250 is a descent stack. I think if the price has worked fine for that long, that it will continue to do so. Ethereum just finished with some important updates, which means that the network is again more stable and that extra privacy features will be implemented soon (zsnarks) which, in my opinion, will keep the price going up. There isn't much to lose to be honest, if you want to buy something like a car/computer or anything that is not really "vital", I'd recommend you not to sell. If you need to money for something important, some financial obligation you have to fulfill, then feel free to liquidate your holders - but unless you really have to, keep the ETH, it will keep on appreciating.

I agree with SALT and Cosmos, especially SALT, it's such a solid coin. Just thing of the concept behind this. There are so many people holding coins which intent to hold these coins for years to come, SALT gives them the chance to keep those coins and still liquidate part of their holding without having to sacrifice "out" transactions. We're talking about a trillion dollar industry here and the platform is not even developed yet. When things get on track and we'll see more people get involved in cryptocurrencies, there will be demand for SALT and that will drive the price sky high, and the best thing, it's not even considered a security as much as I know because the SALT tokens are basically "tickets" to using the SALT platform, so anyone who wants to use SALT has to buy them.

I agree with your ETH analysis. I believe the platform is a hub for innovation and it has already developed its ecosystem so much (there are thousands of companies and projects building on ETH at the moment and there will be so much more in the near future), considering that, I believe the growth potential is huge and we'll be seeing wave after wave once the technology is made available to the population (working software and services that are being advertised). I really like the fact that the founds is very young and extremely smart, which means he'll definitely be around for a while, and if he managed to bring ETH to where it is today in just a matter of years, who knows where he'll get the platform in another 2-3 years. So many protocol improvements will eventually attract many additional investors and when things go mainstream we'll see a fantastic surge in demand and increase in price respectively. About Litecoin, I can't say much because I've never even looked into it, but to me it's just another "coin", maybe more efficient but the same as many others out there.

The one's I'm really supporting are:

ETH (it's the standard for decentralized applications, or dabs. They have the pioneer and first mover advantage so it will be very difficult to get ETH of its throne)
XRP (they are the best coin regarding collaboration, they have several big institutions who already utilize their technology and the Japanese market overall is a fast expanding market)
ZCASH (zcash has the best privacy protocol, in my opinion. ETH wants to implement it and JP Morgan has already implemented it in their Quorom blockchain)
NEO (that's really a hedge to ETH, anything that might threaten ETH is a good investment options, and at the moment, considering that ETC is lacking innovation, NEO is the best candidate)
IOTA (the internet of things is gonnna be huge, and IOTA is obviously the leader in that regards. It might take a while until it takes off, but when it does it's gonna be huge)

the main thing you need is:

-Access to a foreign exchange

As the most common abrigrage opportunities (price differences) are present in different continents (countries), you'll need access to a second exchange (depending where you're trading from) to Japan, China, Europe, and the US. If you have access to these countries/continents you have great ways to make a handsome profit out of arbitrage. That's difficult of course, because all these countries have their own regulation and it's not as straight forward to simply open an account in one of them, you usually have to be a resident and it's unlikely that you have a nationality in all these three countries, but in theory it could be possible if you get along with a trader from one of these countries (chat, live support/email etc.)

Do: Hold at whatever you're buying
Don't: Trade

Explanation: Everyone is losing money by trading because no one can predict the outcome of the market (short term outcome). But we can all be fairly sure that the cryptomarket will evolve within the next years and it's value will multiply by a lot. Considering that, it makes no sense to trade "catching waves" to make short-term profits, if you can simply buy any of these coins and hold, and make just as good of a return as you would by trying to trade. Just consider doing something else, having a job for example will most likely provide you with a better income than trading (even though trading is a job as well, leave it to the experienced one's) if you really do want to get invovled in it, just put a very small amount of your portfolio into trading, maybe 10% and trade with that. Something you can afford to lose

there isn't a specific website that serves everyone.. I assume you are talking about buying/selling BTC in which case we're talking about exchanges. If you are looking for an exchange, make sure to find one that is compliant in your country, different countries have different regulations and have to follow various rules. You will probably have to submit personal documentation when you create an account in an exchange in order to buy BTC, but that won't be a big issue. After that you can simply send them your FIAT and they'll send back the crypto depending on how much you bought and in what price range. Make sure to keep everything in a secure wallet, an offline wallet would be recommended... and find a localized exchange! A specific answer to the question without knowing your location is not possible.

I'd recommend not to keep your BTC on an exchange during the fork. There have been many modifications and as suggested by a lot, it's better to make sure that your wallet provider supports the new enhancements and changes to the fork. Check with them if they will issue BTC gold and have your stacks stored based on that. You can send your BTC after to any exchange and start trading again, but remember what happened with the previous fork.. it was mayhem during the first days and weeks but suprisingly Bitcoin Cash is still alive, who knows for how long though.

http://www.investopedia.com/ is a very good website to get all the basics/definitons and fundamental right. But when trading, you will need as well real-time information, such as current news (that affect directly the price). That means that you will have to read a lot, on a daily basis, to keep up with the newest developments in the crypto space. A good source is coindesk.com or cointelegraph.com, they always keep up to date with the newest tech on blockchain. Other useful ways to get information about trading, is through trading groups (Telegram for example), or you can use Tradingview.com, which has an integrated ticket and chat channel, where you are free to discuss with anyone about the price changes and technical indicators that move these prices

usually a successful fork is a good indicator that the price will rise.. that materialized in this latest fork as you might have noticed, with BTC going from 4.9 to 5.7k, which is quite cool. Have a look at ETH now.. and see if something similar happens after the latest hard fork in implemented successfully

nah....... in a couple of years people will be asking the same thing. When BTC is 50k and ETH 3k, people will still wonder whether it's a good time to buy or not, which it will be. Blockchain is the future and opens the door to finance and investments, people are not realizing this yet. The poor will be able to invest for the first time in HISTORY, because they don't need an account with useless KYC requirements, which until now, made the rich only richer. Just give it some time and you'll see that adoption will come, it's just a matter of time

make sure to come in direct contact with the founders of the project. Reliable projects always have the team available on various social media (twitter, telegram etc.) and it gives everyone the chance to ask any question about the project, which can be useful if you know what questions to ask. Other things you can do: read the whitepaper (does it make sense? are the suggestions reasonable?), if it's a poorly made whitepaper it's a good chance that it's a poorly run project as well, last but not least. Check if they have a working product/prototype for whatever they want to launch

Anything that is not BTC can be considered an ALT. Alt's are all cryptocurrencies, such as ETH, XRP, MNC etc. except BTC

BTC is considered the gold standard, and it is suggested that you hold at least part of your portfolio in BTC, a smaller fraction, like 20% can be invested in ALT's (or even more if you want) depending on what how much you believe in the underlying project and the new technology developed for that alt. Either way, make sure to always keep some BTC handy.

you know what they say, whatever goes up eventually has to come down. NEO just like any other cryptocurrency has it's periods of growth and decline, and we've seen the recent one (Chinese ban) which showed how vulnerable crypto's are to external influences. If you think it has potential and will eventually do what the developers said it'll do, then buy it and hold. Going back and forth (buy/sell) just makes things harder for you

it's more about the negative trust than the positive one. By being able to see that a user has negative trust, that's a good indicator of him having done something bad, like a scam or tried to trick someone. Positive reputation is less important in my opinon

you basically have two options

1)buy before the fork
2)buy after the fork

(same goes for sell in both cases), if you are worried the fork might mess things up, sell before the fork
if you believe the fork is a good addition to the coin and that it will be completed sucessfully, sell after the fork

different exchanges have different prices.. you'd need to scan every single exchange in the world to find the cheapest currecy. My reccomendation: always choose the exchange with the highest trading volume. This will ensure liquidity and therefore a tight ask/speard fee. You might find a cheap buy in Japan as you mentioned, but if the exchange charges insane fees, then the difference might be even bigger than buying it from the original exchange

I'd recommend to have a hardware wallet at all cases.. you can use electrum as a hot wallet (only small amounts which you transact) and keep the biggest portion of your crypto's in a hard wallet.. that's the standard pretty much nowadays and the most secure option

it's pretty much what it sounds like, when you have a paper wallet, you literally have a paper with the public/private key inked on it - that way you store your crypto's "offline" which reduces the chance of getting hacked and losing that information. On the other side, your problem is now "physical", which means that if you lose that piece of paper, if your house burns down, or if it's damaged, you'll basically lose all the information related to your crypto's

try to add https:// to make it secure instead of just http:// that is a safety "standard" that will protect you