it depends on what you want to do. as a newbie you must learn first then get involved. but learn what depends:

* if you want to just make money from this market and don't care about anything else then you have to learn how this market works and how you can make money. you need to know how to trade or learn it if you don't then start watching the market and see how the hype and consequently the pumps work. then start investing and enjoy the pumps and the profit they can give you. be warned that it is not an easy nor a short task.

* if you want to learn more about the technology. then your path is completely different. you need to first become familiar with basics of cryptocurrencies and possibly a little about cryptography too. then you should start with bitcoin because it has the most sources for you to learn from and if you have a question you will find the answers a lot easier. and also majority of altcoins are either copying bitcoin or they are using the ideas that bitcoin rejected.
after that you can move on to learning more about altcoins. visit their websites and read their paper. and finally check out their codes and start testing them to see how they work.

unfortunately this forum has turned into a way of making money for everyone instead of a place to learn more about cryptocurrencies and good discussions about the technology itself.

don't get me wrong there is nothing wrong with making money from altcoins, all of us do it even if someone is hiding it or denying it. but it should never be our main goal. the first thing has always been to explore this new and awesome technology and when it comes to altcoins, to explore the new possibilities of this technology.

one of the ways to become a successful trader is to have a good exit strategy. and that means knowing when to sell the coins you have bought. there are many different strategies and people use a wide variety of them. but for me the best strategy has always been to have a profit amount in mind and as soon as i reach that level i cash out.

for example when i buy an altcoin which is on the pump, this number is usually about 10 to 30% profit before i jump out of it. i don't mind if the price goes higher even to 100000000% i still am satisfied with the huge profit that i have gotten. this way i am guaranteeing my success and reducing the risk of getting dumped on.

i had a little amount of funds in my Hitbtc account that i used for trading there and some possible arbitrage opportunities. but ever since i read about this news i have withdrawn all my funds and i am staying away from them for at least some time to see what is going on. i never like exchanges that shy away from regulations.

as far as the profit is concerned when it comes to mining bitcoin and the rewards it is always a dynamic thing which is why it always remains profitable for majority of miners and also it is the reason why bitcoin will always be mined by some miners.
it is all about the difficulty. if some day it becomes less profitable then miners will start leaving until it becomes profitable again. and when it becomes more profitable then more miners will come in until it becomes normal-profitable again.

exactly. the problem is the prices need to come down first. and that means more drops for the time being. specially when it comes to altcoins and the fact that investors don't have any faith in their futures. and that leaves the newbies in.

a coin that starts as a fork of bitcoin will never become big. you can see bitcoin cash that despite all the drama and all the advertisements, misleading,.... is struggling hard to stay relevant.
some other fork coin like BTCP is never going to be able to gain even the half ass popularity of BCH let alone want to compete with an original coin that started from scratch and is trusted such as Monero.

i wouldn't call that a "community" let alone a big one.
it is just a group of newbie bag holders that got their coins by referring others like a Ponzi scheme and some even fell for it and bought something. they are not just spamming everywhere about this coin. for example 90% of the topics about DeepOnion is started by someone who was in their signature campaign.

that doesn't seem like the user's fault and there is nothing you can do about it unless you are willing to spend time 24/7 watching every altcoin/bounty campaigns out there and see if someone is abusing your account name.

the fault falls on the managers who should only interact with the accounts themselves not using outside of bitcointalk means to communicate like a spreadsheat on google to sign up instead of a comment on bitcointalk.

you are WRONG about everything.

first of all from your  comment it is obvious you are gambling not investing.

secondly you have made 4.3% profit in 1-2 hours and you are complaining about this profit?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

third you have to think about it this way:
if you randomly help this coin and instead of going up it went down to 0.00001000 ETH you would have lost A LOT OF money.

and finally you made a huge mistake of not buying back when you saw the rise. in fact when you sold this shitcoin at 0.00004800 you made a solid good decision and you made a solid profit. but then you saw the rise days after that but you did nothing and just stood by instead of jumping on the pump wagon. THAT is where you lose opportunity.

ps. as you are complaining about this random shitcoin, there are at least 6 other shitcoins being pumped today that you are also missing out on making profit there....

this has been A deal for a very long time. i think they started back in 2013 or maybe older. but most people don't even know about it!
i think the biggest deal was Steam accepting bitcoin because it opened bitcoin up to the gaming community. sad they stopped it last year because of high fees.

it is the price drop and the exit that most traders are doing. there is also the exit of newbie bag holders that lost enough money to now want to give up hope and panic sell. it is a slow process which is going to continue happening until ethereum price reaches a more logical level. i agree with most experts on less than $100 to be a good place for ethereum based on its utility and huge supply.

as for EOS i still have to check the project myself but it seems to be gaining a lot of attention and attract a lot of money which is understandable as small projects go. it stops when they become big like ETH.

the open source nature of this market means that everyone can create their own coin at any time they want which in turn will lead to thousands of altcoins existing most of which are completely useless because they are copy pastes or have zero usages.

there will eventually be a couple of real altcoins which are different and do something proper and become big like bitcoin but i think we are far from that day since the current existing altcoins are mostly useless.

it is interesting that you only see "deception" because price has gone down! and you were closing your eyes on the same "deception" that also existed while price was going up.
it is a simply process pump AND dump.


i don't really understand how this relates to rating platforms but as for mechanism, i don't see any need for it. the "honest projects" will survive and as long as they are actually doing something and not just advertising it, they will grow more even if in short term they get pumped and dumped.

when you are reporting some poll result you must also include how many participated in it and also who your audience were. for example you may have asked some random people on the internet who have no idea what cryptocurrencies are and only 10 person answered your question.

also your options are not well designed in my opinion. for example "security" is too vague. for example is it the security of exchanges? altcoin or bitcoin exchanges? or is it the security of cryptocurrencies themselves?

also your final result being "Price Manipulation" receiving the most votes only shows that the answers are completely emotional.
it is well known that whenever prices are going down people tend to blame it on "manipulation" and although it exists and is strong if you ask the same question during a rally (like in the middle of the rise after a couple of months of green market) you will not get nearly the same % for this option.

in short bitcoin is a currency that has additional features built on top of it in form of side chains instead of it all being on the blockchain and bloat it for no reason. while ethereum is just a token that you use to make ICOs (aka smart contracts) which is already possibly with bitcoin.

in details:
bitcoin is decentralized while ethereum is centralized.
bitcoin has a small supply which is capped, ether has unlimited supply with a huge circulating one.
bitcoin is a currency and also can be used to create smart contracts. ether is just a token that you can only create smart contracts with.
bitcoin is battle hardened and fully tested without any bugs while ethereum is filled with bugs and there are a lot of exploits in it.

good post.
i would like to add that the problem with a coin like ethereum is that its price depends completely on one factor and one factor alone: ICOs.
the only use case for it is to participate in ICOs, people buy it to do that. and we all know that the ICO craze can not go on forever, like anything else that will also die and with it the price of ETH will take a huge hit.

additionally there is the problem with the limitless and already huge supply of ETH which is the reason for the long term downward movement. it is inflationary!

first of all there is only 1 main crypto-currency and nothing else and that is bitcoin. everything else is an altcoin.

secondly where you keep your money depends on you and what your strategies are.

* one strategy is to make a long term investment and enjoy the profits of that. for instance you buy bitcoin and wait more than a year (3 years ago price was $200 and now it is $7500).

* another strategy is to be a trader. that means constantly being active and trading. which means you should not buy and hold anymore. you invest in altcoins that are on the move not the coins that are idle or are getting dumped. that way you increase your profit.

it depends on how you are looking at cryptocurrencies.
one way to look at them, which is pretty common these days is as an speculation tool. in that case more volatility is desired because traders can only make profit if the market is pretty volatile. when price is swinging 30% in a couple of days they are making profit but when it is staying stable with barely 1% move they can't make anything.

another way to look at it is as a currency which will limit you to bitcoin only. in that case volatility is a bad thing but it is inevitable because bitcoin being a currency won't happen in one day. it is an adoption process which takes a long time, even years. and being volatile is not the worst thing that we can have because price is on the rise most of the times. for example when you buy 1BTC for $700 and a year later you  can spend it as a currency worth $7000 you don't mind the daily fluctuations anymore.

the problem with topics like this is that people starting them are only hypothesizing and never have any actual world experience themselves. they never use bitcoin and they have probably never made any payments in their short lives since they are too young for that stuff!!!

for instance you say Consumer Protection, but lets give an example. you go to Steam and want to purchase a game. if you use Paypal for example you can do a charge back and scam Steam easily. but if you use bitcoin you can never scam them. and at the same time Valve is a trusted company that is not going to scam you either. so it is a win-win scenario. you don't need an escrow either like what the other user said.