i don't think the coin is even released to public for "investment" though. it is more like them using it internally and only taking advantage of the hype to improve their business and profitability.
additionally because of things they have done in the past towards the whole cryptocurrency market and specifically bitcoin, even if they released it for investment i don't think it can be successful because as you can see the feedback is already very negative towards this coin!

but i don't think this can happen. because first of all if the  credit card companies did that there would be incentive to keep cash or even reinvent it to get rid of them.
besides lets not forget that we are living in a world of cut throat competition. if credit cards were the only means of payment then there would be a huge amount of competition which would lower the fees automatically. so anybody who raises the fees would simply be kicked out of the game.

and we always have the decentralized solution called bitcoin

it will happen exactly the same as the past two times because of a couple of reasons. most importantly the fact that the current very long bear market is going to make bitcoin ready for that kind of launch to the moon but also the fact that people are becoming accustomed to following certain patterns even if they are not real patters! as long as they believe in them, they will happen. like the long bear market which should not have happened but it did because people kept pushing for repetition of 2014.

if anybody is afraid of bitcoin's future just because price is not rising these days then they are so dumb and it is best that they sell their bitcoins as fast as humanly possible. and they should not stop there, they should never make any kind of investment in any other asset either.

because that is what happens to any asset. it is never going to be always rise. there are times that we see drops and there are times like now that we see stability and accumulation.

it is impossible to say because the "hint" in OP is vague at best so there is a lot of ways that you can get a private key from the supposed set of words that are the answer to this question.

i think people should first focus on solving the "puzzle" and after that when they at least had part of the answer they should work on brute forcing it. in which case if you have a big chunk of the answer you can simply try all the possible ways like using it directly, using its hash, using it in a brainwallet,...

you might have misunderstood the statement or maybe the person explaining it (like most of them) were not familiar with how things work so they misled you.

the thing is when you are using coinbase as your wallet, you are NOT using bitcoin. you are instead using an account with a centralized service that gives you some IOUs in return which are only valid on their platform and you can convert them into bitcoin. so whenever send/receive a bitcoin you are doing it with your account which is also linked to your identity so they can know exactly what you are doing.

i wouldn't really say it was a "coordinated" effort to advertise those shitcoins. those people who were advertising these tokens were also newbies themselves who were just as misled by the advertisements as everyone else. they were just desperate and wanted to make some money.

we are not in the future like 2025 or something like that when bitcoin has reached mass adoption so much that even old people are using it!!! we are in 2019 where those more familiar with the technology are still not so keen on buying bitcoin because it is volatile. and they don't need such services.
not to mention that these services are always being advertised as "ultra secure". we already have a couple of these "vaults" where they give you all kinds of promises just to take your money and have control over it.

actually nowadays this has turned into a common thing where we see they call completely random people as "influential experts" but when you check out the history of that person you can see he wasn't even around for that long. not to mention that following what they said, if you have a tiny bit of experience, you can see how full of shit they are!

there has never been anything interesting about ripple and the only interesting thing about ethereum was the idea which all the interest ended there in the "idea" stage. as for bitcoin, it is till growing and the fact that it is keeping all its characteristics such as being a decentralized boarderless currency is more than enough to be interesting. it doesn't have to do fireworks to be interesting though!!!

i disagree. "HODL" is still a meme, nothing more, nothing less. if it was actually affecting people's mentality more than anytime else then price would have never dropped this low!

so nothing has changed. people are still the same and making the same decisions. some are making long term investment in bitcoin because they see the potential and since they don't like speculating and don't like trading they decide to instead "HODL".
if you call that change of mentality and impact of meme then so be it.

i'd say the reason is only number 1 and nothing else.
otherwise bitcoin is offering a lot to have that incentive for anyone including freelance workers to start accepting it. for example one good thing would be the multi signature features that bitcoin has, a freelancer can ask for the payment up front but into a multi sig wallet and the payer can only sign the final transaction when the work was done.

you are confusing offline transactions with cold storage (or offline signing). what these tokens and MEW,.. offer is the later. and it is a part of security measure to prevent your private keys from leaking if you are on an infected computer by moving everything secret to an always offline computer which has no connection to the rest of the world.

that is a horrible idea!

you always want to be in control of your private keys. otherwise what is the point of using bitcoin in first place? stick to using fiat and the banks if you want to use services such as coinbase to keep your keys. not to mention that backing up secret stuff like this on the cloud has always been the least secure way even if you encrypted them.

some people seem to have focused on the final result of the FOMO, i was not talking about that. the final result is of course going to be above $100k in my opinion after the next bubble shapes up.
what i was focusing on was the initial FOMO where newbies who have been waiting for low prices such as $2k and $1k,... realize their mistakes and start panic buying. in other words the first leg up after the rise began.

and that i believe is going to shoot ups to $5k initially.

from what i see, there is no actual fork drama. people have been making this bigger than it really is, not to mention that it is not even a new thing! this weird looking proposal has been around for a long time (over a year?). and i suspect it has something to do with the price and the fact that some groups still want to lower it more.

there is nothing surprising about that. it was obvious from day one that they started attacking bitcoin that they will eventually start something like this. why do you think they were attacking bitcoin in first place? they were simply afraid of losing their position and have been desperately trying to keep up with the world.

well you start by accepting the fact that your loss has nothing to do with the market or the trend that it was in.  your loss is your own fault and you have to accept that you are not good in trading or investing your money.

then as soon as you see the actual problem you can start solving it by learning how investment works, how trading works and most important of all how the market works.
for example investing during the ATH time is the worst decision and not investing during the ATL time (or when we are in a dip) is also the worst decision.
additionally buying random altcoins because someone suggests them to you is a bad idea.
following these 3  simple rules would save you in most scenarios!

recently we have seen a small preview of what the FOMO (fear of missing out) can look like in bitcoin market when the rise starts. we have also seen it many times when the reversals happen and generally whenever there is a rise.

so considering the current situation where most investors are scared, how big do you think the FOMO is going to be when the rises start?

i don't really think investors are waiting for ETF and SEC anymore. we have had the same story a lot of times, more than enough for us to give up on waiting on them before investing.
in fact i think the reason why we had the recent rise had nothing to do with this ETF news but it was about how the US states passed a bill to recognize bitcoin as a currency and if i am not mistaken they also removed taxes on it.

and don't forget that bitcoin has never stayed low this long, this is a record in both length and size of the drop.