It depends on the type of trading you do. Short term trading is very stressful as you have to be on edge constantly watching every second of market movement. I much prefer medium to long term as it’s far less stressful and the success rate is much higher.

No one can predict a pump and dump, however some key areas to look out for is major news like big exchange listings, major partnerships etc pushes price up. Once buyers fatigue kicks in that’s when you take a profit and wait for the correction before either buying back in or moving on. This of course sounds easier than done, you would have to spend many hours developing a strategy that works for you.

There is a lot of good news on the horizon but we need to take into account that many people lost a lot of money in this bear market and therefore the stench created needs to clear before we see a bull market return. In the interim the market seems to have bottomed out and investment at the current prices would be a good idea. Whether the bull market happens now or in a year is irrelevant, it will return, the key is patience.

Regarding stability there is still so much money that will pour into this market that there is no way it is getting stable any time soon. If you do the math on the potential scenarios of "marketcap/circulating supply" of the various projects you will notice that what we are seeing today as stability or a flattish trend is pseudo stability for what could actually play out.

It is not advised to put all your eggs in one basket as your risk is far too high in terms of the potential losses occurred. Rather diversify your investment and put a small amount into crypto. Remember the market is still in its infancy and there are a lot of gains to still be made, be patient and wait.

Faucets are a waste of time in my opinion, I’d much rather find a crypto coin that is backed by a good team and product and invest in that with my own money. 
Some pointers are never buy into hype, don’t buy a coin because someone said so or its price is suddenly surging or some group says it’s a good idea, do your own research and make your own assumptions and never invest what you cant afford to loose.

Create a criteria of what a coin needs to have before you even consider looking further. This could be things like website, active social media platforms, team disclosure and verify them, github activity, are they just another fork or do they offer new innovation, what effort have they put into their platforms/wallets/whitepaper/roadmap, are they POW/POS/DPOS/MN etc therefore can you make your money make money, this is just an example of some of the things to look for but obviously make your own criteria.

Then join their social media platforms and monitor them for a while, watch their price fluctuations, watch the community, see if they keep to their promises/deadlines/product and then only would I maybe consider them as an investment.

Then again how you manage your risk is up to you as you will notice many might have far greater or even less risk appetite. You need to assess what type of investor you are and do what you feel comfortable with.

Also do not leave your coins on exchanges, the amount of money that has been lost to hacks and exit scams is horrifying. Always encrypt and backup your wallets and write your private keys somewhere very safe.

It really comes down to what type of product you have invested in, the team behind it, what use cases does it have , what potential real world problems does it solve now/future, how unique it is etc basically research what you have put your money into. If it ticks the boxes, judging from my experience then hold as there will come a time when its value will appreciate. There is no time time associated to this so only invest what you can afford to do without. Then sit back and monitor the products and teams progress.

There are a number of reasons that I can think of that makes crypto currencies very attractive.

For one it mitigates government and bank involvement in storing, spending and dictating what you can and can’t do with your funds. You now are your own bank with no middle men, fees are next to nothing, cross border transactions are instant and you are in full control over your account. You also get to issue the currency and get rewarded for doing so as well as having a vote in most cases as to what direction you want to see it moving towards.

Market cap is really low for many good projects and if you do the math once these projects get accepted into the main stream there are big profits to be made, so investment is defiantly another attraction factor.

Yes most defiantly invest in alt coins, and when I say invest I mean long term and disregard short term volatility. I don’t want to shrill and coins but what I will say is do some research on projects that have real world application and are capable of offering a working product. Diversify your portfolio as it rarely works out well when you have all your eggs in one basket.

It defiantly does have the first option to be able to become the world’s first crypto currency used for cross border transactions. Each day that passes we are seeing that this is going to become a reality soon.

I can understand where you are coming from but I don’t see the re-branding of Bitcoin having any effect on bolstering its reputation nor making it less confusing. Let’s also take into account the logistics to perform such a task, which would cause more chaos and confusion than anything.

People are now acquainted with the name Bitcoin and will get used to how it works as adoption starts to kick in and they start to do transactions.

Crypto's threaten the banks livelihood and very existence and therefore to make the two friends will be difficult. Like any evolving technology banks will have to adopt, adapt and find their niche within this space in order to survive, otherwise the history books will pen them on their pages.

It wouldn't make a difference whether or not Satoshi decided to be active in this space or not as what he created is decentralized regardless of his prescience, that is the nature of Bitcoin. Regarding whether he could influence price to a small degree if he were directly involved now, I think that would be a safe assumption.

If I had a penny for every time I've heard this statement. We cant only take the current situation into consideration and completely ignore the bigger picture of events to come.

There is a lot of "positive" news on the horizon like the SEC's softened approach to crypto paving the way for ETF's. Bakkt in my opinion is the biggest news at this point in time. Also the fact that governments, banks and large corporations are paying so much interest to this space should tell you something.

Research to the point of being comfortable in what you have put your money into, this will give you peace of mind to some degree.
Never use money that you cannot afford to lose.
Always think long term and the key word here is patience.
Delete all tabs, apps etc that waste time offering you current market fluctuations and portfolio updates. No amount of staring at price daily will do anything but give you “induced bipolar”.

You need to factor in what it costs to produce a Bitcoin and then what profit you need to sell at to recover your running and setup costs. Already mining in most places is running at a loss in accordance to the current price and the mining difficulty is increasing on the daily. Also you also need to look at what’s upcoming in terms of development and adoption in the near future. Combine these 2 factors and I would very comfortably say that $500 is impossible unless by some miracle the entire systems fails

I wouldn't say they control the market but rather market sentiment is driven in large due to the "herding mentality". These trends can be initiated by news, alternative media platforms or whales but it’s the accumulative traders, investors, speculators, trading bots etc that follow through with that particular trend.

I defiantly see higher values, in a nutshell this will coincide with block reward halving, profitable mining and global adoption. Unfortunately I don’t see less projects but I do see less shitcoins being allowed to share the same oxygen with good projects. My opinion would be tighter regulation = more acceptance but it’s a yin yang situation as it would contradict in many instances the very ideologies that brought this space to life. Society in general are sheep they will just follow the trends set forth

Binance's motivation for such a move has little to do with what they would deem "a good project"