the bear trend began when the drop started which was this year after at least 1 month of rise not last year where we were still rising up. and the patters has so far been with a fixed low which we hit at least 3 times and nearly the same high in $9k levels which we have tested at least 2 times and we are possibly headed there right now too.
the only problem i see with the current rise is that it is littered with ETF news so it can be affected by it greatly and that can determine the result of the current rise.

we have already dipped below $6000 multiple times and each time it couldn't last so i wouldn't worry about it that much. it is a strong support which won't be broken with no reason.

bitcoin IS the next big thing!
you think it is done rising or done  being adopted? it is just starting. so far we have only reached less than 1% adoption for bitcoin and there is a very long way to go to reach that mass adoption stage where you can say "ok now it is too late to be an early adopter". otherwise getting in now or next year, or ... for a couple of more years you will still be an early adopter getting in the "next best thing".

as for others, i am sorry to disappoint you but the altcoins are not created to become used. they are created to give short term profit with their pump and dumps so that people who have bitcoin can increase their bitcoin by using newbies.

because there is a corresponding drop in price of altcoins instead.

not at all. the manipulation in altcoins exists because of a couple of important reasons
- the altcoin market is very small and it is always super easy to manipulate a small market than a big market.
- the supplies of these coins are usually in control of one person (eg. the dev who premined it) and they gain a lot of control and money over time that can manipulate the price with
- the pumpers are always present in altcoins and want to make money
- the true purpose of altcoins is to get pumped and dumped and this process is what gives people profit and everyone wants that. they don't want manipulations to go away because it is their bread and butter.

during bitcoin price rises you should stay far away from altcoins because during times like this all the traders will take out their money from altcoin market and put it back where it belongs meaning in bitcoin and that means altcoins go down and some of them ever get dumped real hard and being in them means you will lose a lot of money.

right now bitcoin is on the rise.

bitcoin doesn't need such shenanigans but altcoins do.
not to mention that bitcoin is already being accepted as payment directly by some big names such as Microsoft, Dell,... and there are millions of small merchants all around the world that are accepting bitcoin as payment.

this was either an advertisement for altcoins or an advertisement for that particular service which to be honest seems mostly shady.

the "bear trend" ended about 2 months ago. you are way too late

signs of reversal is not a big rise. it is when price reaches the bottom, stops going down and starts becoming stable and entering an accumulation phase like that past 30 to 40 days of bitcoin which has been the buy signal indicating the end of the bear run and start of a bull run.
the rise is just proving that the speculation 1 month ago about bear run ending is correct.

only people who listened to FUD doubted bitcoin otherwise you could have seen the strong buys that has been happening all this time BEFORE the rise began.

i do expect that too.

wrong.
"red market" indicates price fall. you should not buy during a fall, you should buy when the fall is near the end meaning at the bottom. for example price started dropping from 9.5k+ down to $6k and market was red all that time, you shouldn't have bought at $9k or $8k but you should have waited to see when it ends then bought back in.

this was fake news, Samsung denied any kind of partnership with this shady payment processor called CopPay yesterday. you can read about it here:
https://www.newsbtc.com/2018/07/24/another-fake-partnership-as-samsung-denies-coppay-crypto-payments-deal/

and the funny part is the stores in Baltic state do NOT accept bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency payments at all. i don't know where this news even came from. was it the shady service called CopPay trying to scam or gain fake popularity?

you shouldn't be trading bitcoin if you can't already answer these questions on your own. specially if you can't read the  charts to see that last two months price wasn't down below $6k!!! it was well above $6k and it has been rising for over a month now building up for this current bigger rise.

when you went to buy bitcoin did anybody force you to buy 10000BTC?!!!
of course not, you can buy ~0.266BTC with that amount and in a couple of years when price is a lot higher than this your $2000 can only buy 0.02BTC for you. and since bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency with real long term potential that is my suggestion anyways if you want to do it long term (1-2 years).

investing long term in altcoins that only get pumped and dumped in short term is not a wise decision in my experience.

because the thing they created is very different from each other and they each serve a completely different purpose, a purpose that requires Vitalik to not be anonymous and Satoshi to be.

bitcoin was created to be a decentralized currency. it shouldn't have that kind of authority figure like Satoshi. it is a system that works on its own and backed by the entire network of decentralized nodes.

on the contrary, ethereum is a centralized platform created so that Vitalik and the supporters (the foundation and banking cartel investing in it) can make money. so it needs the public spokesman to advertise it.

in other words you are looking for the altcoin that has the biggest lies in its advertisement.

well that is a good strategy as a matter of fact because in this market we know that the good altcoins are not that successful and they fail to give you big profit like the shitcoins do. and shitcoins use these strategies to advertise; they use things like having higher market cap, having more coins, faster blocks,... and newbies fall for them and the pumps become big.
you can make profit from these  coins as long as you are aware that there is a dump coming.

it is called accumulation which means price stays pretty much where it was. it is not a "struggle" but it is a "purchase" where people are constantly buying more and more bitcoin accumulating it to get ready for the rise. and you can see that with two things: the higher volume during these times and also a small and slow rise which is why price is now $7600.

during this time you can sometimes see drops happen too for example the $300 drop that we recently saw and another sign that this is accumulation phase is that that tiny drop was bought up super fast.

wrong and wrong.
bitcoin price has not "stagnated", it was actually rising with a solid slow pace for the pat two weeks with one bigger faster jump when it reached the resistance.
as for XRP it has always had a huge market cap because it has billions of coins as its supply!
and Stellar got pumped hard because Coinbase said they will list it on their platform that is all!

ShapeShift is  a special form of exchange people use it to trade altcoins with each other. for example you dump ETH to buy LTC, you dump LTC to buy something else and so on! the volume of different coins change based on which one of them is being pumped at that point. just like any other exchange out there.

i disagree, the damage is more than any benefit that you are thinking of. the damage is two things:
1. damaging the image of bitcoin as altcoins are useless, buggy, scam, pump and dump and ...
2. damaging the price as when the big dumps come money usually exits through bitcoin and can crash bitcoin price too.

every word has a meaning, you can't just assume what it means and then use it with your own personal definition. it is like these days that people call bitcoin rises "pump" and each drop as "dump"! that doesn't make them true you know...

HODL is also like that. you have to understand what it means. the word itself was mostly a joke or a meme if you like to call it. but the usage and real meaning of it is as a long term investment. you can invest in bitcoin and HODL it or you can invest in grains of sands and HODL  them, but the second one doesn't make it a good investment just because you are HODLing.

i believe since there is no way of measuring how many people lost money in their trades so the 90% mentioned in OP is not realistic but mostly like a guess. although it is understandable assumption because of the fact that most of the traders are newbies and we are all in a heavily manipulated altcoin market where prices go up and down illogically and purely based on pump and dumps and if you are not familiar with pump and dumps and try to analyze them like traditional markets then you will definitely lose.
but as i said it is an "if", you can easily start opening your eyes and see how the market works and adapt. then you can gain more experience and eventually become successful.

anything is possible with bitcoin but i don't think we can set a new ATH in just 5 months while we are not even in a bull run. if we have had a solid bull run for at least 1 month and prices has been rising so far then it might have been possible but in order to reach there we first have to get out of this accumulation stage then start rising slowly and have some panic sells (two major slow phases) then start rising faster (so far 5 months will go by with these 3 stages) then start having the bigger rise to a new ATH.

bitcoin has been surviving all along and it has nothing to do with the news and certainly has nothing to do with its price! it is surviving because of its usefulness, security, decentralization and a lot of other things.

the "bitcoin" future has been positive all along too. and what government does, if it is positive will only ease the way to success, it doesn't make it.

you said all these things to share this news? this isn't even related to bitcoin!

the "cryptography" isn't centralized the "cryptocurrencies"  or more accurately some "altcoins" are centralized. and no it is not a cause for concern. they are just shitcoins doing their own thing and people only use them as far as exchanges go and nothing more and only for profit making purposes.

being on top of some list (market capitalization sorted) does not mean they are strong. it just means they are bloated more than others because of their huge supplies which they used to manipulate the result of market cap and stay on top of that list.

because this has always been like this!
when bitcoin goes down => altcoins go down also
when bitcoin rises up => altcoins go down instead

reason? i believe it is mainly because the money always goes back to bitcoin which is the only coin that everyone really cares about and believes in when it comes to real investments.

and there is a couple of exceptions to the above rule:
when bitcoin is stable => altcoins get pumped
reason? because during bitcoin stability traders can not make the same profit from it so they go to pump altcoins and make profit

when an altcoin is already on a pumping spree => that altcoin pumps
reason? because you can't stop a pump from happening. when the rocket is launched there is no stopping it until the pump reaches its peak of the bubble and then there is no stopping the bubble burst and the dump.

holding is only good if the coin you are holding is a good one with real future, low risk, big rewards. and so far i only know of bitcoin that fulfills these conditions. this means i only find day trading a viable option for altcoins.

based on my experience i am making a lot more profit when i trade altcoins in short term only which is why i am going to stick to it, in the end the only important thing is whether you are successful in the strategy that you choose not the strategy that someone else uses. maybe the strategies i use is not good for someone else or vice versa.