Like anything it's just supply and demand. If the demand for electricity to mine BTC keeps increasing then the price of electricity will go up. Eventually it will be uneconomic to mine BTC and hence the demand for electricity will drop. The only reason that so much power is being used on bitcoin is because so many people are mining and hence the difficulty level keeps increasing to keep the block rate the same. Once all coins have been mined then that will be the end of bitcoin mining.

Coins that generate a return are a good bet. Unlike a normal share in a company it's very hard to value a cryptocurrency. At least coins generating a return can be valued. Hence Neo is one of my favourites, it generates Gas which when sold is equivalent to about a 5% return per annum, plus the change in value of Neo.

You can mine them but you'd have to invest in a decent mining rig to make that worthwhile. The amount of hashrate being added to the bitcoin system is increasing all the time and you'll find your rate of return on mining will diminish quickly. Most pieces of hardware will not pay for themselves.

Bitcoin is being used as a long term investment as it is likely its value will keep increasing in the near future. However it is likely it will get replaced by another type of cryptocurrency in the future. Remember the Blackberry?

Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency will become the new world currency. Gold is has it's place in an apocalyptic scenario but then you'd probably have more worries than just your money.  So if you weigh up the odds of world desctruction vs bitcoin becoming the world currency I'd bet 90/10 to bitcoin. So invest 90% bitcoin, 10% gold. Nothing like having something real in your pocket.

You can certainly affect the price of a low liquidity coin with 10 BTC. Some coins only trade $5000 a day so if you put in a market order to buy 10 BTC worth you;'ll pump the price up. You can look at depth of the order book on some sites to see how much you will increase the price. Unfortunately unless the market notices, chances are the price will dump back down pretty quickly leaving you with a large loss.

A friend told me about it when it first started, and I looked at it and thought it was just another sort of payment method. Didn't sound exciting. Boy was I wrong. Now I look at it everyday.. Lol

I can tell you after it has happened.

The more money you have the more time it takes to manage. Sometimes the simple life is the better one.

Where do I buy some? lol

100 years is a very long time. One way to to see the future is to look at the past. How many things from 100 years ago have survived to today? My guess is that 99% of things have been superseded by other things - it doesn't mean the original idea is gone, just that it's form has changed. Model T has been replaced by Honda or Nissan, planes by better plane, light bulbs by LED's etc. etc. So my guess is that cryptocurrencies will be around, but bitcoin won't be. "In my day we used Bitcoin" - Dad you are so old fashioned.

Get them into an alternative activity like bitcoin and alt coin trading. If they are good they can make some spare cash

Have never used one, but wouldn't if the fees are 20%. Kind of defeats the purpose of bitcoin being descentralized if you then have to rely on a centralized atm machine owner taking a massive cut. Good on them for spreading the technology though.

Where do I send my money? Do you have an ethereum or bitcoin address?

I wish I had 40 BTC! So you've discovered trading is not as easy as it sounds. The human element of emotion makes most people fail at trading. The natural emotional inclination is to buy when it's going up (fear of missing out), and sell when it's gone down a lot (fear of losing even more).  Unless you are a human robot you will always struggle with these emotions.

Not in the near future but it is likely some form of cryptocurrency will replace fiat one day. I imagine some forward thinking smaller countries will adopt and recognise crypto-currencies as a currency and allow people to use it to transact with daily. I think it will spread from there to other place around the world. At the end of the day if everyday people start using it then can it really be stopped?

There are now many crypto exchanges that offer the option to buy bitcoin and ethereum for fiat. One option is to use localbitcoins.com which matches up buyers and sellers in your region.

Hard to know who has gold. There is no world gold register unlike a share register. We know there are millions of BTC wallets but a lot of them are empty. It is likely bitcoin will become the new gold. You can carry it around with you but unlike gold you can safely send to someone else on the other side of the world quickly and in any amount. I know people who have sold all their gold and put it into bitcoin, believing it to be a better store of value. Obviously right now there are more gold investors than bitcoin investors, but I think that will change in the future. Gold may cease to the safe haven asset and dramatically lose value in the future as people sell it to buy BTC.

Generally investing is a long term strategy where you buy and hold a cryptocurrency or shares in a company that you believe will grow in value in the long term due to the nature of their business or product, E.g. Apple stocks would be a good example. Trading is a short term strategy that you can apply to any traded asset or commodity and the goal is make money by buying low and selling high. The investment strategy is an easy "set and forget" option where you check the value of your investment periodically and you don't panic when it goes down, knowing it will likely go even higher in the future.

Trading on the other hand requires you to monitor the prices and market information regulary and make quick decisions as to when to buy and sell. Emotionally it's much tougher because you constantly make profits and losses and hope your profits are higher then your losses. The emotional element often makes people make bad decisions and hence lose money overall. Statistics claim that 90% of amateur traders lose money.

Long term this will be good news as it will force regulation into the Chinese market. Once it is legal again, the money will flood back into cryptocurrencies with the market cap heading towards $1 trillion. This is an amazing opportunity for many poorer people in the world to have access to an investment vehicle like this.