The last couple of days I keep reading about the bitcoin fork and that people should keep their btc in their private wallets in order to obtain also other cheap bitcoins. Of course I agree with that. No one should keep their wealth in any case on centralized exchanges unless they want to trade in and out.

What I am not convinced though is regarding the short term value of bitcoin. Everywhere I read everyone says that btc will have X value on 1st August and you can actually gain 10-15% by owning also bitcoin cash etc.. The combination of the two-three bitcoins will make you profits etc etc...

My personal opinion regarding all this is the following. This is not an investment advice, just a personal opinion.

Starting from now until exchanges halt the deposit and withdrawals on the 31st of July, BTC will vary between $2,650 - $2,800 (depending which exchange you use) since now there is buying pressure.

After the fork and when deposit and withdrawals from the exchanges are resumed I expect a huge drop in all bitcoins.  I believe there will be a time of uncertainty so people will rush to deposit back their btc, bcc etc to the exchanges and dump before others. Most likely the exchanges will dump btc, bcc on their customers and most people won't have the chance to sell their bitcoin versions at high prices. 

My personal estimation is that the combined value of all the strong bitcoin (whichever this is) and all the bitcoins alternatives over the month of August, until the dust is cleared will range between $1,500 - $2,000 on average  and therefore many people will lose money (at least in the short term) with all this bitcoin forks mess.

My advice would be to instead of trying to make some 10-15% profit from the bitcoin alternatives, to sell your bitcoins now, before the fork and convert to fiat short term. Since you want to be able to get back in crypto and in bitcoin when the dust is cleared, my personal preference is to hold  **bitusd, bitsilver, bitgold, biteur within the Bitshares Decentralized Exchange**. 

Finally, in case you have missed it there will be another bitcoin alternative after the 1st of August and that is "Bitcoin United", a gift from bitshares to bitcoin holders. You can follow @stan posts to see what this is all about. Basically it will be a super fast bitcoin, with current reduced supply of bitcoins at the time of the fork. People who hold their private keys at the time of the fork can also claim bitcoin united, BTC-U. 

As a personal note, I was never a big fun of bitcoin and never held any for more than 1 month maybe. I am an altcoin fun and I believe that eventually something else will replace bitcoin. However, I would definitely be interested to get some super fast BTC-U at a cheap price. Therefore after the fork please don't forget to claim also your BTC-U and sell some at low prices on bitshares DEX.

Does anyone else feels the same way as me or am I the only one predicting a blood bath coming?

I would like to stress again that the above is not an investment advice. I am no expert so make your own decisions.