Think we are overlooking one big aspect of this all and that is the governments are regulating cryptoscurrencies which should be a bullish signal for anybody! Sure there may be a temporary pull back because there will be some FUD but cmon the overall arching theme here is that cryptos are here to stay, governments want the tax, and moving forward they realize they can't stop it so might as well tax it. As the old addage goes if you cant beat em, join em .

Do not underestimate these little pieces of individual Bitcoin use, small or big, they leave behind a mark and set a precedent. Remember pizza day? If some guy never bought 2 pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoins, several times, maybe it would have taken longer for people to attach value to Bitcoin. It is still remembered today as the first real transaction involving Bitcoin. Maybe one day people will remember that boat purchase in the small country when everyone is using it.

What goverments are doing is one aspect, but Bitcoin survives and thrived before any government knew about it, not because of policy but because individuals used it.

Ripple will touch $20 by end of 2018.

I am a newbie to BTC field.I have little little bit of BTC amount(around $14).Is it enough to trading altcoins.IF it is what are the sutable altcoins

Anyway, bitcoin and other crypto-currencies have already attracted huge attention from countries. In the future, some countries will prohibit, some regulate and some will implement. For this reason, Therefore, I believe that bitcoin will change the system of the economy.

if last year bitcoin scored a very surprising value.
does bitcoin still have the potential to register much higher value this year and in the years to come?
will the predictions of cripto be a reality or just a mere wishful thinking?
with great pleasure, I really appreciate your opinions and inputs from all of you.
Thank you very much.

Traditional investors are aware that crypto has already garnered massive interest from all over the world, and that means more money for them if they entered at the right time. The hundreds of billions of dollars wiped out of cryptospace in a span of a month *could* be regained if the money from the Dow continues to be pulled off and move it to crypto, and smart investors knew that the stocks aren't the best place to put their money in given the current market conditions. It seems that the most viable options they have right now are bitcoin and gold, but I'm not so sure about the latter, and the former being a likely option given its steal price.

let him trade it on paper as i did with stock market.

While browsing some online articles, I came across the mentioning of a book by noble laureate Friedrich Hayek, called "The Denationalization of Money". In it, Hayek argues against central banks issuing money and advocates the adoption of private money, not too dissimilar to what Bitcoin was designed as.

Interestingly, Hayek's book was published in 1976! At that point in time, only few people took the idea seriously.

If you know of some other visionary publications that "predicted" some aspects of this new world of cryptos, I would love to hear about it.

On a large scale we are not even close. However, I still want to believe we are going to be getting past the adoption phase pretty soon. Is it not becoming obvious ?

First, some investors are still scared and looking to see if it is right to get in or not, some have taken the bold step, institutions gradually are stepping, the LN will increase the speed of transactions and make bitcoin even more usable, once we hit those stage, we are going to even be getting past the growth phase, so for now, I will say we are just there in between the adoption and growth phase.

Those who have Dolars can and should buy, well, from whom all means are invested in crypto (like mine) should be kept, this year will make us all rich. When the whales finish this game down, the entire crypto market will jump and reach those levels that we have not yet seen.

Guys, have you noticed that everytime the market goes down, the internet is filled with bad news and apocalyptic news about crypto. But when the coins are rising, only good news are seen?
We must learn to not pay attention to this kind of manipulation

When ever someone ask you for more info than usual, that should sound an alarm in your head.  New icos that ask for more then your address are trying to take info about you that they can use for robbing you later, or making some purchase in your name.
I use this forum to check is some ico is a scam or not, other than that I use my common sense when I read their white paper and road map, if they promise too much I am running out, if not I think its OK. There is no other way to check new ico , maybe if you know development personally that changes everything.

You guys still don't understand? price started 0.04 on bitflip and now current price is now 0.35 while I'm typing this, and you guys are still skeptical. oh well  

Investing in ICO is one of the most risky investment that you will made if ever especially if you are just new in this crypto investment. There are so many ICOs to choose now and some of them are just created for scamming people. Only few ICO are genuine and have roadmap so you have to be careful.

Well as others have said Cardano and EOS will be the two big blockchains of 2018. But their room to "go up as high as possible" is kind of limited since their market cap is already very high. Unless the market cap of the entire cryptosphere increases substantially this year, but who knows.

Your best bet is to research ICOs that have a low market cap but good teams and a good product.

If only its that simple dude. Get out when you seem to be on top, try other investments, then get back at the bottom. Everyone would be rich then. But movement in crypto isn't really that predictable to begin with so even experienced traders often get stuck and are left with holding as the best option.

"Bitcoin is down, crypto is down, everything is down, this is the end, crypto and bitcoin are dead."

How often have you read the above in the last weeks? Let's look at some things in a bit more context here to really understand things. 3 months ago, bitcoin price was around exactly the price we're at today. A year ago it was at about 1k, that's a 600% increase since then. All this crash/correction has shown is that nothing can rise indefinitely and at an ever increasing pace.

Take a step back people and think about things logically, nothing else in the world would offer the same ROI that crypto has for the last year, do not let your greed blind you, the illusion that you could invest and the price would continue to rise without any resistance is dead but crypto is not.

It is still early to tell if there is such an impact of bitcoin in financial stability of a country. The government can always make a measure like imposing regulations on bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to to ensure that the country's financial stability will not be affected. Many government fears that because of bitcoin's decentralized feature, they can't be able to monitor any funds that comes from unknown sources like money laundering and other illegal activities that uses bitcoin. This illegal activities might later affect the economy if it is remain unchecked.

As of now, bitcoin is just a minor speculative asset, it does not have any significant impact on the economy. You could say that money people would otherwise put in savings or other investment classes like precious metals, real estate, stock market, penny stocks, mutual funds, they invested in crypto instead. So bitcoin's impact is that it has reduced the value of other asset classes (only slightly, by less than 0.1%).