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.
RE: Black Friday - Altcoins Off!