As dollar is not used much in my country, one can exchange bitcoins for local fiat. Although Ukraine is a developing country, it is surprisingly easy to cash out btc here. Of course there are sites where you have to provide your ID, photograph and other unpleasant things. The money you will lose while converting is insignificant. I guess you can meet people and do the exchange via localbitcoins in big cities, but I don't enjoy dealing with strangers and meeting people in general, so I choose the 3rd option. That is an online exchange on a website which doesn't need any info from you apart from a debit card number and email. The fee will make you lose about  1-5% of what you withdraw but it's safe, fast and reliable.

As you named coins that you already have, I would recommend you something different. IMO, the best one is dogecoin. I don't understand why nobody mentioned it and why it is worth such a small amount of money. It is really one of the best coins I know! It can be compared only with eth and litecoin, perhaps. It is safe and fast. The community is second biggest after bitcoin! People gamble with it quite often and it also has a good reputation because of participating in charity projects.

I agree there is nothing special in ethereum price growing nowadays. The platform is used more and more, so the demand for the coin grows as well. Yet I don't think it is right to call ethereum a shitcoin. I know it has big problems with code safety but it is very innovative, so I guess it's one of the best coins we have no matter what. You are probably right the price will go down after a while, though.

I think that bitcoin cash might be a good way of solving btc problems. However, I consider it like a treason of btc community as well. Segwit idea was out here for a long time, people agreed to support it. Then, out of nowhere, right before segwit day, some people decide to take advantage of the upgrade and make a fork regardless to how much people think it is needed.

I haven't understood your point. Escrow is something that prevents from scam, because at least it ensures that the coin will be released (for there are sufficient funds available). Why are you saying that ico  without an escrow is better? I think that the most important thing when one chooses is whether there some projects supporting the coin in advance. This gives hope that the coin will really be used by somebody.

That's very said that there was a ddos attack. However, why do you say this coin is a scam? I recall it gaining popularity about half a year ago and a nice casino btcdragon starting to use it.
Oh, I got it, you meant poloniex is a scam thing. Well, this doesn't sound reasonable enough, for it is a very famous exchange site, but these kind of sites have problems from time to time indeed. That's why I prefer using wallets, not exchanges.

Waves sounds good. I know the op said it is already there but maybe something from $400 is still worth to be invested in it. I would strongly recommend dogecoin, because it's cheap, fast, safe and has big community behind it. I guess I would've invested most of money in it. And perhaps now is still good time to buy some litecoin till it didn't go to the moon.

Well, you should've posted this in 'speculation' section. Anyway, ethereum suffered from big hacks recently. As a result, the price dropped quite hardly. Now it seems to be growing rapidly. I think that with such a speed this coin may reach the previous record in two weeks. However, we haven't heard news on proof of stake thing recently. And yet we know it is ought to happen. Now, this looks suspicious to me, so I wouldn't invest into eth nowadays.

I honestly don't think ICOs are promising nowadays, for most of them scam people. And yet some coins with deep projects which back them up should be an exception from this rule. district0x has quite a good advertising which is vague but makes believe there is really something behind the coin. I don't see any difference between it and ethereum, nothing original. And yet I believe they have real projects which use it, so perhaps it's not a bad option for retail. unikrn looks less promising to me anyway.
Perhaps you should also consider enjin coin, for at least they have a huge gambling community which is going to use the coin regularly and it is really adjusted to games.

Altcoins are so unstable. I am not sure one can really make high profit out of it. I mean, sometimes it's quite easy to make the right investments but it takes some time and can't be regular. Regular income needs regular buying and selling of the coins. This is not easy, as most of coins are bad and dump so fast. I thing it is a very risky way of earning money.

Altcoins kind of existed 2 years ago and those who were creating them popularized them as well. Nevertheless, I believe they weren't really popular at that time. People were mostly getting to know bitcoin then. Altcoins became extremely popular this year during spring. They started to grow in price rapidly and new coins started appearing very often. On this forum altcoin signature campaigns paying in btc appeared which is also a sign of their popularity. They gained popularity because of investment opportunities IMO.

That's great one can exchange coins on the gambling site. However, I believe this will still reduce the amount of money, for something inevitably gets lost in exchange processes due to fees and different prices. That's why for altcoin gambling to be profitable one has to use good and quite stable coins plus more sites where one could exchange alts for fiat with reasonable tax rate are needed.

People used to have interest in free bch and mining opportunities perhaps. Then the price went so much down that now it is hardly imaginable that bitcoin cash may actually be compared with bitcoin and may win over it one day. It is up 28% and but still it is just $270. Obsession with this coin is over, so I guess it is now just another alt we are having. Moreover, as some alts are actually trying to differ somehow from btc, offer something new and innovative, this alt doesn't. I think it will continue to go down in price.

You are the first one who wrote about 'Lock, Stock and 2 smoking barrels' in this thread! That's what I wanted to write about as well. I was surprised nobody mentioned it before. This film is particularly good, because it shows that even a really good player may end up losing everything. At that time is was all about gangsters who deceived him but the same holds for our times in a modified version. From time to time we see the news about different scams and sometimes it is the fact that the website actually know what cards you got and thus doesn't allow you to win.

The value is high comparing to what we are used to deal with. And yet maybe bitcoin will show us even greater values in the future and those who didn't buy btc now would regret it. Whether the value is volatile is also a question. Bitcoin's value is not somehow randomly set. It directly depends on the demand. People get obsessed with new btc with fast and cheap transactions. buy it a lot more than they used to do it and, as a result, we have the value.

I don't believe in the future of bitcoin cash but there are some trusted and respected members of the forum who believe this is the real bitcoin as it was and is supposed to be. Perhaps they are strong enough to make this coin popular. For now it is surely going down but I guess there are people who plan to mine it and so perhaps the demand will make bitcoin cash at least one of the most powerful altcoins.

I can add at least two to the list above. vdice.com has its token on ethereum called vslice. They have decentralized apps. Enjin is preparing to release their coin called enjin coin (now it is an ICO) which is specifically created for gambling and is adjusted to certain needs of gamblers like scam-free proof, creating tokens for game items, privilege tokens for those who met specific requirements and deserve rare items etc. Surely, like most of coins, it operates on ethereum platform.

I believe while answering the question we should not think of it as of a real possible problem but rather as of a thought experiment. If we don't add additional info to what we have, it is just a normal day with no nuclear war or something like that. You wake up, turn on your laptop and find out in the Internet that the coins are gone. You can't believe your eyes and so you quickly enter your wallet. You see no coins there. As if they've never been there. I think that overall cryptocurrency community is about 20 million people. The overall population of the potentially civilized world is about 5 billion people.  So, at best, of one 250 people will wake up and become highly depressed and covered in panic. It will surely be on the news in countries like USA, Canada, Russia, China but it is not likely to affect a significant amount of people. The economy is likely to suffer, though, for it will be around 95 billion dollars lost.

And yet there are some things really different. Bitcoin is now not having tons of hours to get the transaction confirmed and yet the transactions are far from instant. Ethereum transaction get confirmed within minutes if I'm not mistaken. This point is a disadvantage of bitcoin. As for the opposite, ethereum allows people to do a lot more with it, then btc does. As a result, eth code is so comples that there is always some 'blank space' that makes huge hacks possible.

Do you mean the regret that one hasn't decided to gamble with it? I understand that now, as bitcoin has been improved, it is probably not a bad choice for gambling. And it is easy to exchange it for fiat, whereas with altcoins there are a lot less possibilities to do that. Plus, there might be withdrawal problems (like a very high minimum withdraw which was set when the coin didn't cost much). Still, I think that eventually some alts will win over bitcoin in gambling sphere.