In bitcoin people are free to make their own decisions. That includes foolish and fearful decisions. None of that changes the fact that bitcoin is revolutionizing finance. If we have a lot of new users who bought without understanding the protocol, then we should not be surprised when they make an ignorant sell decision based on nonsense.
If you believe in the project then just ignore the hype. We have seen these cycles for many years now.

Welcome to bitcoin! For the new among us, this is what a free market looks like and we may see a 50% reduction in valuation before it's over. There are no controls on the market and if people panic or just decide to divest then it will be so. Enjoy the ride.

Scared yet Jamie?

Muahahaha, we are coming to rob your corrupt banks of their customers.

The Chinese did more than you, contributed more infrastructure, etc.  That is why they have more power than you. It's that simple. If only there were a coin that rewards inaction and trolling.

Believe it of not, some of us don't care about the money. And famous... That would be the ultimate curse for me.

I want to see bitcoin take on fiat systems and put the power money holds into the hands of the people. That's what this project is about for me. Wealth means little to me compared with making the world better.

I so don't get what you mean. I can get less than a penny's worth if I want to pay the fee. It's like asking when gold will be too expensive to buy because you have this arbitrary idea of an ounce in mind. Forget about the idea of a "bitcoin", there are no coins. It's like gold. Too expensive? just switch to grams or Satoshi if you must think in units. Then it will be "cheap" again.

Amen Brother.
Stop worrying about what the other guy is doing and answer your own questions. There is no expert out there who knows the future.
neurotypical, your example is a good illustration of why you shouldn't follow the crowd. I'm guessing your co-workers are not stupid. They may be great at what they do. However, when people are afraid and trying to make decisions without knowledge, they look to the group and copy that behavior.  Which means buying near the top in a market frenzy and selling near the bottom in a panic. Exactly the opposite of what you want.

If you dump the public keys you could check them on the blockchain to see if there are any recent transactions. If you wait until core is synced with the network you can see it in your wallet. So until your wallet receives information about recent blocks it does not know about recent transactions.

If you sync with one wallet you will not have to download the blockchain again when you place the new wallet in the folder. It will however take a while as it goes through the chain. The longer the wallet has been offline the longer I think it will take. Maybe hours?

I think a lot of businesses are years away from holding the bitcoin they receive. It's understandable considering the price volatility. Payment processors are going to be big players in this space. At least I get to book my travel with bitcoin.

P.S. There is (or at least there was) a bitcoin ATM in Atatürk airport. Very convenient for dumping your Lira and receiving BTC on your phone!

The invention of bitcoin is like inventing the airplane! Alts are like painting that airplane blue and claiming you invented a blue airplane.

I had to laugh also at people selling BTC when the "news" was specifically about alt-coins.  It will actually likely raise the value of bitcoin. Not to mention that news from China has been manipulated soooooooooo often.

Apparently a sucker is born every minute. He/she then hurries over to a crappy exchange to buy the latest alts. 

One bitcoin is a completely arbitrary amount of bitcoin.So the price is completely irrelevant.
Of course I will buy at whatever price. When you buy $100 worth of bitcoin it does not matter if the price per coin is $0.11 or $11,000,000. Stop thinking of bitcoin as coins, they are not coins. It is more like a big pie and if the price is high then you get a smaller piece. But you still can have $100 dollars worth of pie.
 

China is a superpower. It may in the next century become THE superpower. If you consider that the U.S.A's power is waning, then China really already is the most powerful nation on Earth, IMO.

I ate at this place over the weekend. Great food and they take bitcoin. I recommend it when in Madison Wisconsin. http://bandungrestaurant.com/

In the U.S. I trust Coinbase most. They are a serious business that offers a full spectrum of services. Just don't do anything stupid like trying to hide your identity. If you link to your bank account then buying is very straight forward and simple.

Bitcoin's father may be Satoshi, but the mother of bitcoin was the 2008 global financial crisis. Bitcoin was born to survive such a meltdown. Having said that, I am surprised that bitcoin tends to run with the market rather than counter-market. IMO, a fiat collapse would see bitcoin value rising and diverging from assets like stocks. I would expect it to start tracking with gold in that scenario.

Oh that-a Luigi, He's a so crazy. 
Bank coins, lol. He is about to get Donkey Konged.

I think China is trying to act reasonably. Let's be honest, 99% of ICOs are just outright scams. Of the remaining 1%, 99% of those are bad ideas. Assuming the news is real, China is acting to stop people from losing their money by investing in something they don't understand. After all, if you understood crypto you would not even touch alts.

Here is a typical way an ICO tricks users into thinking they are "investing".

Step 1. Create "Stupid-Coin", bitcoin's soon to be replacement.

Step 2. Pre-mine 1 million coins.

Step 3. Sell 1 coin to your buddy for $3.

Step 4. Advertise your new ICO! And mention that it has a current market cap of 3 million dollars!
(market cap = cost per coin x number of coins)

ICOs are all B.S.

My bitcoin folder in Linux (.bitcoin) has only the file named "wallet.dat" and no file named "wallet." Could it be a backup with the file extension removed by renaming?
What you are describing is weird behavior. It should recognize your wallet and load it at startup.
Could the wallet you are installing also be empty? Maybe it just looks like it created a new wallet but actually is accurately reading an empty old one?

You seem to be doing everything right.

I don't even call it a crash if it's less than 50%. This is actually about the smallest correction I have seen called a crash. I have watched it go from about $700 to about $250. Now that's a proper crash.  as long as we have a speculation based economy we should expect periodic drops of over 50%. When we reach $2000, then we have crashed.