people are confusing a lot of things with each other and the social media spamfest has made everything that much worse.
saying HODL doesn't  mean you should hang on tight to anything you can find and never let it go. holding means you invest long term in something that is worth holding in long term mainly because of its long term potentials. so far bitcoin is the only thing here that has that potential.
unfortunately people start holding onto a lot of shitcoins and call it "portfolio" and think to themselves that they are experts in the field because they now have a "portfolio" but the reality will always hit them hard in the face when all the shitcoins they are holding start to get dumped and their "portfolio" turns into a ruin.

the worst part is that we have this almost every year!

my hands are calloused from years of holding my Ultra Great Sword and my big ass Greatshield

I know, nobody likes the bear market. I particularly hate it not because the price drop but because of the unpredictable price drops that look more like manipulation to me than a real legit downtrend where everyone is selling instead of whales dumping to push it to the threshold and then others following it down.

first of all there is absolutely no reason for this year to be anything like 2014 and the trend of those years because the market is nothing like that time.
secondly just because some trend happened once it doesn't mean it will happen again. other times it was a lot shorter than this and if anything the most repeated trend should repeat again in which case this downtrend should only last about 6 months and nothing more.

and finally it is just my opinion that this time things won't last on downtrend that long. we will see a reversal soon. in fact the more dumps that come and the faster we go down the faster we are getting close to that bottom which will reverse things upwards.

bitcoin is already legal. you can't legalize something that is already legal!

no I disagree. you are hanging around in circles that focus on the scams that has happened so all you have seen is the scams and nothing else.
besides if there are a lot of scams happening it means that bitcoin has grown too big and has a lot of usages and a lot of users that it has also attracted scammers. it is like fiat that has a lot of scams and scammers, more than anything in the world because it has the most amount of users.

it is not just about the ATM and how many of them there are. it is about what the installation of that one ATM proves. and that is the fact that there was enough demand in that particular place that they had to install an ATM for people to use. in other words it shows that bitcoin adoption is still growing and it is growing fast in places like Zimbabwe. and that growth is going to affect the price and this effect is not going to be in short term. the adoption effects are always visible in the long term. in short term the manipulation is dominant force.

there are a lot of traders in the market and they are doing a lot of different things. there are many different strategies and bots they are using, as a result you see these types of orders sometimes. without seeing these orders myself I can't be sure but my guess is that this is one of those ping pong-ers who are placing a lot of orders above and below a certain level and hope they get filled. for example they buy $5 worth of something at $1 price and set a sell order of what they bought at $1.1 and they have a lot of these orders like 50 of them at a time!
sometimes the steps they use are too small too. for example I have seen orders placed with 1 satoshi steps in LTC market!

why are they doing it? I have no clue. maybe they think they can beat the market like this and make profit
are they making profit? most probably not because they are going to get busted when a big dump comes and wipes all their orders in one go and price doesn't go back up again.

in this market when you are in doubt the best course of action is to simply stay away from it. just keep holding your fiat (USD,...) until your doubts are lifted or at least reduced to a level when you can feel confident enough to buy back in.
this may mean losing some opportunities such as buying the very bottom but it is always best to be safe than sorry.

I am sorry to disappoint you but the bitter truth is that the altcoin that you are bag holding is dying and all the people who are dumping it are also pulling bitcoin down with that sinking ship. look at its trading volume you can see how huge it is today. that is because of all the panic sells that have been taking place in the past 30+ hours as people are pushing the big red dump button on your altcoin.

I am going to go ahead and say it is go below $6000.

but not because I expect it to, not because it is possible to reach that price, not because some analysis says it, not because of supply and demand, not because of support levels, and certainly not because I want it to.

but simply because of the same reasons why it went below $10k and then $9k, $8k and so on. dump, dump and more dump followed by FUD and a lot of false news and panic.
we had a ridiculously strong support at $10k but it was broken. price wanted to go back above it but it wasn't allowed, it tried again two more times and it wasn't allowed to break it and it was constantly pressed down so far. and this pressure has not been lifted and also it has not yet reached that time when it can no longer fight the power of the rest of the market combined.

there is no need for conducting such experiments to know the result. I can tell you the answers right now.
all three questions have YES for their answers. not because manipulation exists but because people always want to blame things they don't understand on others and what better to blame as "manipulators" whether it is some whales or the exchanges themselves. as I said this has nothing to do with actual manipulation for example when the correction happens after a rise everyone starts saying it was "whales" who dumped! and specially these days that price is going down and not up to their dream prices everyone is seeing manipulation on every corner.

let me hold your hand and walk you through it. buying "the dip" will need a strategy not just throwing money in the wind. the first strategy that many people use is the short term (day)-trading. if you look at each of those "dips" they all happen below a certain buy support and then there is a recovery. in a bear market you buy these dips below the support level and sell after the recovery for a small profit and wait for the next dip or whatever to make more profit....

the other strategy is to buy and invest long term. imagine next year (for example) that price is $50k, of course you would want to have bought all your coins at the very bottom but we all know it is not possible. would you honestly mind that you bought these dips and price went lower?
of course this strategy is best performed when market is more predictable than this, in my opinion. and right now things are strange at best and the signs of recovery did not show themselves so buying for long term investment had a higher risk.

criticizing and spreading nonsense are not the same thing. there are critics of bitcoin and they have valid points too but these two persons are neither critics nor valid. they are both market manipulators who are trying to make money from it. we don't YET have any evidence of Buffet investment in bitcoin but it is highly likely and we already have evidence of JP Morgan involvement in bitcoin and the fact that they bought a lot of it when Diamon's fraud FUD crashed the price last year.
US dudes who are "looking into manipulation" should start with these two gentlemen here and "look into" them before starting elsewhere.

bitcoin market is already big enough that individuals on this forum who see this topic can not do anything about it including manipulation. but the answer is yes and there are many who are trying to do it at least. you can see a lot of idiots on this very same board trying to spread some bullshit thinking it is FUD LOL.

in any case most people prefer manipulating altcoins because it is super easy. they are small, there is not that many exchanges and some only have 1 small exchange listing them and everyone knows altcoins are pump and dumps so they are more susceptible to manipulation. there is also a lot more money there too but only if you know how to pump and dump them or at least know how to spot and take advantage of them.

this is bound to happen, it is inevitable. and it will happen everywhere in the world not just in some big developed countries that are bitcoin friendly! bitcoin and the cryptocurrencies are here to stay, for now only bitcoin is worth something and the altcoins are pump and dumps but there still is a lot of money to be made and a lot of business to be started offering different services. banks will be the first to jump on board as soon as the adoption reaches a stage when the possible profit of offering such services become incentive enough for them that they couldn't deny it anymore.

it depends on a lot of factors. an investor is not just waking up some day and decides to buy bitcoin and that day price doesn't happen to be at $20k! and it doesn't just fall down in an hour after he bought bitcoin!

an investor (a real one not a newbie throwing his money away) analysis the thing he is buying and when he sees the potential he invests his money. then depending on their strategy they act differently after they bought. some are short term investors trying to make some money in less than a day. they profit from swings. some are long term investors who see the potential and buy stuff to park their worthless money somewhere. for instance a long term investor has been buying bitcoin for over a year and has bitcoin ever since it was $900 and even if he bought above $10k they are still in profit and will be in a much bigger one in long term too. it is like saying those who bought when price was $2 and lost money when price dropped to below $1 are losers!!! no they have bought bitcoin at $2 and now it is ridiculously higher than that price even if it dropped more than half.

since there has not been any legitimate news from India regarding bitcoin and its regulation I am going to assume that it was all FUD, and that is mostly because people are still trading bitcoin enthusiastically and even more than before in India according to the high volumes. I believe the confusion you had may also be because of the things they said about the exchanges not the act of exchanging your coins.

the government can not control bitcoin and this is never going to change, and if it happens bitcoin would be as good as dead. but that has nothing to do with making bitcoin legal or not. almost all of the countries have already made bitcoin legal one way or another. most of them see it as a commodity and are working with that. some others are stuck making a decision about what bitcoin is but it is still legal. and a couple of them are seeing bitcoin as a currency.

it wasn't exactly that short and I have a LOT of ways of making bitcoin. for instance I recently received 0.01BTC payment from the ads (banners) that I had with some bitcoin ad network that I don't even remember which one it was, I just know the address that received the payment was for ads.
there is also my signature campaign payments. looking at my payments I currently have 0.45BTC which is for more than 3 months of work.
there is also trading. and sometimes I get lucky there! for example I earned 0.1BTC from some shitcoin that was getting pumped and I just joined the ride and transferred the profit here.
I even have some plans to start some mining operation. possibly will start it in winter.

the thing is, I really do believe in the future of bitcoin so I am busting my ass earning as much as I can and also from time to time I buy bitcoin with fiat to accumulate more.

not every month!
for example in April trend reversed on 12th of April and as you can see from this month today is already 8th (2 days past) and the trend has not yet changed.

try to never get caught up in things like this. you will be disappointed because there is no reason for them to happen.   

probably not this month.

Bittrex.

people say Yobit, but Yobit has always been considered a terrible exchange and they are not denying it either. so bad experience is expected from it!
other cases such as Cryptsy, Mt Gox,... that scammed and ran away are bad but they scammed you and ran away.

the Bittrex case however is the worst because they scammed a lot of people and don't admit it while they continue their services. basically they handpicked certain groups of their users and banned their country without giving them any prior warnings and that meant all their funds were blocked and robbed by bittrex.