$50 is not that small an amount, if you look at coins below $1 now, or let us say even half a dollar, then you have 100 coins with your 50. I would take 50 coins of two such coins, or 50 coins of something like Ripple and then the rest in a small basket.

Remember, you are buying with a target of long term hold, since it's $50. If you bought ETH or LTC when they were $5 you would have thousands today. So that is the aim for your $50, to wait two years and reap the profits.

Please do not go in with an ICO. Too risky.

All the other coins can do all they want and say all the want, but to me the only real use anonymity alt is Monero. Yes, I am well aware it is behind price wise of Dash and Zcash,,, but I have never still seen use for those two coins, so for me, I cannot really explain how I as a normal user would ever need them when Monero already meets all my needs. Also, it is not getting important, it has always been important. Bitcoin still values privacy a lot. It is anonymity you are talking about I am sure.

Of course it cannot be maintained, this pattern has been seen before, and is normally followed by corrections. But it goes up and down at the moment, according to the inverse of Bitcoin. You can see the downwards pressure now on Bitcoin happening, perhaps this will sustain over the week. As long as it does, it will result in a general appreciation of alts. I can see now a lot of my alts finally FINALLY gaining ground, cutting my losses overall to below 40% from what I originally invested with BTC months ago.

Mixed feelings, but I guess if BTC has to go down again so I break even, even if BTC goes down to 15k I will be in big fiat profits above 20%.

I think because of one simple reason. Minimum order on CME is 5 BTC or about $100,000 while minimym on CBOE is 1 BTC or $20k. So volume of course will not be as high, if we assume there are less big whales than they are small ones.

I still do not really see the effect in either case. Yes, BTC seems to be slipping now, as it is below $18k at the moment, but we always see this slippage every time a new ATH is reached. I felt that futures were not going to have much impact, or if they would, it would not be big or long.

I also think it is healthy for a step back. But cannot say now if that will happen.

Token swaps are always very difficult, I see this happening all the time at exchanges, especially the smaller exchanges, which is why I only use them for more recognized crypto where the wallet upgrades are easier. Next time, take all your coins out from any exchanges before the swaps, and then wait for the devs to announce a stable place for swaps, then go there.

But yes, good advice, never attack an exchange that has your coins. Just be polite and patient. Good luck guys.

It is easy to find (good) markets. Just go to Coinmarket cap, search for the crypto you are interested in, and then look at the Markets tab. For example for Ripple this would be found on https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ripple/#markets

All the pairs are listed there along with the exchange, so you can find the suitable pair. If it is not listed there, then better not to use the exchange since coinmarketcap only uses exchanges which are legitimate (well, legitimate enough where trading volume can be recorded). Bithumb, Poloniex, Bittrex and Bitfinex are the biggest markets, BTC, KRW and USD.

Correct assessment. In fact, Litecoin is the obvious choice for me against Bitcoin Cash. It has Segwit, it will have lightning network, it will have atomic swapping, and who knows what next? It keeps moving along at the rate of "fast" when it comes to development, while Bitcoin Cash is too busy making political moves and marketing. Litecoin also has a very positive community, closer to that of Bitcoin, and makes no enemies. Bitcoin Cash wants to be aggressive, with us or against us. I cannot abide by that type of attitude, really. Litecoin is more honest, drama free. What happens when BCH folks disagree one day? Another quick fork?

Let us save you the trouble and tell you there is no such thing as a profitable cloud mining as an investor. The only one making money are the companies running cloud mining contracts. Of course, there are those who make profit but you need to be lucky: Bitcoin price must rise and difficulty must remain suitably manageable.

All those who make profits anyway actually would have made much more if they bought Bitcoin and held it.

If you MUST try cloud mining, wait for 2 companies in 2018 who will sell you power contracts instead of hashpower. Then you know you stand a better chance. One is gigahash another is hydrominer.

Yeah, and if we base the price rise on the effect of new money, and diversification, then I think we can expect the entire 2018 to be the same. Even more new money, and newer money from old money going into alts to hedge their Bitcoin bets. Can you imagine what new investors did for Litecoin when they finally found out about it? So now the trick is,,, which new coin will be attractive to newcomers? Let us not talk about technology, but talk about what speaks to investors. I think they liked the fact that LTC's dev was someone they knew, someone smart, and whose dev community is not split.

Hmm, no. Iota and Litecoin are very good coins (yes I know Iota got caught red handed with their over hyping and have now been forced to issue a statement clarifying the Microsoft relationship that does not exist) but they have already had their superb runs. Another one in January is far, far quickly, such speed would be worrying.

But Waves on the other hand I do not know. Either it is picking up speed for a boom in January, or it will be just steady and slow rising from now all the way to 2019.

Yes, it is normal for a coin to attract a lot of attention when the price appreciates the way Waves has, hitting its new fiat highs. It did not do a x10 like other alts, though, so it will avoid getting overheated in alts market. So this is good news for us holders, especially with all the nice things being achieved before the end of the year.

I think the devs do not need inspiration from prices, but of course it is a nice bonus, so am sure some people are cashing out, but not enough to lower prices and somehow keep the growth in check.

I wonder how long more people can continue asking this question and find that only a week later, they are already in profit? Everything is rising so quickly now, with so few signs of slowing down. Yes, I am enjoying the prices, but because I am a holder, I worry for the effect today's huge explosion will have on tomorrow.

This is not really a party, but it seems like a bash to outsiders. So they come in and share the fun. Who of us will be left when the party is over and the proper work to build ideas and products up begins?

You must not have seen how ICOs managed without all these extracompany parties doing it for them. Take a look at 100 ICOs in this year, just take any pick. What is your measure of success? Millions raised? OK, then they have been successful. But 0% have been successful in meeting their full objectives. Not when most of them have scheduled their launch next year. And if you want to measure by way of token/coin price, then you will see less than 10% have a value today higher than what they were during their ICOs.

Research and understanding is not a certainty of ICO success. It is not that simple, buddy.

Depends on who the bounty hunters are and depends on the type of ICOs. Some ICOs just want a lot of signups and a full telegram group, full slack group etc. It creates an illusion of interest, so when new people enter these channels they see, wow thousands of interested people, then FOMO kicks in and they invest. Hype is a powerful thing these days especially with so many competing ICOs!

But serious ICOs do want quality people promoting their ICO otherwise you end up with shitposters and spammers who ruin the reputation of the project, or worse, give out wrong information about the ICO.

That is true, but dig deeper and the systemic problem is us, the community. If we take a look at ourselves, we see a distinct lack of ideology behind our motivations for cryptocurrency. A lack of principles, a lack of good sense, and this transfers over to the communities we support and the developers behind those. Put out a "shitcoin" and we still run for it. Put out a "shit developer with shit idea" and we still promote it if it pays us good money, we still escrow for them if they pay good %.

The forum recently banned ICO advertising. That was the best move in a long time.

We decide what the future of crypto is. We decided what crypto has become.

You guys are the speculators who only buy and sell for profit. That is okay of course, every person has their place in the world of crypto. But I hope that after you bought your Waves you have also tried using their platform (new one I am about to try but if it is anything like the old one, be prepared to be amazed.

The main thing is not to miss the sell moment, but to try the product out first! You will be so glad you bought.

No need to be sorry for being dark, I also feel the same way. But core has nothing to do with SegWit not being adopted. In fact, they always push exchanges and wallets to use the tech and upgrade. Coinbase for example said, "it would only take months to do this and that why is core taking so long?"

So now SW is ready, the real question is, why are people like Coinbase taking so long to upgrade? Electrum has long already upgraded and made their wallets SW ready. I am waiting and waiting to be able to use my SW addresses.

Core cannot force people to change. They are obviously just lazy and have other agendas. Exchanges are the same, end of the day they want the convenient option. What happens when BCH runs into problems? Maybe they go to a BCH fork?

Also a Waves holder, not Ripple. Also Litecoin for me. 2018 will not make me rich (hell, I did not expect Litecoin to beat the crap out of other alts in 2017) but I will be extremely satisfied if it can maintain $250 for 2018, remember even Charlie Lee says be prepared for it to become $20. The same can be said for Ethereum, be prepared for it to drop below its old $400 ATH, be prepared for everything to drop for a while, including Bitcoin.

2018 will be the consolidation phase, not the boom phase we thought it would be. 2017 is already the boom we did not expect.

I am not really keen on multi wallet at the moment, they all seem to have their downfalls. I suppose one of the best around is still Exodus, which has a solid base and can have private keys exported finally. Only problem is not that many coins supported. Jaxx is also a good option but everyone seems to say it has a private key vulnerability. Then of course you have Coinomi. Maybe Waves also counts since it supports the main alts.

I am not holding that many alts so just sticking to individual wallets.

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I guess people still think decentralization is another fancy word. You cannot really decentralizes while Ripple is a project led and managed by a team. No matter how good they are, just like ETH, they are still by definition centralized. So cannot bandy that term around like it will mean something. They are still unproven in terms of development. They have a lot of things promised and have so much to catch up to next year. Still not sure why the price is increasing, but I guess that is just new money coming in from all the new Bitcoin players looking to diversify and thinking they were late to Ethereum.