I can't really understand what this has to do with bitcoin and what the hell MasterCard is doing! but about this part I have to say what we are aiming for is that we reach a stage where you don't need to exchange fiat and bitcoin anymore. so in the end it won't matter what they do when bitcoin is already a working currency which you can use for anything that you use fiat for.

I disagree. we don't need centralization to enter this decentralized ecosystem for it to be adopted more. they will only introduce more restrictions and a lot of different fees on their customers who are using their services. and we are talking about services that we no longer need because of bitcoin!
you must have heard the phase saying "be your own bank with bitcoin". that means you don't need a bank anymore so their attempts now are only in order to stay relevant and not be pushed aside entirely in the near future as the "adoption" is happening with or without them.

are we sure this is even a legitimate news?
in the past we have had a lot of this kind of news when some shitcoin wanted to advertise and get newbies to fall for their schemes and invest in their token so that they did what we call "name drop" where they basically make up some fake story and pump their coin with a fake news. and the market sometimes reacts positively.

of course bitcoin is here to stay! it didn't take us 10 years to understand that
we already knew this a very long time ago when the network was at least a couple of months old and it was functioning properly as it was supposed to. I am talking about the time of Hal Finney and early days of bitcoin. and then we were assured of its strength when they started attacking bitcoin in the media and calling it names and talk about its "death", that was a clear sign that bitcoin is a power that they are scared of and is here to stay.

going nearly 50-50 with bitcoin and altcoins is not a good idea in my opinion. you are taking a huge risk on your 0.7BTC worth which is in altcoins. and I would say that unless you are an experienced trader who is using that 0.7BTC to make profit from trading altcoins and using their pumps, then it is not a good strategy to get involved with them because the losses will be greater and the possible gains will be smaller than holding 100% bitcoin.
what I personally do is that I dedicate a smaller amount for trading altcoins and constantly cash out the profit and also I make sure to stay away from the altcoin market during times that I can't predict it or times that are generally considered "dumping season".

I completely disagree with your speculation because you have some wrong statements but mostly because you are not looking at the whole thing which is both similarities and "differences" between two time periods. you can't just find some similarities and then stick to them to force a certain conclusion that you like!

for example 2013 rise took about 2 months and was mostly a pump rather than a rise, mainly because of the control that Mt Gox had over the whole market and the fact that there practically was no other big exchanges. and as "pumps" go they always end badly.
in comparison 2017 rise took more than a year and even if you wanted to compare the two trends you can only compare the 2013 rise with the rise from $10k to $20k and say the drop should be down to $10k and then rise back from there!

as for the drop part, the drop of 2014 was because of the bubble AND a lot of other factors. the biggest ones were Mt Gox scam which was the biggest hit the market could take since as I said it controlled almost all the market. also the SilkRoad drama and a lot of other smaller negative factors against bitcoin.
in comparison 2018 drop is only because of the $20k bubble and the fact that speculators kept comparing the two scenarios with each other that convinced themselves it should be similar and did a panic sell.
if you compare two charts the current trend looks more like the bottom in 2015 @$220 with its perfect horizontal line.

I disagree with the rise speculation too. because that is also flawed. you are basically saying just because it has risen before after the drop it should rise again after this drop too! but that is wrong. the past rise after the drop does not guarantee the rise this time.

good news for bitcoin has never been a new thing. from early days there has only been good news for bitcoin. the rest were mostly FUD otherwise we don't have any kind of "bad news" per se. and price is not moving based on news. it is till moving based on other factors. for instance we are in a recovery phase right now and although good news can speed it up but it can't change it into another trend.

news is always more like a catalyst instead of being the fuel itself!

no I am talking about actual usage when people purchase something from a merchant using bitcoin. and what I said is based on what I have read in the news from merchant statements claiming their sales have grown during the big fast rise of last year. and also based on Bitpay's annual statistical report showing an increase in number of payments they processes during those times.

for bitcoin to become (relatively) stable like other currencies it first has to be around at least half as long as they have been around so far and be adopted half as they are. we are not even at 1% adoption yet so we can not start expecting stability and we certainly can not compare this very young bitcoin with other currencies.

however, interesting thing is that so far the usage of bitcoin as a currency (based on user's spending behavior) has been at its peak when price is rising fast!

of course price of literary anything in the world is tied to other "factors" and takes effect from a lot more. the world is interconnected. but in case of bitcoin this connection between it and stocks does not exist and I have not seen any experts make that connection to be honest.
what I have heard has been a speculation or two that during some stock market drops bitcoin price should rise.

this is not a joke this is an advertisement for their coin. most probably the site OP is quoting was paid to publish this. you can contact any news site and ask them to advertise your coin with a fake news article. and this whole method is the same. they usually say some bank is adopting XRP and backing it but now they have taken a bigger step and talked about a "country" baking XRP. it is all done for pump and dumping the coin and keeping it alive. otherwise everyone knows well enough that this coin is the most useless token of all times. and there is no future for it.

don't confuse this short term trend of bitcoin for the long term of what is happening. right NOW we are in a stable phase but this is not going to last. the over all trend of bitcoin is a rather speedy rise upwards. what you see here is the short term fluctuations. we have had the high volatility, the bubble and the panic sell and now we have the stability and accumulation.

as for the title question, yes bitcoin will become a lot more stable some day in the future. but we are so far away from that day because there is still a lot of rise remaining. and a lot of way to go before bitcoin is matured.

before you "review" the market you have to know that in this market a price change of less than 5% is not even worth talking about specially if it is an altcoin that is having that percentage. in fact an altcoin that rises less than 5% should be assumed dead.

this means that the only thing meaningful in your comment is this part:
and that only means that these altcoins were pumped. so again there is no point talking about them since every day there are a bunch of different altcoins that are getting pumped. and 50%-60% pumps are nothing we have 200% to 5000% pumps these days!

true, but usually how this works is that when you are making a purchase you are doing it from a merchant. the merchant is usually stationary like a shop, or a known person and there is a history. for instance it can be a website like those game selling ones, or bigger companies like Valve or Microsoft. so you as the customer have easier ways of avoiding scammers by doing a little research about the merchant but the merchant accepting payments is accepting from random people. so when there is no charge back that risk is eliminated.

no, this is just business!

they get paid to list these coins so they win because they make money
the ICO devs spend a tiny amount compared to what they are being paid to get their useless token be listed on some exchange so that they have a place to dump it and get the money out. so they win too.
users get a place so that they can dump or possibly participate in any possible pump and dump and make some profit so they win also.

when everyone is done making money and wants to move on to a new token they should get rid of the old one.
everyone is happy...

everything that is pumped should eventually be dumped.
during that pump these exchanges were adding dozens of altcoins at a time in a short period of time as they were being created then paid the exchanges to list their shitcoins.  but as I said this can not last forever. it will end at some point and when it does and the dumps kill the coin, there is no more volume hence no more profit for the exchange to keep these coins listed. everyone is done with them so they are delisted !!!

people are not going to buy bitcoin to then go right on to spending it somewhere else! even if the merchants give big discounts that still doesn't make sense because of the fees (2 major fees: fiat deposit fee from bank to buy bitcoin + % trading fee when exchanging that to bitcoin). so if price goes up it is going up only because of speculation and nothing else.

and as for dealers, if they use services such as Bitpay for instance for accepting bitcoin their coins won't be sold on exchanges. they will be sold elsewhere off the market so they will never affect anything about the price. and these services like Bitpay have enough liquidity that a small rise won't really change anything.

well it is not possible to speculate bitcoin like this in short term but all I can tell you that for the past 4 or 5 years that I have been on this forum I have seen that almost every year people start making the same speculation about bitcoin price drop close to holiday's with the same flawed reasoning about them selling their bitcoin "to take care of needs" but in the end we see that either no change happens in price or it rises up. although past performances don't guarantee the future trends but it is something to have in mind.

nothing about your comment makes any sense whatsoever!
bitcoin is not some free money giveaway that you can make money from it from scratch! even if you want to invest/trade you still need money to invest in it and make profit on that. you can't do it from scratch. even mining requires money for equipment and has costs like electricity cost. and even if you earn it still you are working to get paid.
as for "rumor" bitcoin is not that easy to pump and dump with news and rumor from outside.

they should have banned ICOs if you ask me because they are all bad not just a great percentage of it. they are damaging the economy and also the cryptocurrency world and that is a big deal that we should be concerned about. but unfortunately people only care about their short term profit so they all want ICOs to stick around because they are a great "gambling game" which have given them good profit once or twice so now they are addicted to this gamble.
some governments have already banned ICOs and that is the correct way to go in my opinion. raising funds this way is silly while we have legitimate ways for real companies to do so without damaging anything.