the arguments in this thread read surprisingly often like a kindergarten assignment. are these real users or is it bots?
anyhow, i like iota for solving two major problems of bitcoin: scaling and transaction costs

here's a related forbes article if anyone is interested: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2018/03/01/dear-crypto-enthusiasts-forget-the-telegram-ico-its-not-for-you/#28b0cf71792e

depends on how fast the number of people (and machines) that use it will grow + how well the scaling problems of bitcoin can be resolved. personally i like projects that address scaling explicitely, e.g. iota and substratum both have concepts in which the network becomes better with rising number of users.

that's what some people tend to overlook: even if you trade successfully, you need to be over the gain you would have made from simpe holding. actually, what you need is to be far above what you get from passive holding, since trading takes a lot of effort that needs to be compensated in order to be more valuable than holding. that's quite hard without proper experience and tools.

i long-term hodl a few coins on paper wallets that never saw the web. nevertheless i check the market situation every other day simply out of curiosity and because it's only 1 click away.

somebody got a small loan of a million dollars for me? will pay back eventually :-P

i think IOTA and Substratum will become quite strong in the near future but are also suitable for long term hodling since they bring new solutions to the table for real world problems

in my opinion investing into solid projects after careful research is the way to go

trading is much harder than investing for several reasons:
1) in order to be profitable, you need to compare your gains to those you would have made by simple investment (which would not cost you all the time and energy you need for trading).
2) trading is a zero-sum game and therefore big players and algorithmic traders will most certainly have a better position than you in taking the winner position.
3) there is a lot of risk in having your money all the time on exchanges. many are driven by small teams that are not prepared against the large number of people and transactions, which leads to downtimes, defect withdrawals, hacks and in the worst case total loss of your belongings.
4) the psychological dynamics that it puts you in may not be worth it at all. your own health and relationships are more precious than increasing the numbers in virtual blocks.

take a look at historic price charts. there was always a dip in mid january. in february and march you'll be happy again, just relax and hodl.

try to get your head around algorithmic trading instead of nonsense technical analysis combined with gut feelings and moon phases

DeepOnion is a new and promising anonymity coin with realistic outlook on a 10-100x gain in 2018 and a rewarding staking option.

Here is a step-by-step guideline how I managed to compile the wallet on my Raspberry Pi (after some initial problems) and successfully staked a few coins: https://steemit.com/deeponion/@trait/deeponion-staking-on-raspberry-pi-3

Hope it motivates people to look into the project and maybe setting up a low-power staking machine for themselves

here is a legit airdrop: https://deeponion.org/airdrop.html

it requires to hold some deeponion and be active on this forum as well as the deeponion forum.

Do you know where I can find official statements about the testnet launch?

Haven't heard about Bluezelle before, sounds interesting. How did you find it?

IOTA hasn't moved quite a while despite having great announcements, tech and team. I expect quite some gains in the next months.

I don't really like NEOs but I'm impressed with its performance too, might be a good investment for 2018, especially if China's politics might promote its growth as well.

I heard people mention oyster pearl (PRL) and BAT quite often but I have no idea if it's worth to invest in one of them yet. There is so much choice in the Altcoin market... One thing that is sure in the case of BAT is that the team is very good.

I didn't invest in NEO quite some time ago because their GitHub looked crappy, only few contributions by very few people. However, now they have a lot of interesting partnerships, ICOs starting on them, potential to be a favorite child of Chinese politics, and did not get dragged down by the recent general crypto bleed - I wish I had invested a bit of my portfolio in it.

Ad trading:
- There are several exchanges which do not require verification beyond having a working e-mail address, e.g. Cryptopia in New Zealand or Binance in Hong Kong (although I think you need to setup 2FA with an Android device here). Without verification with personal data (passport foto etc.) you are restricted in the amount of coins you can withdraw per day or week, but as beginner you will probably not hit those sums very soon.
- I would not leave money on an exchange any longer than necessary since there were some severe hacks on big exchanges in the past. I.e. do your trades and then get your coins out onto an address where you hold the private key yourself, preferably on paper or a hardware device like Trezor.

For your own security, try to understand what the terms "cold storage" and "paper wallet" mean, otherwise you risk loosing all your money by being hacked. Only then I would start to buy and hold - in a way that minimizes the risk in terms of getting robbed, which is probably the easiest way to loose money in crypto.