I am a bit nervous about LTC now, as well as about ETH and some other coins I hold, but yet I haven't lost much on my investment in Litecoin. I purchased it a year ago, in Autumn and the price was around $60 back then. I sold some of it in January, however, as I saw that the price was going below $250, so I think I've made some good profit by selling at the right time. And basing on the previous experience I feel like end of the Summer-Autumn is a good season to buy cryptocurrencies, including Litecoin.

You're right that some people can become rich from poverty with cryptos, but you have to realize that those "poor" people you're talking about aren't actually that poor. There are ~3 billion people out of ~7.6 billion that are now using the Internet according to the United Nations agency, so 60% of the world's population already don't have the ability to learn things about cryptocurrencies, not even talking about investments. Another aspect is developing countries, like India, for instance, people can study there and have Internet access, but the average salary there is only around $600 and it would be extremely difficult to invest 1/6 of it, or to lose $400. But if we're talking about the middle class - yes, people shouldn't be greedy and lazy, but should think about the ways of improving their income and financial situation.

Second choice, if you've already decided to HODL - why give up? You should've either sell everything out immediately when the prices of all top coins in the market began to crash somewhere in March, or, if you were holding all this time - don't make it worthless. Yes, the market is red again, -10% for Ether and -7% for XRP, that seemed to be the future are frightening now, but unless you believe that cryptocurrency is bubble you shouldn't worry and think that it's the end now. Microsoft stocks were volatile at the beginning and other successful companies too, but eventually people made millions on it, so don't waste a chance and read some encouraging articles, like this one: https://smartereum.com/2732/bitcoin-price-prediction-2018-can-cryptocurrency-hit-50000-or-100000-this-year-forecast-2018-mon-aug-13/

I've noticed the same tendency in my country, but not with online casinos, with the real ones. Firstly, the government banned all private casinos (apparently because they were making too much money), but the law said that all kinds of casinos should be banned. Then, one year after another different establishments began to appear on the streets that said "national lottery", but when I came in one of those - it was just the same old casino, that said it's a lottery, and there are much more of them now, than there were private casinos. Now, as long as gamblers need to play their games they switched to those "lotteries" and all of the money goes to the government, but you can imagine how much black money can be made there and money laundering as well. So I absolutely agree with you here, crypto gambling isn't that burglarious.

You firstly can think that it's news, that influence the market, because there seems to be a correlation between Bitcoin's price and some facts, such as facebook bans BTC advertising, or CEO decisions related to cryptocurrencies. But, on the other hand, according to coinmarketcap data, BTC 24 hours circulating volume goes up to $5 629 492 454 (today's example) - I don't think that people's panic and decisions due to news can influence that much price, taking into account this volume. Moreover, according to AQR Capital Management, 40% of the world's bitcoins are owned by about 1000 of people and other 60% are distributed between all other holders (that's approximately 22 million people), so most likely it's those 1000 people that influence the price. And if they hold so much Bitcoins (about $105.6 million per person) I don't think that they pay attention to the news that much. The conclusion is clear - they manipulate the market and sell off Bitcoins whenever it is convenient.

I've been thinking recently, people discuss here on forum different types of investments: crypto investments, real estate, gold and precious metals, stocks, but I haven't seen one about art, like investing in paintings or other works of art. This, however, seems like a good opportunity to me. Just think about other investments: a certain cryptocurrency can be destroyed by market rivalry, same can happen to real estate and stocks and they can become depreciated. But art lives, because something stronger lays there - it's ideology and sense of beauty. Paintings can live through ages, Pablo Picasso, for instance, wrote his works about a 100 years ago, but his famous "Nude, Green Leaves and Bust" was sold in 2010 for $106.5 million and it happens a lot. Apart from ideology there's another thing about art items that can increase their prices - auction. It helps to recover price and increase it instantly even when it seemed like everyone has forgotten about that piece of art. What's your opinion on this?

Binance for crypto-crypto trading is the best one, low fees, very wide altcoins spectrum, great support, the only thing that can be confusing for a newbie here is complicated interface, but you'll get used to it. Coinbase - another very decent exchange for top cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, etc. Here, unlike in Binance, you can purchase cryptocurrencies using USD with credit/debit card. And, of course, Bitfinex ad CEX for Bitcoin purchasing. I would suggest you to buy alts with BTC or ETH, but not with fiat money.  

ETH might be more flexible, than Bitcoin with its smart contract platform, but regarding scaling issue this cryptocurrency undergoes same problem that Bitcoin does. With a maximum network throughput of about 15 transactions per second ETH requires immediate scaling problem solution. This problem, however, is about to be resolved with the help of offchain payment channels, sharding and implementation of Proof of Stake consensus mechanism, but till that moment ETH will probably keep dropping slightly. Here you can find info on the upcoming scaling solution: https://www.ccn.com/ethereum-sharding-slated-for-2020-ethereum-foundation-researcher-justin-drake/

No, don't use it, it's a trap. I've tried to play using it for 2 years and had to stop, because realized that this strategy will eventually demolish me. If you play it for a short period of time (like 2-3 weeks) and you have a lot of money you might have a lucky break, but you won't win much with this strategy if your initial betting amount isn't high. And if it is high - you will be surprised how fast and suddenly your betting amount can reach the number of all of your assets in the game. E.g. your initial betting amount if $5, you get 5 unlucky bets in a row (which is not that rare) and that's already $640! And what if it's more than 5, 9 let's say - that number jumps to $2,560, you definitely wasn't counting on that. And sky is the limit, the longer you play - the higher that number goes, I've played to 16 unlucky bets in a row. So, if you don't want to lose everything eventually - don't play with this strategy.

There are tons of discussions related to this topic on BTT, like this one regarding scam ICOs: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1963768.0
ICO is a form of raising funds, that is very similar to crowdfunding (if you haven't heard of that one - it's when people are offered to invest in a certain project and receive stakes as a form of reward). ICOs are related to cryptocurrency world, the products of ICOs differ though, from medicine related projects to entertainments and AI. ICOs started launching in 2016, reaching top point in 2018: total number of ICOs 712, approximate amount raised by ICOs is 17.8 billion USD according to coinschedule data - https://www.coinschedule.com/stats.html?year=2018
Top 5 ICOs ever are Filecoin, Tezos, EOS, SIRIN LABS Token and Bancor: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/13/initial-coin-offering-ico-what-are-they-how-do-they-work.html

I like simple registration (username and password with optional email). Inserting too much data on a gambling website firstly takes too much time, and also I feel uncomfortable with that and I think most of players do because you naturally want to be as anonymous as possible. Optional email is convenient to restore pwd or username, so it has to be there. Bit-Exo registration seems complicated and I don't see any benefits over the above mentioned method, and sharing your wallet info on gambling websites doesn't quite attract, also this method can be applied to a certain limited range of websites, so you would probably need to use other methods for the sites that are off that range.

Right, futures are extremely bad for cryptocurrencies, actually, I don't see any side that gains something from futures system, it's a total disaster that is doomed to crash sooner or later. As far as I remember the tulip mania phenomenon ended up leaving everybody with nothing and that's the only possible scenario - people buy futures having no actual money to pay it off - well they never intended to, they bought futures to trade with them and that's what most likely will happen to Bitcoin futures trading. That thing can turn Bitcoin in what we all claim it isn't - a bubble, of course the price will increase, it can go insanely high, but then it will be the end of Bitcoin after it bursts, and all other cryptocurrencies will be taken with caution after that, so the market would probably go red for a long time.

I like to invest in different ICOs but the main purpose of it is to collect some coins and sell them as the price increases. Some projects do sound interesting, but the problem with really using them is that they're optimized for something that special, that mostly people don't use in everyday life. Take Ubex as an example, a very hot ICO launched on May 21st, purpose - AI in advertising. I am personally not anyhow connected to promotion field, so I can't use it. Or TV-TWO, project backed-up by a very serious team, 4.1 ranking, but as long as I don't watch TV I won't be able to use it two, even though I invested in coins. And same situation occurs with most of ICOs.

It depends on what kind of person he is, he can't withdraw your funds, but he can lie about the value of those 25%. To me all kind of brokers (trading, real estate, etc) are useless. They invest zero, usually do quite simple job and gain such a big stake. I am familiar with such situations, I know some real estate brokers that took at least 10% from apartment/houses sale. So, let's say, someone wants to sell an apartment for $100,000 - a broker takes $10,000 for finding a client and dealing with some papers! That's insane! Your situation is a little different, though, trading and earning a lot with it isn't as easy as selling a flat, but still I think 25% is too much.

Mostly it's luck, I agree that dice roll and slot roll are 100% luck, but strong no for poker. I think those games that involve only one action - clicking can't depend on anything else but luck, you can't play with the probabilities. How many there are examples of people playing using Martingale strategy and lose all of their assets because they had too many unlucky bets in a row (up to 16 I experienced myself), even though this strategy seems like a logic one. But poker is another case - there are too many actions, you can try to remember the cards, you can guess people's cards judging by their confidence and bets and the fact that you can improve your skills in poker (unlike dice) proves that it mostly lays upon strategy. Here's an interesting article and research on this topic: http://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-is-poker-a-game-of-chance-or-skill-39224

Yes, I completely agree with you, crypto coins are different and some of them have no chances to grow even in the longer term, others are doomed to stay stable, so investing in them doesn't make much sense, e.g cryptocurrencies that have billions units in the circulating supply - on one hand they may seem promising, the technology is awesome, huge marketcap and the team consists of serious people, on the other hand - how many people and how much have to buy it to cause a serious shift in the price? And news are extremely important, yes, you can hold even though you know that the coin will decrease in price, because you're so sure it will eventually recover, but why not trying to sell it when the price has increased instantly and it's very unlikely it will stay that way for much longer (like when BTC reached $20k)?

I wouldn't say there's a strong positive correlation between the SEC's decision and BTC price. News that the SEC has rejected Winklevoss ETF proposal appeared on the Internet on July 26th: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/26/winklevoss-twins-bitcoin-etf-rejected-by-sec.html
And the price after that was even increasing till July 30th (from $7.9k to $8.2k) and only after that started to decrease. But, on the other hand there is some sort of dependence, because it isn't the first time Bitcoin drops after news related to the SEC. The thing is we live in a world, where laws and legislation questions are number one priority if you don't want to do black business. SEC's Bitcoin approval is the first step towards worldwide legislation and implementation of cryptocurrencies. Investors are interested in this process, because if most of the world's population use Bitcoin the price increases instantly and if there are some news that denote the reverse process investors become disappointed and sell off their cryptos.  

A credit card, or a wallet with small amounts of fiat currency can be safer in some sense. You can establish a maximum expenditure amount for your credit card so that all your savings won't be stolen, you can also block it right away when noticed the stealage. On Bitcoin wallets, on the other hand, people usually store lots of money and have a bad habit to store all of their passwords (including private key) on phone, so in case your phone was stolen the consequences might be catastrophic. I wouldn't say that fake money is a big problem nowadays, because counterfeit money detectors are everywhere. As for inflation issue - Bitcoin can deal with it, but lots of other cryptocurrencies are programmed to be in an unlimited supply, so new coins can be created as easily, as money printing.

You're right, it's actually very likely that homeless people won't say big thanks to the ones that helped them, unlike pets. But here's the thing - let's say citizens would give money not directly to people who are in need, but raise funds to build some kind of shelters, where they would have teachers, books, clothes and be able to learn some things. That would be for the benefit of the governmental economy, by reducing the level of unemployment, for instance, which would be better for those citizens. Of course, ideally, it's government's responsibility, but the reality is different. The problem is that they don't think in the longer term and wait for repercussions wight away (like for dogs to wag their tails).

I know it may sound strange, as we live in a society, where people mostly adore animals and I don't have anything against it, but still there's one catch. Sometimes it comes to my mind that some people spend too much money on pets and numbers speak for themselves (estimated expenditures for 2018 year - 72.13 billion USD according to The American Pet Products Association), I'm not talking about simple feeding or taking care of homeless pets here. I'm talking about this habit, when pet keepers become obsessed with some special breeds that cost thousands of dollars, or do expensive haircuts, paint nails or whatever for their animal companions. Come on, is that what animals really need? I think that's just a show-off, and why develop new breeds, when there are lots of animals struggling on streets?
But another, more important question is lying on top of that: shouldn't people take care of other people, instead of domesticating animals, that would feel better under wild nature conditions? Only in the US there are nearly 564,708 homeless people, taking them away from streets and giving them the opportunity to become educated would improve country's economy by increasing the number of skilled labour. What's your opinion on this?