i think we can be 99.999% sure SegWit is locked in with BIP91 because according to https://coin.dance/blocks currently 183 out of 336 blocks (79.6%) are signalling their support and it only needs 80%.

there are 106 more blocks remaining from the 336 blocks but unless someone changes his mind, or new hashrate appears on the network with adding a huge amount to total hashrate i don't think this percentage can go down.

so far F2pool is the only big miner that is not signalling despite supporting the BIP91 for some weird reason which people call "trolling". maybe they wish to pull another LTC swing on us before the 2x rise comes

PS. 106 blocks is about 17-18 hours.

this is a real embarrassment in my opinion. there are only bad news for ethereum these days, the hacks the dumps, the price goes down each day and no buy support.
and on top of all that there is still the ICO threat that can crash the price at any moment.

i bought some in the recent dip but i sold them as fast as i could. things are getting too scary with this coin in my opinion and with higher price it just attracts more hackers and so far they have been very successful in hacking it.

i am starting to think topics like this from throwaway accounts like OP are a good thing.
the more they advertise and the more people fall for the scam and lose money (eth dropped another 10% today) the faster we reach the point where number of newbies in the market decrease.
i mean eventually everyone will learn. some the hard way. and the effects of these type of HYPE lessens.

i will be counting and enjoying all the extra cheap coins that i bought from panic sellers 4 days ago and enjoy the >25% discount they gave me.

if they do it again, i will gladly take their coins another time. and in less than 2 months i will be giving a small part of it back to them at a much higher price.

XRP was an excellent investment when it was still low and the price was below 1000 satoshi. now it is over priced and is not worth investing in anymore.

LTC was also an excellent investment when it was low at 60K-70K satoshi. but the difference between these two is that LTC has a future with being decentralized and having SegWit, Lightning Network, and all the benefits of that such as Smart Contracts and Atomic Swap for p2p exchange, .... and that will help it in long term to keep rising up and give you profit.

the "uncertainty period" is not that date you cited. it is the period where we are not sure how much support each proposal has and the low supports can mean split.

but before that date comes we can clearly see how much support each proposal has and when SegWit gains a large enough support (which from the initial agreement is above 90%) we can get a simple fork with no split.

this simply means, there is no reason to be uncertain after some point which will be long before Aug 1.

also i should add that going into another altcoin is pointless. because in case bitcoin drops, that altcoin you invested in will be annihilated and will take your money with it.

as you can see the uncertainty period has already started to end

kwukduck has always been like the first green leaves you see on trees after a hard winter. it is always telling us about the coming of spring.

here is a poem to cheer you up 

crypto or more accurately bitcoin in this case is a decentralized money and just like any other fiat money, you can not control how some people use it for.
if you can find a way to prevent people from USD (or generally cash) to do illegal stuff then you can use the same way to prevent them from using bitcoin, etc for the same illegal stuff.

only 2 groups are important. Miners and Nodes. the developers have already done their part.
Majority of nodes (more than 90%) are running bitcoin core which is compatible with SegWit in other words they are behind it and supporting it.
Majority of miners (nearly 90%) are supporting SegWit which means they are behind it.

SegWit, SegWit2x, BIP148 (UASF) are currently all compatible, they are all looking for SegWit aka BIP91 which was merged into SegWit2x some time ago and miners are signalling the same thing. this means i am talking about all of them since they are the same thing!

p.s. panic has nothing to do with any of this. it is market manipulation. take a look at the charts and see how many of these red bars we had so far where people panicked and dumped bitcoin!!!

based on technical analysis (which i am mostly quoting from experts) the bottom of this drop is somewhere around $100 plus or minus $10.

but the thing you should know is that TA doesn't work for altcoins. they are heavily manipulated and are heavily affected by their design. for example the sell pressure that the 3 or 4 months of constant new ICO fund raising is brutal on the market. it is still pushing the price down and it will only speed up.

also you always have to factor in the panic sellers who will give up bag holding and start dumping their coins when a certain price level is reached and no dead cat bounce satisfied them anymore.

in short i'd say somewhere between $10 and $100 is a good guess and a good price for ethereum to be at.

the activation and the result of that date is a process not something that happens over night without anybody knowing and being caught off guard.

first miners start signalling then a total hashrate that is behind every proposal becomes clear and based on that you can see what the outcome will be. so far there is about 90% behind SegWit and that means it will be activated without any problems.

some people love to create disruption and say miners will pull out near the end but i like to stick to reality rather than what may happen.

and the signalling and the locked in status is achieved in one difficulty period if i am not mistaken which is 2016 blocks. (someone should verify this since i am not sure how timeframe of each of these things go, there are too much information)

p.s the price actions are 70% manipulation and 30% panic sells.

why not. banks are just service providers that are taking our money to pay it back to us
it can simply be possible in the future. bitcoin first needs to be accepted by more people then be considered a viable option for banks to adopt it and start offering their services on it, like opening up accounts, giving loans, ...

this being good or bad is hard to say in my opinion. bitcoin is not supposed to be used like this. bitcoin was created so that we no longer need banks, so that we can do what banks are supposed to do.
but as we can see things like Xapo, Coinbase, Debit cards for bitcoin,... exist and people want them!

the more number of throwaway newbie accounts you guys create to repeat doomsday theories about bitcoin price, the more sure i become that the drop is near the end of its course and you guys are getting desperate for cheaper coins.

p.s. surprise surprise price has gone up ~$150 today...

i have no clue what "contreverial" means but the UASF (BIP148) and all the miners who will implement SegWit2x will be signalling for the same BIP91 (not sure about the BIP number) and that means they are activating the same thing.

SegWit currently has about 50% support and
SegWit2x currently has a little less than 90% support. and it requires only 80% to activate.

p.s. remember LTC SegWit activation...

all these numbers are irrelevant.
what matters is why you buy bitcoin and what you do with it after you bought it.

some people believe bitcoin is going to reach a much higher price. in this case it really doesn't matter when you buy. specially if you don't want taking the risk of trading bitcoin on unreliable exchanges.

some others are in it for the money. in that case it is important what you do after you buy. if you bought at $2900 and price started going down you cut your losses and sell and buy back at the bottom. it is not really rocket science. and you risk using these unreliable exchanges and buy in the dips and sell on tops.

if by 21 July the SegWit2x team delivers as they have promised and the SegWit signalling starts with the 85%-95% of the current hashrate that is signalling NYA then that is going to be enough reason for the price to rise.

i will expect a LOT of FUD by that date saying miners will back out and stuff like that, even after the signalling started (like what they did with LTC and caused the crash) but in the end if things go as they are planned 21 July may be the reversal date.

the split fear is a little bit different from other types of fear and FUD. it usually makes people always wonder and be in constant fear of the future and think twice before buying.
right now it seems like the buying has started at some smaller scale since the price went just below $2000.

but at the same time the money doesn't go anywhere else. altcoins aren't going anywhere, they are dropping harder.

this has one upside though. all this money is waiting to be invested. everyone is ready to buy, there just needs to be a green light. i have a couple of speculations about what that green light to start buying is going to be but not sure which one is going to be the one that initiates it.

well, sell!
sell and get out.

you clearly think bitcoin is just the "price" that is supposed to always go up and make you rich, so it is best if you sell and stay away because bitcoin will disappoint you. bitcoin will only have a realistic rise based on adoption and sometimes it will have big drops like this because the market is full of idiots who wanted to become rich over night and they failed.

whenever i have sold bitcoin for local currency i have always done it at much higher market prices and p2p and that means no taxes

also we are moving towards a world where bitcoin taxes are only for investors in bitcoin. this means if you go on an exchange and try trading bitcoin or buy and sell it there you will have to pay taxes.

but if you are using bitcoin to buy something (aka use bitcoin as a currency) you don't have to pay ANY taxes. it is 0 tax for that.

and everyone is happy about it. the traders make a lot so they don't care and the users are happy because obviously 0 tax!

LOL
you think this is the first "flippening"? it won't be the last of them either.
their joy ended as soon as ethereum failed to sustain an increased traffic and the network went down. the week when all exchanges disabled all ethereum and ethereum related altcion wallets, everyone knew the truth.