i don't know where to check but did it happen the last December fork? Not that i'm very much interested but would be nice to know a site where we can check the incoming forks.

it depends on your connection speed, usually hours with a good connection, otherwise can be days, the whole blockchain it's like 150/170GB so have patience and check if you have enough disk space before starting it

well, if i was a celebrity i wouldn't let the world know what i'm investing in, BTC or not because these are just personal things and especially being under the lights there is no way i would tell to the world: hey! i have invested a million of dollar into BTC.
What's the purpose of it?

my goal for 2018 and not just January is to get some experience on altcoins because there is a lot of potential but i'm still not keen to deep dive into it without knowledge, and of course regarding BTC is to hold!
Now, the idea is to find funds to invest into altcoins and start some trading.. we will see how it goes.

bitcoin is everywhere nowadays, my homecountry newspaper are talking about BTC and crypto in general for months now, while before it wasn't even mentioned.
It depends in which way they're talking about it, most of the times they are spreading crap about this world, how hard is to buy BTC, how easy is to launder money with crypto but the worst topic is about government being worried about taxation of BTC.. being on media it's always a good thing, but it's always up to the lecturer to define if they are talking about crypto in a neutral way or just bashing it telling people to avoid it at all cost.

you have to think in this way, who is supporting each coin? and in particular, how long it will last? it's just a pump to get some gain from altcoins or really community switched to a different coin?
it has been like this every second week, for a week or two a different alt is getting attention by the investors, price skyrocket, whales sell and move to a different coin which is not happening for BTC, people invest, do trades but mostly HOLD.
Ride the altcoin waves while it last because it wont last long.

ye, the idea of a CEO behind this crypto make me laugh every time i read that BCC will be the new king!
This is just wrong, because the idea of BTC it's the opposite, decentralized and can't be controlled by anyone, plus the recent pump just show they are trying to make profit out of it before people stop supporting it and it will get lost into the altcoins sea..
I don't think BCC will have a long future but who knows?

income/salary before anything mate, without a stable income you will not be able to do anything with crypto and unless you have loads of BTC/alt coin and you get daily income it will not last long.
Get the new job, get promoted and in the same time do your crypto stuff like you're doing now, all in all you need internet for crypto and you can get it anywhere in the world.

naa, it will never happen, or better, it might happen if people will lose interest in BTC and switch to ETH but for what purpose?
BTC is growing strong and will keep growing in the future, going on the stock market it's something huge for the life of BTC, it could happen for ETH as well, but the first coin it will always be BTC.

competitive market it's always a good thing but in the sea of ICO's now we can hardly find the ones we can actually support.
I mean, at least for me 99% of the ICO are just money grabbing without any support or reliable information behind the project, the 1% of the projects which might be a very good idea or a proper one, get lost within the other crappy ones.
It's like cloud mining, at start it might have worked but people got greedy and did it just to scam people.

it's always the best time to invest in BTC if you have money, but there are better times like the last price correction when it went from 20k to 11k$.
In that moment you could have got a good amount of coin/dust which in the future can always surprise you with the rise of price.
Don't be like couple of my friends, "now it cost too much" "i will wait a bit for the price to drop" and so on, in this way you will never be ready to buy, just do it and you will not regret it in the future!

for sure i wont be able to own 1BTC by the end of January, sadly i don't have much money to invest in crypto but my 2018 goal is to reach 1BTC or close to it.
Working toward it hardly, by selling my services for BTC, signature campaign and when possible, to invest some money.
I started very late but i'm doing what i can to reach my goal.

i completely agree with you and bear in mind, my advice to add a password to your electrum wallet is to do it AFTER you updated to the newest version!
And of course, cold storage does not have bugs

besides the wallet, if you have no password in your wallet, you deserve to be hacked because really, that means you don't give a value to your BTC (dust or not), as soon as i saw the red dot at the top of this page i have upgraded my electrum wallet and everything went fine.
If you don't have a password now it's the time to encrypt it, now.. come on guys, you will not regret to have a password but you will cry hard if you get hacked because you're too lazy to add it.

hold it, even if it's just some dust and try to get some more with signature campaign, working for crypto and so on.
The amount is so small that worth to hold and forget for months, you might get suprised in the future.

well, this is an hard prediction to make because if we check the 2017 trend, especially last couple of weeks/months, price skyrocketed to the moon but i don't think it will be the same this year.
My prediction is around 30/35k by the end of 2018!

i have cashed out some from kraken, didn't take long (around one week) to get money to my bank account but be aware, in this moment kraken is pathetic, slow, working in degraded mode for months.
Stay away from them until they upgrade their system (which should have been done 1 month ago already).

good question, plenty of altcoins around, most of them are just shitcoin but if i have to choose id go with litecoin, my first love back in the days because with a small laptop i could mine some dust while working.
Had couple of LTC forgotten for years and exchanged for BTC 1 year ago.

main goal for 2018?
Keep earning BTC and study a bit more altcoins because at the moment i'm not confident to invest on them.
Alts can be a good source of income but without knowledge i'm sure i would lose everything, so for now i'll hold and study.

some newspaper in my country are starting to write articles about bitcoin without having any knowledge on the topic.
One article was "how (hard) is to buy 50 euro of BTC" and it was so full of crap that was funny to read, was mentioned also a shady seller with a black hoodie and crap like that, he basically compared buying BTC to go to a pusher hidden behind the corner who would sell you bitcoin.
Many articles are just clickbait for uneducated people.