According to some reports, this recent hack has nothing to do with Bithumb security measure. The reason for hack is still under investigation. But there is a news that malicious emails were sent to Bithumb users which directed them towards a phishing page and this led to the security breach. Regarding big exchanges not doing much about the security, Bithumb spends $9 million annually on security measures. This is online space, with such a large volume and user base, sometimes security becomes difficult.

If this pattern follows, price might fall below $6000 and can dump to the $5k levels. But lately, price isn't really following the technical analysis. But technical analysis is showing a bear reversal which will stop at $5200. If price from here gains a volume to breach $6850, we will see a bullish reversal, else we are heading in deep bearish zone. But price manipulation is so high that nothing can be said with certainty.

There are various reasons for the price breakdown.

• Market Manipulation: This tops the list because recently price isn't following any fundamental or technical analysis. I agree crypto space is unpredictable. But when price didn't get affected due to recent Bithumb hack and when price was in bullish territory, a sudden fall came without any valid reason tells a lot about market manipulation.
• Regulations: It is normal that a centralized system can't accept the freedom of decentralized system. Countries are bringing in unnecessary regulations which stops institutional money from entering the market.
• Amateur market: Crypto market hasn't yet matured enough. The volatility is pretty much high because of lack of volume. The premature increase in price last December and market still going a price correction because of that isn't an example of mature market.

If you want to speculate the price movement according to Technical analysis, then this fall below $6600 has confirmed a rising wedge breakdown. This can lead to a further drop to $5200. Bears have overtaken the market once again and we might see another steep fall soon. We are experiencing a harsh correction after the premature surge of Q4 last year. Price is trying to come back at original levels where the price should really be at this time in its development.

A very simple reason for why 99% of crypto wouldn't survive in long term or wouldn't get any enterprise scale adoption is because they all are permission-less network,  having different consensus module - pow,  POS, dpos and list goes on. But they don't have any control on addition of nodes and what computational/mining power their network gets. And added to that, the risk of getting hacked. Hence, Enterprises will not put their business on stake by going with public blockchains.

That's why I am quite enthusiastic about hybrid Blockchains (mixture of public and private blockchains)

I would suggest you to invest in DRGN, XLM, XDCE etc. They are going to get big in 2019. Buy in every dip.

Tether has a history of manipulating the Bitcoin price and bringing an artificial pump and many a times Bitfinex has been criticized for the same. There are many reports backing this claim that Tether are strategically being printed during a downtrend to bring BTC back in uptrend. This does effect market for a short period and brings in an inorganic growth. But market always recovers from such an artificial pump. Same is happening now. Market is going through a correction and a consolidation period.

Bitcoin price action determines the market movement. Right now, market is too young and no one is trying to value other coins than BTC. Institutional money is waiting to enter BTC. If BTC can gain institutional recognition and become store of value, perhaps a decoupling could take place where each coin is valued fundamentally and market doesn't move according to BTC. Right now, I think more correction is due but that won't be a deep one. You can hodl right now with a stop loss of 10%. I expect BTC to jump back after touching $5800 and their won't be any further correction. So, a stop loss of 10% can save you.

SEC is still not clear about the status of 1600 other coins except BTC and ETH not being a security. I am still waiting what SEC has to say about other coins and can bring a blanket rule to cover all the ICO. But SEC is too stiff and inflexible and this might create a problem for all the tokens that went through an ICO. Since, most of the companies don't usually have a working project before the ICO conduction and project company is trying to raise money to go on a venture, then this is offering security only. The real market situation will be known when the status of other altcoins become clear and big financial firms are waiting for that only.

This is just a beginning.
We might see many ICO coming everyday and very few percentage making it actually successful. Utility and use case is what matter in long term. We have tons of shit coins in the market at the moment with practically no utility or value. Almost 95% of cryptocurrencies are worth basically zero by any reasonable measure. We keep on seeing more ICO in coming in future. This isn't the end. I believe one - possibly more - of them might change the world.

There is nothing normal in that.
Most probably your private key has been compromised. It is better to shift your tokens to some other ETH address. If you are in some bounties or airdrop, ask managers to change your address. Try to keep your keystone file, password and pvt keys safe. If possible, use cold storage. You can go for Hardware/paper wallet. Software wallets rae prone to hacking and viruses.

Because this is how the employee mentality works.
If you are getting paid for your work, then you don't care about the future returns or ROI. Bounty hunters are like employees who get paid for their work and hence, they usually cash out the amount as they don't care about the long term prospective. While if you have invested in an ICO, you look for ROI and future prospects.

But bounty hunters aren't investors.

With Lightening Network making Bitcoin feasible as a payment option, there need to be a way for instant payment to vendors while making a TX. I have read an article which state that NFC can be clubbed with LN to make crypto payment fast and reliable with less fees involved. This is likely to boost the utility of Bitcoin as a currency. Cryptos are basically being used as an investment asset because of their deflationary property. People tend to hodl than to spend cryptos for the future returns. Merchants fear the volatility of cryptos and hence, aren't really willing to use cryptocurrencies as a mean of payment. But if we find a way to instant and relaible payment, we might can boost the utility.

We are still in bullish phase if we look at long term charts. We had a parabolic move at the end of last year, so here is the period of price correction and consolidation taking place. There have been an increased government regulations recently which have kept institutional money from entering the market. Moreover, the December hike was just a result of price manipulation. We are still up from the last year November price which was before the inorganic growth. So, yeah if you are a long term hodler and have invested before December, you portfolio is likely to be in green.

I don't know if you have heard about privacy coins, but cryptocurrencies can be completely anonymous leaving government or state agencies with nothing to trace. Also, there are mixing services, which can make Bitcoin transactions almost untraceable. Government can really trace cryptocurrencies and their hodlers because we still need to convert crypto to fiat which requires bank details for any actual use because cryptocurrencies still lack adoption and utility. Government still can't trace anything going on in Darkweb and OTC trades. That is why countries are trying to regulate and it making it necessary for people to go through KYC. But they still can't control the decentralized form of monetary system, cryptocurrencies.

There is definitely not any co-relation between FIFA and bitcoin price action.
FIFA do boost the betting platform. Sports betting isn't legal in many countries. Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, thus, pave a way for people to get involved in sports betting anonymously. According to me, cryptocurrencies have a huge marketplace in betting ecosystem. But I don't think that this is going to bring any price appreciation in a $300 Billion market. Betting might constitute only a few millions which would be less than a 1%.

I was analyzing the Bitcoin's long term chart and was looking at the price trend. December was the highly bullish period for the market with Bitcoin touching the ATH of $20k. There have been recent reports telling that those December's price trend was highly manipulated and hence, was inorganic. Thus, such a correction was anyway expected of the market. But the thing to notice here is that before December, price was increasing organically where it was hovering over $6k-$7k levels. Price is corrected back to that level and it isn't going to break down than this.

Investors aren't losing interest but an inorganic pump has been corrected!

The recent dump to $6100 exhausted the sellers which brought a temporary pump. I expect this pump to continue till $6750-$6850. After that there might be a further correction to $5800 which is considered as the strongest support for Bitcoin. Bitcoin did try to test this level once this year and I expect it to happen again before any reasonable recovery or trend reversal. I expect June as well as half of July to be a bearish period for cryptos.

Cryptocurrencies don't have a long history that someone can claim the repetition of trends or cycles according to months.

Last year we saw Q1 and Q3 to be bearish, Q2 to be a bullish and Q4 to be a highly bullish period. But this year, so far, Q1 and Q2 both have been a bear one with a very small market volume. Last year, we had more HODLers. But this year there has been a shift from HODLers to Swing traders and that's why we see a short market cycle that doesn't sustain. We don't have enough data at present that you can trade according to expected market trend at expected month of a year.

Russia has always shown variety of opinions over cryptos. Finally, after long they have made cryptocurrencies legal in Russia. This is indeed a positive news for the community. I still feel there is some hidden agenda behind this news. But for now when countries are giving mixed stance over Bitcoin, this came as positive wave. There was an increased interest in cryptos from Russia, lately. Many ICO were coming from Russia, hence, this news can bring in more investment from a country with a strict capital control and can give a boost to the volume.

Investment in any asset is subject to risks. Cryptocurrencies are decentralized investment asset with high volatility and not much regulation. hence, are the riskiest investment asset. I would suggest people to go for Fundamental and Technical analysis before starting with crypto trading with more stress on Technical analysis. People are here doing swing trading which can get a newbie rekt if didn't trade according to market and price swings.

This market is highly manipulated by exchanges and whales because of the less volume and circulation. So, unless you believe in your trading skills, better to learn trading before putting in real money. This high volatility and unpredictable market trends aren't healthy to trade if you know nothing about how market works and what are the technical indicators that drives the price.