In no particular order, a few I am into are below, hoping for some decent progress with each of them.

NEBL
SKY
DRGN
BLOCK
PASC
SHIFT
ADA
XRB
BIS
COVAL

I think IOTA could well be up there this year along with some other coins which are equally if not better put together such as BLOCK, XRB, NEBL and there are others also I think will do equally as well as IOTA

Having some patience and sticking with some coins you believe have a good future is something that for me anyway took some time to get to grips with, it's easy to get into the quick selling mindset.

It can also depend on how the coin acts, it could be in a a pump phase so whilst also being your long term coin you would be crazy not to take some profit but a solid portfolio would include those coins you view as long term and short term coins.

It is amusing when you come across old comments on coins and then the coin is doing the completely opposite, who would have known DOGE would be getting all this focus, DOGE at $1 who knows, it would make a shed load of rich people.

This does sound crazy in the normal world, in the crypto world stranger things have happened and something like you describe is not out of reach and it would require an element of luck along with being in the right place at the right time and not selling too early.

Even with the 50 bucks if you hit the right coin at the right time an increase like x 1000 is not an impossibility.

This is the right way of thinking, if you think you are late you are not as we know bitcoin and crypto has hardly touched the surface when it comes to awareness, although the end of last year it seems that awareness is growing at a rapid rate so although now might not be too late certainly in 2019 it might be late and even then it still might not be too late.

It seems that anything can pump at any time so really it is a lot of luck at the moment as more and more money comes in, if you are looking for decent projects that will have a natural growth I would suggest looking into BLOCK, NEBL to name just two.

Litecoin will be cheaper and quicker to transfer from exchange to exchange, if the exchange has a litecoin market then you will save the fees to buy back the bitcoin but Binance doesn't have a litecoin market so you will need to buy back your bitcoin and even then the fees for this will be far less than you would have paid sending bitcoin from Coinbase.

And now it's shut again
There are other exchanges, Poloniex is a decent enough exchange, there is also c-cex which is okay but I am not sure on their status of new registrations and whether they are having the same issues.

I did consider looking at Ebay but then thought that it is too open for things like this, always best to go direct to the site as then you know you are purchasing a brand new untouched product even if it does cost a few extra $.

I got rid of mine as soon as I got it when it was launched, I didn't think it would do anything much but I should have held on just a little bit longer. 
In terms of what it brings to the table and if it will have any further growth I am really not sure but if it is on Coinbase and remains there then the price should at least hold but moving forward I can't see it doing anything spectacular.

No, I don't think just because an exchange has it's own coin it means it is more trustworthy or legitimate, look at Bittrex as an example they do not have their own coin and is one of the best exchanges.

I can understand why some exchanges have their own currency but it doesn't bear relation to the trustworthiness of the site.

I think Bittrex will sort it out soon, they tend to leave things a bit to make sure that there are no problems, it was never going to stay up at the $20 levels this long, might go back up long term but at the current price it doesn't really matter when we get them or not as it's not worth dumping at this level unless you need to cash now, holding for a bit makes more sense.

Cryptopia is good but like others said with all exchanges make sure to turn on the 2FA using an app like Google Authenticator or Authy.  I am surprised you were able to setup a new account with them as they have just suspended new accounts like the other exchanges Bittrex and Binance due to high demand, you were lucky.

I think 2018 is going to be a good year for bitcoin and we will see it at least double but I think we will see a few scares along the way so if you have good nerves hodl.

There are.so many to choose from right now, you also have some good ICOs, take some time and read into a few coins before investing, a couple of good ones I would suggest looking into are BLOCK and BIS.

Not sure if it will overtake bitcoin but if it does get close to where bitcoin is now then bitcoin would have to increase also as it is the lead coin, they are very different and there are many applications that ETH has over bitcoin but it also has it's downfalls and there are other projects out there which are equally as good as ETH that could also rival bitcoin.

Looks like now is the time it starts to rise, I wonder how long it will take for it to get to $20,000 Q1?  or maybe a bit longer but it can't be far off.

Still waiting for Bittrex to sort their users out, it will all depend on the price, it might be worth holding on until all the dumpers have finished if you are going to sell.

I think 2018 is the year of crypto, everyone will be running around trying to find the next big coin, bitcoin will steadily rise up to an amount that would have seemed unimaginable only a year ago.

If you are in crypto now there should be no reason why you should not profit in 2018.