Bitcoin Forum

https://i.imgur.com/fAgTH7U.png

Emphasis on the red dot.  I would also like to hear some of your comments on this.  Thanks.

Ofcourse there are market cycles and you have to figure out where in a cycle we are.

People have been saying we are in the denial phase for a long time, but I actually still think we are entering a new phase after a 2 year long phase from euphoria to depression. In my opinion we have passed the hope and releif phase again with the recent surge to 500 and are now back in the optimism phase. It got a bit dented with the news from Hearn though, but that doesn't derail too far from this grah.

Also, it doesn't mean that the cycle is as linear as your graph shows though. It doesn't have to end up where it started to make a cycle right? It could also start the optimism phase at say 100 and end the cycle at 150. The graph would be slightly tilted, but the shape can be retained.

I have almost the same thinking, that's why I'm asking if this isn't denial or something.

no, i believe that was in the downtrend from 400-600 when we were at 1200, now we are between depression and hope, there is even a word to describe it?

So you don't think the recent pump to 500+ is the peak?  If no, then wouldn't that also mean that we're in a state of denial?

Triple bottom @150
Longterm is up now!

we're on the way to the state of depression from my pov. capitulation was last year when we're at ~250 and almost goes to ~150 . despondency is just about to be over with the media cooling down.

that or maybe we were stuck at hope since the beginning of 2015.

I think the comming block halving is what makes people believe that the price will go up and there will be a pre block halving pump bringing the price to a new ATH this year. I am not that optimistic, but I believe it's definitely possible to see a price of at least $600 this year.

We have seen these kind of images showing the different market states/emotions when we were sub $100. As long as the majority of the people believe in the price going higher, we can surely achieve a higher price. If there wasn't the block halving comming up, I would probably not be this optimistic.

I think were in a wider range at the moment as we all differ in terms of what we have as belief so my answer would be no were not in denial state. We have past that some time ago and at the moment were more like in the range of capitulation stage, up until Hope stage (Vary depending on what I've seen most say so far.

is the mental barrier more than the peak, like 300 was the mental barrier for 10 months stright, i think we are more in a combination of state, than one single state alone

it could be a bit of denial plus something else, the market is "undecided" right now

I've been a lot of reading old posts here. Euphoria was late 2013. I didn't see much of the same when it hit 500. People seemed pleased and relieved that it was doing something but they weren't jumping up and down with excitement.

Do such dramatic cycles apply when there's not really a whole lot happening? I don't feel euphoric or hopeful or in denial. My feeling is that it's gonna go up and down some. It'll take a lot more for true emotion to kick in.

We could be in denial, the prices are going down little by little despite the positive hopes of the community which could mean that the whales are not doing anything to prevent the slow bleeding or they could be selling as well to create the downward push. If only the community does not have faith, we might already be in the $320 area. Low price are attractive to buy though so the whales must be allowing the prices to go down so they can increase their holdings.

I think so. Bitcoin has go down a lot and recovers from the lows. It will go up from here to much higher value.

if you just look at the long term growth, then you can see that bitcoin has been increasing nicely. peaks come and go and same goes up for the lows that we reach several times a year. just keep your eyes pointed towards the long term charts and you'll be fine.

I think we are still muddling around in despondency and depression, with occasional small spikes of hope before falling back into depression.

Optimism would be $800+ :D Anything else is just everyday Bitcoin and pretty meaningless.

I don't think anything much will happen until the block size war is resolved. And that could take years if we have to wait for deployment of the Lightning Network. Just hodl tight, guys.

Nope, ANY price compromised of 3 figures, so thats 100 to 999, is an instant steal. Anyone that has a functional brain can known the potential of Bitcoin and sees how 6 billion marketcap is an insta-buy all day-every day. The market is so damn tiny right now, and it has so much potential, that it doesn't matter where you buy, you are making money by buying Bitcoin, period. You just have to wait for the rest of the world to catch up in a couple of years.

Emotion may be a big influence on some, but I never trade on emotion. It's really my edge to avoid bringing superstition, fear, and euphoria into my mathematical decisions. 

where you been the last 18 months!?

we're depression/hope!

Probably a little in denial as some are still suggesting that now is the buy time. Market price have peaks and valleys and we're not in a good place at the moment but it's not something worth crashing for. The price could still go down as most profiteers are going to altcoins nowadays. Once the altcoin wave is done, they'll be back to bitcoin bringing in money with them.

Where do you think we are now in that cycle, of course with regards to the coming halving. I suppose we're still at optimism?

@OP: What is your time perspective?
If we talk about daily trading and maximum 2-3 months, then maybe yes. Otherwise if we take the big picture, we just ended the long bear that started at Mt. Gox.
Therefore we are between Depression and Hope. And that would explain a lot why you started this topic.

According to Hearn, we will be in denial. And it is possible we are, but I want to think I am still in "hope"

I guess I'd put myself in hope at the moment but if price goes down back to depression a bit longer

I'm not sure any of that applies to bitcoin--those market cycles apply to business, i.e., stocks.  Take a look at precious metals.  Gold and silver don't follow anything that resembles that, or if they do the cycle is extremely long.  And if bitcoin does obey market cycles then I'm totally confused as to where we're at.  Seems like bitcoin just cycles up and down, sometimes very quickly.

This is of course dependent on your time frame as a trader or investor.

Judging from my point of view the $460 - $500 USD price was a peak.
The price has been declining since. So then, yes this could be the denial phase.

If so, then that means it could go down further...

 :P https://i.imgur.com/fAgTH7U.png

^^^^^
Good one, I wish I had this idea! :D
Coming soon, the fear phase... ;)

Yes I like that. Very clever. :D

Fear phase at ~320?

I reached panic a few minutes ago, so... yeah. Imma buy tomorrow. See how it works out.

I would say somewhere between hope and relief. I think we already hit the bottom and while we haven't had the price skyrocket yet it is an upward trend

This is exactly what I had in mind!  I will post this in the OP.

gotta test 320 again before we know this last uptrend wasnt a suckers rally! so if you flip that chart I would say we are in the fear zone of an upward trend (Bear Trap)

I have the same thought.  But that's what made me ask myself if this is me in denial or not...

Now that the new market cycle pic almost closely represents reality, people tend to avoid the topic of denial.

I don't think it is a necessary condition to test $320s in order to resume the growth. The support cluster between $400 and $350 looks pretty rock solid and for now I don't see the arguments for breaking $350 support lines. In the most recent attempts bears had thrown all but kitchen sink (Mike's retirement, Cryptsy, etc.), and yet were not able to break $350. Now having said that, I also currently don't see solid arguments for further growth. Meaning, there is the third option: more of sidewards trend. Pretty boring and very exhausting for investors (not to say all the quick guys in this forum), but also part of the game. To me we will stay a little longer while sidewards. There is no such option on your picture, though.

I dont think we're gonna see another capitulation fase again while this ''denial'' situation is just created by the block-size debat.

I take my bet on relief and optimism, the only obstacle before a decent lift-off is the block-size issue, wich is a luxury problem. There is enough brainpower in the BTC pool to solve it.

Block-size fix+incomming halving+Blockchain media fenzy wil trigger a run up...i'm gonna eat my cat food if that doesn't happen.

Always interesting to be reminded of these market psychology - market state profiles, because no matter how many times we see these things, and recognise our own past errors in these schematics, we (or most of us), repeat the same old trader fails, time and time again.

I am not sure whether we can class Bitcoin as a commodity or a currency, but Bitcoin is similar to a commodity in that it has a clear cost of production. Commodities don't generally go much below the cost of production, because beneath a certain price point, it just isn't worth the producers effort to bring the commodity to the market place.

So what is the cost of producing Bitcoin? How much does it cost the miners, who maintain the whole network, to keep their mining farms switched on. That cost greatly varies, depending on who you are, where you are based, and what sort of deal you have with the power company. For miners who are currently in operation, that cost ranges anywhere between $150 - $300. Miners with a greater cost of production than that, would have been forced out the game during 2015, leaving the mining capacity in increasingly fewer hands (so much for decentralised money of freedom - lol). Indeed, it is entirely likely that the big Chinese Miners, deliberately pushed Bitcoin down into the dirt, where only they could breath, in order to shake off the 'weak' competition from their game. Perhaps not a lot unlike what is happening with oil prices today, with the US/West happy up to a point to 'tolerate' Saudi Arabia keeping the market flooded with oil, in order that enemies of Petrodollar hegemony are squeezed, with the idea of forcing them to capitulate thier hands in other key areas.

So, we have had an entire year, of Bitcoin being priced at near production levels, forcing all but the most large scale mining operations out of the game. And we have the halving event just 6 months or so down the road. We have had our 'price war', where the Chinese Bitcoin Cowboys have emerged has clear overall winners, with action on Chinese exchanges now dominating the whole market. With the average cost of production set to double, presuming that Bitcoin isn't going away anytime soon, what must by logical definition happen to the spot price of Bitcoin? Soon, $300 will be the very minimum cost of producing 1 BTC and generally, commodities trade at a premium to production costs.

I believe that there will be more scares to come, and that the $350 low will be breached, and panic selling will ensue. But as per your market pyschology/state diagram, there does indeed come a time, when the bottom is well and truly in and that bottom happened one year ago. What we have now, are the Chinese BTC Cabal, pumping n dumping, swishing coins around to sucker traders in, and then scare them back out of trades, and suck all their wealth from them. 'They' want as few filthy white foreign barbarians getting in on 'their' action at optimal prices as possible. 'They' want us to be buying in, chasing momentum which they will generate.

$650 BTC is a very logical target for many reasons, and whilst I suspect a lot of resitance around here, in the long run, I can see $800 Bitcoin, and perhaps even a spike up to $1000 BTC......but of course, it wouldn't surprise me at all to see $320 BTC in the coming week or two, and a whole lot of doom n gloom surrounding the move down there.


https://www.tradingview.com/x/TJX0KZdl/

So I guess the answer will depend on the market then?  If it goes down sub 300 it's denial, if it continues going up we're at optimism...?  And since no one can really predict the market, how do we really know if it's denial or optimism?

Yep, we're dope! That's where/what we are right now!

Joke aside, we are all in on the beginning wave of a massive monetary takeover, by the people. Unless one is a trader, I don't think one should ever sell one's Bitcoin. Instead we should all start using it, then whatever price it would be wouldn't matter anymore as it would slowly become the new standard currency.

MatTheCat, thanks for this nice analysis. I believe we agree in many points you made, as stated not only in this thread. I also see $500-600, as the target resulting from the halving event, if there is no other support due to the fundamental developments that would influence the adoption. Apart of that, we are driven by Chinese speculators, so it is up to them what is in the cards for the coming months, but I would also expect actions similar to that recent November pump and dump afterwards to repeat.
 

Sub 300$, but above 200$, would still allow a shoehorned bullish scenario. If 200$ will be broken, then very likely a new lower low (than January 2015) will follow and possibly double digits.
Here are the bid sum / ask sum ratios for the last 6 months and 4 exchanges (BTC-E not included, looks more bullish, probably due to Russian capital flight):

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

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

https://i.imgur.com/XjfTfQ6.png

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

As more and more time passes by I think we're all in denial.  The trend is now down.

halving pump happened two months ago.... btc is 18 months from the next pump...... get over it

When the Bitcoin Core decides to adopt higher block size, the price will rise dramatically. It will be at least $600.

I think that is a huge factor right now. The community's inability to come to a consensus on block size is a worrying sign for the year ahead. If we do come to ANY change then I think it will send buy signals.

Maybe this whole thing is a reflection of the fact that humans are unable to reach consensus on pretty much anything that matters.
I think that bitcoin was badly damaged by the 'premature' price spike of 2013, which resulted in too many economic actors and policy makers pressing their case before the software was ready. As far as going forward-who knows.

That was not halving pump, that was a boost in price coinciding with large hashing deployment by Bitmain and Bitfury.

In fact, miners rewards are LOWER now (in $$ per the same hashing power) than they were in September of 2015, despite somewhat higher price (from $225 to 373 now).
Sharp difficulty increases ate all mining rewards and then some. This resulted in ALL miner purchases made in September-October to be projected as unprofitable in the longer run without taking into consideration halving projected in July.

I agree.  But what if that comes 4 - 5 years from now...?  So BTC price will stay at current level or lower?

True, and for the doubters, haven't you guys been here long enough, we've seen lows of down to $200 last year. It's a really complex cycle, a lot of factors blend in and it takes time.

What I'm concerned today is this statement:

"It's proven easier to get a bank to participate in payments standards than a bitcoin community company," by the W3C Web Payments. He further added that "these companies aren’t looking to interoperate, but instead want to dominate."

It's easy to assume that they'll kill BTC if given the chance right now.

That really didn't answer my question.  It's not about doubting..  And your answer makes me think that we are indeed in a state of denial as no one wants to face reality.  Go read the question again.

I think it all depends on how other versions are taken... Block size changes are inevitably coming soon, but perhaps not on the Core client. If Classic is adopted and a fork occurs, then it's about how people perceive that change. If negatively, then we stay flat or go down until Core gets their shit together and we fork back to Core. But then it's two forks, and ain't nobody got fo dat! So more likely imo, if we fork to another development, that will be it, and we all have to deal with the repercussions. Users who are against this change, will leave and Bitcoin will get its true test of sustainability.

If the Core team does not want to change the block size soon, due to the conflict of interest, I will most people will support Classic and learn a lesson from the process.