Yeah, a lot of people have been saying that and normally, we always expect to see the market experience some surge or decline based on the response to some certain news once in a while.
It is still a question unanswered as to what could have caused the skyrocketing within that short period, but one way or the other, it is a volatile market and we just have to live with some of these quick fluctuations. Nevertheless, we still have a long time to confirm before we know if we are in a bull market or not.

As far as I am concerned, every other altcoin was just more like a clone, and as the last time I checked, that is the reason why they call them alternate coins, which makes bitcoin to remain the legacy coin.
The thing here is that the market is controlled by the market makers, and it is their perception in the market that makes the market what it is. This is the reason why altcoins for now will still be in the shadow of bitcoin until later on, when most of them become useful in their own way to stand on their own in the market without them just being speculative in nature only.

Oh! What would you have expected before. Talking about mainstream investors, these are the caliber of people who have been investing all their lives and they know all the things that it entails investing into any market.
Most of the people that always end up losing in any market are the inexperienced, greedy and weak hands who will definitely let their emotions play them that using their own heads and knowledge to make decisions to benefit from the market movement or just hold for the future. It has been like this since ages in most markets, so it is not new.

I guess that is what most people are not really understanding yet. We are still in a very early state and we cannot expect the volatility to not be like this, most especially for a decentralized environment. A lot of people keep complaining about how volatile the market is without understanding it is that volatility that actually makes some investors to want to pull in to take advantage of the fluctuations.

However, some of these things will change overtime, if we indeed start seeing real life usage with a great level of adoption but until then, we just have to get used to it. Also, based on what the OP said, I do not see how this inhibits the development or growth of altcoins as a whole lot of alts have grown since their inception and still growing.

Agreed as we really need to be very specific on the problems here. Sure, the ushering in of blockchain technology and bitcoin being the main legacy currency has really helped to solve some problems so far at least for the users but we cannot really say how it will eventually solve on a global scale except it becomes highly used.
However, looking at the way we make transactions and how we have been a bit removed from the shackles of our government in making international transactions, a lot of things have changed.

Right bro! Well, I guess it is one question we will just have to keep answering. It is simply because so many people may not actually understand bubble. Bubble is something that increases hugely in price without something driving the demand or does not really hold any intrinsic value and makes the value unsustainable.

Sure, we may want to attribute the activities of last year as a bubble, no one is wrong with that, but cryptocurrency itself even though may look bubbl-ish now, most of them do have value, and we will get to see all of this in the future. For those with no value and they are pretty much of shit coins, then we can call them whatever we want, but calling the whole cryptocurrency ecosystem a bubble is not right.

It is more like a community and as long as the community keeps standing strong, nothing is going to shake it. The essence is to have a P2P digital currency without a third party during transactions and that is what makes the whole idea special, so as long as that is in play, I see no reason for cryptocurrency to die and I see no reason how the government can effectively kill it and the highest they can do now, which they are planning already is to regulate it.

If there is even anyone that does not have any idea on how to trade the market, I wonder why they should be bothered about the downfall in the market because if they had done their assignments pretty well, they should have known better by now, that this is something that is normal, and whenever narket recovers in cases like this, it always end up coming back better.

For those who are here for the long term and never got greedy at any point or think this is a get rich quick scheme, patience is something they do not even need to look for, because it is definitely going to be there. The future is al that is important here and not what we are seeing with the downtrend.

Dude! You simply have no trading knowledge, so asking a question like this or trying to trade short term what you are holding will only put you in a much more terrible situation in the long run and at the end you start making screwed up emotional decisions that you would not even like. Hold what you have, and if you want to trade, take your time to learn than asking us what to do. That is a brotherly advice! Take it or leave it!!

It is not even about the time, it is about what you are willing to gamble with. Simply put, gamble with what you can afford to lose, and once you hit that limit, walk away and do not look back. It takes discipline and self control, and if that is not in play with your gambling activities, then you are going to be having a bad day ahead with a lot of losses due to the inability to control yourself to stop. If you cannot afford to lose it, then do not gamble it and that would easily make you to know when to call it quit.

Everything about it is true and as long as it makes sense, it is not useless. You think if those who have been holding for a long term and reaping the benefits now had lose hope, they would have reaped those benefits?

The mistakes a lot of people have made is that they got greedy (that is the basic fact) and with that, they just expected the market to keep going up and then giving the whales a lot of money to take as a result of their panic, but the thing is, those who were never ignorant of the market situation and got in with some knowledge will never have fallen for such.

However, even if you did eventually make such a mistake, like the OP have said, there are ways that you could have at least gotten out of it even during the downtrend, but like it, most people would still prefer to stay in their ignorant state and rather whine and complain about everything.

Shorting now for someone who has been holding or planning to hold for a long time is not a good advice. Apparently, a trader will know what to do when the time comes, but a good investor should have started buying in bit by bit now and if the price goes lower, keep buying more. We are supposed to be in a long term investment, isn't it? However, it seems people are just busy getting greedy and expecting bitcoin to just shoot up overnight and get them rich. Maybe they have to understand that those who are extremely rich holding bitcoin from the onset waited a huge number of years to even get here.

What makes you think the market is not busy? It has been busy with fluctuations even in the downtrend and people are still holding while some are busy selling, and what we have now is just something that is necessary for the way forward whether we like it or not.
Usually the second quarter of the year is normally when decisions are made and with that, a lot of things will be affected which for now we are just keeping arms crossed. However, we have to understand that bad news travel faster than good ones, so we may take some time before we get to see the market recover.

Nice one mate! Unfortunately, people have always gotten the wrong picture most of the time, while thinking bitcoin is just a way to make quick money based on its value as an asset and then forgetting that bitcoin in itself is money and a safe haven for those who have been terribly ridden by the fiat system.

Those who understand the blockchain technology very well and the true ideas of satoshi will know that bitcoin is irreplaceable, and I guess some who forked out already got the picture by now.

I feel not getting too excited is always the good way to put it. When the price is being driven by FOMO with everyone getting greedy and nothing actually driving in demand, then you should be very careful because the aftermath is what we have just seen. However, the future is still strong and for those who are caught in the trap, they can just keep holding. The thing is sell out are meant for weak hands, and that is why it is always necessary to have huge corrections, otherwise the state of the market would be generally unhealthy.

Most of these places have a lot to do with the government itself. I have been to some remote places in Africa and I can see how secluded some are, which to me I may not blame the government as long as some have decided to stay primitive.

However, with respect to the poor where the parent could not even afford, there is no free system of education provided by the government and even if it is free, it is as good as not even going to school as there are no paid teachers to teach.

All these things balls down on the government response to education as a whole and even as some have said, our own little impact in giving back to the society will have some roll to play but nothing serious without government intervention.

I am still not expecting too much as well this year, but I will not just rule out anything. We have seen how this market has performed before, we know how things can quickly play out, so the possibilities before the end of the year may still be there.

However, we also have to know that a lot of people were greedy for no reason last year and that typically affected the market, and unless there is a huge news that could fuel a huge demand, I do not think anything of such may happen this year, but who knows?

Hmm! Very nice article to read and I hope some of the new and inexperienced investors are reading this now. I guess the problem most of them have today is just ignorance, since all they do is to want to get rich quick, without analyzing and understanding what they are getting into, then they tend to get emotional easily to everything.

There is a huge potential in every market but everything cannot always be rosy and being able to understand all these without letting it affect you emotionally in the decisions you make is all that is important as an investor.

Well, how long are they going to keep prohibiting without giving up eventually? It would have been easy if this has not spread globally already but the truth is that they must not have expected the rapid growth or spread within a short period of time, thanks for the global level of technology, otherwise, if this were to just be operational in few countries so far, the idea would have been frustrated.
Now, they have no choice than to just embrace and move on with the way things are except to find ways to regulate the current cryptocurrencies and see how they can also integrate the blockchain technology.

Yeah! We are all worried about the state of cryptocurrency presently and forgetting the future and how things can easily work out with adoption. So many merchants today are not collecting it for some reasons best known to them, but over time, this mentality will change.

Let's take a look at Japan for instance, things are gradually changing with adoption, you can easily see bitcoin ATMs, you can walk up to a store and pay in bitcoin and so on, if other countries do something similar, adoption will be huge and the volatility some people are referring to will be a thing of the past.