The panic is most likely being induced by short sellers, media FUD, and traders who got in after January that are having a hard time seeing their paper worth drop. However this is all part of the hype cycle and crypto cycle in general. We're approaching the capitulation/despair phase, and this would probably be a good time to start accumulating especially after this bounce.

I think it is a great time to begin trading, given that we are an in an extended bear market that is approaching a bottom. Of course those shorting would love to spread FUD and get you to believe that ETH will approach 0, however this is extremely unlikely. There is still a chance we could see retracement to the mid 100 levels, however this recent bounce has indicated that there could be a sign of relief in the downtrend and sentiment. My strategy is to wait for an established support and consolidation and make your entries around there.

There's been great fundamental news coming out about ETH and frankly the market has been overreacting to the FUD that has been put forth but competing communities and the media. However, the technology has much more room to grow. Check out the shorts: https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/ETHUSDSHORTS/ seems like they're topping out.. hopefully we consolidate slightly higher and establish strong support levels. Again, this could still be a bull trap and could see a bottom around the 130-150 range. In the long term, these prices will be great entries as the price and overall market will recover as soon as early 2019.

The cases for your choices vary, however make sure to do your own due diligence! The developer community for Ethereum is the largest at the moment, with most dApps building on top of the platform. I've been following Steller and its developer community and many of them find that it is a great blockchain for the niche of financial services. Ripple has advantages of having fast transactions and low costs, however the argument in the community tends to be that a large supply of XRP is being controlled by institutions which makes it more centralized. I myself am an investor in Ethereum given that it is building the necessary layers for a secure and truly decentralized platform, while others may be sacrificing this for scalability. Some altcoins to consider are BAT, 0x, and Augur, as they are all being built on top of Ethereum. BAT is the native token that users can use on the Brave platform to reward advertisers and content creators. Augur is the first decentralized prediction market using third party resolution sources and reputation as oracles. In the end, do your own due diligence but know that this market is growing rapidly!