Bitcoin Forum

(Note: This is a follow-on thread to my original one about price cycles (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=717215.0); however, as I have re-analyzed things, I think at this point it deserves a new starting point.  See that thread for more background.)

I have been looking at trends in the Bitcoin price for a while now, and I've been noticing something, which I will detail below.  I think what I am seeing is the result of a couple of things:

• Bitcoin is a unique ecosystem.  It has arguably been allowed to grow organically, and as such I think the price is exhibiting some natural cycles, not unlike what you would find in nature in cycles of sunspots, plant shapes, sea shells, tree rings, etc.
• Price is, of course, driven ultimately by people.  Now, individually people's behavior is almost impossible to predict, but in large groups, certain fundamental patterns will exist.  Basic human emotions such as fear and greed are behind a lot of it, but regardless of exactly why it is, people can be somewhat predictable in large groups, not unlike animal herds or insect swarms.

With that in mind, I looked again at the price of Bitcoin over time, and tried aligning some of the peaks in price.  Previously this wasn't overly successful (although some general similarities showed up), but this time i though I would see what would happen if I looked at a full cycle between the peak in June 2011 and that in November 2013.  It turns out that there is about 903 days between those peaks, so I am going to round this to 900 and plot the data.  Observe:

https://i.imgur.com/997Ppyg.png

All of a sudden there is clearly some repetition to the price cycles.  The scale is different, of course, but the trend is up, and the major events correlate quite well.  Know what else?  That 900 cycle divides neatly into 3 phases of 300 days each:

https://i.imgur.com/ReWMpXG.png

Each of those phases is marked by some clear trends, which has repeated each time.  (And yes, I know we would only be in the third cycles, but at least now, if the concept holds, behavior can be seen in the previous 2 cycles).  I'll break each down below.  Note that a 300 day phase is about 10 months, which is quite a long period of time in Bitcoin.  Here are the same graphs in linear scale, each on their own graph:

https://i.imgur.com/C1sWBE9.png

https://i.imgur.com/xuDTBlK.png

https://i.imgur.com/Q3tMflV.png

Phase 1: Initial runup
This phase is marked by a generally level or rising trend in the price, with one or two distinct jumps in price.  Note that the price run ups, as has happened with every major price increase, are followed by a fibonacci retracement, but in each case ends up higher than before the runup began.  In each cycle, Phase 1 ends with price being about an order of magnitude higher than at the start of the phase.  (Cycle 1 Phase 1 I didn't get the data for the first 40 days or so; doesn't really have much impact, and with such as low price and relatively low number of people trading, I wouldn't bet a lot on it's worth.)

Phase 2: Long phase exponential increase with more volatility
Each of the major runups in the two previous cycles (one in each) has been another order of magnitude increase or more, followed by a retracement valley and then up again before the phase ended.  The end of the cycle has been between about 6x and 10x higher than the start.

Phase 3: Volatility and instability
The least predictable of the 3 phases.  Cycle one showed a general increase over time (~50% increase), while Cycle 2 had a drop-off of about half.  Note again that this is over 10 months, so while a long slow decline is painful, it's not that bad in comparison to the overall trend.  Interestingly, there is a "hiccup" in Phase 3 of each of the two cycles, occuring at almost the same time (about 2/3 of the way through the phase).

What drives all this?  I'd characterize Phase 1 as showing pent-up demand (and maybe fading memories) about the last major increase, which, by this time, would have been well over a year before (previous Phase 2).  Phase 2 shows confidence gained from Phase 1 resulting in increased demand.  Phase 3 shows some shakiness in the confidence and basically is a "rebuilding" phase.  All these things are probably affected greatly by media attention, which also (I suspect) goes in cycles. 

As I said above, I think people's behavior as a group follows trends, even if individuals' behaviors are not predictable.  It is the individual volatility, such as the implosion of Mt. Gox and the clamp down by China (both back in 2014) that is trying to break trends and cannot be predicted.

What does it mean going forward?  Maybe nothing.  I'll say again, as I did before, that past history does not predict future performance.  However, look at the points and trends which correlate between those two previous cycles.  That's a lot of coincidences.  The cycling also predicts that before March of 2016 we should have expected at least one or two major price spikes.  We had one this month; if the cycle holds, there will be at least one more before March 2016.  Note also that the halving occurs part way through Phase 2 of this current cycle, which is widely expected to drive price up. 

So maybe there is something.  Maybe not.  But I have been getting tired of all the meaningless posts lately and wanted to post something new.

Oh, and if you are into numerology, there are a lot of "3"s in this analysis!

Disclaimer: I'm tired, and am not going to proofread this post now.  Have a good night, all.

Nice analysis.

Interesting thanks!

Another attempt to predict a major bull run?

It just isn't happening in a cyclical nature for bitcoin, that is not how technology develops.

The price cannot be predicted. Only the major adoption news of bitcoin will increase the price. Nothing else.

If it will follow this pattern, it will take around half a year for the next big run to happen.

However, it can also be that we are still in the initial pump, a big spike might obliterate the current peak in the graph and make it look like part of the rise.

I think all the people that do the TA on this forum might not agree with your first statement...





We're not talking about the technology here... the tech is developing on its own; it's the price that we're talking about, and that is completely driven by other factors (media coverage, rates of adoption, greed, fear, panic...)  In that sense, and as I said in the opening post, Bitcoin is behaving more "organically".  We really have not seen anything like this before.  Was it possible to buy a "piece of the internet" or part of a torrent network?  Bitcoin is the first technology with completely digital units that you can buy.  And yet it's not like other currencies or commodities, since we always know the rate at which new bitcoins are produced, exactly how many there are now, and exactly how many there will be at the end.  This has never happened before.

In terms of predicting price or noticing cycles, take a look at this image highlighting what I would say are correlating events in the cycles as I described them:

https://i.imgur.com/G4az2Lk.png?1

Tell me if you don't agree that at least some of those areas look pretty similar?  That's a lot of coincidences, even if you don't agree with all 12.  And what does it mean?  Well, maybe nothing, but as I say, it's a lot of coincidences.  So maybe there will be some trend this time around.  Don't underestimate the power of human nature; people tend me to be influences by what others due, so price run-ups generally lead to others jumping in.  Similarly sell-offs and profit taking can drive others to do the same.

So there are a lot of factors that affect price.  If it were only good news that drove the price we should have had lots of increase since mid-2014 with all the positive news that came out.  But we didn't.  Why?  My thought is we were still too soon after the 2013 price peak, and the momentum was for price to push down.  General group sentiment by all Bitcoin traders.  That falls in Phase 3 of my cycle above.  Now?  In Phase 1, that sentiment would have run it's course and the time is ripe for the group mentality to change.  I don't know if it will (nobody does), but I think the timing is right for it.

Yes! Some of those areas look similar, but a few to note are:
(D) In 2011, D was already making higher highs (HH's) above the B. In Elliott wave, that was a subwave of the whole rise to $31.9099. In this case, it was a 3. In 2013, it was still part of the correction, or in the best supporting argument, a subwave of a subwave, 1 of 5. Visually, it makes no HH, so it really doesn't look similar at all.

Next, compare price of everything after the $1200 peak with the 2011/12 data you have there. Your corresponding points hit the bottom and began rising in the latter. In 2014, it continued down. This tells me that we are in a much larger cycle here that isn't really comparable to the 2010-2012 data you have without first stretching that data about 4x. I would argue that your F, G and H are more appropriately set up like this
https://i.imgur.com/2Ca3IN7.png

Where F and G were all of 2014 and we are still somewhere in the H. Or at best, in the I. There is also the possibility that F was the entirety of 2014 and we are in G since January this year. I don't really have an opinion on which is more likely.

Oh waw! This are some good research.

Thank you for sharing this and taking your time doing this.

Hmm.. those are some very interesting points.  In terms of the period since $1200 peak, I had actually looked at compressing the comparative timeframes to see if they would better match up, but then I ran into two problems: 1) this no longer fit in with the concept of human "recovery times" that I was sort of basing this on, and 2) when (or does) the "compressed" period end?  The latter means its harder to judge when something might happen (though it would give a better idea of what would happen next: for example, if we are indeed in H or I, then we know a rise would still be coming, it would just be harder to judge when).  I'll have to go back an analyze those results again taking that into view (and I'll have to read more about Elliott waves).

Given the model I have so far, I could not help but notice the correlation between G and H, which are two period of relatively higher prices (though still on a downtrend) after the volatility ("F") that follows the peak price.  The main disparity is in the period between J and K, where in one cycle it is up, and the other it is down.  I could attribute the down trend to extenuating factors (China ban and Gox), but that's a guess.  My overall thought is this is a period of "light winds", as it were, where the price could easily be shifted in either direction, or lay flat.

Thanks for the input... I'll go back when I have more time and see about changing the time scale to see how the trends work out.

A half year is where we will land when the halving comes then all the charts that is shown now will mean nothing.

Price analysis != prediction of tech development.

There had been too many TA recently and in the past, but I don't think most of them had even come close to what have actually happened to bitcoin's price. :/

Agreed.  Those are the two options that I see at the moment too.  In either case, a big run up looks to be in the cards sometime between March and December, 2016.  Both possibilities would be a rosy outcome, with the latter being even more rosy!

The current estimate for block halving next year is around July 23.  That would put it about 4 months into the second phase, which extends to January 2017.  I think it's quite likely that the halving will drive price up sometime during that period, but exactly when and by how much nobody knows.  Last halving there was little effect at the time, but it followed about 2 months later by the rise to $266.

Yes the price cannot be predicted otherwise we would all be billionaires and a billion would be worth nothing :).

TA can be done to determine the general direction of the market, it's no more than an educated guess that will give you a few percent better chances.

News is most likely not the main driver of increasing prices. First of all bitcoin news happens after something happens with bitcoin not before. So news will only act as an accelerator.

actually if everyone had the chance to predict the price, nobody would gain anything, so no billionaires  at all

we would end with a sum zero game

Yep

and a billion would be worth nothing

hacknoid, thanks for an interesting topic.
I am not a big fan of cycles in TA, but there is one thing that actually is very interesting in your chart. If you look at the ratio between the max and min price in each cycle, you will observe very interesting story, namely, for the first cycle (market introduction) we made more than 1000-fold increase ($0.01 to $30) in price, for the second cycle (initial adoption) we made about 100-fold increase ($10 to $1200). That leads me to a very interesting conclusion, which actually matches my expectations, in the third cycle (I would call it broad adoption) the price will go up ten(teens)-fold maximum. That would mean $2-3k as the realistic price target for the next 900 days.

But you gotta admit that these bitcoin price graphs looks amazingly similar. I know it proves nothing certain as we have not enough repetitive cycles to study, but still.
Pure coincidence?

You're welcome!  :)


I noticed something similar, although I don't put too much weight in the initial value of the first cycle; it was so early, before the first major public exposure and subsequent runup to $32.  I definitely agree that the cycles so far have tended to decrease in the amount of gain, and I am thinking the third would also be a somewhat smaller increase than the last. My personal feeling is that we would look for a peak price somewhere between 10x and 100x the starting price, or around $2300-$23,000.  Note that the peak doesn't last though, and tends to drop back to about the midpoint between the start of the runup and the peak, so that would mean a stable price more like $1500-$15,000.  On or about October, 2017.

Sure, the initial value of Bitcoin in the starting cycle may be a bit blurry, which makes it difficult to get the precise results for the max. peak and the stable value there.
But I believe the figures we just named are about right. Second cycle, is a clear cut. I pretty much agree with that observation regarding the third cycle, tending though to be more conservative in my predictions, i.e., closer to the lower bounds of the ranges you had just given. That is mainly caused by two things: speed of adoption of the new technology and the fact that it is much easier to turn 1 cent into $1 than the $100 into a $10k, although both are a 100-fold increase.

It is kind of like time travel though.  Now that you have made a prediction, that prediction in itself could change the way that people behave and thereby modify the future trends.  Once an object is observed, it is changed.

interesting, so should i buy or sell......lol ::)

There is not too much to discuss for about 300 days, then it will be very interesting or useless.

Sadly, this is probably true. :(  However, by March 2016 (end of Phase 1) I'll have a better idea of how the cycle is shaping up compared to the previous ones.  And I'll put up updated charts periodically, just for info.

Well, yes this is probably a long-term topic. But I will be very interesting how it progresses and already added it to my tracked threads.
Cycle predictions if spotted correctly can be very accurate, but as always there comes a question whether we have just one main cycle or several superimposing cycles so let's see how this unfolds. Closer to the halving event, we will probably see much more and we can draw first conclusions on the accuracy.

If this is accurate, then the price should be at least $1000 within 150 days from now.

Agreed, I have this topic watched.  I guess I just feel numb from being in bitcoin for so long, one can only take so many roller coaster rides.  I await good news. hehe

interesting analysis.

To me, the price of bitcoin is an enigma in itself.
It's like lambda-infinitesimally (well, maybe not THAT infinitesimal) small in comparison with the capital markets, but NOT ZERO.
Why it is not zero, and if not zero, why not substantially higher?

GOOGL alone moved three bitcoin's cap worth just today and the move was "just" 2.74% of GOOGL-a small portion of the market.

Haha, but I love that feeling. It is cool to not care about huge price fluctuations. Although euphoria of the early days was very pleasurable there is something calming about being ready to expect the unexpected. Then again maybe I am just numb too; as a HODL'r they are just numbers on a screen at the moment...

Technical analysis on Bitcoin is like technical analysis on penny stocks - worthless as the price can easily be manipulated by a single or a small group of investors, is very subject to news events, and the market is too small and immature.

Well, yes - but, the market is larger and more mature now than it has ever been, and the analysis done on it so far is based on the history of that manipulated market.  So, I would argue that if a model has applied to this point, it should be able to apply in future.  That is basically what I was getting at in the OP; I think what we are seeing are the elements of human nature being applied to a market space.  The tendencies toward greed, fear, manipulation, profit taking, etc., are what has driven the shape of the price graphs up to this point in time.  And that, together with it being such as small market, is why, for example, each time there is a dramatic price rise we see a sudden fall back to a midpoint and subsequent instability... people are taking profits, becoming scared (in some cases), and jumping on opportunities (in others).  It makes for dramatic, but very definite and noticeable, changes in price.

There was an article a while ago, probably CoinDesk but I can't find it at the moment. Basically the study concluded that Bitcoin never sleeps. Overall trading volume doesn't correlate with open/close times in any particular timezones. If volume doesn't change with the time of day I don't think the price will either.

If the trend is followed like it was previously, then yes - in fact, I might expect that price even before the end of January.  But in general, I would expect at least some price rise between now and March (at least above the recent spike of ~$US500).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/11/30/are-there-mice-on-mars/ -- humans tend to see patterns in randomness.  The one Bitcoin fundamental with a predictable period is the reward halving every 4 years; take it to the bank.

You are taking about Pareidolia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia) - "a psychological phenomenon involving a stimulus (an image or a sound) wherein the mind perceives a familiar pattern of something where none actually exists."  I'm not saying I see Jesus or anything familiar in the graph.  I am pointing out a repeating pattern that seems to be displayed in the data.  Humans also have an exceptional ability to spot recurring patterns (http://bigthink.com/endless-innovation/humans-are-the-worlds-best-pattern-recognition-machines-but-for-how-long).

 And you're trying to analyse a manipulated market? By your own statement?

 DOH!!!!!!


 You can't time manipulation, the people that can manipulate do it on their own schedual when THEY feel like it.

Well some gold bugs, analysing the market of gold in the last 15 years or so may disagree with you. They claim the market of gold is heavily manipulated and nevertheless they tend to analyse it, forecasting when the next orchestrated slam down will happen. And indeed, there are some patterns in it. In the end of the day, the humans are also behind the manipulation.

Haha same here, I just like to lurk around these topics and hear everyone's opinion and speculations.

Based on that I make my own calculations and buy or sell.

Normally it makes me money, but these day, i've got not idea what to expect.

Exactly.  And there are many more people trading in the market than trying to manipulate it, so the trends will follow group behavior.  Individuals can have an immediate impact by a large or constant buy or sell, but there are plenty of other people that will act based on their interpretation of those events.

Aside from outright trying to destroy Bitcoin, what is the purpose of manipulating the market?  To make money.  Traders that know what they are doing can make money when the market goes up OR goes down; they don't care.  So, if someone is trying to manipulate the market, they would be stupid to try to force the market against it's general sentiment (remember the "bearwhale"?).  So yes, some whales may be manipulating the market, but they can only push it so far.  Unless they are controlling a large percentage of the trades, then market sentiment rules when looking at the larger picture.  I'm not concerned about the small, even inter-day trading here.  I'm looking at the long term trends.

Besides, even if I buy the argument that everything we have seen was due to manipulation, the graphs I've shown I think demonstrate pretty clearly that they have followed a pattern.  If it's worked for them for 6 years, why would they change that now?

BTW, just came across this in another thread, and it seems apropos to this argument:

RyNinDaCleM, you are trully smart! respect.

I agree with you, regarding the length of time taking longer or in other words, a larger cycle.

When i was reading OPs idea, the first thing i thought was he was right about human behaviour in herds as predictable, but also thought he was wrong in assuming it would repeat itself in the same number of days cycles. That i find, cannot happen in a case where there is growth. Growth in nature is not linear or proportional.

For example, think about children growing up, they grow at different paces at each stage of their life. Not that any growth is superior to another, but it does not take the same amount of time because at each growth level, complexity varies.

In the case of bitcoin, bitcoin today is not bitcoin of yester years - so, while growth might occur in a similar fashion, I would expect number of days to vary eg X4 or xY.

Which is why, i agree with RyNinDaCleM here when he redraws the labels to show the cycles are taking longer - similar, but longer days.

*please excuse typos. Cant be bothered

Ok, you have my attention. Sub for updates. Thanks!

Cycle moving backward ..will go below 400 now.

Like i said in another thread, the market manipulators are not yet.
It would make no sense to think it is done now. A turbulent month is coming for all specators.

Yeah the length of time that we would take to repeat each cycle is definitely questionable... I certainly agree that we are in a new phase of Bitcoin now, and how that will affect adoption and price remains to be seen. 
Unfortunately cycles at this point are  not clear until the cycle is complete, so if we are indeed in a longer-phase cycle then it's not really possible to see it at this point until it completes.  As I said the other day, I'll take a shot at looking at the data again with a different period in mind.  (Excel is not great for varying the scale on the X-axis, so plotting that requires some thought...)

In defense of the original plot, I do also believe there is definitely a period after which people tend to "forget" what the old price was, and during which demand builds up again.  I know for myself the thought of a $20 coin seems laughable now, and I am feeling the desire to buy more coin again.  My feelings about the long slow ride down in 2014 are also not so raw now.

In the end, there are so many factors that come into play.  There is a whole new crop of Bitcoin companies becoming major players now, and the whole focus on "blockchain" now instead of "Bitcoin" also lead to thoughts that it we are in a new wave.  How this all comes together remains to be seen.

Exactly, I don't think it's going anywhere below $350 only up from here on out. At least, that's what I like to think when it comes to bitcoin. But you never know, it's really unpredictable. I have been wrong about the price increase/decrease in the past.

Watching

OK, so I replotted the data overlaying everything basically since the November 2013 runup to ATH with about a 3x compression.

https://i.imgur.com/fFEH8kh.png

No questioin that doing this results in a very interesting graph that parallels the previous cycle much closer.  This would put us in a situation where we are on the tail end of a phase 2, however, it could mean a phase 3 that more closely follows that of cycle 1.  The net result is a possible short term period of uptrend in price, followed by a period of slow growth.  Not a bad thing.  However, in cycle 1 this phase (3) did not overtake the ATH we reached in phase 2, so if that holds again it would mean we won't get over ~US$1200 for the forseeable future.

As I stated before though, this would mean that there is no discernible cycle to be found, and while I will continue to track it, the time frame of any future peaks becomes much hard to guess at.

OTOH, if we do see a significant growth over the next month or 2, I would say the time frame has not compressed, and the original cycle periods hold.  In the above plot we are starting to generate some disparity with the previous cycle at this point using this idea, so I think we will get an idea over the next couple of months which trend fits better.

The other possibility is a period of compressed time as shown above, followed by an expansion in X bringing our timeline back to the original; something like this:

https://i.imgur.com/IHxjFkf.png

which again puts us close to back to the beginning of a new cycle.  Again, time will tell.


My final thought on this, and not working on theories of Elliott waves or TA in general, is that if there is a fractal pattern becoming evident, it would present itself such that you could view similar trends on various time scales, as I have done above.  That would mean the original theory is not invalidated, but rather additional trends become evident by changing the scale of the X-axis.  Again, we will see.

Thanks for the chart hacknoid! v good work

I wonder if you factored in this [bolded]? Even if you ignore EW theory and its implcations, at least see how they differ in my chart below

Thoughts?

https://i.imgur.com/irRwFLQ.jpg

as already described. bitcoin have fluctuating prices. turnover rates and the amount of bitcoin is very difficult to predict.

I think we will see 500 before newyear.

While these charts are very interesting and might be right I have the feeling that we will see $3000+ relatively soon.       
Probably within 10 months.

I presume you mean the different shape in phase 1 of the two cycles?  I did notice that, and would attribute it to minor variances in the specifics, even though the trends were generally the same.  In cycle 1 the run-up occurred in two parts, with the first part being an increase from about $0.06 to about $0.25, and second bringing the price to about $0.65 to finish out the phase.  In cycle 2 there was one major run up from about $12 to finish the phase at about $120.  In both cases, it was about a 10x increase in price.

My breakdown of the trends in this thread is mainly focused on the overall trends in each phase of each cycle, since the individual price increases and ups-and-downs are too hard to predict.  Rather I point to the similarity in overall phase trend (10x increase in price, generally trending up the whole time) between start and end of phase 1. 

I could also attribute the difference to the immaturity of the market back in 2010 vs that of 2012, but as I say it's too hard to try to track individual reasons for bumps and dips.

As for what that all means this time around:

- assuming we are back in phase 1: trends would indicate a 10x increase in price between the start of the cycle back in May of this year (~$230) to when it finishes in March 2016 (so ~$2300).  Of course that would likely be after one or more peaks before then of possibly as high as $4k.

- assuming the compressed options: a lower peak value than the ATH sometime next year, with 2016 ending maybe ~$1000.  I just can't really see this being the case, however, looking at all the other positive indicators (and that we seem to be entering a strong bull market).

So, we'll have a better idea by March (or more probably, by February).

Bitcoin is simply not old enough to be able to declare any sort of 900 day cycles going on.

I'd say this is a fallacy, but interesting nonetheless, thanks for posting. But I think this is tantamount to a 4 year old ruminating on how there life has been a periodic and discernible cycle of positive and negative 230 day phases of good food and bad food. 

:)  Ha ha... nice one.

Can't say I completely disagree with you; there certainly is not enough evidence to say for certain whether the cycles actually exist, or whether they are simply a series of coincidences.  I do find it especially interesting that if we apply the idea of cycles, it points to quite a rosy future at least in the near term, at a time when other factors are really looking positive as well (tx rate, exchange volumes, upcoming halving, ETF(?), etc.).  So, maybe just a coincidence again, but I also believe human psychology also factors in to this, and so there may be a cycle at play behind it all.

Humans have a very uncanny ability to fit correlations into two separate things that have no correlation and explain it very well. Its really hard to stay unbiased when you hold a stake in an asset that you hope to profit from.

Really nice graphs. I think we will be seeing the graphs steadily rising, as the demand of Bitcoin increases.

We also have a fantastic ability to spot trends in things when they are there. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1256918.msg13131843#msg13131843)

I'll fully admit I am long-term bullish, but that is based on fundamentals.  Yes, I hold some coin and hope the price goes up, but it doesn't change the past correlations I outlined.

I also tend to agree with what glendall said (this however does not cancel my interest in your work, hacknoid, which I already expressed earlier in this topic). I also think that it is too early to talk about seasonals if you have only 6 years of data available all together. No statistical meaning. On the other hand the cycles you plotted show some repeating patterns and do show compression between the max. peak value and the stable value in each time period, which aligns with fundamental arguments for the growth at linear pace and not at the exponential pace, as in the early days of Bitcoin. So, to some extent, that makes sense.  

Yeah. Really nice graphs bro. These really help me to understand how Bitcoin has risen and fallen. Really good work.

Check this out.

Uncanny resemblance between bitcoin price chart trend and google 'Selfie' search trends

Obviously, the constant here is human beings and natural behaviour and I wouldn't dismiss how similar these two are, even an underlying explanation as to why both are similar.

So, given the discussion in this thread, and after analyzing the history and highlighting the cycles I have, I would say my thoughts are currently at about the following levels (and what I would expect the price to do in each case):

Scenario A: 50% - the cycle is playing out as described in my original post, with no changes in time.  I would expect a general trend upward, into the US$500 range by end of December and then peaking above the old ATH sometime in January next year (possibly double peak with an even higher ATH in February)
Scenario B: 20% - Cycle is more as RyNinDaCleM noticed, where we are currently in a compressed phase 2 of cycle 2 (will take longer to complete).  Price may reach into the $500s or $600s in December/January, but won't go over $1000 until we approach the halving in June
Scenario C: 20% - Cycle has been compressed, but is expanding out again as I highlighted as a "modified compressed" (in that case we are exiting phase 3 of cycle 2, and will soon begin cycle 3).  In this scenario price will likely stay $400-$500 or so into February, with another run-up beginning in March where we would exceed the previous ATH before June
Scenario D: 10% - All this so far has just been coincidence and there is no cycle.  This case would become more likely if the price doesn't reach $500 and/or drops back below $400 for a significant time [weeks+] over the next few months

I agree with this x infinity.  Bitcoin is not a stock that can be analyzed like a stock--though technical analysis believers think this is true.  Only if and until there is widespread adoption of bitcoin will the price 1) rise and 2) stabilize.  Everything else is just a bubble, and that can happen too. 

It's a nice analysis you did, but I'm not sure how true it's going to turn out to be.

In my opinion B and C are more probable each than A due to timing. D should not be excluded either, due to the small amount of total data.
I would give the following distribution to the variants you provided:
a-20%, b-30%, c-25%, d-25%.

So pretty much even odds to all four outcomes at this point?  Could be; of course, I have to weigh my original proposal a bit higher.  :)

I think the main indicator will be when (or if) we reach the previous ATH:

A - January-March 2016
B - June-late 2016
C - March-June 2016
D - not at all in 2016

I find that this is quite amazing the regularity of the charts. Do anyone have a clue about this phenomenon ? Maybe some big players/exchanges playing again and again with the same scheme ?

so much emphasis on the halving.

Does anyone consider it might not have an impact?Maybe it has been priced in, i mean, we all know exactly when the halving will occur. Kinda like the Fed raising rates this week.

Also, what if price impact of halving happens AFTER the event itself?

I see it a bit differently. It is rather 75%-25% in favour of cycles.
Then choosing among a, b and c, I simply think that we won't grow that far in January in the first place, unless some big fundamental event is around the corner. I don't see it for now, I think more of the steam will come later in the spring, so it is between b and c. I favour b rather than c, as the market tend to give you usually the solution that is different that everybody is expecting. But we will be much wiser already in January.

Even tho it could just be coincidence, it sure is a nice analysis. I think we can all agree that the thing that binds these charts the most if the fact that each
time bitcoin price goes to bottom after the tanking, it ends up higher than it was on the previous round/cycle.
This just proves that bitcoin will continue to grow proportional with the passing time, which is great news for us hodlers.

Well there are definitely factors that seem to come into play during each major price increase; for example, the initial run to $32 was likely a result of interest taken after the Gawker article on Silk Road.  The run to $256 occured after the first reward halving and possibly due to the interest in the Cypress bank bail-ins.  The $1200 peak occurred when interest from the Chinese was first beginning to peak, and seemed to get implicit approval from their government.  However, while these things almost certainly played into the price rises, it's hard to say for certain whether any particular event actually caused the rises.  People like to point to every price increase or decrease as occurring because of a specific reason, but sometimes I think that's just fabricating a reason.

This would also not explain the extended relatively flat periods in 2012 and 2015 and the downturns in 2011 and 2014.  This is where I think it's the underlying human tendencies that are affecting things.  People's attention changes, and it happen en masse.  A good example is the selfie chart posted recently in this thread; as interest in something spikes initially everyone jumps on the bandwagon.  Then after a while interest begins to fade and people move onto the next thing.  After a certain cooling off period interest can be renewed in the initial phenomenon if people are still talking about it.  That is what I believe happens here, where phase 1 of each cycle reflects initial interest or pent up demand, and then phase 2 reflects a rebound of an interest that hasn't yet run it's course.  By the time phase 3 happens people are losing interest or are distracted or disillusioned, and price reflects that.  It then takes a year or two before things are ready to start again.

As another example of interest cycles, look at fashion and societal trends.  It takes about 20 years for those cycles to repeat, which is why in the 90s we saw a resurgence of interest of the 70s (fashion, hair, nostalgia, music), then the 2000's saw a "flashback" to what was popular in the 80s, and now in the 2010s there has been more interest in the 90s again (and to a lesser degree the 70s).

Without a general sentiment in the market (generally bear or bull), individual events won't have a large lasting impacts.  Large buys or sells have more impact when they happen in the direction the market is moving anyway than when they move against it.  Same for news events.
 

I don't necessarily think it will be the halving itself that will cause these events; rather I mention it since it's a milestone that people are looking at.

If you look at the last halving, there was not much movement around the time of the halving itself (a slow trend upward), but there was quite a rise that followed.  Notice in the cycles I showed, it occurred very early in phase 1 of cycle 2, meaning that the market may have only been getting into real buill mode around that time, leading to the runup.

Personally, I think we will see some rise around that time.  No matter how much the market may have already priced this in, it will be a big hit to miners the day it happens, and they are now being run as large operations not small individuals like in the past.  That 50% drop in revenue from one day to the next is not like the fed raising rates by 0.25%.

I've seen the cycles but with this rise it don't append, let me clarify

- No rise was take such a 'long' period of time
- No rise was manipulated this much. Rise rise, sell, rise rise.

It seems all other rises were natural, and just this one manipulated..

This

Just to finish up this thought, here are my current thoughts on the likelihood of various prices, based on the discussions in this thread (and my feelings):

I would say the prediction till January 2016 will be true but there might be a price dip after January 2016 as per my experience about Bitcoin but still let's hope this stats above goes right

I think that if the price goes up in January that there will be a dip until mid February. It will probably be around $450.
That's my speculation. I think bitcoin will go up to $700 next month and over the several months to come we'll have a resistance around that number.

It's been about a month since the last update of the charts, so here they are with the latest data.  First, the updated chart of my original 900 day cycle:

https://i.imgur.com/izq9mcy.png

DISCUSSION:
We are getting close to the end of phase 1 of cycle 3 in this interpretation.  We have about 2 months to go, and have not yet passed the previous ATH, as we did in each of the previous cycles' first phase.  Note that the peaks just before Christmas as well as last week were actually higher than the point when we reached the local maximum back in November.  This is explained by the fact that the number I am using are the daily volume-weighted prices, not the daily highs.  I think daily weighted prices make more sense since they are not swayed by a sudden temporary spike, but rather represent the true trend.  As such, we are still in a general upward trend since September 2015.


Overlaying the highlighted points looks like this (actually did this one about a week ago):

https://i.imgur.com/eq1gIz4.png
DISCUSSION:
I have highlighted what might correspond to areas A and B in the charts, though its not clear.  In fact A and B might not be distinct enough, but rather may be the same part.  Doesn't really matter.  What it would suggest is we still may have a sudden, short-term dip (C) upcoming, somewhere into the low-mid $300s., which would be followed by a rise to above the previous high point of this cycle.  At this point, cycle 3 is looking more like cycle 1 than cycle 2.


Now the option with a compressed period, as suggested by RyNinDaCleM:

https://i.imgur.com/JBpwZjI.png
DISCUSSION:
If this scenario plays out, we would be in for a long upcoming period of general sideways movement, with price rise being pretty much done with for the current and upcoming period.


And finally a variant on the last scenario, with a compressed period followed by an elongated period (proposing that we will converge back to the original 900 day cycle):

https://i.imgur.com/m6tA9Ln.png
DISCUSSION:
This one is interesting, as it would suggest we have just entered into Cycle 3.  It would predict that we still have some major price gains to come in the next couple months, including a peak well over the previous ATH.

I've been giving a lot of thought over the past few weeks about how to explain both variations in the cycles and similarities.  As I mentioned in the initial post, I think it is human nature behind it all, primarily the way that human psyche will forget past events, grow interest over time, and basically follow cycles.  However, it also got me wondering what are the other main factors that may be driving the price?

Clearly the implosion of Mt. Gox and the crackdown by China's government back in 2014 played into the long downtrend in price.  But I think these are just some specific example of general factors that I believe come into play.  Below I'll outline what I can think of in terms of the major factors; there are also numerous smaller factors, but I think large trends are driven by the large factors.

Factor: Interest
Affect: Positive
I think there is a general increase in interest over time.  This is closely tied to amount of public awareness, but I'll classify it in general terms as interest in the technology and/or currency.  I think this is more or less constantly increasing. 

Factor: Adoption Rates
Affect: Positive
This includes both user adoption rates (measurable by the number of online wallets or wallet app downloads) as well as business adoption rates (Coinbase and Bitpay customers) as well as availability of Bitcoin ATMs.

Factor: Price
Affect: Positive or Negative
Large price drops result in more nervous traders, while big price gains results in FOMO. 

Factor: Media coverage
Affect: Positive or Negative
In general I think "there is no such thing as negative exposure", but certainly in terms of whether people want to put their money into something the affect can be either positive or negative.

Factor: Competition/Distraction
Affect: Negative
Previously, especially from mid-2013 through mid-2014, this has included altcoins (notably Litecoin and Dogecoin).  Also includes competing digital payment technologies such as Ripple, Stellar and Venmo as well as digital payment interfaces such as Apple Pay and Samsung Pay.  In 2015 the big "competition" was from Blockchain in general, with the thought that Bitcoin was not required, but rather just use the tech without the coin.

Factor: Controversy
Affect: Negative
Currently this is the scaling debates and all the mudslinging going on over that.  Previously it would include the "51% attack" concerns.

Factor: Government Legislation
Affect: Mostly bad
Sometimes the clarification of rules provided by governments has been positive (such as Germany's tax rules), but in general there has been lots of "banning", either real or perceived, but governments such as China, Russia and Thailand.


I'm currently trying to figure out how to best "measure" these factors, if that can indeed be done.  I'd love to try to plot them all together to see what the net affect might look like, and how that would correlate (or not) to actual prices.

Well, and there it is, I would say.  The corresponding points are getting more clear, although I would still say A (if it really is a trend) is harder to match.  However, we seem to have clearly just hit point C.  If so, this would indicate upcoming is a rise, followed by another relatively flat period.

https://i.imgur.com/I0ybaVI.png

Thanks a lot for a nice update. I haven't visited your thread for a longer while and now it seems the picture is slightly more clear than about a month ago. The next 50 days will be crucial for the whole story, if the original cycle (or scenario A) is to play out. As I wrote in one of the early posts in this thread, I wouldn't necessarily expect a ten fold increase from where we just are ($3500-4000), as the sign of the cycle confirmation. Instead, I would expect the price to peak at around $2k (ten fold increase within the cycle - see one of my posts on the first page (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1256918.msg13102564#msg13102564)).

Yes, and I am inclined to agree.  Both the peak at point B and the "heartbeat" at C have been less intense than previous cycles, so the next peak could quite likely be less proportionally.  I also think the ongoing blocksize drama will help mute any price rises as well (though not defeat them entirely).

What if we added 2014 in here? Would they match? If not then why? Asking because you took 2010 and 2012 as indicators and then skipped 2 years instead of 1.

As far as I know, 2014 is right in the middel of the Nov 2012 - May 2015 graph..

Also, it is a 900 day graph, which would indicate that it covers around 2.5 years, which would indicate that 2014 is covered.

Yes - the graphs are continuous - the next cycle begins immediately after the previous one ends.

It may not be clear since I just realized I cut off the right side of the picture with the legends on it (I'll correct it for next time); the three cycles are:

1) June 2010-Nov 2012
2) Nov 2012-May 2015
3) May 2015-Jan 2016

of course it is, funny how you name it, "ecosystem",well, i noticed that too, that everything repeats

like pumps and dumps, if we have pump we will have dump soon, and if we had dump, we will get pump soon, same cycle all the time, it makes bitcoin even predictable sometimes

Interesting, So that the finish of the last period will be on Jan or Feb 2017. However could be interesting see too as will be the impact of the halving on it.

@hacknoid, you have planned to update the graph? We are at the beginning of phase 2. If the scenario is repeated, the exponential phase is imminent.

Thanks for the "nudge"... I've been sidetracked by other things recently, but I was thinking it was time to update.  We have indeed begun the next phase, so I'll update the chart soon to see what it looks like.  It's been pretty quiet in the price range, although not unexpectedly. 

So, here are the updated graphs for March 2016:

https://i.imgur.com/RKB6EKR.png

and the image with what I see as the corresponding sections highlighted:

https://i.imgur.com/e9NdmFS.png

It clearly looks to me like we have been in D for a few weeks now, which is a period of relative stability and horizontal movement, after the sudden short volatility of C. (Note D is also preceded by a small run-up in each case; this time, it was the jump from about $370 back in February.)  If things continue, we should expect a noticeable rise over the next few months, possibly to new ATHs.

For reference, here are the other graphs:

https://i.imgur.com/C1sWBE9.png

https://i.imgur.com/xuDTBlK.png

https://i.imgur.com/2db6TAv.png

I should point out that the relative increases are indeed continuing to drop;

Cycle 1 Phase 1 : start: $0.01, max: $1.06 (106x), end: $0.79 (79x)
Cycle 2 Phase 1 : start: $12.06, max: $214.86 (17.8x), end: $127.26 (10.6x)
Cycle 3 Phase 1 : start: $240.26, max: $461.49 (1.9x), end: $405.06 (1.7x)

Also note that in Cycle 2 Phase 1 we went to a new ATH; we did not repeat that this cycle, so exactly how high we go this time is very much up in the air.  However, I do believe a price rise will be incoming (especially with the halving coming up).

if pre-halving hype, you should not take a long time startup. It would be interesting to be repeated again for the third time cycle.

Interesting thread. I'm posting so i can keep an eye on how this develops.

If you look hard enough, you will see cycles and patterns EVERYWHERE. So many desperate people on the forum are willing to grab straws to hang on to their dreams. Folks, bitcoin will never see 1000 ever again. Most it will get to is 600. The days of rocketing to the moon are long over. Think about it: mining has been centralized to a few Chinese mining factories, market has been taken over by professional manipulators, bitcoin fundamentals have been shown to have too many weaknesses, bitcoin core developers have no leaders and no vision, bitcoin community has never been more disjointed, etc... It's over, folks.

Which is why you're here is it?

It's bitcoin, anything can happen in this space.

Quite the fucking pessimist, aren't you, sir?

Have thought about it. Apart from casual racism, what's the actual problem with this? We've had (non-Chinese) mining pools approaching 51% before (I can't remember, but I think ghash.io may even have passed the 51% mark?) and miners responded by moving to other pools. This Sinophobia only seems to work if we suspend disbelief and assume that the vast majority of miners are (a) also Chinese, and (b) will put national identity ahead of rational self-interest. (Incidentally, you seem to be conflating "miner" and "pool" - I assume that was just an accident).

PS. Not sold on the idea that "professional manipulators" are a new phenomenon - or even a serious one, though I realise that a lack of belief in the mystical powers of cetacea marks me as an iconoclast on BCT.

I don't really see why people hype so much about centralization of mining by a certain group, as long as there is no 51% attack.  You really think that anyone who purchased the equipment for a big mining farm has anything in mind except for maximizing their profit?  If Chinese bitcoins double in price, so do yours!  They are all the same thing.  And if they are just a big pool, well - even less to worry about.

As for the patterns, see my comment here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1256918.msg13131843#msg13131843).



 ;D Thanks for that... that comment made my night!

If a pool has 51% of the whole network and it is taken down, the the attacker needs just 25% of the hash rate to attack the network.

April 2016 updated graphs:

Cycle chart:

https://i.imgur.com/wcSS0Pb.png


With highlights:

https://i.imgur.com/SXhoENa.png


Just cycle3 so far (linear scale):

https://i.imgur.com/cgMHE6o.png


And for reference, the first two full cycles (linear - different scales):

https://i.imgur.com/hW4JmQL.png



As cycles go, we should be reaching the end of section D very soon.  If previous cycle trends hold, the next thing would be another rise.  This corresponds nicely to the halving which is upcoming (~3 months from now).

Hey Hacknoid,

At first I would like to thank you for this thread and for letting some novice in charts like me, understand it easily.

I've few questions to ask if you don't mind.

1. When should section D ends ? And what ends it exactly ?

2. I see in your charts that you try to relate future and past bitcoin cycles together although a lot of people say that past performance of price is not a must to replicate a future performance especially when we take about TA charts, what do you think ?

Thank you :)

1. When should section D ends ? And what ends it exactly ?

2. I see in your charts that you try to relate future and past bitcoin cycles together although a lot of people say that past performance of price is not a must to replicate a future performance especially when we take about TA charts, what do you think ?

@Fuckhoury, u don't know sh1t and u suckz ballz!!!

Thanks for update!

You have a forecast of the maximum value that could reach the new cycle ?. I think you said you hoped that the next peak was much lower.

Don't forget when looking at these charts, this is based purely on observance.  Based on what appears to be the repeating cycles, I am hypothesizing that the cycle repeats based on the fact of the way the human psyche works (memory of past events changes/gets forgotten/rosier, etc.), natural interest levels change over time, and media attention changes.  (See earlier posts in this thread for more on the natural nature).  As such, we appear to be repeating again, on roughly the same scale.

Now, to answer your question - it looks to me like section D should be ending soon (read: anytime in the next 4 months)... that is based on past cycle history, other TA in this subforum, history of price after the last halving, and "gut feel".  The only real indication the cycle theory gives me is that we should have another boom/bust (relatively speaking) cycle complete by the time phase 2 ends, in January 2017.  Along these lines, I would expect a significant run-up probably before September, with some pull-back before the end of 2016.  As to what ends it?  Nobody knows; my best guess is that buildup up buying pressure and FOMO will get to be too much such that all it needs is a trigger to start moving. 



Past history definitely does not dictate future performance.  However, I believe in the repetitive nature of nature in general and humans in particular.  There are far too many factors and interests involved to know exactly what will happen, and things can still change on a dime, but conditions are right for a repeat of past general trends.  So, as I said at the beginning, don't bet money on this; Bitcoin is, if nothing else, unpredictable. 

Most TA tends to operate on the short terms (hours/days, maybe into weeks).  I'm looking at long term trends, into months and over years.  Looking at how natural cycles tend to repeat over longer time scales, I think there is basis for this.  However, it's still impossible to point to specific events that tend to have long term effects (even Mike Hearn's missive in January didn't affect the long term trends in price).

Wish I had a better idea.. previously in phase 1 and 2 of each cycle we reached a new ATH, so I was hoping for the same last phase, but we didn't achieve that.  In fact, the ratio of end price to starting price in the phase was still decreasing


I haven't worked out the relative entry/exit prices for phase 2 yet, but even if it's only around 2x again, that would potentially put a peak higher than that, around or maybe above the previous ATH.  Of course I would love to see that, but at this point I would have no idea.  (My optimism says $2000+ for peak, but I tend to be a pretty optimistic person!)

Had a few minutes, so I looked up the numbers for phase 2 of each of the previous cycles; they are:

Cycle 1 Phase 2 : start: $0.78, max: $29.58 (37.9x), end: $5.74 (7.4x)
Cycle 2 Phase 2 : start: $125.47, max: $1,132.29    (9.0x), end: $621.93   (5.0x)
Cycle 3 Phase 2 : start: $410.17

Interesting that again, the amount of increase is less in cycle 2 than in cycle 1.  May be indicative of a smaller increase this time, too, although things don't seem top be indicating this, as far as I can tell.  I think we will get an increase, but not necessarily less than cycle 2.

Note that given the recent price uptick and away from that long period of stability, we may be transitioning into section E of the graphs.  Each previous time there was a gradual start to increase, before price really took off.

At first, thank you hacknoid for your replies on my previous questions, time again for a single question this time :)

1. When you will be sure that we've entered phase E finally ?

Thanks buddy.

No problem... hoping to keep this thread interesting, if nothing else!

That question is a hard one... these things really haven't become clear until they are over and done with.  However, looking at the rises in the past in phase 2, they both occurred over the course of about 1 month.  So I would say a significant increase over the course of a week, say about 30%, or more would be pretty indicative we are in E.  50% or more would pretty much confirm it for me.

So, I noticed something else interesting.  I took the ratios of the values in Phase 1 for max and end prices (ratio of max/start and end/start), and plotted them on a graph.  Linearly doesn't work, but on an exponential axis the trend is remarkably clear through three cycles:

https://i.imgur.com/sLunbbV.png

Notice here that there is a very definite trend in decreasing price ratios, and also that the trend lines are virtually parallel, meaning the ratio of max price to end price is also pretty consistent. 

So what happens with Phase 2 data?  Here you go, with trend lines plotted:

https://i.imgur.com/yQqkgYt.png

Well now that doesn't work.  This indicates that the end price would be greater than the max price, which clearly is not possible.  However, it is possible to get a value that closely works:

https://i.imgur.com/9KHSupH.png

Choosing 3x for both the max and end price results in a reasonable plot.  However, these lines clearly are not anywhere near parallel, and this would not hold for a 4th cycle, even if it works for this time.

So, it indicates to me two possibilities:  either a max occuring at the end of this cycle (Jan 2017), or else Bitcoin is going to do something completely unexpected on this time around (at least in terms of price ratio increase).  Even in the former case, it looks like the trend is changing, and next time could be anything.

Note I still am expecting a rise in price this phase, but maybe it will actually be greater than last time...  8)

Despite the phase of each cycle.

Do you feel like we will hit $1k in phase 4? Since the halving or no? Im including all exchanges including chinas, after the halving is done.

It does not if it has phase or not. As long as there are mass adoption of the bitcoin, the price will rise eventually.

My personal feeling is regardless of what happens before the halving, unless we hit a new ATH before then (and even then possibly still), we will see a significant increase on the order of 2x or more in the months following the halving.  Given the current price we are at, I expect $1000 before the end of 2016 quite likely.  The real question is as we approach the previous ATH, what will happen?  I say we either stay below it (~$1000 range) or rocket past is ($2000+).  Again, all of this to happen before year end.

(Note all my prices are US $, based on graphs produced from Bitstamp only.  However, all the exchanges follow similar trends these days, even though the specific numbers may vary)

I don't think the price will stay behind the $1K, why would it ?

I honestly can't see why it would stay below it either; however there are always unknowns, especially if people are nervous about all the scaling talk.   There is a resistance level around the previous ATH, which may slow down the price.  My gut says we will go past the previous ATH and thus above $2K or more; however, I guess I am trying to curb my optimism a bit.   From everything I can see we are headed up, but it's always the unknowns that get you.

Hi hacknoid!

Is there any chance you can draw us an update of cycle 3 (in log) to reflect the recent runup, whenever you get the time please?

I think it would be nice to see if 'the slope of the rise' (for want of a better description) lines up in any way with the previous charts.

Ask, and ye shall receive  ;)

https://i.imgur.com/HLsqTox.png

Not really a whole lot to see yet; not really going to be noticeable until we pass above $600 or so.  As I said earlier, it would take at least a 30% or so rise in a week to start to really indicate the next rise beginning.  However, the current increase looks like the price is starting to shake up a bit, which at this point in past cycles has signaled we are approaching a significant rise in price.

As others pointed out in other threads, we had really low volume so far on the current rise.  One possibility is it's just miners holding back some coins in anticipation of price rise after the halving?  Or maybe just manipulation.  Who knows...

Hmmm... something familiar looking about this....

https://i.imgur.com/Ef0cmHy.png

Deja Vu or this supports what we both trying to stress on (incoming rally) ?

Looks an awful lot like the "false starts" we had before the previous rallies.  :)

Can't agree more, but I saw something, I don't know you saw it also or not, will we doom from 2011-2012 peak or have a what we can say (mild) doom like the one in 2013-2014 ?

You mean the fallback that occurs after each peak?  That will be inevitable... happens every time.  Price will run up to some point, and then retreat back to stabilize somewhere higher than when it started.  Generally, from what I noticed on the charts, it's about halfway between the price before the run-up and the peak level (2011 was a much larger drop, but again it finished higher than it started).   There's always lots of furious trading in this period, and the price fluctuates wildly.  Expect that again after we reach the next peak. 

The only question is - how high will the peak be?  The higher it is, the higher the fallback price will be, but also the larger the amount of drop.  For example, consider a $1000 rise (to ~$1450).  The price will likely fall back to around $950 in this case ($500 drop from peak).  However if the rise is by $2000 (to $2450), the fallback will be to around $1450 (a $1000 drop in price). 

All part of the cycles. :)

https://i.imgur.com/Ili7N3z.png?1

It's time... not confirmed yet, but if this continues, then it fits right in.

this years bull run seems a bit shy

oh well, you know what they say about shy girls

(except bulls are male).

https://i.imgur.com/NYhyxqH.png

Things only become clear after the fact... This looks more correct now.

thats crazy, according to those pictures the price should rise 6 times if the history will repeat itself, that would be an insane rise as the price would go to 3 thousand dollars per bitcoin

i hope that is true and bitcoin will reach a price that is bigger 3 times than the last all time high, this would definitely attract a lot of people to bitcoin as everyone would want to invest

The magnitude of the moves may decrease as time goes by.

Hacknoid, my buddy, hope you are doing well :)

Could you elaborate more please on what you said ?

Doing well, thanks!  Hope same for you!

Historically, this is looking like the initial (small) rise that occurred in each of the two previous cycles.  It was followed by a realtively sideways period, followed by a significant rise.


It has so far in each cycle... In cycle 1 this most recent rise in price increased by ~99%.  Cycle 2 it was 56%, and Cycle 3 it has been 22%.   The large increase following in cycle 1 was  710%; in cycle 2 it was 455%.  Keeping the same trend, in cycle 3 it might be 200-300%.  But who know?  It'll be interesting to see where it goes.  I do believe that with the halvening we are likely to see some increase.  But exactly how much is anybody's guess.  But history is hinting at something significant! ;)

Nice!

Thank you my dear friend.

Then I see that you can confirm that we are most probably will see a new ATH soon, am I right ?

If you don't mind, using charts and your knowledge, what could be the range of the ATH, $2K - $5K ?

Side note : Check your favorite thread, if you know what I mean :P :D


Check your quote next time bro :P

Ooh... that's a tough one.  As I've maintained all along, I think the trend is repetitive, but it's hard to say if the relative peaks will continue trends.  That is, even though we have reached new ATHs in previous cycles, we failed to do so in phase 1 of cycle 3.  Thus no guarantees we will actually do so in phase 2.

However, that being said, my gut would say with all the conditions right now, we are ripe to pass the previous ATH.  And that would likely in itself fuel further momentum.  So my gut feeling says peak of maybe $2k-$3k before falling back to around $1500 longer term.


Already did... thanks for updating it!  Always enjoy seeing the positive news.

Very interesting analysis, but I am very skeptical about the relevance of technical analysis to predict the future behavior. And this is especially applicable to the bitcoin performance because of its very recent appearance in the financial and technological world.

Can you add more dates? When does this predict a peak? Sometime this summer, right?

I want to take the chance since you are online now, is this it ?

Will reply to your latest reply ASAP.

In my experience it's a time/volume tradeoff. The longer it takes, the higher the magnitude. It's funny because Benoit Mandelbrot talked about this in The (Mis)Behavior of Markets and seemed to indicate there was some algorithm behind these sorts of "repeats". His theories are so anti-modern finance though, that most people ignored what he had to say.

That doesn't mean enterprising Bitcoin traders aren't taking advantage of it or evolving on what he started, though.

I think that's true. But there's another principle at work: the larger something grows, the harder it is to keep growing.

Apple is a great company but it can't keep growing at the rate that it did when it was two guys in a garage, right? The market cap is too big.

Well, if the previous cycles hold to repeat this time, then we are due for a significant price rise any time now.  The current phase (2) will end early in 2017, so it would in general indicate any time between now and the end of 2016 for both a rise and subsequent sell-off.  Good news is anytime we have a significant run-up the pullback is always to a point higher than before it started (usuallty it seems to settle about halfway between pre-runup price and peak price).

Don't forget, these are just indicators.  I wish the "crystal ball" were more precise, but it's just a trend.  Sorry, can't get any more specific than that.

Interesting... I didn't know about that.  At the beginning of this thread I likened the behavior to fractals we see in nature, so maybe this is indicative of the trend in finance (at least when artificial limitations have not been placed on markets).


I think this is why we are observing a smaller percentage change each cycle.  It is indeed harder to change something that is already getting large.  Of course, Bitcoin still has a large potential future ahead of it!

Understandable.  I am actually quite surprised at the repetitive nature that can be observed by looking at the history of BTC prices.  However, at least up to this point, there definitely are correlation between the cycles I have highlighted.  That being said, no guarantees about the future...

I think what we are seeing, as I said at the beginning of this thread, is a representation of human nature (greed, FOMO, panic, etc.) reflected in Bitcoin price.  My hypothesis is the reason we can see it is that Bitcoin is the first market free of artificial limitations.  There are no restrictions on trading hours (24/7), countries where you can do it, no blackout periods, no limitations on which exchanges are allowed to trade Bitcoin, and the market is not shut down in the event of a price crash.  Everything is truly reflective of interest and investor sentiment.  This seems clear from both the up and down trends that can be seen.

On smaller scales, there are cycles too.  Each runup in price follows a heartbeat pattern, with a rise, then fall back, eventually settling somewhere in the middle, higher than where it started.  Lots of noise of course too, but trends are there.

In any case, don't take this as definite future predictions; it's merely observations.

Sorry bud, missed ya.  Was on just briefly earlier, just to look at chatter about the current price.

Don't worry buddy ;)

What I wanted to say, regarding the current up leg, is this it (heading towards new ATH) ?

Looking at the cycles, this looks like the pause (sideways/gradual uptrend) before the main leg up.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1498855.0

Correction.

Beware that ATH is not at around 1000$ but around 700$ because of the increased supply since then.

Is it time to start thinking about how we're going to call the top?  Even long-term holders might be well advised to learn how to identify it and sell some BTC to capitalize on the following downswing.

1. Looking back at the previous bull runs, it looks like we can expect to be strongly in the green for about 6-7 weeks.

2. The rallies tend to culminate in the price doubling within 7-10 days.

So, assuming this is one of the serious bull runs, I'd say if we've been in the green for at least 6 weeks, AND the price doubles within 7-10 days, it's reasonable to assume we've reached the top or close to it.  From there, expect at LEAST a 62% drop before buying back in if you're trading it.

But isn't it upnormal to go up leg, correction, sideways and so on.

Do you see what happened today and few days ago to be normal ?

This is something I've been commenting on recently though, we haven't had a halving of this scale and with so much money on the line with such a larg community, and thus a lot of historical charts might not be accurate for what is actually going to happen. This halving right now is going to have to end up being the default or experimental halving, and that's how we'll determine how a large market reacts to a halving. Just seeing something in the past, when the community was noticeably smaller, is not a good representation.

re: profit-taking

rpietila always said that trying to time the market will probably not work very well and that you should sell a certain percentage of your holdings whenever the price rises (e.g. sell 10% every time the price doubles) and just stick to that plan.  But he also said that if you really want to time the market, then it would be better to wait until after the initial crash than to sell too early. Tons of people who were holding coins from $5 ended up selling at $20 when the price was heading to $266.

This round, $420-$440 may very well be the equivalent of $5. Don't be the guy who sells everything at the equivalent of $20. Be the guy who sees the $266 peak, watches the crash, and then "sadly" sells at $150.

Excellent analogy. With this thinking we most probably will see 4 digits very soon!

It is indeed very good to compare the market with his history, but one should never look for the exact same patterns. Market is like an artist, and it will never reproduce two times the same drawing...

Yes market is like an artist always follow the supply and demand dynamics in the long run. We all know what is halving and how it will change the supply dynamics.

It is human nature to try and find patterns in random data.  :)
If it was possible to predict price movements, a lot of people would become very rich just by trading.

we're gunna need a bigger chart.

No, the ATH is still the same, mining is not a stock split.

And were not talking about the market cap, but the price per bitcoin.

I agree with you but as supply increase it get much harder to go to 1000$. IMO i think ATH should be pro-rated to total supply now vs before.

Meh $9 billion is still tiny in terms of market cap

once we get to the trillions it will become harder to grow, but while we're still tony, it shouldn't matter much if we're at $8, $9 or $10 billion.

I agree with this, in matters of weeks, we raised $2b.

I totally agree on that !! just saying 1000 (don't remember exact number) for me is more than ath at today's supply even though he could be a big psychological resistance

Aboslutely right!
For instance just 1% of the gold market alone would push Bitcoin up to a $70 billion market cap and a price of ~$4400/BTC!
Or due to Panama papers, offshore tax heaven accounts shall have a size of $20-$30 trillion. Just imagine if only...meh better not! ;D

Bitcoin is not a private ledger ... but other alts propose privacy.

true, but it's hard to track down which wallet belongs to which person.

Yes, this is absolutely right. Even Bill Gates thought Bitcoin could be a technological tour de force, however. If Bitcoin really is the new financial paradigm for the 21st century, a market cap in the single digit billions is going to be paltry. We might have another full cycle/bubble even AFTER the one we're in now.


Yes, however my models would put the fractal nature as also waxing and waning over time. One of the things people ignore is that while gold was $35/ounce in the 30s and was lower than that before then, if you keep going back (https://measuringworth.com/datasets/gold/result.php) to the times of the civil war, specifically 1864, the price rose over $40 at the New York listed rate before falling back into the 20 dollar range after the war. So yeah, ~150 years ago gold was actually higher than it was 85 years ago. Given the history of global reserve currencies going back to the 1500s, it's not uncommon to see the Spanish dollar replacing the Portuguese Real, French Livre replacing the Netherlands Leeuwendaalder, and etc. I'm guessing that as the currencies were moderately debased and replaced, there may have been a few decades of fractal turbulence in assaying value, too.


rpietila's always seemed a bit odd to me in how he controls his own threads and sometimes posts about stuff that seems unrelated to simple matters of scarcity and supply & demand, but he's a more regular poster than some of the other older members are and this advice to wait after the bubble has definitely "popped" to sell is spot-on for any trader, IMHO. But even that is timing-related sometimes. Remember the price fell from $266 to $55 in about one day in 2013. Some observers might have freaked out and said "Oh god, the bubble is popping and I forgot to get out!". I get the impression the next major bubble is going to integrate bitcoin with groceries, bills, etc. however, so maybe you could base the bubble pop on AFTER a series of significant events have happened?

Each time I purchase I go a bit more longer term than the previous. I set up a fund for using my trading knowledge to make others wealthy in 2012 and in 2013 I had a chance to really take advantage of the swings, but I would have done much better had I just bought, held, then sold after the bubble burst. Here were the price points for those of you interested: I bought a significant amount of coin at $16 which I sold at multiple points including $37, $135, bought back again at $55 the day of the plunge, sold a bit at $85, and then sold a bunch right at the bottom of the dip in 2013 as well (to be fair, I had a down payment and needed it at the time) at $65. Bought some more off Gox again when it passed $110 again at various prices. My next sales were $780 and $1050, oddly enough.

My major problem with his advice on selling after it doubles is this: Suppose you own 1000 coin at $.10 basis... You would have sold 100 at $.20. 100 more at $.40. 100 more at $.80. Doubling in value is something we're going to have to get used to, because scarcity is a real thing. I have two models putting the price at $120k in two years or $60k in early 2021, but I don't think there's anyway we're not going to be seeing crazy numbers this time around eventually.

I think his idea was that you could wait for the first panic sell and then sell on the bounce. You're just trying to avoid the danger of selling at $10 or $20. Whether you manage to sell at $55 (unlucky), $65, $75, or $100, you're doing well.  


The 10% is recalculated each time.

With your example, you'd sell 100 at $.20, and then you'd sell 90 at $.40. Then you'd sell 81 at $.80.

And you'd never completely cash out.

If you sold in this manner, even if bitcoin went to 1.67 million dollars per bitcoin, you'd still have 8.8629 bitcoin left.

You can see the whole progression here: http://imgur.com/aCVU1BD

It's pretty clever. You take all the guesswork out of it. And you would've been able to enjoy your profits the whole way up, having sold over 33 million dollars worth of bitcoin cumulatively.

Hacknoid, great to see that your thread is advancing and you posted some new charts. Interesting times ahead of us. We will soon see whether the history repeats yet once more time. It should be clear in the next 50 days whether the pattern we observe is that one from cycles 1 and 2.

Okay, I got it now. That seems reasonable enough. Did he actually do that though? I thought I remembered hearing he had 2k and sold almost all of it near but not at the peak?

It was a suggestion for the newbies. He may have opted to swing trade, given his experience.

hacknoid, can you post an updated chart? thanks man  :)

Sorry I've been away from this thread for about a week now... Been laid up with a bad back so I couldn't even get to the computer! I'll post replies... Probably tomorrow.

Cheers

I hope the last (critical  ;D ) 24 hrs chart action will help that bad back feel somewhat better man!

^^^ what he said ^^^
Very anxious to see updated chart. I know nothing about TA but I've been glued to this thread! Very interesting and I'm wondering if I should indeed attempt to load up my cold storage coffers a bit at this price. I share in the earlier statements of being "bitcoin numb" and would add that those feelings are mixed with the all too familiar FOMO. It's a "crypto-speedball" lol. I prefer to buy and hold, as trading is too much anxiety for me.
 Sending positive vibes and I hope you feel better. I also hope you're really onto something, and to say all your hard work is appreciated is truly an understatement!
Great job buddy! :)

There are definitely some bitcoin price cycles going on but it does take some figuring out to find out the exact patterns. But one of the most obvious ones is a huge pump before the halving, and perhaps an adjustment after halving.

If you can get hold of these cycles, you can make some seriously money.

congratulations, we are seeing the expected rise.
Foul see if we ATH.

On the negative side, I worry that after a few days of rise, we have to wait 900 days to see a new high.

Translated means congratulations to those who bought a year and a care makes those who buy now, because at any moment we will have the maximum for the next 3 years

OK, sorry for the delay.... here's the latest update on the graphs, for phase 2:

https://i.imgur.com/EnK6bf4.png

Up to this point, the trend has continued exactly as it did in the previous 2 cycles during this phase; a relatively flat period to start, followup by a sudden jump (indicated by the arrows), a small plateau, then the real takeoff.If (and that's a big if) the trend continues from here in the same way, then we should be heading much higher.  Note that I adjusted the vertical scale on the cycle 3 graph to better reflect both the relative height of increase as well as the resistance we faced at $600.

Here is the zoomed out view of the whole cycles (still on linear scale):
https://i.imgur.com/yqgNBtT.png

However, and i will say it again, these graphs are only showing what is currently happening as compared to previous times.  I absolutely cannot say that the price trend will go to new highs as in the past, only that the pattern looks the same.  I just don't want anyone to think I am trying to convince them to buy.  I still personally think there is room to go up, but who knows.


It may not be that bad.. it looks to be taking 900 days for the whole sentiment-cycle to repeat, but we also had some nice new highs previously in phase 1 (which is only about 500 days away :) )


BTW, my back is getting better - thanks for the wishes.  The fact that this past weekend all my previous bitcoin purchases are now positive relative to the purchase price, certainly helps things feel better.

Of course it's bad if shopping at a maximum price, ask the user who bought in nov / 2013 to $ 1000, it's been almost 3 years and still losing.

Of course it is bad buy in full bubble, the time to buy was months ago, now it's time to sell slowly.

Your study has been great to hold positions before this rise, now is the time to be very careful because if the two previous cycles is repeated, the fall is just as fast as the rise.

I think in theory cycles, in the sense that the price peaks, both maximum and minimum, occur separated by a very similar time.

Cycle theory can not predict ATH or ATB, at least to my knowledge. We can only guess that there may be a maximum or a minimum when some time has elapsed since the previous.

However, your study goes beyond this cycle of 900 days and is very dangerous for people to think that we will see an ATH in the coming weeks, as your graphs indicate.

We must be very clear, as you have advised your last post, but even more.

If in the next few weeks we have an ATH, everyone happy, but everyone should be clear that there is no security, at least in this cycle ... maybe in the next.

http://en.zimagez.com/miniature/20160614btccycles.jpg (http://en.zimagez.com/zimage/20160614btccycles.php)

Very well put.  And yes, you are right - this sort of thing cannot predict how high the highs will be, or even IF it will reach a new ATH.  I hope it is clear I am not advocating that this definitely is a crystal ball - I certainly would not want to see people lose money by trying to use these past trends to buy and sell.

My point in proposing the cycles is to illustrate that I believe the price is reflecting user sentiment, and basic human trends, which do tend to operate in cycles.  There are many many factors at play in pricing, and I propose that in a "bull run" the sentiment is more positive, resulting in prices generally going up.  Bad news doesn't tend to have as much impact during these times, while good news can have more effect.  Similarly, after a price spike and then subsequent sell-off, sentiment tends to turn bearish, and it is harder for the price to keep up.

Given the timing and trends in the market, as well as news in global financial markets, it seems we are in a bullish phase, which tends to repeat in these cycles.  Hopefully that means prices go up from here, but all we need is another Mt.Gox or China ban event to trigger a change in sentiment.

And make no mistake - there will be corrections and sell-offs, regardless of whether the next high is $700 or $7000.  There will always be people that buy at or near the peak; use care, manage risk, and don't invest more than you could afford to lose.



I did make some buys in 2013 when I too was struck by FOMO, at a price of around $800 (CAD).  It's taken from then until the last couple of days for those coins to be back at the price I paid for them.  I held onto them though, as I believed the price would eventually recover (and I wasn't so hard pressed for cash that I had to sell at a loss).



That's my strategy too.  I average down when and if I can, and otherwise hold them long term.  I tried some other trading, but I always lose money at that.  Long term the trend has been a slow uptrend, and patience has worked out.  Nothing is guaranteed, but trying to buy on the expectation of short term gain is highly risky, despite what anyone might otherwise infer from my charts (or any other charts, for that matter).

Thanks for giving the updates!

I have two models I've been using for my own pricing. Both of them are taking into account not only the magnitude of changes but also time period changes. You can see some of my predictions by going through my post history if any of you are interested.

I don't want to go into too much detail about my current system, but don't you think a price cycle should maybe take into account the following?

• Total Shares Outstanding (or total coin outstanding)
• Market Capitalization
• Volume
• Price
• Time since previous ATH
• Time since previous bottom
• Change in magnitude of recent ATH to previous ATH

That's not to say spacing it out by 900 days is a bad idea, I'm just not sure if that specific trend can continue indefinitely. In fact, while some trends may be visible in hindsight, it might not always equate to a similar scale today. After all, where do you really start and stop? Do you completely ignore the time period before Bitcoin had a "price" of $0.10 as listed on Gox and was instead being sold primarily OTC? What if someone's model of off-chain transactions is better than yours? What about the Winklevoss twins having possibly portioned off most of their shares for ETF underwriting?

I have two models, one of which is eerily close to your 900-day one. I think the one that is not 900 days might be more accurate in the long-term, but it has been interesting watching this thread and how things unfold. Makes me hope I am wrong and the 900-day model is more accurate. If so, then it predicts over $10k by the end of next year which would be huge compared to waiting for 2020.

Hey Raize,

Could you please elaborate more the part in bold please :)

If you don't mind for sure.

Thank in advance.

Two years ago I would have said no, but I'll go ahead and divulge some information for the hell of it since very few people actually take me seriously enough they won't likely act on my predictions.

That said, I need to preface this with the huge caveat that this should not be taken as sound financial advice. Invest at your own risk and I don't want to hear that anyone has taken out a second mortgage on their house to invest according to my estimates, but I do suppose there's some benefit in sticking my neck out with a prediction in case it does come true. One model predicts $10k by end of 2017, a second model predicted it by sometime in 2019/2020 (before the next halving most likely). The latter of the two models was my first one that I've been starting to think lately is too conservative. It is primarily based on the amount of time between the previous ATHs compared to each other and takes into consideration the magnitude of the price differentials as well. I'm not going to be extremely detailed, but I'll use some numbers to get the gist of it across. Remember that this first one is the model that I think is probably TOO conservative.

First high date: 07-18-2010
First high price: $0.09
First low date: 09-18-2010
First low price: $0.05
Number of days: 61

Previous high date: 06-08-2011
Previous high price: $31
Previous low date: 11-13-2011
Previous low price: $2
Number of days: 159

New high date: 11-30-2013
New high price: $1150
New low date: 1-14-2015
New low price: $160
Number of days: 411

First Time Factor: 159/61 = 2.61
Second Time Factor: 411/159 = 2.58

First Days Low till High: 263 days (09-18-2010 till 06-08-2011)
Second Days Low till High: 749 days (11-13-2011 till 11-30-2013)

Current Low Date: 1-14-2015
Estimated Third Days Low till High: (749/263) * 749 = 2133 days
Date Estimation: 1-14-2015 + 2133 days = 11/16/2020

First Price Factor $0.05 to $31 = 620
Second Price Factor: $2 to over $1k = 500

Current Low Price: $160
Estimated Third Price Factor: (500/620) * 500 = 403
Price Estimation: $160 * 403 = $64,480

If factor of price and time and the trend of those factors continues, that would be a value of ~$65,000 on or about Q4, 2020.

Now, here's why I think this is wrong...

Quarter to Quarter estimation from my raw ratios of the low compared to previous price swings:
Time   Price (High)   Price (Low)
Q1 2015   $317   $150
Q2 2015   $292   $190
Q3 2015   $486   $353
Q4 2015   $417   $340
Q1 2016   $370   $311
Q2 2016   $364   $326
Q3 2016   $356   $340
Q4 2016   $462   $362
Q1 2017   $628   $449
Q2 2017   $920   $628
Q3 2017   $862   $691
Q4 2017   $888   $711

Obscuring other data...

Q3 2020   $9,579   $8,319
Q4 2020   $14,478   $8,299
Q1 2021   $64,480   $14,289

After 2021 the bubble would be popping. At this point nearly every man, woman, and child in first world countries will know about Bitcoin and the subsequent bubbles will no longer be able to be multiple magnitudes more than the previous ones.

I was super-excited to watch the price increase almost exactly according to my numbers in Q3 2015 just as this chart had predicted, however I was not accounting for things like volume, total coin outstanding, and etc. Because of this, I was off on so many levels, but I still consider it a reasonable model, just not one I'd recommend a client use given what I know now. I think my numbers might also be close, but obviously the time-scale of them is "off".

My current model does see increases till ~$900 sometime this July-August and a decrease to low $700s shortly after in early Fall. It will then stay in that range into early 2017 with things picking up again after tax time (April) in 2017. From there it's basically a crazy ride till the end of the year when people take their profits in December over $10k. After that I'm not discussing what I predict and when, but I do think that on long-term scale the prospects are great. :) Good luck!

I would like to thank you so much for taking the time to write this post and going into details, much appreciated.

For me, don't worry, my strategy is so simple, buy and hodl, whatever we will reach $1K or $1M in the coming 10 -15 years, I'm here for the long haul.

Now, questions time as I'm confused.

1. Which model is the "too" conservative, once you said the later of the two models and once you said the first one ?

2. Your best model or the model you are working on is the one that estimates $10K at Dec. 2017, am I right ? If yes, then why would be reaching $60's K at 2020/2021 could be wrong ? What will stop the increase ?

3. I believe in the $60's K somehow because from the above numbers, the numbers seems to go exponential, and this is how Bitcoin behaves, am I wrong ?

Waiting to hear from you :)

Thanks again to take the time and effort to write the post :)

It was brought up recently in this thread about the previous ATH being different in relative terms, due to the total number of coins in circulation at the time vs now.  I think it's possible that there may be a way to model expectations by trying to take into account the factors you mentioned above.  Certainly those are valid points in both of those cases, but that's not what I am really trying to show in my graphs.  As I said earlier, I think what the 900-day cycle shows is a reflection of sentiment towards bitcoin, as reflected in the price, but modulated by a whole bunch of external factors, including what happens in other markets (FOREX, stocks and bonds, etc.), news in the Bitcoin/crypto world, focus/attention on BTC or competing cryptos, etc.

At least to this point, there is no perfect model.  I have seen some really good short term TA (Klee's PnF seems to be working remarkably well), and that can focus on price, but longer term the price becomes difficult, if not impossible, to predict.  I am pointing out the trends that have occurred and seem to be repeating, but don't expect relative highs like previous cycles - they could be higher or lower, relatively speaking.  Look at phase 1: cycle 3 repeated the trend of cycle 2 remarkably well, but we didn't reach a new ATH.  However, the graph shares the same shape.

I read through your analysis, though I admit I don't follow it all; it certainly seems to have reasonable conclusions, but remember, ultimately what we and all TA is trying to do is predict the future.  Humans haven't been able to do this in any arena so far, although Nostradamus arguably has a pretty good track record, and Moore's law continues to hold up well.  But everything is subject to change at some point, based on whatever unexpected events may occur in the future.

I think looking forward to prices, the best we can guess is a range, as you have done, and I applaud that.  Hopefully nobody bets too much based on anybody's models. 



I started looking at the trends back in 2014 when I was kinda bummed out by the price; at the time, I came up with various shorter-term models (~670 days) which matched well to that point, but began to break down as time went on.  Since that time, a 900-day cycle has matched (and continues to match) better.  It may not indeed be 900 days exactly, and it may vary from cycle to cycle.  A while ago rpetiela postulated a multi-year trend (2 years, IIRC), which does fall along my line of thinking as well.

The question about where to start a cycle is interesting, and one I struggled with.  I have already had to change the exchange I based my numbers on once (Gox was significant earlier, and since then Bitstamp is my source of numbers, and that may change again).  But there was value assigned before that... thing is, if the cycle length is correct, when exactly it started doesn't matter.  The up- and down-trends still match up, and the events occur ~900 days apart.  The earlier you start taking data from, of course, the smaller the sample size, so I wouldn't weight it too heavily.  I already don't assign too much value to cycle 1/phase 1, as the price was much more volatile and the market so much smaller.


As I say, I think the field is open to anyone's opinion; after all, this is the speculation forum.  I'm sure the Winklevii coins' status, as well as that of other large holders (Tim Draper, for example, or the BIT) have an impact on price, as they effectively affect market liquidity.  But even more so are the halvings.  They certainly affect price, but not instantaneously.  For example, there was no sudden doubling of price in Dec 2012, and there won't be next month.  However, as the number of new coins available to drop into the market decreases, there will be an effect - of that I am certain.  However, next month it could be less.  Dec 2012 we decreased the number of new coins per day by ~3600, next month we will decrease by ~1800.  In a market with so many coins trading each day, the effect will likely be smaller.  However, in a perfectly balanced market (reflected by a stable price), this could be enough to tip the scales up to a new balance point.  In a bull market the effect could be even more.

At the end of the day, the price reflects what someone is willing to pay for one Bitcoin.  Thus I am choosing not to try to account for these other things, but rather just watch how they affect the overall number.



Again, be careful - I am not trying to predict what the price will be, just pointing out the trend in price.  I have personal feelings on what the numbers may be, but that is just based on gut feeling and being generally hopeful and bullish about Bitcoin's future, rather than any sort of analysis of the graphs.

Thanks a lot for contributing to the discussion... certainly some interesting points you raised.  Let's hope the high ranges do pan out!

The one that says we're going to $60k over four years is too conservative compared to the one that thinks we'll be over $10k in under two years. I can't/won't explain why, but suffice to say that $10k in under two years is just the start of it.


I'm just not divulging what happens after 2017, because I'm in this to make money and I need some of the people who could potentially read this to despair and sell into potential buy walls.

The $60k at 2020/2021 model also expects the price to bump over $10k briefly in early 2019, I just don't show that part. Suffice to say, the newer model is more accurate, don't focus too much on the old one.

There isn't anything "stopping" an increase, it's more of an estimation of human nature. What do you think is going to happen when the price goes from like just under $1k to over $10k in under a year? Of course people are going to sell. All my models attempt to do is use previous hype cycles to build expectations of the next price cycles, they are estimations of what could happen, not necessarily what is going to happen. I have backtested or verified them with respect to previous hype cycles, however.

Also, I am focusing on "bear side" potential, but I've had a few people who have PM'd me tell me I should focus on using the bull side data (with the assumption that bear side is too conservative and might be inaccurate because of this). I have not yet thought about averaging the two, but I'm not sure how you "average" together dates. It doesn't seem possible. Of course, I thought modelling trends in volume wasn't possible either and that proved to be wrong.


Well, the exponential price swings are more due to the hype cycle and human nature than anything else. The problem is that -- with Bitcoin -- the traditional hype cycle is also ingrained into the pricing structure for the underlying commodity. The more adoption the more valuable the underlying asset or unit is. In this case this means that Bitcoin will almost always hit higher "lows" after bubbles pop, but it also means that increases will occasionally be very short and very exponential.

I know there are number of people who say "with higher adoption we'll have less volatility", but that's an absurd comment to make at this stage of the game and perhaps in general. When talking about what Fakhoury mentions here, the "behavior" of an asset like Bitcoin, we should probably do a brief look into historical pricing. Has anyone ever heard of Jay Gould (http://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2016/01/crisis-chronicles-the-gold-panic-of-1869-americas-first-black-friday.html)? Well after the gold rush and when the civil war was coming to an end, America had been trading for a few years in greenbacks but prominent people were calling for a return to a gold standard. Jay Gould had an idea to corner the gold market and devalue the greenback by having President Grant close the "gold window" similar to how Nixon would end up doing it nearly a century later. They convinced President Grant through somewhat-deceptive means, but perhaps with a valid argument. The notion was that by making gold scarce and highly valuable, the value of the greenbacks held by the public would decline and therefore goods would become cheaper to foreign countries. In practice, the price of gold went from low amounts to $145 and nearly $160 after the conversion of greenbacks to gold had been closed.

Over a century later, after Nixon closed the gold window, inflation quickly began to get out of hand. While Volker at the Federal Reserve had increased lending rates, the Hunt brothers and some wealthy Arabs (http://www.traderslog.com/hunt-brothers-silver) used a similar tactic and their own wealth to corner the market on silver. This brought the price to over $55/ounce, something that wasn't met again till 2012. The "solution" that was used to stop them by COMEX was to argue with regulators that they needed to close margin accounts. This was used to force the price downward and the Hunt brothers were victims of this scheme despite the fact that it was not their fault the exchanges couldn't deliver on the assets. Ultimately, they were the recipients of the first big Fed "bailouts" (http://www.outsiderclub.com/american-conspiracies-hunt-brothers-corner-silver-market/1016). I would speculate that while the Hunt brothers settled with those they owed, the US gov't may have worked on a deal with the Arab shieks that led to the start of the petrodollar.

The point of both of these examples is to show that silver and gold had been trading for centuries and they were still volatile. The idea that more adoption makes Bitcoin less volatile is errant, IMHO.

Right now we're in a similar situation as these two historic examples. With Saudi Arabia being seen less as an ally and more as an enemy (the death of the petrodollar) and Federal Reserve interest rates at all time lows, all that remains is for some enterprising billionaire to step in and first borrow as much as they possibly can to invest in Bitcoin and try to corner the market, using their own personal wealth and perhaps that of others as insurance against the borrowed money in order to litigate if they are unable to receive delivery of their coin. The market is ripe for this sort of turmoil, and someone could stand to make a huge amount of money in the process, as the media tends already to go nuts at the first sign of 10% or more increases in the price of the nascent crypto-currency markets.

So yes, I think exponential prices are possible, but I don't think this is some inherent "behavior" of Bitcoin, but rather as a result of speculators that are aware of the scarcity of coin, the hype cycle, and the nature of man. We've all heard the quote that necessity is the mother of invention. That may have been what led to Bitcoin to begin with, we needed it to combat the rampant inflation over the entire world. I'd similarly argue that scarcity is the mother of opportunity, and if it is possible to destroy the Federal Reserve banking system by borrowing against it to pump crypto currencies that will inevitably replace it, then some enterprising soul is eventually going to do exactly that.


Yes, bouncing around between exchanges and using early market pricing isn't ideal, but like you said, ultimately you just have to pull the trigger and start somewhere. I wanted to focus on the bear-side, and right from the git-go after Mt Gox came out at ~$0.10 the price immediately started falling, so I had to start there. What is sad is that the sample size was maybe two dozen total traders (if even that!) so it's probably not going to be great.

I like your 900-day cycle though, and I'll try to take this into consideration as time goes on. Even with us speculating here, there might be some risk, as many traders will take some advice as gospel and others will try to make money off of the people who try to follow it. I originally thought (at least in 2014) that the price of coin was going to fall to ~$60/coin, so I missed the bottom of $160 this time around. I did make some reasonably significant purchases in the $240 range, but it wasn't anything like I did back in November 2011 when I was able to spot the $2 bottom. Back then, though, we had these huge buy walls we could take advantage of, and those seem to have all but disappeared in the last 2-3 years.

Anyway, like you said, it might be fun to speculate, but none of this should be taken as actual trading advice. No one can predict the future. I just wanted to get some predictions out there for fun and this thread seemed like a good one to put them in. Maybe I'll be bumping it here in a year to do a "see? I told you so!" in jest. Good luck in your trading everyone!

I'm amazed at how professional and cultured you are, I'm really glad to be learning from some one like you.

Side note : I'm sorry hacknoid if the thread is taking another curve of what it used to be, if you are annoyed or something, kindly don't hesitate to PM me in order to take this talk into the PM's.

1. I still see as you said, the destination to $60K after 4 years, will start depending on your newest and best model, which speculate the price to be $10K at Dec. 2017, even if you didn't mean it, but I guess you stated it, or did I miss something here ?

I fully understand your intentions in making money from this, and all of us in this game for this, even the believers.

2. I had a conspiracy theory in mind and I would like to hear from you about it, aren't Governments and Banksters afraid of Bitcoin where for example assassination of core developers could happen for example ?

3. Could really governments start buying Bitcoins where they think that it's best for them to take Bitcoin as an friend not foe ?

4. What you think about this, since you've talked about this a bit earlier in your above reply



5. While talking in simple terms, what do you think about this as well ?

Well I did title the thread "Bitcoin Price Cycles", not just "MY Bitcoin Price Cycles" :)

I'm enjoying the healthy discussion; no worries.

IMHO, I knew this would be your reply, bulls seems to be kind and friendly also :P

Edit : Are you keeping track with MY :P thread or shall I get some bears to assassinate you and steal your bitcoins :D

:)  Good moods all around these days, for sure.

Yes, yours is definitely one of the few threads I regularly (>1x per day) follow.  Keep up the great work!

It's not mine, it's OUR'S ;)

Waiting for Raize to come online and reply, I'm setting on fire waiting for him tbh.

 ;D

The price in Canadian dollars is coming so close to $1000 again... wonder if it will be tonight?  New CAD ATH?  (Now I don't want to sleep!)

Don't forget to watch the price at Bitcoinity.

Me as well, I don't want to sleep, I've several tabs open here, BitcoinWisdom, Twitter, Reddit, Bitcointalk :D

The rally has stopped a bit, if it will continue, we could see $1K in CAD, I give it 95% chance.

As for the new ATH discussion, here is my old observation from the early days of this thread, that should still be valid. 

I entirely agree.  We have definitely followed the trend, for the relative increases to be less each time.  Also earlier, I plotted some graphs:


Now, this is trying to quantify with exact equations what will happen, so it's probably not right.  However, it would indicate, based on the slowing trend, to reach a maximum this phase of about $1250 USD/Bitcoin, at around the end of the phase (Jan 2017).  So far, it's possible.  However, if we exceed $1250 before the end of the phase, then this model doesn't hold.

It's not the core concept I am illustrating, just an interesting trend I had observed from the data.  

In any case, I think you are correct, uki, in that the relative peaks will be lower than previous cycles.  However, since last cycle we hit a peak about 10x the value at the start of the cycle, we can be lower this time, but still be anywhere up to a peak of about $4000.


EDIT: I guess I've committed myself to saying we are likely in for a peak price of somewhere between $1250 and $4000.  Note: NO GUARANTEES! :)

If the magnitude of the bitcoin bubbles decreases by a factor of 10 each time, then there will essentially be no more bubbles after a few more cycles. This doesn't really make sense to me. Looking at gold and silver, you have large bubbles occurring indefinitely for hundreds or thousands of years. I think bitcoin will be similar. The bubbles will go on indefinitely (as long as bitcoin survives). Instead of getting smaller and smaller, the magnitude of the increases may trend down and then back up and then down, or the cycle length may change.

As for bubbles going infinitely, it all depends on the context. If there is nothing more than speculative pumps and dumps driving the price of Bitcoin, I would expect 2-3 more cycles with lowering bubble ratio until the general public gets fully bored and quits it for good (therefore my theory about that factor decreasing by 10 with each bubble). If, in contrast, there are additional developments so that Bitcoin gets global recognition (similar to that of silver or gold, for example) and the price action can be less influenced from such thin-air speculative pumps, then I expect the story to go on for longer, with occasional bubbles being bigger than the previous ones. Which is basically what you say. The critical assumption is, however, to get the mass adoption, or at least to get there as close as possible. That is an open issue for me, atm.

Even if we don't have bubbles as we have come to know them, it's possible that instead we'll move to a model of slow, steady increase.  There has to be a top somewhere, but we could still be likely quite far from that top.  However, it's easy to see the long term uptrend in price, plotted on a logarithmic axis, has never been broken.  Even during the long downturn of 2014/2015, the long term trend was still up - we were just taking a long slow road down from the massive late-2013 bubble.

That is not to say we won't have any more bubbles; just that they may not be on the same scale, or repeat at the same relative intervals, as they have historically.  Bitcoin still has an extremely small user base in relation to potential (the entire world population), and a tiny market cap in relation to just about any significant metric. 

I think we are entering another super-cycle but there is still going to be a ceiling on stable price, which can be temporarily overshot, due to the cost of mining taking up too much of the world's energy consumption.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=694401.msg9186092#msg9186092
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=694401.msg7841448#msg7841448

Would be helpful to run these numbers again.

I like what uki is saying here, because powers and magnitude could be trended as well, but then for trying to find a cycle where do you start and stop? Do you say it went from $12 to $120 pretty quickly or it went from $120 to $1200 pretty quickly, or do you take the whole thing and say it went from $12 to $1200 over the course of a year? I mean, before that we had a $0.10 to $30.00 increase in under a year before that, so maybe it's only a 3000x increase to 1000x increase to now *only* a 300x increase? And if so, when does the "bubble within a year" start?

Sorry if I'm asking more questions, but it's stuff like this that we should have answers to if we're going to be speculating. I think a 300x increase in a year's time is just as likely as a 10x increase from $150 to $1500 over three years just prior to that. :/ Of course, then that puts a yearly increase from a basis of $1500 to over $300k, which seems silly right now.

I think that's why I tried to do a bear-side evaluation of the price on a longer timeframe and took into account the entire history over the longest time frame possible. I'd rather be conservative in my estimates than really go pie-in-the-sky and be wrong, but I have to accept that it is possible growth continue exponentially till all 6 billion people are affected in some way daily by cryptocurrencies.

Of course it seems to the average poster that it would be equally-silly right now to be talking about prices like $10k and $60k within four years as "conservative" when the price is still well under $1k, but I've never cared much about what people think. :) I venture to guess that hacknoid feels the same about his model which could end up being accurate or more-accurate as well, but maybe just off-set by a couple of months and followed up by a "super-cycle" as others have mentioned. I didn't mean to hijack this thread, either, just thought it was similar enough to mine that it seemed worthwhile to discuss here. Plus, I suspect the people in this thread are interested in timing and cycles, so it might be beneficial to talk about a LOT of them as we spot them.


Yeah, I still think we'll eventually reach $60k sometime by 2021, regardless of model. There's just so many people in the world that may eventually jump into Bitcoin that what we call "Bitcoin" in 5 years might not even be Bitcoin anymore because the average person won't own one and we might have more technical names for smaller units. The word bitcoin might end up being demoted down to just a lower-case btc and we'll be talking about "mbtc" which we shorten even further to just "mills" even. We'll probably still use the BTC or BTC symbol in some respects, but global finance as a whole might all be nation-state side-chains and we're exchanging in units that are measured in agreed-upon BTC increments. If you look at what side-chains and the lightning network is, it's basically a way to be your own bank. It could be that normal Bitcoiners suddenly start becoming independent bankers who issue and secure their own on-chain representations of BTC. Some countries may have laws about individuals issuing their own physical coins, but very few (if any?) countries have laws on the books about issuing virtual/crypto currencies. Prior to the 1910s, bank notes were commonly used as currency (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Note#History) in the US that were actively and regularly traded. And this is while the greenback was still in use, too!

The creation of the Federal Reserve only ended up making a single note what they called "legal tender". Some people that want to outright end the Fed. In some respects, I've been this kind of person over the years, but what I'd really like to see is just an end to the legal tender laws and a return to allowing gold, silver, and other bank notes being viable solutions for resolving debt obligations. This is less controversial than ending the Fed, and probably an achievable solution in our lifetimes for US citizens.


Oh dear. I try not to speculate on conspiracy theories despite the fact that I sometimes tangent a conversation into talking about the petrodollar or what-not. Even though my talking points might be similar to those that conspiracy theorists talk about, I don't speculate on lizard-men or the Illuminati, nor do I think the government itself is bound to some sort of evil cartel or jewish conspirators or anything. It's pretty easy to see which politicians are "bought" by which special interests using public data, but I don't think that just because AIPAC "owns" Lindsay Graham that it means they get to dictate some grand conspiracy of a New World Order or anything. It's very likely that AIPAC itself, for example, is made up with lots of people that have a wide range of opinions on the purpose of money as well!

I do suspect that core developers could and are being influenced, but I try to evaluate what they are saying without regards to who "owns" them. I know some people are concerned about Blockstream. And Blockstream for example could be argued to be "owned" by PwC. So maybe PwC wants Bitcoin to be more "auditor-friendly". But then I start to think about what it was Satoshi was building and what we all signed into when we were getting involved in 2010-2011, and the blockchain is probably best built in this manner, open and independent, with a lot of "banks" existing on top of it with it as a huge settlement network. Naturally PwC wants to have staff that learn how to work with something like that and if it only costs them a few hundred grand per year to have near instant-access for their staff to the people that are actually coding the new order of global finance, is that really all that absurd?

If PwC wants to pay the salaries of core developers to build what we were already expecting them to make anyway, then it doesn't seem right to complain about it. Yet, anyway! There still may be reason to despair about some things. For example, I worry about how the core developers are more Western-based and seemingly anti-Eastern philosophy in some respects. I worry about how English-based the communications are and how much they adhere to IRC discussions, which might not be popular to other technical people and could become "insider-driven". This is less of a criticism and more of an observation, however.

I don't think it behoves anyone to worry about what could happen to core developers by evil actors till it starts happening, though. I worry about the absence of some early Bitcoiners like DeathAndTaxes. I worry about how the US gov't treated BurtW. I don't think these sorts of things come from a conglomeration of Banksters and Gov'ts working together to hurt Bitcoin yet, but there is always the possibility that someone, somewhere, really wants Bitcoin to fail. Regardless of who may be behind ill-intent, it doesn't mean organizations they have ties to are working for any sort of overall agenda to destroy Bitcoin. The blockchain has the potential to benefit everyone, after all! We can ALL be the next big banking institutions and the people will trust our technical and financial expertise to safeguard their wealth in ways that traditional banking didn't provide them. Decentralizing banking will help avert crisises like what happened in 2008. It'll also help keep banking executives honest. whereas it could be argued that traditional bankers are really only good at schmoozing with politicians and bureacrats to protect their empires, the future successful bankers might be the folks who work independently and provide their customers the best service and protect their assets FROM the politicians and bureaucrats that want to inflate currency and ruin the people's store of value.


Yes, they could buy, or just governments can easily start accepting Bitcoin as payments for fines and etc. There are no laws that I'm aware of that prevent them from doing so, though the legal tender laws require them to also accept fiat. I do suspect we're less than maybe five years away from a first world country eventually accepting Bitcoin as payment of fines/fees/etc. It might not be the US, but the US (and perhaps a state like Texas) does seem like a likely government that would eventually do this. There's really no risk for them to do so. I believe that Wyoming (US state) might still have laws on the books allowing people to pay for some things in gold. It's just never used. Similarly, states could accept Bitcoin if they really wanted to. So could the Chinese accept it for fees or fines if they so desired, but they are more top-down driven right now, it would likely require their primary state government to accept it before the provincial governments could.


Well, he's mostly right with some statements and maybe borderlines on some others as they approach the conspiracy angle of things. I'm not sure ALL of the gold in certain reserves have been sold to China but we do know COMEX is kind of screwed and allows contracts for more in gold than is regularly mined. That shouldn't be a problem as long as no one takes delivery, but like the Hunt brother's example, what is to stop someone from eventually doing exactly that?

The way COMEX goes about ensuring prices don't accumulate too much is through margin calls, which will only work for so long till alternatives to it in India and China start becoming more widely-available and used by someone attempting to corner the market again. Then maybe you'll see the real price of gold accumulate higher than COMEX and the paper ETFs can keep up. That'll be a fun bubble to watch pop as the entirety of the Western world asks how derivatives markets like this could still exist when we just had a housing crisis that showed why this was a problem only eight years ago. Western bankers love their derivatives markets! The public be damned, though, because the governments are always going to bail them out.

I'm not sure that both the foreign and domestic gold held at the Federal Reserve has ever been audited at the same time, which is probably my one and only "conspiracy" belief, I think they both should be audited to ensure that the same gold they show Germany they have isn't the same gold they claim the US public owns. Aside from that, the petrodollar isn't even a conspiracy-laden topic anymore. It's common knowledge that OPEC has required all contracts to be made in USD since the 70s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrocurrency).

When it comes to how worldwide finance works, I always try to consider a term called "Hanlon's razor". My belief is that Western governments aren't corrupt, they're just incompetent. The full statement is "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." I don't think bankers, politicians, and bureaucrats are
evil, they are just dumb, and the public will inevitably suffer because of their incompetence.


I don't have much to comment on this one. I'm not going to take the same tone that zimmah did, at least. Without any context, I'll try to analyse "the average amount of bitcoin people will have is less than 0.003 bitcoin".

I don't know what led to that comment, but I'm going to assume it went something like this:
1. There are ~6 billion people in the world.
2. There are going to be about 20 million bitcoin in active use till it hits 21 million in 2140.
3. 20,000,000/6,000,000,000 = 0.003 repeating so that means there's enough Bitcoin for everyone to own .003 BTC which means that most people will own less than that cause there will always be wealthy people and institutions that own more.

Does that sound about right? I wasn't involved in this conversation, but it seems like that might be the argument. That said, I'm not sure how we're supposed to address it. Take gold for example. How many people the world over own any gold? Do they need to own any at all?

It's possible that very few people will ever own Bitcoin itself. Instead they might own side-chains representing goods or services that get settled once per month or at other iterative times. It's hard to visualize or process this fully right now as we all deal in Bitcoin as if it is a normal investment for us and don't see our ownership of coin as a way to settle other people's payments. It is possible that you and I could be banks in a decade, though. We'd protect and run Bitcoin nodes for ourselves and hire technical staff to maintain the nodes and we'd store our immense wealth in cold wallets, sure, but we'd have hot wallets with a few thousand or tens of thousands of dollars in equivalent crypto-currecies in them. All of our friends and family would trust us with storing their wealth and we could issue side-chain currencies or use side-chains that each of us trust and for the ones we don't trust, we could settle in Bitcoin itself.

Ultimately we'll have to trust our own technical and finance staff, but naturally the people who understand the technology better than others while still understanding people better than others will build the most successful systems. My guess is that there will be a lot of M of N or Shamir's Secret Sharing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_Secret_Sharing) in use in the future business world. A lot of people's reputations will be hinged on how well they secure their private keys and pass phrases. It'll be a different world for sure. So many people right now are not used to being held accountable in Western finance. I doubt they'll be able to tolerate it. That's part of the reason why I think things like the DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) and such might be better sold to the Eastern markets, but over time the whole world will eventually see the value in it.

Thanks again Raize for taking the time and the effort to write such a very long and detailed reply.

If you don't mind, I would like to take the discussion a bit into the "price" route.

In the middle of what you've typed and I can infer from what you type and how you think that you are not that type of person who just write any shit, even if giving out an example.


Since you've said $300K and William Mook (https://ihb.io/2014-05-01/news/rockets-scientist-william-mooks-700000-bitcoin-price-target-5818) said $700K and others said $1M.

What let you say $300K, is that your "non-conservative" target ? If not, what is it ?

And, what do you think about the above 3 numbers please ?

Thank you my friend and waiting to hear from you.

Thank you again hacknoid although I feel pity for you that I didn't see $1,000 CAD yet on BitcoinWisdom (although you've touched it somehow) :D :P

No, I was just showing how one could pick and choose when to start a cycle to make incorrect assumptions. Even though my modelling goes back to the less-accurate $0.10 to $1.20 era, at least it sort of takes into consideration that there might be a "super-cycle" that includes the 900 days model that hacknoid highlights here in this thread. I just think things could go a bit more crazy (in a good way) than a 900 day cycle would dictate.

The guys picking over $100k might be right, but it could be decades before that is a stable price. I don't think we'll see $100k in the next four to five years according to my modelling. Maybe in fifteen or more years, but I think even a $100k/coin valuation might be pushing it.

I'm using a bear-side modelling, however, to be more conservative. A bull would only look at the bull-runs and use only those as their basis. I'll show you what a bull-side model might look like.

Consider that the run from a low $2 in 2011 to a high of $1100 or so in 2013 may have increased Bitcoin's exposure from a few thousand people to hundreds of thousands and was a 550x increase. Even with a low of $160 a 550x increase would still be well under $100k. The increase before that was from $.10 to $30 or a 300x increase. Now a bull-side analyst would say: "Well, this cycle we're going to see (550x - 300x) + 550x = 800x increase from the previous low, so if the low is $160 that would mean $128k. I know a few guys who have done exactly that, but those are people trying to time the top. I'm not trying to time the tops, I'm trying to safely sell so I am not chasing the price back down. Though I often wonder if each subsequent bull run is going to make Bitcoin so prevalent that I won't even have to sell back into fiat again.

IMHO, to go over $100k would require an increase that is exponentially higher than either of the previous ones. I'd rather not speculate that such a thing is possible myself, but you see people all over the net and even on this forum doing just that. The whole reason I posted here is because hacknoid is actually trying to be accurate and not just pulling out random numbers. He's shown he's doing an awesome original analysis, and so are many of the other commentators in this thread. I feel honored to be posting with people who seem to "get it" like I have tried to.

I would encourage you to maybe look into or read more about what Richard Dennis did and the Turtle Trading system. There was a write up a while back about how if in 2012 someone started with $10k in USD and invested using one of the turtle methods in bitcoin, they would have made $3.6 million by the end of 2013 while someone who did just a normal buy and hold would have made only $1.8 million. Here's some links to look at:
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/trading/08/turtle-trading.asp
https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/2a22zf/qwhat_can_you_learn_from_a_turtle_a_the/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dennis

I don't recommend this strategy myself (I'd never recommend a strategy where you sell something short, in fact), but I would say that if you find something that works, and you backtest it and it works during a bear run or a bull run, stick with it and don't get emotional. Trade like the turtle traders did, according to set rules. Also, just because someone like me says something like $10k in a year or $60k in five years does NOT mean you should trade based on it. I have guesses at best. I do some trading based on those guesses and I've done quite well for myself, but I'm not sure my models or trading strategies will work for everyone. Missing the start of the bear market could wipe me out very quickly, in fact. I think that's why I've tried so very hard to be conservative, even though my comments and an estimation of $10k in a little over a year might be seen as very bullish in the present market.

Thanks again Raize, thank you :)

I found what you said is really well said and perfectly matches with the way we've to think with. What I want to say is, being extremely conservative, from my humble point of view, is extremely great as you will always be ready for the worst expectations, and since we are talking in numbers here, so it's $10K in Dec. 17 and $60K in 2020/2021, and I KNOW, it's guesses and speculation.

Don't worry, for me at least, I'm an investor, not a seasoned or day trader.

I didn't look into the turtle strategy yet, but what I think it's about is, to go slow and steady better to go fast and be non-sustainable.

If you don't mind, I want to ask you two more questions :

1. I don't know if I've stated this before for you or not, as you may know, the money in circulation in China deposits (I think) is $22 trillion and our market cap is $12 billion, and I highly guess you are aware that China is in love with Bitcoin, so don't you think that we will say at least like $1 trillion moving into Bitcoin, or lets say $500K billion as also China is addicted to gamble on things that get them high returns and don't forget the network effect, what you think ? We didn't talk about China much in our talking.

2. Since you are aware about PwC and Blockstream, they somehow have influence on Core and I've read a medium article that somehow they could benefit us (in terms of price), so in the light of this, what do you think about this (http://bravenewcoin.com/news/bank-of-england-and-pricewaterhousecoopers-partner-to-explore-putting-fiat-currency-on-a-blockchain/) ?

Thank you buddy and waiting to hear from you as always, ASAP :)

On the other hand, my friend, hacknoid, congrats. on achieving $1,000 CAD, my timing was bad I know :D :P, but I knew that we would get there ;)

Edit 1 : Dear Raize, what you think about this and about Vinny in general ?

https://i.gyazo.com/48f5473cb8f0397e2aab6a1d48dce3a3.png

Wow, certainly some deep discussions going on, which I think is great!  Kinda reminds me of the talks I had with friends many years ago, when over a few beers we'd chat about all kinds of deep things.  Anyway, not to get all sentimental or anything .... :D

Some good points raised...

Regarding max possible valuation... There are many interesting theories about how high the value could go, and a lot of that depends on how adoption is picked up.  Certainly if a large percentage of the population were to decide it was worthwhile to have some Bitcoin, then the price can reach some of those numbers.  There are also many theories regarding if certainly percentages of other markets were to flow into Bitcoin (gold, offshore holdings, etc.)  Rick Falkvinge did an interesting analysis several years ago about how high the price could be if Bitcoin became the chosen route for many different avenues, including international trade settlement, gambling, etc.  Any of those things becoming a primary use of bitcoin could easily drive the price to the 10's or 100's of thousands of dollars.  However, would they happen?  It makes sense, but certainly the option to "roll your own" is always there.  However, I have to wonder about the effect of the DAO "hack" and what that will do.

To sidetrack for a second, from what I read, the "hack" happened as a result of exploiting an actual rule of the DAO.  Now, I have no investment in Ether or DAO tokens, but I have been watching them with interest.  From the point of view of my analysis, certainly any "distraction" from Bitcoin as the digital currency of choice will slow adoption.  Ethereum is interesting, but is also a dangerous, unproven game.  And I think that has played out in the last few days.  Complex systems are prone to complex bugs, or "features".  Bitcoin has been battle-tested for more than 7 years, and still shines.  Some of the best minds have tried to break it, including Dan Kaminsky, and it held up.  So this certainly argues for trust going with the proven party.  It will be interesting to see where things go from here.  I think a lot of people who don't comprehend the whole industry will latch onto "cryptocurrencies are hackable" as a tagline, and stay away. 

But the numbers are changing.  More and more people are learning about what Bitcoin is and why it should be trusted.  I myself was just blown away by it when I first came across it and knew it had a great future ahead.  Will there be more competing cryptocurrencies in future?  Certainly.  Will the majority of the world's population adopt Bitcoin and/or own some?  I doubt it, at least for a long time, maybe a full generation.   I'm not a millennial myself, but I got it.  However a lot of the older generation, the talking heads on TV and the investment advisers and those with the money, don't and won't get it.  Unfortunately, as it is disruptive tech, many people are hard to move from their old models.  And you don't have to contribute it to conspiracy theories to think that pushback against Bitcoin is real.   There are many people whose actual livelihoods depend on the old models.  And this isn't just journalism or publishing - this is the people with the money and power.  So expect some pushback.

As for Blockstream, I was blown away by the concept of sidechains, and thought this was just the thing to finally do away with most/all of the competing altcoins.  It's simply smart, and I am believing that those implementing it still think highly of Bitcoin.  Nobody knows what the future of Bitcoin will look like, just like they couldn't imagine in 1994 (or earlier) what the Internet would look like in 2016.  Things will grow and evolve... they have to.  It's part of technical evolution.  Unfortunately each time someone tries to completely "replace" Bitcoin, it slows this down.  But that will happen.


Agreed - thanks, Raize, for your input in this thread.  Sorry I didn't address all your points, but I did read your posts!


Thanks!  Made me quite happy today to see 4 digits again in Canada.  Price has been hanging around just under that for many days now, so it was nice to see, even if just briefly.

Interesting thing to note at this point - we still have not been increasing at anywhere near the rate of the previous "bubbles".  We are only about 20% increase over the past week, and 65% over the last month.  However, note also that we have not had any significant pullback during that time (not trying to jinx it).  I take this as a good sign, in that we are not going up too fast, at least not by crypto standards. 

I guess what I am saying is that despite the significant increases recently, it doesn't looks to me like we have really begun the major rallies we have seen in the past.  Whether we have now changed to a more conservative, slow gain model, or we just haven't hit our stride yet, remains to be seen.  We may be entering, or on the verge of entering a new stage where we don't have those bubbles like in the past.  Instead, it's short, sudden uptrends in price, that level off quickly.  As Uki  quite rightly pointed out, the trend has been for smaller "bubbles".  We may be headed there, but that could be a good thing.

If we are indeed changing trends, then hopefully we can avoid the long-term blowoff period we experienced in the latter half of cycle 2.

One of the most obvious cycles with bitcoin is probably that the price will go up by a lot before halving, and readjust after the halving. This has been the case time and time again.

There may be others, but they're extremely hard to find.

Yeah that sounds close enough, keep in mind not this Dec 17, but December of 2017. It's probably just a date-format thing, but in the Western world, doing the last two digits right after the month makes it look like the 17th of December. If you do want to write it like you have, maybe "Dec '17" would be best, the apostrophe implies the "20" in front of it.


I've always kind of wished I could speak directly to the Chinese bitcoiners, but the language barrier is a problem and I have never liked to write without eloquence about important issues. I think most of the breakdown between the Core team and the Chinese and Eastern miners is communication-based, too. If the Chinese knew half of why Core was being so paranoid and slow, they might be more accepting of it. There's a piece I wanted to write up that covered a bit of Bitcoin's history in late 2011 and early 2012, going over the popular Russian mining pool called Deepbit and the BIP 16/17 debacle. I wanted to finish it and post it so that the Chinese miners could understand why 75% of the mining world accepting bigger blocks is actually not enough, but I kind of just gave up on it because I don't think I could ever get it translated right. Still, I think it's a piece of Bitcoin's history that is worth knowing, and there aren't a lot of people that remember what took place from that time.

The thing is, Western philosophy and legal interpretation is bogging down innovation quite horribly right now. The US, at least, has a judicial system that is too afraid of the executive on the federal and state levels. We have developers willing to make peer-to-peer apps like AirBnB (rent out your house for X days) and Uber (provide a taxi-like service better than actual taxis), but we still have governments unwilling to change regulations or loosen legal restrictions. These startups and small developers don't have the money to fight the legal battles. Meanwhile, the courts were always the last bastion for liberty, but right now even they are failing when even our own government is spying on us. It's too expensive to fight important battles to restore our freedoms in court, too. The people here fear their government. That might change someday, but right now it's about as bad as it can get. Bitcoin can't do much better here.

In the Eastern world, however, it is the government that fears the people right now. People tell the government that restrictions are too burdensome and the government actually listens to them, even if reluctantly. The Chinese vice-president (now president) fought so much against corruption, too. I remembered looking into it while he was still vice-president and came to the small US state I live in. I was interested in why he came here because I had worked on technical matters and ran a website for an English teaching department at a public university here. I was always astounded at the large number of students interested in learning English and in some cases agriculture and farming. I eventually found that the reason he came was to promote agricultural ties (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/world/asia/xi-jinping-of-china-makes-a-return-trip-to-iowa.html?_r=0) and found another article later on that said that the reason he was going around purging corruption in the Chinese government was because they had to. So many people were well-informed on the "Princelings" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princelings) and nepotism that these officials had to win back the people's trust. I thought that was kind of an amazing thing.

Here in the US, people ignore stories of rich and powerful people buying silence from officials, because they are so beholden to the TV news and journalist organisations that are bought by those same people. That said, I'm aware that there is still so much more that needs to be done in China in cleaning up corruption obviously. Judicial concerns plague China just as they have in the US. But for some reason China at least looks like it might be improving while the US intelligence community continues to use glittering generalities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glittering_generality) about why it's OK to spy on us and even lie to our elected politicians about the spying. But it's the government's healthy fear of its own country's people that gives me hope that something like Bitcoin could spread even faster than it has in the Western world, and yes, perhaps to a higher market capitalisation as well.

I realize my answers might be kind of long-winded, and I'm sure this one is no exception, but a wider-scale Chinese adoption of Bitcoin is, of course, a passion of mine and should be for every Bitcoiner, IMHO.


Yeah, it looks promising. Britain has always had a more traditional "hands-off" approach to financial independence and currencies, so if they extend fiat into Bitcoin and operate on top of the Bitcoin blockchain, it could be pretty huge. Especially if it came with a loosening of restrictive policies on exchange into the coin itself or if it provided a "like coin" that came without a tax obligation. Hell, it would maybe even be enough to convince me to move there someday and set up a hedge fund or something.


I'm not sure I know who he is, sorry. I mean, I try not to put too much stake into rumors of things like this. LinkedIn investors might get money, but they might have already bought Bitcoin knowing they are going to get fiat, for example, so it's hard to say it'll be going straight into cryptocurrencies.


No problem. Thanks for letting me post here and thanks for the original cycle thread and idea. I'm glad there's others out there doing cycle analysis as well.


Yes, though it looks like today the price is taking a hit. I often wonder if, because I'm a Donator, putting my estimates out there can trigger buys or sells just because the name and title can sometimes convince people and they try to time buys/sells based on others taking my advice as gospel. For what it is worth, I haven't bought or sold any Bitcoin since $240, when I last purchased a non-trivial amount. :) I might sell if it goes to $10k next year, of course, but it'll be a couple coin so I can semi-retire and maybe take a vacation. I'd hope that if it goes to $10k then maybe more companies will come out and I can finally buy groceries and/or pay my mortgage in Bitcoin.

I think slower and longer timeframes are probably going to be the only way to justify the patterns, maybe. I might have been wrong about us getting to $900 in July/August, before falling again, but that's still my second model's prediction and I think it is the more accurate one. Slower and longer time frames could also result in higher magnitudes as the overall volume reaches what we would expect to be the GDP of a larger European country over the next five years or so. If we go crazy and hit $500 billion market cap or $1 trillion like Fakhoury pointed out, then maybe I should have been analyzing the price from the bull-side. I think 1/22 of China's market cap as a whole is a big target to strive for, though. I hope we hit it, but it's a big target.

Indeed and the fact is that the price is going up and down, right now it has a pretty good price but I honestly do not think the halving will be such good, it can be but right now I'm doubting about it.

Hey Raize,

Thanks for never putting me down buddy.

As you know, more and more questions to ask :)

1. I've digested well what you said about about China and East vs. West govemernts as well as corruption, but, if you don't mind, I would like to hear your thoughts about the same question but from numbers prespective.

I do feel that it won't be that impossible to reach half a trillion or one full trilion, mainly from China ?

Doesn't Chinese people play a game as a team or group of musiciains who prefrom an orchasterial piece ?

Plus don't forget that $60K makes us at nearly $700B as $23K puts us at $333B

2. Thank you for correcting me on how to write the date right, really apperciated :)

3. Remember when talked about reaching $100K, I've thought about it from another prespective, lets say we will reach $60K in 5 years, wouldn't there be a possibility to reach $100K in the same duration or double the duration ?

4. I would like to know how you see our progress will be in terms of price and technology in the duration of (after halving - Dec. '17).

Thanks and waiting to hear from you, as usual.

Side note :- Hacknoid, where have you been ? Not saying you being active lately !!

Man you are a little too giddy about these numbers and speculation in general. You keep going back to -- and asking him the same thing about these crazy valuations. Sure its possible but anything is possible at this point and nobody knows for sure.  He has provided so much information already on this subject I don't know what you will get out of keep asking him about it. Don't count your chickens before they hatch! Just enjoy the ride! Good luck.

Ugh... too much other stuff going on right now.   :P

I've been watching the numbers, and I think the current trend is interesting.  I think it definitely indicates things are in the process of undergoing a change right now.  Could be we are reaching saturation point until we "cross the chasm" in terms of adoption; could be just a lot more maturity in the markets.  I'll try to get to post some updated charts, but probably not until next week.  I also suspect things are hard to get a "true" read as people may be holding off selling (at least until the last couple of days) on the expectations of post-halving increase; that's my current thought.

That being said, the trends indicating that sentiment toward Bitcoin is still quite positive are stronger than ever; just look at some of the things you posted in the Bullish News thread!  That's a good indicator, but not enough by itself to drive the price massively. 

Oh, it appears I went on a tangent and might not have been direct, you're right. So yes, I don't see it as a problem for Bitcoin to be 1/22 of the Chinese money circulation someday, maybe it could even be more. A $700B or more market cap valuation isn't uncalled for, even here in four years (though keep in mind that in four years there will likely be over 2.5 million more Bitcoin in the world than there are today) so the market cap will actually be higher based on the same price.

When I did my mock bull-side assessment in a previous post it was at $128k. A $128k valuation in 4-5 years would end up being around the next halving cycle, when there'd be over 18 million coin. $128k * 18 million is a market cap of ~$2.3 trillion, which also seems high, but is still maybe a small amount of China or the US's total monetary transfers in a year. I used to value things based on GDP, but now I'm not so sure it's a great basis. GDP and total outstanding monetary balances aren't great. It might be better to compare yearly BTC trasnfers to M1, M2, or even M3, but that's a whole other topic, honestly.

I think the world would be a better place if it was even higher than $60k, obviously, but maybe that's the next "supercycle".


There's no one right way to write the date, just ones that might be easier to explain to other observers. Keep in mind that when you make a forum post you're making it for posterity's sake as well. Someone in the future might want to look back on what you've posted and you don't want them to misinterpret what you've said. That was my only intention in correcting you, I didn't want someone to think I was expecting $10k/coin by the end of THIS year.


Well, let's assume it hits somewhere in the middle of both a bear and bull side prediction and so the halfway point is actually ($128k-$65k)/2 + $65k = $96.5k. You can maybe see my conundrum here. I really can't be sure that it will not hit $100k, only that it might not. My basis for the NEXT bubble would require that I have the numbers for where this bubble ends up landing in four years, so I can't estimate from there. Believe me though, I've had some friends who have asked me to estimate it anyway, using currently available data. I will say that I estimate the next bubble will be even slower and longer (maybe after 2030?) and might only end up in the $1-$3 million/coin range, though. It all depends on how this bubble does. If for some reason this bubble blow through $100k and does something akin to what maybe the first or second bubbles in my chart say, then maybe we've got a cycle on top of the supercycle yet. :P This is the problem of trying to use Mandelbrot's type of cycle analysis, unfortunately. You can see patterns, but they become more clear after the fact. This was also his big criticism of Elliott Wave Analysis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_wave_principle) which some could also argue we're trying to do here.


After December 2017 is still murky. I don't know how exactly to plan for post-2017. Keep in mind that I even changed my models after a year anyway. I don't have a magic system (yet). Even if I did find something that worked, I'm not likely going to go into too much detail on it, I just like to talk about this wave stuff because it's fun.


If each low is higher than the previous, I think everyone's going to be happy.


Yes. I can tell you I've talked to far more people that think "the moon" is just around the corner so they try to time their buys and sells and it always fails. That's why I really don't like giving numbers at all. When I say $900 in July-August and falling to like $700 in September-October, I often wonder if people will be pissed they sold at $900 when it goes to $1100 in August and then buy back in only to watch it fall to $900, then they buy back in at $700 only to watch it fall to $600 before increasing again. I only have what my models say, and my models have sometimes been wrong.

The best strategy, IMHO, is buy and buy and buy and buy and hold. If you want in, put a small percentage of each paycheck in and just watch it grow. Over enough time you can sell it as needed for a down payment on a new house, new boat, etc. Don't expect to be a market trader. Half of those guys' investment strategy relies on people reading their materials it really starts to show you how they make money (it's selling their loser investments to people that read what they have to say or watch what they say on tv).

Good luck and invest safe!

Hey Raize :),

1. Pardon me, but every single word you say, makes sense for me, Sir. When there is an healthy discussion, every word counts. I don't see you've made an mistake, on the contrary :)

2. Super cycle, yes, you mentioned Super cycle :D , What is "supercycle" ? And is there still "supercycle" ? Is it like the "mega super spurt" ? Kindly elaborate for me in terms of word and numbers, from both perspective please.

3. Since you've mentioned M1, M2 and M3, could you discuss it with us and how do you see it's impact on Bitcoin and vice versa ? E.g. Could Bitcoin takeover 1% of M2 ?

4. Your bear-side predictions had put us at $10K and $60K, I'm not denying this and see it near to reality. But if I asked Raize about near predication he believes in, like he believes in himself, will it still be the same numbers or less ? In other words, what are the predictions you are nearly sure about ?

5. Regarding your intentions, as I've said before, I can semi-read you from your posts and I know you are seeking the benefit for all of us. I apologize for that error. Don't worry, I'm not offended, on the contrary :)

6. I know you are serious but do you really mean this !!


Could you please enlight us about those high number, Raize. Geeeez, people tends to see we will reach $10K in a decade and others like Raize is talking in millions :P

Although I hate classifying, but I will do in order you get the complete picture of it.

There are 3 types of people when we speculate the price

Kind 1 : We will see $5K - $10K in a decade - 15 years

Kind 2 : We will see $10K - $50K in a decade - 15 years

Kind Raize : We will see $60K - $1M in a decade - 15 years.

Side note : I'm extremely sorry if you got offended this time as I'm trying to break the ice between ice and being friendly, so please accept my apology if my kidding with you made you offended or passed the limits.

I would like to know how (Kind Raize) see those high potentials, as you remind me of this


Extremely thank you Raize for letting this discussion ongoing.

Edit 1 : What do you think about this one as well, Raize ?

https://medium.com/@Numerai/rogue-machine-intelligence-and-a-new-kind-of-hedge-fund-7b208deec5f0#.nl6an4ms0

Wish you all the best buddy.

I do believe in the trend, Raize, marked out here.


What do you think ?

Looks like hacknoid's going to get his confirmation on the "blip" soon! Increase plus a decrease, followed by a slower increase.

Here's what I said...


Guess who just left the EU? Shhhhh....


Oh jeez. I better keep my numbers from here on out to myself, but rest assured, things are looking good.


The US stopped recording M3 (http://inflationdata.com/articles/2006/03/16/goodbye-m3-what-is-the-government-hiding/). There's a lot of conspiracy theories as to why they stopped, but I believe the government at face value when it says that it is difficult to determine actual M3 data. That said, the belief a lot of us (commodities traders) have had since 2006 when they stopped is that money is "leaking". It is, but into harder assets. Bitcoin is one such asset now.

Your comment about "Could Bitcoin takeover 1% of M2 ?" is really intriguing. You're thinking like I am now. I originally put a high emphasis on GDP before realizing that fiat currency "inflation" is better correlated to Bitcoin by money supply, and therefore actual use is better determined by it as well. 1% of M2 in 2016 is 1% of maybe 12 trillion USD? that's 120 Billion USD. It takes some work to compare that to Bitcoin trading/inflation data, but this is where I need to shut up because it gets too much into my currency valuation strategy.

One quick comment that I did want to make is that there's something called the 1% fallacy (https://successfulsoftware.net/2013/03/11/the-1-percent-fallacy/). The argument here being that just assuming that you are going to take over 1% of a specific market is foolish. You should assume that without significant backing, you are actually going to fail. The reason why I would argue something like Bitcoin supercedes the 1% fallacy is because Bitcoin isn't just a piece of software with a team of developers. It's a global phenomenon that has the highest network effect among it's own class, that of cryptocurrencies. If you think Bitcoin can only ever be a small market share competing with fiat currencies, then yes, Zipf's law would dictate it might never hit 1%. But if you think that eventually the entire world will be using crypto-currencies, that fiat will go the way of the Dodo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo), and that Bitcoin will be #1 among cryptocurrencies, then 1% by itself is NOT ENOUGH.

So yes, I think it'll eventually be 1% of M2 and beyond.


Yes, I believe more in the bear-side numbers and estimates than the bull-side ones. This is to remain very conservative in short-term predictions and expectations. I don't think in terms of days or months anymore. I think in terms of years now. I also believe hacknoid is right about the short-term (months), obviously. I just think there's also a super-cycle in effect. (I will say, this isn't what I called it when I was doing the estimates I originally made. I just called it the cycle)


No problem. It wasn't an error, just a communication problem. I only felt the need to correct it to make sure it was clear. You're very polite about it!


Yes. I really mean that is possible. But keep in mind, these are guesstimates based on adoption rates that we've yet to actually see. Obviously I expect more "Brexit"-type scenarios, and eventual adoption of the Bitcoin blockchain (http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/e-innovation/bank-of-england-tests-blockchain-193952) by major countries.


It might be 20-25 years, but yes, I see those kinds of numbers. Keep in mind there are kids who will be able to invest who aren't yet even born yet and who we, the successful crypto-currency traders, will eventually educate on its value.


You're fine. Just keep in mind there are some things I can't really go into detail on. Speculators that buy (or, specifically, sell) poorly are, whether fortunately or unfortunately, the people who I make money off of. I'm not horribly apologetic about it, but I will say your best investment strategy is to buy and hold against people trading cycles. I never short Bitcoin, though. That's too dangerous.


I have no idea who AZwarel is, but he seems to maybe grasp the idea that 100-1000x increases aren't uncalled for, even at the present prices. His other comments, like those on sex, are uncouth, in my honest opinion. We have to share success with all sorts of people, though.


I actually read this article a day or two ago! It's a good read, but I'm not sure we're "there" yet. There's a lot more interesting smart contracts that will turn into "smart algorithms" or some-such until people are able to figure out how they work and trade against them. To me, it seems very very unlikely that someone creating a smart hedge fund will not eventually trade against it anonymously once people invest in it.

Be careful of shysters who claim to be working in your best interest. If someone cannot clearly explain how they make you money, then YOU are the way THEY make money. Until we have blockchain-based smart contracts, take stories like this with a HUGE grain of salt.

Hey Raize,

1. It's not a matter of being very polite or not. It's a matter of respect because you push anyone to respect you even if he denies this. In regards to us, I like to respect and be polite to everyone, what about a person named Raize who've never put me down and give me time and effort to elaborate as much as he can for me, shouldn't I be thankful ?

2. Thank you for letting me break the ice with you and be friend of yours, it really makes me extremely happy :)

3. I totally respect not going into details my friend, be rest assured about this, no offence between us :)

4. I guess Hacknoid will close this thread and open a "self-moderated" one and kick us whenever we write a reply :D ;D , Hacknoid, I don't want neither me nor Raize to be cursed because of this thread, take actions and update the thread because I'm missing your updates :P

QUESTIONS TIMMMMMMMMMMMMME :D ;D

1. Since you've talked about Blockchains, let me ask few questions.

1.a. What do you think about the recent blockchain hype and company x will use a blockchain and institute y will use a blockchain (I guess you understand the diff. between a blockchain and the blockchain).

1.b. Will Bitcoin Blockchain really be adopted ? And you mentioned here (http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/e-innovation/bank-of-england-tests-blockchain-193952) that it will be adopted because of the PwC ?

2. What do you think about Canada coin and China coin and such ? and how it will affect Bitcoin ?

3. Brexit, I didn't hear your view about this nightmare yet and the effect it will affect us ?

4. What do you think about COIN ETF ? Lets say we won't see that ETF ? Will we see an ETF soon ?

5. When do you see large players and super mega whales join Bitcoin ? In other words, mega wealth transfer.

6. What do you think about this podcast (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvhVHrJEv1A) and Trace Mayer in general ?

7. What do you think about this

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ClqsFFvWgAA-kjo.jpg:large

How many % do you think will be on the blockchain ?

So sorry if this discussion is not coming to an end, but I really do enjoy and learn from all what I read and be educated from you. I highly guess others do as well.

Thank you so much, Raize :)

Edit 1 :

8. What do you think about this one as well, Raize ? Kindly take a look at the video.


Edit 2 :

9. What do you think about crack the SHA-265 algo. and quantum computing affecting Bitcoin cryptography ?

Edit 3 :

Dear Raize, lets imagine that we are witnessing $60K or $120K per Bitcoin now.

Will goverments, banksters and such allow those high numbers ?

In order to achieve those order of magntuide, what needs to be present ? Finanical crsis for example ?

Edit 4 :

I feel extremely shy from you because of those 10 questions, kindly accept my apology for the inconvience I've made for you.

I sure hope not! We're bumping his thread more regularly and exposing people to at least the IDEA of there being cycles and my comments here are just a short interlude from his thoughts. If necessary, we can take this private or to PMs. I like hearing comments from others, though.


I think that a lot of well-meaningful people are going to become very disappointed. I don't think Bitcoin is strictly a "payments network" or a "settlement layer" like what some people refer to "big block" and "small block" people as. I think of Bitcoin more as a "consensus protocol". But this probably comes from my network administration roots. Network admins need to be familiar with something called the OSI model (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model) made up of different layers with each layer having multiple protocols that reside within it. I'm not sure entirely which layer Bitcoin resides on. Conventionally it might be seen as a data layer, either session, presentation, or application. In fact, it's inner-working right now certainly resides here. But there may be reason for something like the Lightning Network to expand the sending of coin to represent lower layers.

In other words, create a TCP connection from 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.0.2 on port 51000 and keep it open as long as coin resides in 1Q2TWHE3GMdB6BZKafqwxXtWAWgFt5Jvm3. This is kind of a nonsensical example as such a connection doesn't MEAN anything, but with networks like TOR you could have a pay-for-use system, and have the bandwidth be a metric. The Lightning Network would be low bandwidth and slowly ensure that coin from 1Q2TWHE3GMdB6BZKafqwxXtWAWgFt5Jvm3 flows to another address according to the bandwidth used by 192.168.0.1 through a proxy or node on 192.168.0.2:51000. It might not make sense to transfer something like $0.03 worth of bandwidth, but over enough time, and perhaps even one night, it could be worth $.36 which can easily be represented as a Bitcoin transaction (though maybe not a great one). My guess is that keeping a running total will become necessary or that there will be sites that are "Connection Aggregators" that could handle multiple people using multiple connections and finally "settle" those transactions once a sufficient amount of coin had been transacted via the Lightning Network.

Please note, this example is a very crude explanation and really does not do something like the Lightning Network justice. There is a reason why so many old Bitcoiners are excited for things like Segregated Witness and the Lightning Network, though. They will provide the underpinnings and building blocks for epic changes in the way the Internet does business. And underlying the next generation of Internet applications will be the "consensus protocol" that is Bitcoin. Every day the system continues to run because miners agree that other miners blocks are legitimate and build their own on top of them. Everyone trusts these miners as well, even if today they are perhaps more appropriately called "pools". But miners can shift between pools and often do, especially if it looks like consensus might be disrupted.


Well, the Bitcoin blockchain is the only one that has the backing of vast amount of investment and miners behind it. It's the mining aspect of Bitcoin that allows the protocol to remain honest. There is no other blockchain better than the Bitcoin blockchain because a blockchain's success can only be measure by the features developed atop it and the suitability of consensus underneath it. Bitcoin is winning in both, with maybe there being some altcoins that have succeeded in adding features that could be said to be arguably better. One such feature might be Zero Knowledge Proofs (https://bitcoincore.org/en/2016/02/26/zero-knowledge-contingent-payments-announcement/), whereby money is pooled together with specific amounts only being releasable by someone who can prove they know the answer to a specific mathematical question.

Oddly enough, it appears Core is maybe the only institution interested in building such features. There have been a few alts that have tried, but they were horribly valued/gamed and manipulated.


Eh. I don't really believe in alt coins or private blockchains. I have said to a few people privately that I think the greatest threat to Bitcoin is likely going to be private blockchains, but I don't think these will be able to "topple" it. The idea of them could be successful though. I don't think alt coins will become anything more than private blockchains in the end, anyway. One of them will see some modicum of success, but it probably won't be anywhere near as full-featured as Bitcoin and will always lose money to it just like fiat currencies do and have in the end. Bitcoin users will always be more wealthy, just like those who invest in gold will always be wealthier in the long run over those that invest in fiat.


Brexit isn't a nightmare, it's a dream! I'm happy Britain is leaving the EU. If they end all Bitcoin-related taxes next or start allowing tax-free conversion between Bitcoin and their currency I might even have to move there it would be so awesome.


I heard a rumor that the huge drop in mid-January 2015 was because of the COIN ETF and the twins. I'm not sure what to think of it, but rumor has it that the ETF and underwriters were related. Now, my question is, if that is the case, then why is it a year later and we still have no ETF? Wall street works way too slow. People will just use other ETNs that already exist like Bitcoin Tracker One and GBTC.


Right now. I've had at least one person contact me in a very unconventional way asking to buy an amount of coin that I don't even own. Not sure where they are going to find that amount, either. I can't disclose the amount. Nor would I. :)


Well, I like Trace cause he hesitated before he responded with an estimation, but I always worry about these guys whose primary purpose is to be "the face of cryptocurrencies" or whatever. The only one of these such people that is doing what I would call a great job is probably Andreas Antonopolus, and only because he's extremely smart and knows what NOT to say, I think. I've not been a fan of Roger Ver, but he was definitely a good early advocate. That said, we could certainly do worse than Trace as an advocate, and he's not doing horrible by any means. But you should take any predictions (even mine) with a HUGE grain of salt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_of_salt).


and this one...


Well, it's really too hard to say what percentages will happen with any degree of certainty. I envision a world where we no longer have massive global debt markets, but they may still exist in small part and it might take some time before that happens and we might have private blockchains, nation-state blockchains, Bitcoin blockchain, and perhaps even a large amount of gold and silver ownership among the public again as well. I don't know what percentage of this world will be made up of Bitcoin ownership by then. In fact, maybe here in 30-50 years private space companies will be more prolific and we'll have a burgeoning asteroid real estate market even! How's that for crazy?

With respect to 10% being a tipping point and in 2027, that's maybe not out of the question but I think it might be only 5% at that point and it might be in 2035. This is a VERY loose estimate though. Could be swings of both 3% and five years in either direction. 10% in ten years is a tall order, even for Bitcoin. On a second glance I notice they are talking about 10% being on blockchain technologies as a whole, however, and I think both private blockchains and side chains and etc might make that number a bit more realistic, if not outright obvious. If side-chains can really do what we're hoping, 10% could maybe even be on the low end.


I posted on a thread that I don't think Satoshi's coins or any of the early coins should be encrypted. That's pretty much the extent of my concern about quantum computing right now. I do think it's a threat, but I think we're far from seeing it realized. Very far, in fact. We'll get closer for sure, and maybe it is worth having some discussions now about Shor's algorithm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor%27s_algorithm), but aside from that, I don't want to do anything immediately.


I do think it is a combination of things, including crisis that will lead to large bubbles or one of the ones between. Similar to how Cyprus led to $260/coin. But remember the last bubble in fall 2013 was due to the US government hearings and them saying they liked Bitcoin. It'll probably be good news that leads to the $60k-$120k bubble.


No problem. If for some reason we can't talk here or folks want us to take the conversation private I'm okay with doing so. Just keep in mind I don't always get to the forums as often as I used to. It might be good to have a thread of our own that is just about general news. It might be fun to do a weekly segment where I could talk with you about events that came up during the week, maybe. That way I don't have to post every few days or so but can still answer questions as you come up with them. Do you have a blog or website that you regularly post to?

Hey.... some quick thoughts on things right now, since I don't have a lot of time.

I still hold that we are in extremely bullish/positive territory right now, which grows all the more positive that the price doesn't take off.  I kinda liken it to an earthquake... the longer time goes between major events, the more pressure gets built up.  Interestingly, even though this cycle-phase is "due" for a "bubble", we seem to be on more of a strong uptrend.

In fact, the trend here feels a lot like what happened in early 2013.  Coincidentally, that time was also around a halving (just passed in December 2012), and there was a lot of financial uncertainty especially in Europe with all the goings-on about Greece. 

In our current cycle, this is not the behaviour we have typically seen in bubble phases, where there is a spike in price, followed by a correction and volatility for a while.  Rather, we have seen some steady legs up, each time pretty much maintaining the momentum.  Some shift in that earlier in the week when prices feel back, but things are better again.

Also, the most interesting thing I have read in a while re: pricing:


Thanks for posting that, Fakhoury.  Waiting for the "slippage"... :)  If that happens, I think all bets are off and anything's possible.

Hmf.  Was thinking that this was feeling more like cycle 2/phase 1, but when I chart it it still could be C2P2.  What do you think?

https://i.imgur.com/KrT3d5N.png

Guess it doesnt really matter... in either case, the same thing is coming next. ;D

Quick update of the graph to this point:

https://i.imgur.com/0EPacBk.png

Not a whole lot has changed, but its pretty clear that even with the recent price rises we are not yet in the next "bubble".  Should be on track however, for it to come anytime.  (At least, here's hoping...  ;))

Good news is that volatility has quieted down and we are reaching the end of a large pennant... look for breakout soon.  But which way?

That is good indication of the future price. But the price now is much higher than before, so the bubble will be smaller.

I apologize for bumping this topic, but this is a good comment to quote given some recent revelations I've been made privy to. You're right in that this is the speculation forum. And God bless it! I think the Winklevii situation (their ETF) will come to a head soon, imminently or before the end of the year.


I think a large number of people interested in the DAO will see Bitcoin as the more stable option amongst pretenders.


The breakout might not have been "soon", but it happens regardless.

Keep updating us on the cycles. Even if we're not exact, I think there's more to this than meets the eye. :)

I guess the chart update is due soon. With this recent sell off (sub $480, some exchanges got the low at $465) we didn't go too far down to have the cycle in danger. Yet, it is now all about rebound and how strong it is to determine the post-halving panorama and set the trend for the reminder of the year. 

going back to this thread I must say comparing old charts with recent trends I found quite interesting info. Probably, even without finex hack we would have dropped to these prices. Finex pushed just a bit more.

Waiting for some updates with recent trends

thats true, after a big growth there must be a come back down, it is impossible for the price to just go up and never down, i think we will soon rocket up again

I believe a super-cycle is way overdue, but because of many problems right now it is being held back

for example the bitfinex problem and the blocksize debate that has been gone on for way too long and is still not even anywhere close to solved.

If that were true, then some altcoin with better scalability would've rocketed past bitcoin. Yet here we are, with the total cryptocurrency market cap below bitcoin's all-time high.

The simplest explanation is that the demand just isn't there.

Yup, market demand or my usual call is a movement of the market is a major factor in doing something. and we will not be able to benefit from market movements are weak crypto, except bitcoin. because as poor as any in the future, bitcoin bitcoin can bounce better and give a tremendous advantage

The Monero has good scalability. It does not have a block size limit. The block size is adaptive to the current demand.

Bitcoins price always cicles around the amount of 600 dollar and not only the 600 dollar but becuase we already saw that the price of the bitcoin losses to the 500 dollar or something but we will never now what to hit.

I've been looking into Monero recently, and it seems very interesting.
Does anyone accept Monero at this point?
I would invest in some, but Im afraid it will be just another alt-coin that is never used for anything besides exchange trading.

Sorry for lack of updates to this thread; summer is pretty busy and all, and with the lack of "excitement" around the bitcoin price, I haven't been all that driven to update things.

However, this week I thought I should update; so, here's what the graphs look like to the current point in time:

https://i.imgur.com/9oPXWUy.png

Hm.  Not bvery exciting.  What happened to the cycle this time?  Well, let's change the scale of the graph and look again:

https://i.imgur.com/j0UTsPA.png

Wow... much more interesting.  While not the desired highs I think we were all expecting, this cycle certainly seems to be repeating the same pattern as before.  As I have been thinking all along, the price is showing a similar fractal nature to what we see in nature.  In fact, if you look at the size of the scaling on the graphs, we have been reducing the overall scale each time, from 30x -> 10x -> 2x (in terms of actual dollar value).

Also, if we highlight what I am trying to identify as corresponding events in each cycle, it looks like this:

https://i.imgur.com/GAj0YaR.png

What's especially interesting in this is that not only is the amplitude of the cycle decreased, the duration seems to have as well.  I think this can all be attributed to Bitcoin reaching a local saturation point; not that we're anywhere near potential capacity, but we are in terms of current TPS as well as users.  We have reached the chasm, and now need to truly cross it into mainstream if we expect to see significant growth in the future.

However, there is still hope for the outlook; check out the log graph and trendlines below; we have slowed down on growth, but definitely are still growing (and more closely sticking to the exponential growth curve rather than wildly fluctuating):

https://i.imgur.com/bt3QOzo.png



I personally wouldn't expect a large adoption of any other coin than Bitcoin at the moment.  The overall market for crypto is not large enough to support many players at significant levels.  There are always new coins coming around that show potential for various reasons, but unless either they unseat Bitcoin as top dog or the overall market/userbase explodes, I don't think you could expect large adoption of other coins.  Still possibly very good for trading gains if you know what you're doing, but ATM not more beyond that.

Correct bitcoin is like a wheel spinning just because the price up and down so repeatedly, just so happens to the price of bitcoin . So good monetize bitcoin because of its price down and up will have a profit . But I think in recent months have been stable and the price he is just barely less in a few days and return to the previous price .

Thanks again for doing this kind of analysis. I wish there was more out there looking at the fractal nature of price changes. One thing to note however is that even though the pattern of 30-10-2 may have repeated, perhaps the overarching pattern coupled with the fact that fiat always inflates would indicate we're eventually going to be due for another super-cycle of 30 sometime after this one has run its course.

 30x -> 10x -> 2x

so the next one will be what? 0.2x?

that would imply that the parabolic rises are done.

did bitcoin conquer volatility in 7 years?  gold and silver are still experiencing parabolic rises after thousands of years.

this isn't over.

Well there's obviously a pattern here, although it's strange that it's a 900 day cycle. Most stocks have a typical yearly cycle where they drop for one reason or another at a certain time of the year (usually Jan/Feb is stagnant for stocks or they drop after the holidays). I can't find any logical reason as to why a 2.5 year (give or take) cycle.

At the same time, with bitcoin in its infancy this isn't exactly a pattern yet but so far it's looking like some sort of predictions can be made. If bitcoins never deflate (as 21M is the biggest number of total coins that will ever be 'minted') will we see a steady increase of say 2-3% to counter the inflation of the USD? When bitcoins are stable some time far in the future I say yes!

of course they are, because the FED isn't done printing dollars at an exponential rate.

No, I definitely don't think this is over.  As I said above


At best, we probably have a few million users of Bitcoin currently.  That's less than 0.1% of the population; if that's all Bitcoin ever gains in terms of traction, then maybe exponential growth is over.  But if we cross the chasm and reach orders of magnitiude more users, then the future growth will eclipse anything we have seen to date.

And with things like the machine payable web (21 Inc.) and Brave browser coming as practical applications of Bitcoin for people, who knows?  And there are of course tons of more potential future applications, most of which haven't even been imagined yet...

Stocks are very prone to seasonal things, like shopping tendancies, seasonal travel, annual earnings reports, etc.  Why is Moore's law 18 months?  Why do fashion trends tend to repeat every 20 years?  Why are sunspots on an 11-year cycle?  I think something on the order of 900 days is reasonable, as it is long enough for sentiment to come full cycle, from optimism to hype to pessism to despair to acceptance and then back to optimism (or something like that).  I'm not a psychologist, but it seems reasonable.  Also couple in technology evolution cycles and VC interest; both of those are not tied to the calendar, and would likely have periods longer than a year if there is indeed any cycle to them at all.

I think the perception that Bitcoin price should follow annual trends is the mistake; there is nothing about Bitcoin adoption that has anything to do with the time it takes for the Earth to go around the sun.  Humans tend to think of things in yearly cycles, but many other things are not tied to that.

a major pump Bitcoin fit if there is a larger cycle, ie, 3 or 4 cycles of 900 days formed a major cycle.

They both rely on microtransactions, and bitcoin isn't ready for micro-transactions and will never be ready if these stubborn folks won't get past the whole


This whole 1MB nonsense is damaging bitcoin so hard.

Can't see any way around it for the 21 Inc. applications, but Brave can cache a lot of transactions off chain and then do bulk charges against a wallet, if necessary.  So it may not be held up.  But,


Agreed.  1000%.  Can't understand how anyone can think that artificially crippling a system is good for innovation.  I wonder how many potential apps are stalled simply because the bandwidth isn't there?  And as for all the arguments against increasing it - they are all just theories until the limit is lifted.  Remember - Bitcoin is still beta software; this is the time to see what happens when necessary changes are made.  The system is resilient, and all the players have a vested interest in it's success.  If someone really wanted to kill it, they would attempt it no matter what the block size was; trying to hide behind a paper wall doesn't make the danger go away.

The price will fluctuate and is very dependent on public perception when it comes to the investment potential for bitcoin. I think we will still see good gains over the long run.

Off chain applications are not a valid solution, will bring new problems, the solution is just increasing the mb limit, as simple as that, this whole history reminds me when "Shortsighted people once laughed at the idea of a $1,000 Bitcoin. Today they laugh at the idea of a 1,000MB block." -Roger Ver

I think bitcoin is getting dumped by crypto users for other altcoins and due to lack of big number new users or lets say whales, bitcoin has not crossed it's all time highs even after halving. We have seen altcoins such as Monereo making good moves.

And this block size debate along with hacking news (Bitfinex) has it's ill effect on bitcoin. Nevertheless, I am positive on the growth and adoption of bitcoin and Cryptos as a whole in the coming years.

Altcoin prices are what they are because of Bitcoin price, biggest crypto/fiat exchanges use mostly Bitcoin.

If price of bitcoin doesn't fluctuate traders will not actively trade bitcoin in daily basis. Price needs to get dumped and pumped and same goes on for traders to make profit on day trading.

Hacknoid, first of all, thanks for the long-waited update of the cycle charts. That looks great, isn't it?
I guess it was to be expected that the peak price ratio will get lower quickly in each cycle - that is what we wrote in the very beginning.
But I am still surprised how quickly it went down. 2x only already in the third cycle implicates that we are at the very important crossroads.
We need a break fundamentally that will cause new money to flow into Bitcoin or otherwise we run out of fuel for further exponential growth. That latter option is also something that is very typically observe in the nature with exponential growths. Take the colony of bacteria for example. They grow nearly exponentially as long as there is food to feed their population. As soon as there are too many bacteria relative to food supply, the exponential population growth breaks.

My pleasure... It's both interesting and boring that the cycles seems to be repeating once again, at a lower scale.  It at least has tempered my expectations for a meteoric rise again, at least for the moment.  Overall trend still looks good, and definitely still bullish, which is great.


That's a great analogy;  you are right - nature always balances these things out, and anything that lives in a confined environment will slow it's growth once it reaches the maximums resources it has available.  (Have you ever seen a goldfish that lives in a big pond?  They grow huge!  But they never get that big living in a fishbowl..)

I agree we have reached a local saturation point in Bitcoin; whether LN and SW take enough of the load off the filling blocks remains to be seen, but even that (and others) are merely short term solutions (LN is not really limited in extra capacity it provides, but is not going to be useful in all cases).  Hopefully the community will embrace all options so that Bitcoin is no longer seen as being limited in capacity, and a whole new realm of people and companies will embrace the tech.

Even with current limitations, however, there still seems to be room for price rise.  However I also don't expect the exponential growth to return until a fundamental change occurs.  Here's hoping...

So back in September I posted an updated trend; the repeating cycle pattern may to be breaking down (I'll have to look into it a bit more carefully to see), however, I also posted this:


I thought it would be interesting to post an updated image on the trend line to see how it is going now compared to what the trend would say; to make it clearer to see where we are, I kept the same logarithmic trend line but changed the range of the vertical scale, and put it back to linear.  This is what you get:

https://i.imgur.com/nHEzOYj.png

From the looks of that, we are exactly in line with what the trend has been indicating for this cycle.  And notice the R-squared value is getting even better!

Thanks for the update my dear friend Hacknoid, but I've a strong feeling that the above chart will be violated as we will get towards $900+-$1K+ before 12/31  ;)

hope so, i just don't think there is a pattern like what hacknoid stated above
the pattern might will not remain the same, especially if we talking about bitcoin
the demands always be flickle notably when the price as high as now
most people will think to sell rather than to keep buying more , this situation drive price to dropped, by the end of this year before 12/31 i guess there will be a high drop.

 ;)  I sure hope so - would be nice.  But I'll take a rise to $1k+ sometime in the first half of 2017... that's fine with me. 

Nice to see you're still around, Fak - still missing the "everything bullish" news items!



Things have definitely been changing... as I indicated back in the spring, all indicators are that something is/will be changing this cycle.  I don't know if that means a (temporary) stagnation, mass adoption or something else, but the overall cycles of price keep repeating, sometimes on different scales in time or value.

Let's also not forget that there is a natural volatility to the market (as there is with all markets) - nothing goes up in a straight line.  However, in 7 years of trading, Bitcoin price has been rising overall.  The number of people that own/invest in Bitcoin is still quite tiny, and as it gains ground worldwide it will continue to increase in price. 

I actually found 2 places to use BTC in the wild this week, just by chance.  We haven't crossed the chasm yet, but we are definitely firming up the technology and the committed user base.  Again, just hope one way or another block size issues are resolved.

And just to leave on a positive note, here's a happy image for you:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cx8jwPxWIAAh_s1.jpg

(credit https://twitter.com/BestBitcoinEx/status/801398588446220288)

bitcoin prices always move up and down quickly. it is difficult to predict the price of bitcoin. because bitcoin prices are influenced by many things can suddenly happen.

the reason why i usually having a confusion on trading my bitcoins because the price is not stable i dont know if next week the bitcoin would be rise again justlike the other day . and i usually regretting it when the bitcoin gets higher and im already done trading it to someone. :(

Bitcoin has always had, and probably always will have, short term volatility.  That's why day trading is so hard; I can't do it, nor do I pretend that I could.  Long term, however, while there are no guarantees, the price has gone up over time.  I mean months-years.  We are close to historic all-time highs, and there is only a relatively short period during Bitcoin's history when it was higher, back during the spike in 2013-2014.

Bottom line - you should be happy with the price you get when you trade, because otherwise you'll almost always have seller's regret.  Or just buy and hold!  ;D

Yes all traders who sell bitcoin at the current price range will regret sooner or later because actually this price range is buying point. Better to keep buying and holding whatever you can and just wait/watch your money growing in terms of fiat.  ;D

Yeah, this seems to be the time to buy because the days are getting close to the year end. The price is expected to increase, but this rise will be a big one than the minor fluctuations happening often. Also price movement of bitcoin might sustain with the big increase of year end if big adoption takes place by the year start 2017.

Would you be willing to do something similar to this, but using market capitalisation instead of price alone? Maybe even try a different starting point?

Sounds interesting... yeah, sure - I'll definitely do it up. Might not have time until after Christmas though, it's pretty busy this time of year.  But I love numbers and charts, so I'll see what I can do.  Remind me around the new year if I haven't gotten to it before then!

I think looking at that from the POV of the same price cycles as I did is interesting, but also looking at cycles divided by the halving events might be telling (especially for market cap). 

If it helps, in the lower right of this link you can actually download a CSV that has the total bitcoins from every day, so you could feasibly do the calculation to get market cap this way:
https://blockchain.info/charts/total-bitcoins?timespan=all&showDataPoints=true

hello
i need some help

i need to cash out my bitcoins this weeks (actually was last Friday)
but i was expecting that price get up after couple of days so i waited  but now , i m lost

do you think it s gonna down for more days or get back up ?, now it s looks like it will go down for longer, or a m i wrong

finally i decide to panic sell  ;D

Don't sell in panic, why? These fluctuations are completely normal and part of Bitcoins volatility. Differences are not that big. At the moment Bitcoin is around 744$ and probably will stay somwhere in between 720-750 in the next days.
And do not do anything emotional related to Bitcoin trading, keep the cool head.

 :-[dam and price is up now
problem was if i waited to much and price still more down , i had to mine 1-2 day more too have enough to cash out what i needed

This is just a nature of bitcoin that the price will keep rising and i think we will see huge price increase again soon before christmass just like last year this is just my own speculation and experience.. and i hope that it will happen soon the same as last year.. ..

Short term, fluctuations of up to ~2%, plus or minus, in a day is normal and can always be expected (same goes for stocks).  In Bitcoin, they are nearly impossible to reliably guess (too many factors, and too small a market cap/liquidity).  It's not a game for the faint of heart, and is certainly not an investment strategy - Bitcoin is not a get rich quick scheme.  It may not even be a get rich slow scheme; there are no guarantees.  However, historically, the price has trended up over longer time periods - months and years.  If you plan to invest and get out, I would say if you wait 6 months you will most likely be ahead in price of where you bought at (again, no guarantees).  Pick an exit price that you're happy with and take it and be happy.   Or hold as long as you comfortably can and enjoy the roller coaster.  Either way, there will always be opportunity for regrets at some point (should have sold sooner, should have held longer, didn't buy enough, etc.), but try not to have them.

So let see what is happening with bitcoin price in Christmas day, and also it is a last event of this year, so after it, still bitcoin remain $700 to $750, than i think in the year bitcoin couldn't be cross $800. And if we are talking about the next year, So should wait the Christmas day, after it we see the bitcoin price position.     

I think not the only this one can increase bitcoin's price. the demand to bitcoin can do it as well. The demand is growing now. Every day bitcoin attracts new users of any age of people. And demand is growing and the price is growing as well.

Where we are, at around $750 today, reminds me a lot of where we were in October 2013 at around $120. An ATH of $3500-$6000 seems very possible within the next 2-3 months.

The higher market cap is making things move slower this time around IMO. No one sitting on a couple million extra USD is like "I need to convert this to BTC tomorrow." They're just sitting there soaking up the liquidity, occasionally dumping a bit to shake weak hands and buy back lower. This hasn't been the case with prior runups because the order of magnitude was lower, and I believe that it is effecting the time scale on your charts. That said, just because it has been slow to this point doesn't mean it can't pickup in a liquidity crunch.

I would be very interested to see this analysis done based on market cap rather than price of individual coins, and maybe using some kind of log(market cap) multiplier on the timescale to reflect the latency moving money out of the banking system into the market as the market cap increases.

From the desk of Numerai Revisited:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkLs9nVHv28&feature=youtu.be&t=168

https://i.imgur.com/BJVG9n1.png


With all due respect to Numerai [and Norman Packard], something doesn't smell right.

e.g. ...

<in the voice of the entity (I) who created/runs the "very special form of encryption thingy">: I love Kellogg cereal. Today, I will buy X amount of Kellogg shares knowing full well that within 48 hours its price is gonna rise thanks to the use of my "very special form of encryption thingy" blasting data to my special astute investors.

<three days later>

Fuck me in the ass! Like WTF, only 11.4% profit? Fuck Kellogg's! Today I'm going to buy X shares of World Wrestling Entertainment AND Premier Exhibitions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premier_Exhibitions), then tweak my "very special form of encryption thingy" just a tad prior to blasting the el pumpo to, again, my special astute investors. According to my calculations performed on my Casio calculator, I should have no prob recognizing no less than 18.1043% on the ROI meter.

So... interesting; I came across this this morning in my twitter feed:

https://www.tradingview.com/chart/BCHAIN/MKPRU/nvcHNfKD-The-235-Day-Cycle-somehow-is-Still-Not-Dead/

Looking at it, there definitely seems to be something happening for at least a local maximum every 235 days or so... this comes pretty close to my 900-day cycle (which is strictly peak-to-peak), so I'm starting to look into maybe a 940-day super-cycle, divided into four 235 day phases or sub-cycles.  This would still correspond to a new ATH reached each cycle (we again are in cycle 3 and have not yet reached this point), but would help to predict local maxima.  It also falls away from the strict interpretation of where the peaks and valleys are, but keeps the concept of the cycle.  I'll be looking into this more probably in a few weeks.

Interestingly, my initial finding (in previous thread) of a 670 (later refined to 694) day cycle is very close to a multiple of 235 days (705 days), which is still in agreement in principle.  In fact, changing from a 670 to 900 day cycle is a delta of 230 days, or almost exactly the length of one of these sub-cycles.

BTW, for those asking about analysis based on market cap: I have done initial review, and the trending is not very different.  The cycle trends stay the same, although the long-term graphs look a bit different.  I'll finish up some work on those also, sometime soon, once Christmas is passed.

Here is my very noob long term Elliott wave count. Does it make any sense? What does it mean? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1733053

I noticed we've had some crazy increases recently and just wanted to say that the two algorithms of my own here that I posted earlier in this thread have been thoroughly trashed now due to these recent price increases. Unless the market is heavily overbought, I have no way to use them or anything I've worked on to justify the present price. It's not uncommon to see some drastic volatility in Bitcoin, but even my estimates would have never predicted we'd see $1k or more this early. The scale of the increases is just too high for Bitcoin to be closing in on its all-time high this soon. Even my most accelerated version had us not hitting parity till after April of 2017. Unless there's a huge sell off or stagnation in price for the next four months, I'm not sure my algorithm will be anything close to legit.

That could be a good thing, maybe it means the price is going much higher much sooner, and it could mean hacknoid's 900 day cycles could be more accurate, even if they did kind of lag early on.

Good read: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-02/bitcoin-surges-above-1000-china-unveils-new-capital-controls

So I have done some more analysis, based on this article on TradingView; if I extend each cycle into 940 days, and make the phases 235 days, they look like this (from this point, I am taking to calling each 235-day grouping a "cycle" and the  larger ones "supercycles")

https://i.gyazo.com/a5f2390edb4cf93a1c91cb54ba3e2d72.png
https://i.gyazo.com/87554298d1442fff34fe7b8de7e8100a.png
https://i.gyazo.com/521f0e2b980e53eb6ca2984059008a5c.png

Now what I see here definitely corresponds to a supercycle in cycles 1-4 and again in 5-8, but things have changed in 9-12.  Why?  Well, looks like it could be the change to a strong bear market following the China crackdown/Mt. Gox debacle at the start of 2014 (cycles 7-8).  I think what that did is break the supercycle trend and it had to start all over again once the market sentiment changed bullish again (starting at the end of cycle 8).  So, keeping the same 235-day cycles and omitting cycle 9, the third supercycle now looks like:

https://i.gyazo.com/62e6e984300d18c23e86a7ae789afb0b.png

Now note that the start and end of each cycle is completely arbitrary at this point, but that doesn't matter when it comes to comparing cycles and supercycles (the length is what matters, and that stays the same).  Using this formulation and comparing just the supercycles, it looks like this:

https://i.gyazo.com/35e311b102e266f998768d369f899337.png

So there you go.  I think the cycles still exist.  I'll look into playing with the ending points of cycles and seeing what more I can glean, but looks good for now.

Thank you hacknoid, that is some very good analysis and the charts are great.
If I'm reading this right, we are in the middle of a strong peak which might actually fall to the $700 to $800 range in the next couple of months?

That would actually be perfect. I would be able to cash some out for fiat or trade for alt-coins and then re-buy when everyone sells their Bitcoin a few hundred dollars cheaper than they are right now.
Or am I reading this all wrong?

Well, first let me give the usual disclaimer - past results are not a guarantee of future performance!  As much as the price seems to follow cycles, don't bet on anything; anyone that is predicting the price is purely speculating, so we just have to wait and see.

Now, that being said, my look of things seems to indicate we are on the uptrend of a strong peak; following the 235-day cycle theory, there should be a local peak around February 16th, 2017.  Now, that could mean that we drop down before that then go up again (possibly not as high as we already are), or that we continue the trend up and up past the previous ATH and the Valentine's Day peak will be even higher.  Following the theory that we are in a supercycle, then that would be the likely outcome.  But I'll also point out a few other things:

• One of the most prescient observer's that I have seen in a long time, Vinny Lingham, has indicated in his latest post (https://vinnylingham.com/bitcoin-2017-a-currency-devaluation-hedge-for-emerging-markets-849931d71f6f#.mjbatdmao) that Bitcoin could reach $3000 before the end of 2017; he's been an excellent reader of the market and Bitcoin, and has been remarkably correct for 2016, so I would put faith in his prediction.
• In each of the cycles I outlined, when we are in a bullish trend the cycle ends higher than it started (though this would be affected by choice of start "dates" of a cycle).  Indicates to me that we will likely not drop back below $900 probably
• Each uptrend in Bitcoin's history has followed what I refer to as the "Bitcoin heartbeat", where after the peak is reached, we correct to a midpoint that reaches (as low as) halfway from the starting price to the peak price; in this current beat, the starting price was around $800, meaning the current corrected price might reach $950 (possibly dipping below that, very temporarily); the higher the peak is, the higher the corrected price would also be
• We are just re-entering mainstream media coverage, meaning there could be more demand coming in soon from new buyers.  We will see.
• I believe we are only now seeing the result of the latest halving coming into play; I believe many people held onto coins from well before the last halving in the expectation of higher prices, and have since started to liquidate them during the latest price rise.  However that supply is rapidly running out (maybe already has), meaning demand is exceeding supply even more as time goes on.

At this point there is no way in hell that I personally would want to be in alts; there may be potential upside much greater than Bitcoin, but you would either have to be a top trader or else manipulate those small markets in order to expect to see those gains - or else be incredibly lucky.  But it seems to me Bitcoin gains would be much more likely to achieve, even if it wasn't on the order of 5x-10x like alts could give.

That's my current take; we are rapidly approaching uncharted territory with new ATHs and prices not seen in years.  So nobody knows what happens, but personally I still feel very bullish.

Well, the trend indicated we could hit a local maximum around Valentine's Day, and here we are trending up again as we are 2 weeks out.  With all the financial and political instability now, looks like we could be heading to a peak again right around that time!   ;D

I do not think it is because of valentine's day. You can check the price chart, it will show like bitcoin value is increasing in the month of November, December and first part of January. Then we can see the price pump in the month of April. Dips we cannot identify it due to btc price volatility.

I still hold that March/April (and maybe a bit into May) is going to be a key period as well. There's also reason to see this politically as it's becoming more likely that Brexit is going to be "official" with Article 50 around then, Netherlands vote on exit, France's elections. Then by August we'll have Germany's elections, too, so it's important to note that several of the polls aren't really in EU's favor right now and will likely be very much not in their favor considering all these elections by April.

Your great on analyzing but you think it could be happen again.. since almost movement of bitcoin price are same movement but in different price .
Well we there is no exact time that the price could be the same spikes but theres no problem for trying it and set own margin and make some profit..
This is what happen right the price are gradually increasing just like before.. the spike still same but the date are not..
Lets hope that we can make a good result this coming months..

I think this now is right time and good time to selling in bitcoin
if last month, you buy in level bitcoin price under 800 dollar, this now every one bitcoin can get profit over 200 dollar

Even if its a 20$ that's a good profit as the price increase happens without any work. So people who have been holding long for a increase in price can sell and cash it out to buy when the price falls back to a lower price than the current price.

I am making bitcoins only from the campaign. And I as many others I would like to cash out my money while the price is high and do not skip that chance again, how I did on this New Year. But the button "send to my BTC balance" (those coins that YoBit have paid to me for commenting) doesn't work. Ironically. I will go crazy if they fix it when the price will fall back again.

This can be considered a good profit, considering the amount of money invested, but it would be wrong to say that this was obtained without any work, because the best decisions requires a great mental effort, and time, especially when it comes to the cryptocurrency market, where events that are hard to predict happen and significantly change the direction of price in the market.

Around these days we have top in cycle of 235 days.

Yeah, the theory maybe just another from many ways to create one but this is good thing obviously.
I know we can't predict what exactly will happen in the future by past events, as conditions in every country may different from last year. Every positive regulations about bitcoin and blockchain upgrade will affect on bitcoin, but nothing for sure which we just speculate and examine the best option to keep ours wealth remain safe.

Lots of things coming up, which is good.  Don't forget the potential for ETF March 11 (not a given, but big if it happens).

It's crunch time for the 235-day theory.  If it holds, right now we should be topping out (locally), and any time now we could expect a fallback.  Clearly we won't/haven't hit the huge spike at this time, but the theory predict a local maxima around this time.  If we continue more-or-less up over the next week or more, then I would say it kinda breaks this theory.  I'd give it up to a week though to see if noticeable maximum reached. 

But a 940ish-day super-cycle could still be in play even if the 235-day theory doesn't pan out, right?

You mentioned that I had forgotten about the ETF in the idea of a late first quarter or early second quarter price increase and that was wrong for me to forget about it. Good catch.

I think the reason why speculation on the Internet is that the ETF will "fail" is because it's going to be precisely the opposite and some folks want to use that "surprise" aspect to their advantage (the underwriters). It seems really silly for the actual price of coin to be increasing at a time when the expected news is bad. Even "buy the rumor, sell the news" doesn't explain these latest increases unless it is someone who wants desperately to buy more than what is readily available on the markets. Maybe the ETF will just the be the start of the next major hype cycle or bubble. The bubble to put us to rest somewhere much higher than where we are at today.

Hey Raize,

Hope you are doing well my friend.

Since you are online, could I please know your opinion about the COIN ETF ?

I say it will be approved for a lot of reasons.

hacknoid, can you post updated chart? i guess its just sideways but i still want to see  ;D

It seems that the 235 day cycle spread a little

Sorry for the absence... below is the latest updated graph:

https://i.imgur.com/z9e7FeH.png

Noting that on this graph the 235-day local maximum occurs around the second bar of each segment (Cycle 11, in this case), it's pretty close, but has drifted.  However, that was indeed the highest point achieved in the cycle as of that time; there was a period of horizontal movement, the the dip.  Now we're back on the upswing again (hopefully).

Well generated. We are now in the upswing as stated. Now once again we might get a horizontal move in the price increase rather than a dip, because from the start of the year the price of bitcoin is moving forward without any external influence like the Chinese bitcoin market in the past. So the real increase with respect to the user base is quite good for a positive growth.

But it seems to me that after such growth there will be an adjustment. And soon we will see the price drop. But do not panic - this is the normal state of the cryptocurrency.

Thank you for the price prediction and i hope that the price of bitcoins would reach 2000$ by the end of august,even if it does not then we can expect that the price of bitcoins will only reach upto 2000$ by the end of december.

It's been a while since I updated the exponential trend, so I took another look at it this week.  Here are the previous posts from September and November 2016, for reference:


And here is the updated graph:

https://i.imgur.com/13nkVK8.png

It amazing to me that it's been two years now, and the exponential trend is actually getting closer to being a perfect fit! 

In September, the r^2 value was 0.874 for an exponential increase of 0.23% per day.
In November, the r^2 value was 0.898 for an exponential increase of 0.22% per day
Now, in April, the r^2 value is 0.944 for an exponential increase of 0.24% per day

Remember, r^2=1.0 is a perfect fit.  So over the past two years we are remarkably close to a constant price increase per day of 0.24% (on average).  The fluctuations are actually deviating less from that increasing rate.

Bullish!  8)

For speculation purposes, IF we continue the same exponential trend, we are looking for the following price targets (note we are a bit above where the trendline says we should be right now):


 1 Jun 2017 : $1,243
 1 Jul 2017 : $1,335
 1 Aug 2017 : $1,436
 1 Sep 2017 : $1,546
 1 Oct 2017 : $1,660
 1 Nov 2017 : $1,786
 1 Dec 2017 : $1,918

 1 Jan 2018 : $2,064
23 Mar 2018 : $2,500
 8 Jun 2018 : $3,000
 8 Oct 2018 : $4,006

 1 Jan 2019 : $4,899

 1 Jan 2020 : $11,630

 1 Jan 2021 : $27,675


 8)

Now we're talking ;D
I hope your prophecies can become reality bro, good work :)

I think this is a good speculation from hacknoid. Normally we see the price bump in the month of December especially when we near to Christmas. If the price will go to 2000$ or more in Next January. I could make some profit from the bitcoin I have hold in my desktop wallet. But 2021 speculation seems to more expectation than satoshi speculates ;)

I confirm this prediction.
Its known.

Woow that looks really good

Close friend & brother, Hacknoid :)

What if I told you that we've hit today (05/01/2017) the 1st of Aug. target and 1st of Sept. on Finex ;)

I think you need to be a better speculator brother :P

Hey there, Fakhoury!  Hope things are going well with you.


Yes, we definitely are well above the trendline now.  However, this may indicate a correction incoming at some point (I'm looking at where Fibonacci numbers play into upper limits), but the trend is still nice!  I'm not worried.  The nice thing about making predictions like this is that there are three scenarios:

1) The price stays above the trend, and everyone is happy
2) The price stays at the trend, which proves the trend and still looks good
3) The price is below the trend, but the trend shows reason to be optimistic.

So the way I look at it, it's all good news!

Here's something also interesting... extrapolating that same price trend back into history, since 12 Feb 2013 (more than 4 years now), we have never been more than 20% below the trendline.  Applying a 20% contingency to the above numbers would mean the following potential lower bounds:


   Date       Target    80% Lower Bound
 1 Jun 2017   $1,243      $   994
 1 Jul 2017   $1,335      $ 1,068
 1 Aug 2017   $1,436      $ 1,149
 1 Sep 2017   $1,546      $ 1,236
 1 Oct 2017   $1,660      $ 1,328
 1 Nov 2017   $1,786      $ 1,429
 1 Dec 2017   $1,918      $ 1,534

 1 Jan 2018   $2,064      $ 1,651
23 Mar 2018   $2,500      $ 2,000
 8 Jun 2018   $3,000      $ 2,400
 8 Oct 2018   $4,006      $ 3,205

 1 Jan 2019   $4,899      $ 3,919

 1 Jan 2020   $11,630     $ 9,304

 1 Jan 2021   $27,675     $22,140 

Also, in the 1541 days since 12 Feb 2013, we have only had

• 50 days that were 15% or more below trendline (3% of all the days)
• 136 days that were 10% or more below trendline (9%)
• 301 days that were 5% or more below trendline (20%)
• 382 days that were below trendline (25%)

Bitcoin's price is now skyrocketing. Therefore, it is very likely that bitcoin will reach 2000 dollars soon. If, of course, after such rapid growth there will be no precipitous decline

At this moment we are in a pump phase, but nobody really knows what is happening. There is still a debate about scaling bitcoin with large blocks etc.
So I think this pump will only live short, and we can expect it to go down again.

Wow those predictions are quite good, and some numbers where hit as early as today, though I think todays price is somekind of a pump and I am expecting a price crash later.   I am looking forward to see those numbers happen one by one  and I believe that this price will be reach earlier than predicted.

I'm pretty sure as well that we will actually hit all those numbers ahead of the forecast time, but as you say, price will likely correct afterward.  The trend over the past two years has been quite close to the trend line, but still varied +/- 20% at times, which is actually much less than historical deviation, which is good.  (Actually, we've gone up to 40% above the trendline over the past two years, but only corrected back to just under the trendline after).

I'll be happy if the trend continues on this rate, and if we don't drop below 20% below the forecast price on any given date.

Nicely done there bro thanks for informing us,
Good analysis and pretty much interesting put up so much time and effort in this .

If there is no attack on the each size of the block increase, I think the price will rise gradually.

Your decision to eliminate cycle 9 seems right. We are seeing a pump in cycle 11.

Do you think if the pattern is repeated, the climb will end soon? Less than a month?

It's hard to get a good read this time.  Believe it or not, this actually looks like it's not a bubble, despite the significant price rise.  We haven't seen anywhere near the rapid rises we had in previous bubbles.  The longer we move up gradually, or experience sideways movements, the longer this run can continue.  So at this point, I see no end in sight.  Big question in my mind is what happens as we approach August 1st - we could experience some significant changes as we get closer, maybe part way through July.

Long term, the trend over the last 4 years has been a rise of about 2% per week, on average.  Currently we are about 220% of the forecast price of $1276, as predicated by that trend.  While high, I don't think that's enough to result in a significant crash.  Corrections yes, but growth still quite likely.

Have you updated the cycles to know if this rise is the main bubble of the cycle and how long can it last? 1 month, 2 month...

What about the idea that the time period scales as well?

Take cycle 1, toss it out. (period 1)
Take cycles 2-3.5, graph it. (period 1.5)
Take cycles 3.5-5.5, toss it out. (period 2)
Take cycles 5.5-8, graph it. (period 2.5)
Take cycles 8-11, toss it out (period 3)
Start the graph from 11-14.5. (period 3.5)

I think you'll notice similar graphs and you won't be thinking about it all as linearly as we have in the past. I've been pleased with my second model's performance since the tweaks I made, but I think I can't really call it a fractal analysis anymore as I made more subjective changes than I wanted to. I think it's safe to say no one really knows, though I still think we'll hit 10k or more before the next tax season. Part of me thinks it could happen before August 1st and the UASF 148 goes into place, but I guess we'll see.

I've been watching it, but haven't come to any conclusions yet.  It's interesting that the significant rise is much more gradual than we've previously had, which I think is good.

We may be on a longer trend up swing, maybe even to the point of being able to sustain that growth long term, possibly indefinitely..?  I'll hopefully post some updated analysis in the next week or so.

Technical analysis on Bitcoin is like technical analysis on penny stocks - worthless as the price can easily be manipulated by a single or a small group of investors, is very subject to news events, and the market is too small and immature.

Ultimately, Bitcoin has been one of the truest experiments in financial circles.  Been largely left to evolve on it's own.  I don't doubt that whales do buy and sell to affect price, but I don't believe all prices trending is due to that.  As I stated in the beginning of the thread, I think there's mostly organic growth, which is why you can see patterns. 

it certainly was easier to manipulate years ago, but it's getting harder and harder to do that now.

UPDATE:

Just to get back to sanity check in all this redness, the long term trend was saying this is where we should  be today, 15 June 2017:


   Date       Target        80% Lower Bound
 15 Jun 2017  $1,285          $  1028


At current weighted price of  $2,337.11, we are at 181.86% of forecast value.

Big support is 1300 $ ?

Price cycle of bitcoin is the same most of the time, maybe the price increase and decrease time may vary. It never happens to create a continued growth or decline in the value, so in my thinking price moves happen in a cyclic process is the true fact.

Hacknoid, I wanted to follow up with you about my $10k projection by the end of 2017. If we are, in fact, in a supercycle, do you think that's still reasonable given what we've already seen this year?

At the start of the year I was guessing 10K by end of year, but by April I'd downgraded that to 8K.  I think we'll see 10K within a month or so of 2018 though.

I think with the current price of Bitcoin, the highest price of Bitcoin can be between $7,000 and $8,000 in the end of this year. However, I do not think the price of Bitcoin will stop at this highest price, I also thought it can continue to increases more in 2018.

You can see the bullish cycle from last year until today of Bitcoin, if you are trading follow the cycle of every year, you can see the price of Bitcoin has started this bullish trend since 2015. However, the Bitcoin price always has troubles and the correction of the price because the Bitcoin community do not have enough power to make its value increases more. But in this year, by the growth of the cryptocurrency market, Bitcoin has succeeded to kept its value grow more till today :)