i also think the effects are mostly in reverse. it is the ICO projects that are dwindling and are taking Ethereum price down with them in first place. at least this is the main and starting reason for the biggest part of the drop then there is the fact that ETH has been pumped so it had to drop. otherwise i don't see any change in the projects themselves whatsoever, we still keep seeing the same low quality and useless tokens be created but now they are failing.

you are correct that the market is going to recover in the near future but it still doesn't mean NOW is the right time to invest in any altcoin. majority of them will either continue dropping more or if you are lucky they would stay the same price level for months.

how likely do you think it is we see $35000 price in 2018?

i'll give 3 digits in 2019 the same amount of likelihood as $35k in 2018. most people miss the fact that despite all the drama and the dumps we are still talking about a very lively market that consists of many investors who are not just trying to push the price down but also try to buy a lot of bitcoin.

the FUDsters have lied so much that it is hard for them to keep track of all the lies they have told so that they don't contradict with themselves. one day they say China has banned bitcoin and miners have sold and are burning their ASICs on the streets. the next day they say China controls 90% of the hashrate and owns 90% of the bitcoin.

as for BCH it is pretty on paper that if you stop buying bcash it stops affecting bitcoin but in reality you are talking about the market. when they pump bcash you can not stop traders from going in wanting to make profit.

you can not show anything to someone who has closed his eyes and refuses to open them.

it would be like  wanting to show a drawing to a blind person. except that the blind person might want to listen and use his other senses but someone who has intentionally closed his eyes is not.

what difference does it make?
there is a market and a chart and that is all you need to know and care about when it comes to price. and then there is the underlying technology which is making bitcoin and that is also all you need to know about the potential of bitcoin's future rise.

it had to happen sooner or later.
for a pumped altcoin the drops such as this are inevitable and will happen eventually. in this case we still have some down to go before we can even begin to call the price a healthy value for ETH considering that ICOs are practically dead now.

is there anybody left who is actually waiting for SEC's decision about ETFs? i seriously doubt that. people have been burnt by SEC enough times that they already know that the approval is not going to happen or at least the chances of it are so minuscule that they don't matter at all.
not to mention that ETF is not going to do anything for bitcoin really!

sometimes people oversimplify some concepts to a point where it becomes wrong!

in this case SegWit does NOT reduce transaction size or transaction speed.
in fact SegWit transaction size is a tiny bit bigger. what it does is that it increases capacity by changing the way transactions are stored in the blockchain. it moves the "witness" which is the signature to another place which helps with backward compatibility while increasing the capacity of blocks.
you pay a lower fee on a SegWit tx not because the tx is smaller but because of  this change and the way virtual size is calculated.

as for transaction speed, it is decided based on time between blocks which is a fixed time (10 min on average) and that is not changing with SegWit.

it is all in your head!

you have been trying so hard to say bitcoin is dead that you are starting to believe it yourself too. i have not yet figured out whether you are just butt hurt because of some drops or you are getting some profit out of creating these topics.

only an idiot listens to others and holds. a wise person does his own analysis and when he sees the true potential he holds.

in first case the idiot is the one who buys too late (for example when this drop ends and price goes back way up) and then sells when the drop is at the end (like selling now at the bottom of the drop).
the wise investor however is always buying when there is a lot of FUD talking about how bitcoin is dead like these days and then sells when everyone is so hyped up talking about bitcoin and take it in a bubble like when price reaches $100k after this.

the word "airdrop" has been misused in my opinion and it should only be used for those that are really free like the fork coins or coins like byteball which gave away free coins to bitcoin holders.
so since airdrop covers a lot of different methods you can't say they are all "not free".

it is not bitcoin's fault that people who invest in altcoins have 0 faith in their future and it is not bitcoin's fault that every altcoin that was created is a pump and dump scam.

it is perfectly natural for people to dump altcoins immediately as they see bitcoin price is lowered so that they can free their money to invest back in bitcoin.

eventually they will start pumping ethereum again. that is something that you can be absolutely sure about because there is a big  centralized foundation behind ETH who is dying for more profit as soon as the dumps end.

but i seriously doubt that they can pump it to its previous ATH anymore because that price is so far away and considering ETH has lots its use cases and also its market share to other better ICO platforms.

you are making the situation worse that it really is only inside your head by drawing lines on the chart. so far nobody could ever predict bitcoin by only using TA and lines on the chart!
this doesn't mean $1k is not possible, but it means that you have no logical reason to expect that price or anything lower than $3.5k to be possible at this point.

true that.
in fact manipulation has been the only reason that caused the recent drop and kept the price down so far below the $10k mark but whenever manipulation at this big scale happens, the traders will be afraid of the market and price rise  can not happen for a long time which is why we have not yet seen the bull run start.
but as you have already guessed they can't keep bitcoin down for long. the market will rally against them eventually.

these are two different questions that you are asking here!
1. Is there any cryptocurrency that is worth more now than a year ago?
there was and still are a couple of altcoins that have a higher price than bitcoin. but that is not their value or worth. it is a manipulation. for example there is an altcoin named 42coin which has only 42 coins and because of that each coin of it has a high value which is a lot higher than bitcoin price. but it still is not worth anything.

2. Are there more profitable cryptocurrencies than Bitcoin?
profit is a different matter. profit comes from trading and in trading how much you make depends on your strategies and your experience on how to ride the market. it doesn't all depend on the asset.

it is worth mentioning that any system in this world will have both advantages and disadvantages at the same time. you will never find anything that is only positive and has no negative side.
when it comes to bitcoin and its decentralization, the advantages are dominant over disadvantages which is why it is a big deal.

there are already multiple topics about these things and you can never limit any of them. specially ICOs. they are like a fungus that grows out of hand and everywhere if you let it and people have been letting them thrive and as a result we have a market infested with them and a lot of newbies that have gone bankrupt and are now crying everywhere on the forum about how bitcoin is the reason and is blaming it.

10 years is very young for a technology such as bitcoin which is unique and is changing the world. you should not think about it as any other technology that comes along and takes the world by the storm in a short time. you should instead think about it as a currency related technology that is changing the payment systems.

for example compare it with when people were using barter system and then currencies came along. it was the new technology of that time and it did NOT take 10 years to replace the old system, it took a lot longer. same with any other newer technology such as cash, then banks and electronic currency. and now bitcoin is the same too. it will take a long time to mature and actually replace the old system.