Yes, we may expect 2-3 years of a bear market. Bitcoin may increase in value, though be careful.
If you are looking to make money the "traditional" markets and investment tools may yield better results.
If, however, you just want to gamble on a wild ride, then buy some bitcoin. It'll certainly be fun.
(not investment advice, do your own research)

Thank you so much for taking the time to tell us this. I was worried about you, but that has now all been cleared up.

This has to win the award for the dumbest post on this whole forum.
The poster asks for people to disclose how much botcoin they have and yet does not disclose theirs.
Then goes on to say:
"If nobody has close to my amount I might keep my mouth shut."
But we cannot measure that you dumb fool. So, yes, please keep your "mouth shut".

So the actual, true, answer to your question..........
and I will save you reading hundreds of threads is ........
NO ONE KNOWS!

Either gamble or don't... it doesn't matter if you believe in the principle of cryptocurencies or hoping to get rich.... it doesn't matter.
Jump on board if you want a fun ride.... you may get lucky... chances are, you won't....
but you will learn something about crypto, about trading, about yourself and about others.

I am not a financial analyst and this is not financial advice

If you want to "invest", the only sane strategy is Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA):
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dollarcostaveraging.asp

No one here really knows what is going to happen to the price, it may go up, it may go down.
All other coins pretty much follow BTC and will do so until they can be uncoupled.
You will drive yourself insane trying to guess, Technical Analysis in crypto is just a guess. You may get lucky, I usually do not.

I think that the price is unlikely to gain any new heights for 12-18 months... maybe not until past 2020 with a new ATH maybe in 2023.
But I want to accumulate more BTC in the meantime, mainly for fun and see where this project goes.
But I don't want to go mad trying to guess the lows and highs..... so DCA of $x per week works for me, disposable income ofcourse.

Also, I set my exit. If BTC reaches $y then I will sell half, when it reaches $z I will sell half again. It may never reach $y, but I don't really care.... it is not the only investment I have.

This way, I just sit back, relax, look at the price once a week. No stress and enjoy all the chat on reddit for fun.

PS.... I am not a financial analyst and this is not financial advice

So, reading the first 2 pages of topics on this forum I have noticed that every single question is either:
- Will Bitcoin be the most amazing thing ever?
- Will bitcoin crash and burn?

Almost every answer is exactly the same:
- It will be amazing because "I believe", "I have faith" etc etc
- It will crash and burn because it has no value/too volatile/the secret world society will not let it be mainstream, whatever...
- No-one knows but I will write a ton of words which say that.

Whether Bitcoin ends up rising in value, replacing global financial systems, crashing etc etc the answer is nothing more than NO ONE KNOWS....
Your "faith" "belief" etc in it is irrelevant, unless you can manipulate the price, news, etc you have no influence over its success.

All you are doing is taking a gamble/speculating.... you may get lucky or not.... just make sure it is money that won't ruin your life if it all goes away.

I bought some bitcoin because I am greedy and want it to go up in price so I can sell to someone else for more money.
Is it the best investment.... of course not....
But is it fun, hell yes!

Trading it can be fun, like going to a casino where you think you know how the cards are stacked.....

Thanks.
I hope so too, but don't mind if they are not, it is just going to be fun to watch this investment bounce around.
It also nice to see who are the daily/weekly/monthly winners and losers without trying to outthink the next big move.
My play in crypto at the moment is split 3 ways:
- A chunk of money sat in BTC, ETH and LTC for the long term
- A chunk of money I use to trade with whenever I feel like it, I suck at this, but hopefully will become a bit wiser and skilled as time passes.
- And now a bit of money to mimic your experiment

And your experiment I think is the one I'll enjoy the most.....

Ok, probably the stupidest newbie question ever, but here goes.....
It probably shows I have no idea how currency markets work and should learn some stuff, however I would apprecaite a kind soul to take pity and explain price movements to me (examples would also be nice)

I was buying some altcoin on Bittrex and saw that I could only buy with BTC, which led me to think...
(all numbers below are made up, partly for the ease of the maths)

I buy 300 XVG for 0.001 BTC on Bittrex, BTC value at the time makes 0.001 BTC = USD$20
Now the price of BTC/USD falls and say 0.001 BTC is now worth USD$10
Does the XVG/BTC value change to reflect this, ie 300 XVG is now worth 0.002 BTC?
and vice versa
Or does the XVG/BTC stay the same, in which case to convert my XVG back to USD via BTC would mean that the value of XVG has now also halved?
In which case I may as well never have converted XVG.....

I'm guessing there is probably a lag, as BTC alters, the ask and bids of XVG alter too.
I'm also guessing that with the trading of XVG the relative value against BTC also changes, even if BTC/USD does not.

So going back to Bittrex, BTC is aways shown as having 0.0 change and all other coins rise or fall relative to their BTC value.
And going back to XVG, how do I calculate the value in USD (or any other fist currency) at any one time, is it by converting
XVG to BTC to USD..... and now I'm back in my thought circle, the value of my XVG is totally dependant on the value of BTC to USD even if the XVG/BTC rate never changes.

Aaaarrrrggggh

Thanks in advance.

Hi,
Really fun idea, I've decided to mimic you, but I'm 10 days behind, so missed the last uplift.
I'm having a few twists on your concept.
I started todo as much as possible through Bittrex, but there are 2 downsides:
1 - Minimum BTC trade is 0.001
2 - Not all altcoins are listed ofcourse

Due to some fund transfer issues, I've only managed to get 0.001 BTC of the the top 33 altcoins so far.
Still my 0.033 BTC spend from 2 days ago is now 0.0415 BTC as of now.

I'll will build out the portfolio in the next couple of days.

This should be more of a fun ride that just looking at one or two cryptos going up or down, even if the gains may not be as great and the losses greater.... but who knows, the reverse may be true.

Either way this is a fun way to play.

Hi,
This is probably a super basic question.
I moved a small amount of a bitcoin into a new Electrum wallet from CoinCorner.
The transaction now appears in my Electrum wallet with a warning saying "unconfirmed parent"
I have waited about 36 hours without a change.
The transaction is:
https://blockchain.info/tx/98d723235ff4a3e777cd795fdd77e5a061345791d1e8f34834359e54cced6008

I have no idea what to do about it.

From what I have read I have to wait for a miner to update the blockchain?
The advice I have read has been:
1) Wait ........ but for how long?
2) Increase the fee..... not sure how to do this or even if I can now.... and I'm not sure I want to if I just need to wait a bit longer

I know wallets are the way of keeping my coins secure, but is this normal that it takes days to move bitcoins around?
I kind of expected to be able to move bitcoins around much quicker than this.

On the fees, when I used CoinCorner to send the transaction to my wallet, I saw nothing about how to set a fee and what difference that would make.

Thanks for any help/insight and above all patience with probably dumb questions.