wow this is really strange because ETH is one of the most unstable coins out there! and i am not just talking about its price, the pump and dumps are the obvious downside but the problem is with the development which can easily change things without any clear roadmap.
for example they have been planning to kill PoW and switch to PoS for a very long time, probably from the start and it still has not happened. in fact this was one of the reasons why there has been no ASICs for ETH so far despite a big market for it.

obviously such actions are never fair.
bounty hunter or not doesn't matter, it is some sort of contract between the worker and the employer and after they have done the work the employer can not change or add new rules for the payment.

but the market is not moving up so far so we can not say this was a signal, at least not a bull run. and let us not forget that volume that comes from anywhere other than bitcoin's biggest exchanges (eg coinbase, bitfinex, bitstamp,...) is not something that can affect anything in the market.

for example the volume coming from Indian exchanges was huge, the price was also so much bigger than US prices, for all of last year and i think it still is bigger but i have not checked this. this had no effect on the market.

there is manipulation in bitcoin market but it is not even close to the imagination that was used in this article on Medium. and a certain level of manipulation is normal in any market, specially a small market like bitcoin that was so cheap not so long ago and now it has suddenly grown too big.

the real part is that you can no longer advertise cryptocurrencies on Google or Facebook anymore. for example people can no longer scam others through ICOs using these platforms.

you can no longer receive free crappy tokens that are scamming others.

- investing in bitcoin is risky.
- investing in bitcoin while it is in a bear market (during the drops) is even riskier.
- going all in like this, is the riskiest move of all!

it seems that OP is mostly trolling but this strategy is not good at all. even if someone wanted to go all in and take a huge risk it would have been best to wait for the bear market to end and rises to start before going all in!

these are all the reasons why ETH got pumped!
a lot of newbies entered the market thanks to all the bitcoin media coverage. and then they were exposed with a lot of advertisement telling them "THIS is the way to get rich" and THIS was either investing directly in ETH or investing in countless number of ICOs which then needed them to buy ETH!!! so a huge temporary demand was formed for ETH which is not going away as ICOs are dying so ETH price is falling.

and that is a bitter truth...

it is important to understand that we will continue to have this roller coaster like market for some more time, probably even another 5 years. and that means price will go up crazy and then drop just as crazy. but the important result is that the price will be rising over all no matter what the short term ups and downs are.

in case you didn't know XRP is already centralized. but you are correct that all these banks want to take the technology and make their own version of it.

and Ripple, like other thousands of pump and dump shitcoins will not die as long as there are traders buying into their pumps.

i don't see anything remotely interesting about this one either, sorry!

price is not even close to being low

this is a very common mistake which is being made by a lot of newbies these days and it is the reason for the slow dump of ETH. if newbies stopped making this mistake price would have gotten dumped a lot faster and we would have been at the bottom already!

the mistake is that these newbies think just because price has fallen it must mean it is a good time to buy it! but the truth is, the price has a long way to go down still before it reaches the price level that makes it a good time to buy.
many analysts believe that ETH real value is below $100.

i really hope so but OP's comment is a completely random guess based on nothing.

this downtrend will only be reversed if price reaches the bottom and lasts there for a while like all previous times. or it will reverse if we see a big good news like another Japan news about mass adoption of bitcoin as a currency.

and once people realize banning a decentralized currency is the most ridiculous action they will stop caring about them and they will be lifted.

not to mention that the bans have so far been bans of scams not banning bitcoin for instance. some platforms like facebook and google have been the breading ground for all these scams and because of that they banned them all. examples of such bans is banning ICO scam ads.

at least it is good that you realize you are making a risky move. and so long as you are comfortable with the huge risk you are taking i say it is ok to do it.
a lot of us, including me, are not comfortable with such risks specially in a bear market like this which is starting to show the signs of panic sells and when that happens no altcoin is going to be safe from the wrath of panic sellers

i think this is just the start of the ethereum drop!

right now the panic is just starting in ETH market. so far it was all about bitcoin and how its drop causes the other drops but now it is starting to look pretty bad for ethereum too and since it had a huge dump, everyone holding it is starting to panic and we all know that panic sellers always crash any market.

i think ETH can fall down to $100 and below too.

LOL, it is always easier to blame someone and make them out to be the witch and then burn them instead of blaming ourselves for what we have made.
the big rise and entering the bubble was the fault of everyone who hyped bitcoin and all the newbies who wanted to become rich over night. the follow up dumps were also the fault of same people who started panic selling because they didn't get rich over night.
and finally it is the fault of everyone who doesn't demand better exchanges with better security and trust so that they can grow and with a more packed order book we finally see a smaller drop when a panic starts.

MT Gox drama probably had nothing to do with the drop or at least it caused a tiny fraction of it.

there really isn't some magical solution to overcome panic and in fact panic is a healthy thing. for example when market is acting weird it is not such a bad thing to panic a little but the thing you need to overcome is the idiotic decision that one may make after that panic filled them up.
and it will be easy to do it if everyone just took a moment to rethink what they are doing and why.

the word you are using (Antique) is not suitable here.
an Antique is something that has aesthetic or historical significance and is at least 100 years old. the thing about bitcoin is that it will become 100 years old at some point but it will always remain as fresh as ever since bitcoin is immutable so it will never get "old".

i don't think we can call what you have a "rig", you have a PC with a good CPU and GPU which you are using to mine. a rig is usually a setup consisting of multiple GPUs on one motherboard dedicated to mining.

in any case there are multiple websites with good information about what you can mine which you should visit:
https://whattomine.com/
www.coinwarz.com/

also have this in mind that you can always switch between coins when the others become more profitable to mine.

well bitcoin has never been a pump and dump so it can not continue to be what it has never been!
if you don't know what the term pump and dump means then read about it and educate yourself first https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pump_and_dump

since every altcoin dropped i am going to say the main reason for ETH dump like any other altcoin dump was because they were in a big bubble because of their pumps last year so it had to be popped.
but i am not disagreeing with the fact that ETH pump was mainly the product of its ICOs and the fact that people have to buy ether to participate in these ICOs which creates some sort of demand for this coin.