OP sounds like he is worrying due to what happened in January 2015 (due to mtgox hacking news) but I am too looking for marking this year's low by mid dates of this January. Right now, bitcoin prices are trading below $3800 whereas 24hrs high was above $4000. I speculate next 5 to 10 days will be crucial as I am expecting bitcoin may hit the bottom of this year. Please note this is based on pattern observation based on dates and not an usual technical one.

Moreover, I believe bitcoin may not break last year's low of $3200 levels this time as we are witnessing continuous increase in trade volumes. We may expect prices to test $3500 levels but this should be a once-in-year buying opportunity. Before end of first quarter of this year, we may reach $6800 levels most probably.

Probably he wants to cover all his losses only from trading. I can understand his frustration but right now he should not continue his trading with current state of skill levels. He must need to improve himself so that you will find the differences. Taking a long break for the purpose of learning and practicing is highly suggested. I'm not sure it will be possible because he must need some income stream for leading a life like he mentioned. Moreover anyone cannot earn a living from trading at first place as results from trading is not consistent all the times. So finding some job and then along with that focusing on sharpening trading skills is highly recommended.

But, I'm afraid that he will be finding any development in his trading because he was not successful for last two years hence even the market was positive, he was unable to manage his trading into profitable. So, the current market conditions cannot be the reason why he is hesitating to continue. But, he must need a big break so that it will improve all his trading skills before getting back to trading.

But you cannot ignore that whales are the core reasons why we are here at the current levels of bitcoin markets. I'm not finding wales was contributing in the rising market because it was about the impact of fiats hence it is all about institutional investors who are known for big amount of fiats and not about their crypto holding. But, there are possibilities like whales who did dumps at peak times might be having big amount of fiats and joining in the market when market was rising , still we do consider them as institutional people not as whales.

Worldwide, most people are not having enough opportunities to support crypto in terms of using it but all they can do is, buying and then holding. I do believe holding must be the big help for cryptos, which is the only thing we can do these days. But, we cannot stop people who are all making profits by continuous buying and selling because they are the market mover and we must need them all the times.

Yes, I too believe this whole discussion is about what are the applications of having blockchain technology after cryptocurrencies. Because, even blockchain technology was innovated for hosting cryptocurrencies, many people started suggesting about making a use of blockchain technology in other sectors. But the real question here must be, why do we need to implement blockchain in those sectors and what are the changes effectively it will bring.

I believe all the business/domain which are about basic database handling and about preventing duplication and counterfeiting then definitely may go for blockchain technology to have them more effectively and also in efficient way. Because, blockchain technology is all about having a database in decentralized manner. So, malfunctioning will be 100% prevented.

I believe this is the problem of every online industry because hacking is happening everywhere and most especially with government projects but crypto exchanges are getting severely suffered as their business model is purely handling the hot assets. Hackers and stealing are new due to online thing nor due to introduction of cryptocurrencies but being a online money, crypto space is facing big impacts.

There are two possibilities why we are getting suffered even after many evolution against hacking :

1. Hackers are also evolving and that might be in faster manner than exchanges. Hackers innovates new methods and then exchanges and antivirus providers are fixing them. It is an usual practice in internet space. Always a versatile virus will born first and then only its fix will born.

2. Exchanges might be scamming people by the names of hacking. It had happened many times in the past. Some people are still suspecting mt.gox must be this kind as their treasury team is still holding and moving enormous amount of bitcoins.

Honestly etc is a big coin and all that but it is not really that hard to find mining power anymore. There are COMPANIES that rent out their mining power for stuff like this. People are not using mining power to only mine anymore.

Look at where Craig Wright found its hashing power, he has no miners at all and yet he was capable of mining so much bitcoin cash blocks with the mining power he rented, that person who rented to craig was not looking to make money from his hash power and mining rewards, he is just natural evil who is willing to sell his hashing power whoever wants to regardless of what they will use it, it kinda is similar to renting your gun to whoever wants it regardless of if the use will be hunting or murder. Hence, if anyone wants to do 51% attack on any coin they will be capable of finding proper hash power if they want to. Of course its impossible to do so in bitcoin, ethereum and similar level ones.

Thankfully my country doesn't have laws for bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency. Which means as long as I spend my bitcoins and not cash them out I do not have to pay for anything.

For example, lets say I earned bitcoin from employer as a bonus and its enough to go for a small vacation during the weekend, if I spend it on Expedia that means I do not have to declare any earnings at all since all I did was earn bitcoins and spend bitcoins without cashing it out to fiat currency at all. I can buy stuff online and actually use them like computer parts or steam wallet funds and so forth without declaring anything since it allows me to keep it on bitcoin.

I only have to declare what I cash out and even that is incredibly small considering I don't have to declare anything under 25 thousand dollars per year and anything over I am still free of that initial of 25 thousand but living in a third world country I can't dream of making that much anyway.

Depends on payment for what. If it is for regular day to day stuff like buying groceries or paying a taxi cab fare bitcoin has a bigger chance to become the future of payment systems. If it is about gaming or about blockchain needs than ethereum has a chance to become the future of that payment systems. If it is about sending money from A to B and making it cheap and fast than Ripple will be the future payment system of that.

Hence, as you can see all of the big coins have their own stuff that they are good on, it doesn't matter which one is bigger or which one is smaller but all of them have their place in the world. Adoption can vary from one sector to another and thats why we have many new coins, they are trying to be THE currency for the sector they are starting out on and promising to get market share of.

There are two reasons for that to happen. One is that they saw people not getting punished or saw any consequences of anything when they just scam the customers and investors. So when they get funded and do nothing with the money but spend it on personal stuff they know they will get away with it (in third world countries this is much worse since laws for foreign people asking for refund is a lot more loose).

Moreover, another problem is that they do not care about doing anything because they realize the market is horrible and they will fail, some of them even tries to achieve something but when the price of their token goes lower and lower whereas the value of the ETH they collected also goes low they realize they are underfunded to achieve their goals so they just take the money and leave.

You will be forced to care because even if you like it or not bitcoin (and crypto in general) is somewhat related to stock market. Not directly of course but what stock market is doing affects the whole economy and which indirectly effects bitcoin as well. Crypto can survive only if the economy is good.

Look at Venezuela, people assumed bitcoin would be getting better there since people wanted to put their money into crypto but if you look at it right now people do not put their money in there because they have no money left.

Someone who lost that much money in inflation do not posses the riches to actually set a savings aside to invest into bitcoin. Which means even though things are not remotely similar in USA, stocks needs to do great so people would have surplus money to invest into bitcoin whereas if the stocks do badly they will get their money back from it and cash out their bitcoins to cover the losses.

This not only an Indian deal too. G20 gathered couple months back and they decided that not only cryptocurrency is a problem for the countries, but it should also be encouraged and taxed properly. Which means the countries in G20 that do not have any cryptocurrency laws (specifically crypto related) will soon have them and probably already working on them.

Governments do not take these steps quickly, they don't wake up one morning and say lets make a new law, it takes a while so they are still probably working on it. But as we can see from that G20 leaders gathering that crypto will be relevant in law for a long time and they are working on it.

India is just another one that is stepping in the right direction but there will be a lot more in the upcoming months soon.

For starters it is great that they will go out and buy the stocks themselves first, this way you know they have shares ready and you are just buying THEIR shares and not others. This is not some sort of system where people are capable of buying nasdaq and nyse stocks with crypto they have to be honest with you.

This is just a system where you buy stocks from dx.exchange directly and paying them for their stocks which could change prices differently than regular stocks depending on the market they build but more like stablecoin where it only changes couple percent at most.

I would rather see stocks bought with crypto directly instead of this system but it will at least be a start. Blockchain and stocks have great potential together, instead of these new players I hope nasdaq and nyse realizes the potential and work with coinbase or someone like that to make it possible directly from them.

It would have been amazing if you compared the lowest numbers of 2017 and 2018 as well. It is amazing that bitcoin somehow reached 20 thousand dollars at one point and dropping as low as 3200 was of course an upsetting thing. However, have you check what the lowest bitcoin was at 2017 ?

It was around 700 dollars, the whole year we had only 3200 as the lowest in bitcoin at 2018. Which means about 4-5 times higher lowest point for bitcoin compared to 2017 as well.

If you want to look at the good things in bitcoin look at the low numbers where people are not willing to sell. We are all willing to sell our coins at 20 thousand dollars but people didn't want to sell their bitcoins under $3200 this year whereas they were fine with selling it for $700 previous year. Same applies to all other coins. Do not compare the peaks only, compare the bottoms as well.

Stop loss is definitely the wisest thing anyone can do. Plus, having a buy order ready afterwards could be really beneficial as well. Lets say having a stop loss of $3900 while having a buy order at 4300 would be ideal. The price has been going down to 3600 and less for a while and it keeps going up to $4200 all the time, this means if it drops to $3900 right now than the price could drop as much as $3600 which you can sell at $3900 and rebuy at $3600 later.

Plus if it goes above $4200 to $4300 that means we might be on a bull trend and price could go who knows where and that is why its above the trend. If you set your buy and sell orders at levels that you think are according to the trend of what happened in the past 2 months than it is less risky. Of course, there are still chances you fail and lose but at least this makes it less riskier.

Holding for the next generation ? Interesting. I am not sure how many people are following this kind of strategy but in my experience also this must be the one of the effective way to invest, moreover it is all about how to plan up our  investments based on bitcoins. If we take Mr. Satoshi as an example, he is holding for last 10 years and it may go for centuries also. We are not completely aware of what are his plans but anyone who is able to hold like that then definitely can go for investing all their money into bitcoins.

But, sticking with basics is always important. Diversification will save lots hassles in down trend market. Betting all in should not be done at single shot but it may be done in slow and steady progress. I mean we may keep buying bitcoins for years then we will be in definite profits. Holding bitcoins in profits will not hurt anyone.

There will be no special trick for beginners as everything will be working for making profits hence, any strategy or tips is meant for all type of traders. Yes, both beginners and professional traders need to know when the price of bitcoin is going to up and when it is going to down. Knowing these ups and downs is the real challenge of trading and nothing else. It is not that simple, you cannot find these easily. Still, most of the traders are making profits as we do not need an exact up or down price levels but approximate price levels are more than enough to make profits.

He explained that by keep buying at dips. But, he's about having fixed capital hence I'm not sure how he will be managing for a continuous down trend markets. A trading strategy should be based on what we are trading and buying at dips and holding will work for bitcoin if the trader is ready to hold for long term.

"easy money" here is not the type of money you make of trading or something, the "easy money" talked about is the banknotes and the like that lose value over time. Hard money is what bitcoin and gold type of stuff that gains value over time. Hence easy money here plays a big important role.

USA needs to make a deal with china no matter what because USA has a huge debt (last I remember it was something like 15 TRILLION dollars if I am not wrong) and it is still run by an idiot who doesn't know what he should do to fix it hence its getting worse. China doesn't need to make the deal but the more they keep doing this the more they will keep USA in their back pockets for another while.

After a certain point China will have so much USA debt in their possession that they will be capable of selling American Debt bonds for pennies on the dollar and every country will try to get it and ask america for payments. USA should be careful about what they are doing with China.

If you go for checking out many boards across this forum, you can find most of people are suggesting about buying at dips but I'm not sure how many people are making use of those suggestions. I did few in last 4 months and now waiting for another dip to enter again. I'm not selling out any of garbage as I am still believing in to them to bounce back at any time. Also I have bought few major altcoins. Usually I am not believing in to most of altcoins  but this time I am finding this is an easy way to have more bitcoins for the same money, just as a part of making use of low tide.

I guess there will be no need to change the direction of sailing nor the ship as I am still believing in to bitcoins moreover I am still in profit with my bitcoin stash (bought them by early 2015). Usually people do think about those "options of changes" only when they are frustrated due to losses.

Do you see charts for the other countries? There was one paragraph for all of London stock market, just two-three sentence, nothing about the German and french or so any other European countries whereas there are many places like Italy that took a great hit. Plus the only other one is the Asian markets. Hence, there has been a big big emphasis on SP with a lot of thing said about and charts and so forth whereas the "worldwide" was cut short, given only a fraction of the effort to London one and a shallow Asian flyby for it.

This is definitely a global problem right now and this was focusing on more on the fact that "American stocks dropped so did other markets" instead of "all markets dropped". It has been a horrible economical year for everyone, not just USA. So USA stocks dropping is not a bigger story right now than any other country and should not be the focus.

I just see a topic in trading discussion which is about how many crypto exchanges got hacked since 2010 and the statistics are really terrible as billions of funds had been stolen and it is really a kind of panic I am getting because of how secured the exchanges I am into. But honestly it is not about exchanges are dead because as per you have mentioned they are continuously running one after one. It means we need to secure ourselves and we cannot be depending on them completely.

As per a recent study, most of the exchanges are faking their trading volumes just for the reason of attracting new traders. It may be part of their business to kick start in a highly competitive market but I'm not finding it is a good practice on a common trader's point of view. Because, many people are choosing exchanges based on trading volume as it will be the prime factor for having enough liquidity.

Cryptocurrency exchanges are not dead yet and it may not die completely for ever. But, it is time to learn our lessons so that we can secure our capital and then we can avoid big frustrations due to the collapse of any exchanges we are into.