IOTA started this year with a new chat application running on IOTA controlled agent.
The project has gained a strong interest in the IoT and business community, with growing number of industries and firms showing their interest in it. Still it does not reflect much on the price. It is kind of looking to shape up to rise once again, but is its place in top 10 lost for good?

Now as the market looks more optimistic and with all the news of some of the coins going up substantially it's easier to forget, that most of them underperformed in terms of the forecasts that were made previously. Iota is up 67 percent, stratis 108 percent, and bitcoin cash 150 percent. It’s an impressive recovery, but it’s certainly not a reversal. Back in January, “expert” traders were throwing out wildly ambitious end of year targets that, amidst full bull market hysteria, may not have seemed that outlandish at the time. So, what is ypur opinion on 2018's altc performance?

It pushed into top 20, it has secured $120 million in funding for integration of its Vostok private blockchain into government an institutional IT systems.
If we look at the project's roadmap, getting into top 10 next years seems challenging, but not unrealistic.
What are the chances for them to make it?

Recently we first saw an impressive increase in price followed by a sharp reversed movement. So it jumped from almost 20$ to significantly below 10$ in quite a short period of time.
Factom is a decentralized protocol currently consisting of over 25 ANOs and they receive FCT tokens for the operation and maintenance of the designated servers. While the project has some really impressive partnerships, the price of the coin looks a bit erratic and as a result very difficult to predict.
So, what is your forecast for the first quarter of 2019? Will it move upwards overcoming the recent fall or is this movement down is a more likely tendency for the coming months?

But honestly, no one likes KYC, and knowing that tracking wallets and fund movements is always possible is one of the limitations. It seems that the more Bitcoin faces financial regulation, the less valuable it becomes, as it may be overlooked in favor of really anonymous coins.

Seems like not so many people were expecting the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization to fall again so drastically. The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether it was partially caused by manipulation. More on topic here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-20/bitcoin-rigging-criminal-probe-is-said-to-focus-on-tie-to-tether
Do you find this plausible?

It seems that new projects appear every single day. Do you have your own list of characteristics you find important for a trading platform?