there are already multiple similar topics like this. refer to those.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1984565.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1990935.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1993766.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2000042.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1976480.0

it doesn't matter if you and i think the rise is "a lot", it happens anyways. i used to think like that in the early days, saying 50%- 100%- 200% rise is a lot and a "miracle" if price goes above something. but in time i realized these prices are still way too low. the same way that we can all laugh at $200 i currently laugh at $2500 as a low price.

i didn't say every single miner is doing this!
there are a lot of different mining pools and miners, each with a very different settings. so obviously they behave differently also.
but the big mining pools such as F2Pool and Antpool and a couple of others are mainly my target.

look at these two and how many "half empty" blocks they have mined.
https://blockchain.info/blocks/F2Pool
https://blockchain.info/blocks/AntPool

now look at this for example:
https://blockchain.info/blocks/GBMiners
or this
https://blockchain.info/blocks/BTC.TOP


it probably was an accident because they didn't verify the previous block was ~20 seconds before this.

this is only bad in my opinion because it proves one thing and shows a couple of more bad things.
first it proves once again that there was in fact a spam attack causing this massive backlog.

and it then shows that how mining pools are ignoring the transactions with low fees and only mine those that have high enough fee for them. because if you look at the number of unconfirmed transactions during this time it never reached zero or near zero. it has always been above 5K but when there is no more high fee transactions they MUST include all the low fee and zero fee transactions. and apparently they choose not to!

for example right now there is 8800 unconfirmed tx but last block picked up 1349 or 695 kB of them.

p.s. there is no migrating when there is nowhere to migrate to

your methods are good enough. i have only two things to add:
1. there is no reason for using old versions. the old versions had bugs and can even be missing some critical parts. for example i believe Electrum 1.9.8 generates uncompressed private keys. this is outdated and will lead to bigger transaction sizes. also i may be wrong but the transaction with old versions used to use a high S value which is rejected by the new version.

2. no matter what method you chose, make sure to test it first. don't just send everything you own there.
for example make the offline electrum or paper wallet or ... then send a small amount to it. 0.001BTC would do. then turn everything off and come back the other day and spend it. if everything was smooth and you had no problems then send everything there.

the internal implementation of a banking system and a credit card is also too complicated but you don't see anyone complaining!

the reason is simply because the "end user" being the customer or Mc donals both won't be exposed to the details and complications. they just use a simplified interface which is that little device you swipe your credit card (i think it is called POS in English!) or a simple wallet interface for bitcoin.

the same way you don't need to know what happens when you swipe your card you don't need to know about fees, etc in bitcoin. the App should analyze and tell you everything.
and then the same way that credit card device rejects a dead or stolen, ... credit card, another bitcoin app/device can reject bad transactions with low fees or other risks.

just to clarify "the depth" for numbers or the decimal places have always been 8 meaning 0.00000001 has always been valid.
what i said about 0.01BTC was just an interface thing meaning what the wallet GUI showed.
otherwise the code has always been the same. it actually is not in decimals it is a big integer which is then translated to bitcoin with decimal places and shown in the GUI.

apparently it wasn't as "natural" as you may think. the first suggestion was actually to use 0.01BTC as Satoshi
and also apparently 0.01BTC was the smallest unit that the interface showed
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=407442.msg4415850#msg4415850

i am not sure how else to report this so i just post it here and if anyone with access can fix it, that would be great.

i was reading the page about Satishi (unit) and i realized the reference #2 is wrong.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Satoshi_(unit)#cite_note-ribuck-2
it leads to a wrong topic https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=407422.0

while it should be this one: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=407442.0 (found it by searching)

i think he is pointing to "the future of bitcoin conference" that started ~13 hours ago.
here is the link to its livestream that i found on google: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAcOnvOVquo

you do realize that Satoshi didn't name 0.00000001 as 1 satoshi and the community did right ?

it already did go down in the past 2 days if you wanted to buy then you should have bought then, if not i don't think that opportunity will repeat itself!

and for now it seems like you are wrong there is no "down" as the screenshot by OP shows it is stability all the way. we need to get used to seeing LTC price above 0.016BTC now

you are the one making this drastic speculation so you are the one who should say why not us!!

Thanks for the payment 

it seems like market loves $2500+ price so much better than anything else. and it is a pretty nice middle ground price too. it is exactly in the 50% way up to $3000 and has a lot of room to go down in case some whale decided it is time for FUD in a couple of weeks.

all the history is one click away from you.
just visit a website that lists these coins with their prices, a website that you like. it can be coinmarketcap, coingecko, ... or it can be any of the exchanges that you use for trading. they all have charts that you can see these price changes over time.

for bitcoin it is a simple correction of price because it went up too fast, also it is because of a little bit of uncertainty about the future and how SegWit will be activated. it is not that heavy as you think.

for altcoins it is simply their end of the line, they got pumped and now it is time for the dump. the pump and dumps come in duos not alone. it is pretty heavy and will get harder.

these two are completely different and unrelated.
the ethereum bag holders and the ICO holders are panic selling at the moment because of the fear of price drop and also because of the fear of network fails that happened recently. on top of that the bubble is bursting.

bitcoin is unrelated to all that, and if anything all the money that runs out of ethereum should come back to bitcoin.

going down to $1500 is nearly -50% drop from the ATH. so you either say bitcoin is in a huge bubble which needs to burst and go down to $1500 or you say it is in a small bubble and busts to go down to a much higher price like $2000-2100 for example (still -27-30% and big).

which one is it?

no they are not an exchanger you are confused about the meaning of the word. and their rates are clear and transparent for those who are using them.
read this to understand what it means: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/exchange.asp

BitPay is not an exchange, it is a payment processor for businesses, even big ones like Valve is using it on their gaming platform called Steam to accept bitcoin payments.
they have this option that the merchant can receive the fiat equivalent of what the users pay through BitPay. and the rates are according to average market price.

there has been a surge of investors with all the good news which happened this year a couple of months ago which meant a lot of adoption and the price rise that we witnessed. but adoption is not something that can rise big constantly. it is a slow ongoing process. sometimes it speeds up with some news and then goes back to normal speed.

for $3000 to break we need another good news. many believe that SegWit is going to be that news and if it takes 2 more month of the same price without going down much you can expect $4000 be the new price that we test by the end of this year.