I am not sure why they are still doing it. Back in 2017-2018 when it was the bull market or the early bear market, the projects were paying tons of money to the exchanges to get listed. So that is a logical reason for the exchanges to do these meaningless listings. However right now I do not think that they can ask for tons of money, most of the projects do not have money enough to get through the development... this is why I only use bitfinex.

There is no cost for the token swap to the company. So it does not effect the company budget. Also the developers want to change the platform for more security or coding opportunities. For us I do not think that there is too much benefit. In bull market times it is valuable because all of the news pump the markets, so it makes sense at those times.

I do not know about small cap coins, I like safe investments, back in 2017 I made huge mistakes about small cap coins, so I am wiser now... So I would go with the top 10 or maybe top 20 coins, I think ethereum and litecoin are the best choices. Of course they are manipulated too but less manipulation occurs...

I cannot say it is a good or bad idea, but I can surely say that it is reasonable and the safest way to invest. I used to hold tons of shitty altcoins which got rekt and lost me tons of money, yes at first they earned a lot but I think that it is no different than gambling when it comes to small cap altcoin investments.

I used to attend tons of bounties whether they are shit or not which was a huge mistake. Right now I read about the project that I attend the bounty and get to know it. Which is why I have only 1 or 2 bounties attending. Which is definitely better and safer. Everyone should be careful before attending bounties

One of the reason is the volatility, there is not this much volatility in the current stocks market, however this can be a disadvantage as well. Manipulation and huge volatility can get you liquidated. The risk is big but the reward is also big...
Good risk management will get you earn a lot in crypto

Governments love tracking us. They love earning more from our money, they love using our money. With the current cryptocurrencies it makes it harder for the governments to track our transaction, it is safer for us to transfer money. So they loose control which freaks them out.

Right now it depends on the project, back in 2017 all the bounties and airdrops were really really profitable, those were the days...
Now you have to choose the bounty project wisely and should wait patiently to project gain its real value. So it is not as bad as 2018, but not good as 2017