Let us save you the trouble and tell you there is no such thing as a profitable cloud mining as an investor. The only one making money are the companies running cloud mining contracts. Of course, there are those who make profit but you need to be lucky: Bitcoin price must rise and difficulty must remain suitably manageable.

All those who make profits anyway actually would have made much more if they bought Bitcoin and held it.

If you MUST try cloud mining, wait for 2 companies in 2018 who will sell you power contracts instead of hashpower. Then you know you stand a better chance. One is gigahash another is hydrominer.

Yeah, and if we base the price rise on the effect of new money, and diversification, then I think we can expect the entire 2018 to be the same. Even more new money, and newer money from old money going into alts to hedge their Bitcoin bets. Can you imagine what new investors did for Litecoin when they finally found out about it? So now the trick is,,, which new coin will be attractive to newcomers? Let us not talk about technology, but talk about what speaks to investors. I think they liked the fact that LTC's dev was someone they knew, someone smart, and whose dev community is not split.

Hmm, no. Iota and Litecoin are very good coins (yes I know Iota got caught red handed with their over hyping and have now been forced to issue a statement clarifying the Microsoft relationship that does not exist) but they have already had their superb runs. Another one in January is far, far quickly, such speed would be worrying.

But Waves on the other hand I do not know. Either it is picking up speed for a boom in January, or it will be just steady and slow rising from now all the way to 2019.

Yes, it is normal for a coin to attract a lot of attention when the price appreciates the way Waves has, hitting its new fiat highs. It did not do a x10 like other alts, though, so it will avoid getting overheated in alts market. So this is good news for us holders, especially with all the nice things being achieved before the end of the year.

I think the devs do not need inspiration from prices, but of course it is a nice bonus, so am sure some people are cashing out, but not enough to lower prices and somehow keep the growth in check.

I wonder how long more people can continue asking this question and find that only a week later, they are already in profit? Everything is rising so quickly now, with so few signs of slowing down. Yes, I am enjoying the prices, but because I am a holder, I worry for the effect today's huge explosion will have on tomorrow.

This is not really a party, but it seems like a bash to outsiders. So they come in and share the fun. Who of us will be left when the party is over and the proper work to build ideas and products up begins?

You must not have seen how ICOs managed without all these extracompany parties doing it for them. Take a look at 100 ICOs in this year, just take any pick. What is your measure of success? Millions raised? OK, then they have been successful. But 0% have been successful in meeting their full objectives. Not when most of them have scheduled their launch next year. And if you want to measure by way of token/coin price, then you will see less than 10% have a value today higher than what they were during their ICOs.

Research and understanding is not a certainty of ICO success. It is not that simple, buddy.

Depends on who the bounty hunters are and depends on the type of ICOs. Some ICOs just want a lot of signups and a full telegram group, full slack group etc. It creates an illusion of interest, so when new people enter these channels they see, wow thousands of interested people, then FOMO kicks in and they invest. Hype is a powerful thing these days especially with so many competing ICOs!

But serious ICOs do want quality people promoting their ICO otherwise you end up with shitposters and spammers who ruin the reputation of the project, or worse, give out wrong information about the ICO.

That is true, but dig deeper and the systemic problem is us, the community. If we take a look at ourselves, we see a distinct lack of ideology behind our motivations for cryptocurrency. A lack of principles, a lack of good sense, and this transfers over to the communities we support and the developers behind those. Put out a "shitcoin" and we still run for it. Put out a "shit developer with shit idea" and we still promote it if it pays us good money, we still escrow for them if they pay good %.

The forum recently banned ICO advertising. That was the best move in a long time.

We decide what the future of crypto is. We decided what crypto has become.

You guys are the speculators who only buy and sell for profit. That is okay of course, every person has their place in the world of crypto. But I hope that after you bought your Waves you have also tried using their platform (new one I am about to try but if it is anything like the old one, be prepared to be amazed.

The main thing is not to miss the sell moment, but to try the product out first! You will be so glad you bought.

No need to be sorry for being dark, I also feel the same way. But core has nothing to do with SegWit not being adopted. In fact, they always push exchanges and wallets to use the tech and upgrade. Coinbase for example said, "it would only take months to do this and that why is core taking so long?"

So now SW is ready, the real question is, why are people like Coinbase taking so long to upgrade? Electrum has long already upgraded and made their wallets SW ready. I am waiting and waiting to be able to use my SW addresses.

Core cannot force people to change. They are obviously just lazy and have other agendas. Exchanges are the same, end of the day they want the convenient option. What happens when BCH runs into problems? Maybe they go to a BCH fork?

Also a Waves holder, not Ripple. Also Litecoin for me. 2018 will not make me rich (hell, I did not expect Litecoin to beat the crap out of other alts in 2017) but I will be extremely satisfied if it can maintain $250 for 2018, remember even Charlie Lee says be prepared for it to become $20. The same can be said for Ethereum, be prepared for it to drop below its old $400 ATH, be prepared for everything to drop for a while, including Bitcoin.

2018 will be the consolidation phase, not the boom phase we thought it would be. 2017 is already the boom we did not expect.

I am not really keen on multi wallet at the moment, they all seem to have their downfalls. I suppose one of the best around is still Exodus, which has a solid base and can have private keys exported finally. Only problem is not that many coins supported. Jaxx is also a good option but everyone seems to say it has a private key vulnerability. Then of course you have Coinomi. Maybe Waves also counts since it supports the main alts.

I am not holding that many alts so just sticking to individual wallets.

[/quote]

I guess people still think decentralization is another fancy word. You cannot really decentralizes while Ripple is a project led and managed by a team. No matter how good they are, just like ETH, they are still by definition centralized. So cannot bandy that term around like it will mean something. They are still unproven in terms of development. They have a lot of things promised and have so much to catch up to next year. Still not sure why the price is increasing, but I guess that is just new money coming in from all the new Bitcoin players looking to diversify and thinking they were late to Ethereum.

Lauda, I feel that since joining this campaign, I have had one of the smoothest experiences in my short time at bitcointalk. We are always informed, you have been updating ahead of schedule, and we never need to wonder what goes on.

I think we all need to remember that promoting and carrying a signature that pays us is a privilege, not a right. It is enough that we deliver a service and get remuneration as on terms agreed, but it is a bonus that we even can have input, and that it is considered.

All changes fully supported for now and for future, we appreciate very much for openness.

This is sound advice. The problem with ICOs now is that it is very, very difficult to tell its potential just from doing research. Ratings are mainly incentivized. Posts and reviews are mainly from bounty hunters. News and articles are mainly paid marketing. Advisors and main backers are also paid in advance to lend their name to the ICO, or if they are not paid, they will stand to gain from the exposure. So you cannot find objective information, and they are anyway very tough to verify on your own.

Just stick to investing in tokens or crypto that are already launched. Even so, it is a gamble even with all the research you can do.

I am a huge Litecoin supporter, always have been but I have to take the side of Charlie Lee on this. The value now is *not* expected. Yes, $150 was a target but it was one for NEXT year, not 2017. Now $200 and $300 has been reached, it has to correct because it has not even found the time to look for a floor. I guess now Litecoin will be very popular so the price will not stabilize for a while, but this does not mean we should forget how this was one coin with stability. And now suddenly volatile like Bitcoin. Time will tell, but I fear 2018 will never push higher than current ATH with speculators now entering the LTC game.

Sorry for belated opinion, looks like you came close to predicting the top, but Bitcoin does have a habit of doing that to people, yes? I find it very interesting to see that your "floor" is set so high, though not reaching even $4,000. When you consider how far Bitcoin has crashed before, I would not put it beyond BTC to drop even to $2k floors is anything serious were to threaten it simultaneously.

This week we had futures, and then South Korea, but still Bitcoin looks steady. I wonder what it would take for this to crash?

Yeah, I think the same principle that applied to Bitcoin should also apply to any crypto. If you bought it because you have faith in it, then just be patient and wait. Months, years, until you lose faith or you want to liquidate.

I was not lucky enough to enter the market early, but I hold now several alts that I have faith in, some I will only wait to liquidate if they enter a suitable price frame. For me, this is definitely Waves and Litecoin that I have high hopes for, and Litecoin has already shown me some rewards!

Not all crypto people are speculators. Some actually believe in the idea.

No I do not believe you and I do not need to check all the markets. How can it be mooning when it still has not reached even 15% of Bitcoin's price (a target it already, very briefly, passed a few weeks ago)? Even with Bitcoin losing a bit of ground, Bitcoin Cash is still struggling to pump past that mark. And now not only does it have Ethereum to compete with, even humble Litecoin is showing its muscles finally.

$3000 is a pipe dream. Wait for next year first, show some use and some adoption, and then we can talk about $3k.

If you are looking for a x10 ICO, do not bother. None of the December ones will achieve that so quickly, if ever. You are better off gambling with your crypto, I feel.

Personally, best ICO right now is Sirin Labs, they have a really cool phone coming up next year and I guarantee people will be buying it. I was thinking to enter the presale, but then when Leo Messi came in as their ambassador, I suddenly felt the hype got too big and too much. I know it does not make sense, but now it might have a LOT of money, and the phone even if it does well may not return us investors the same profits we might otherwise expect.

Still, a good project with existing product already. Blockchain phone!