We might be hitting the bottom here soon from the looks of it the sell off is starting to turn into a bit of buying and it for sure was a larger sell off then the previous ones.
As per whats happening August 1st is that the majority of bitcoin nodes will try and force the miners to implement a protocol upgrade proposal called BIP148. Depending on how it all plays out it could and i use that word carefully cause a split in bitcoin kind of like we saw with Ethereum and you now have ethereum classic and ethereum. You would in essence have bitcoin classic running the non updated chain while the new chain runs the updated version.
Good point....I believe Coinbase said they will run whichever BTC is of interest to users and miners and the other one will not be adopted. I think LTC will continue to fluctuate over the weekend from $44-$51 then jump Monday morning. It's possible it could hit up $50s again and then will adjust again over the weekend to the $50-55 range. I think this pattern will repeat through the end of the month and then it could shoot up dramatically if BTC hard forks. Thoughts???