Out of the two I would go for IOTA as it is still in the early stages whereas Waves has been around for a bit longer and we can already see it's limitations, IOTA on the other hand potentially has the scope to outgrow everything and really could be the next big thing.

After finally trying Steemit I have to say it is pretty damn good and over time once it grows it could definitely rival Reddit.

I think we won't see the true potential for this until later this year or early Q1.

Glad I found this one, the teaser looks great and the whole sector is huge if we just look at Pokemon and how that took over the world, something like this could do equally as well.  It could also fall to the wayside, it all depends on how well it is adopted and how the game itself works.

That is the question we all would like to know the answer to, you just have to dyor and make the decision.  There is always an element of risk so just be awre that you could lose what you put in.

This whole story is rather confusing.  You found out that the bitcoin was sent to Poloniex but you did not have an account at Poloniex until afterwards, how did you know it went to Poloniex?

It looks like you have entered the wrong address when sending your bitcoin, it is essential when sending bitcoin that you double check the address it is going to in the same manner you would double check an account number and sort code that you are sending fiat to.

If somehow you are able to find out who owns that address they might be very nice and return the bitcoin to you but the chance of this happening is slim as it would prove very difficult to find out who owns that address unless you open a thread in here asking who owns the address and hope that they see it and are honest.

Bottom line is it looks like you have lost your bitcoin.

There are various ways and some are easier than others.  You can use an exchange such as Coinbase or sell via localbitcoins which offers you more options to cash out.

There are also prepaid debit cards with companies such as Spectrocoin, Cryptopay etc, these cards allow you to withdraw from an ATM and use as you would any other Visa card, to get these cards there will be an upfront fee.

Bitcoin remains the same no matter how many forks we have.. 

It gives the user more choice but has zero impact on the way bitcoin is structured, my only hope is that we don't get an influx of forks offering free coins like BCH did because that took up a lot of time for everyone and just causes confusion.

I would suggest splitting it in half or five ways and invest in multiple ones so you have a better chance of making some profit. 

Even if the profit will be small you said you had lost everything so maybe it's time to be a bit cautious as you work your way back up.

You would have just missed DIMCOIN which finished recently, currently REAL is looking great, check out their bounty thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2068930.260

It would depend on the ICO and how successful it was, also how much money you have put in and how confident you are in the project.

If you can get away with making some profit and still leave some coins in the project it can't hurt, a few times I have got out soon after an ICO hits an exchange only to find out a few months down the road that I could have made a lot more profit.

I was intending on keeping BCH for a bit longer but just recently got rid of mine as I can't really see it going much higher than it is right now and I just read yesterday about another fork bitcoingold so I'm out.

I think it is quite a task for exchanges to adapt to handling the tangle network, I saw recently on slack that Bitpanda will be adding IOTA but not too sure of when.  IOTA is exciting.

IOTA definitely is one to get into if you can, at some point it will take off but maybe not this year.  Maybe check out some of the ICOs that are about as there are a few that look pretty decent but they are quite risky.

Biggest regret is selling, no matter what coin it seems that selling more often than not is a mistake.  It is a learning curve not to adhere to panic and fear and sell your coins, it's a wiser move to hold on to at least a % of them.

With the ability to create a token it seems that they are popping up far too often, not all of these projects can be real and have a future, there will be some decent ones amongst them but hopefully in 2018 the fad of an ICO on the ETH platform will die off.

I agree, as this is one of the main places people will come when researching REAL it would be useful to have up to date information and some links to recent articles that have been written, this will allow the investor to save time and invest quicker.

I don't think we will ever lose physical cash but it will definitely diminish and digital will take the majority share.  We are already mostly using digital money, even the money in our banks is all digital and when we pay using our cards it is digital, 
Myself I use physical cash far less than I did 5 years ago.

Real estate seems to be the most popular thing at the moment, I have seen 3 or 4 in the last two months holding an ICO, competition is always healthy.

It would be preferable to keep the day job as we never know what will happen to the bitcoin price and whether it will remain stable enough to provide a steady income.  You could offer some service if you have some skills and get paid with bitcoin or try your hand at trading but trading would be quite difficult to master.