cases you can't because the "value" of altcoins is mostly determined based on hype and their pump and dumps rather than their utilities. for example there are currently useless junk coins in to 10 altcoins that technically have 0 value for example XRP and BCH are completely worthless but they still have a price because they are centralized and have been pumped by their pumping teams so you can't really evaluate or predict these things.
similarly because of the manipulation and being pumped, they have equal chance of crashing and going to zero.