Bitcoin Forum

Year 2015 started with Bitcoin price at $317. Price then sank and reach bottom two weeks latter at $171.  Then hang between $200 and $300 until November when bull market started. And reach $430 at the end of the year. That gave us 35% price increase in 2015.

Year 2019 started with Bitcoin price at $3740. Two weeks before that price reached current bottom at $3190.  Price of Bitcoin should hang between $3500 and $5500 until October when bull market will start. And reach $8000 at end of the year.





Night is darkest right before the dawn.

While there definitely are plenty of similarities, I prefer to remain conservative. It wouldn't even surprise me if the whole year of 2019 turns out to be similar to what we are subject to right now, which are tight range movements.

I want to see new local highs instead of continuous lower lows, and as long as that isn't the case, there is no reason to be optimistic about the market. 2017 was a crazy year, so there is always a possibility to see lower levels.

Positive aspect is that most people do expect the price to go down further, which means that they may have sold in order to buy back lower. Once these people realize they made the wrong decision they'll fomo in again to not miss out.

In my opinion, this is how it will be. After such a long period of falling prices, investors (those big and small ones) have lost confidence in cryptocurrencies. Everyone thinks that the cryptocurrencies are too unstable to earn money on them. In order to restore confidence, the cryptocurrency market needs about a year of stabilization and investors will start coming back.

Wasn't in the market at 2015, in fact was distinctly unaware of price at all all the time til I properly owned by first satoshis in 2016, so if that's a marker of how price wasn't all that important about Bitcoin in 2015, then I will be the last person to mind if this year turns out to be that!

I wish it were so

But it doesn't look like this at all. I actively traded in 2015 and thus have "first-hand" feelings of the price action back in the year. And today (i.e. after the last 3 weeks into the new year) it looks and feels very different. These days we see mostly stagnating prices, while in 2015 it was an entirely different picture in this regard. Prices constantly moved up and down in the range of 5-10% every other day, with regular major corrections and rebounds. It was an active market in 2015, today it is mostly a dead one

I probably sound like a broken record by now, but it's way too early to say. There hasn't been any technical sign of a significant bottom yet, nor have we established a medium term uptrend to suggest the bear market might be over. A sideways year of accumulation like 2015 is definitely possible, but it's the best case scenario.

We could still be waiting for a V-bottom like January 2015 to mark the bottom. In that case, we haven't seen the bottom yet nor begun the long sideways period. Alternatively, we could be in for another year of downtrending just like 2018.

We will see but it's an interesting comparison for year 2015 which determines positive ending for this year. But one thing that we can be sure of, cryptocurrency market is totally unpredictable.

It seems that JP is FUDDING again about bitcoin.
https://www.ccn.com/bitcoin-valuable-in-a-dystopia-but-not-anywhere-else-jp-morgan-analyst/

Like what happened when Jamie Dimon FUD before. It's an accumulation period where institutions are trying to get ready so I think $8,000 by the end of the year is an ideal prediction.

It's either intentional FUD, or their analysts tend to fall into the same sentiment cycles as retail investors. At the top, JP Morgan analysts were predicting Bitcoin to become a traditional asset class like gold (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/12/04/bitcoin-could-new-gold-says-jp-morgan/). Now that they think the opposite, you can guess how close we are to the bottom. :P

https://i.imgur.com/lEVv7kj.png

I think whats more interesting is what happened the year after this where it held above the 400 area, which was about 23% of the total decline.   So on here

https://i.imgur.com/l8GbpEy.png

If we repeat that % scenario now I can state a few prices that would relate.   7150 would be the same 23.6% recovery point, above the previous 6k area.

I think more leverage was involved in the 2017 price peaks, where as the 2014 scenario came from the Mt.Gox prices being higher there then everywhere else.    I dont believe in a repeat exactly, we just want to observe positive behaviour and I would guess a large part of that is time or digest price movements and then build

I think we are in a completely different state of bitcoin development and adoption.

Back in 2015 governments doesn't care about crypto, tax agencies too, ICO was a rare exotic and so on. Now regulations are more tight and ICO euphoria is behind us. We will need some powerful catalyzer to see the down and new highs.

No I don't think it will compare at all, if anything 2018 was like 2015 and we should be beginning a new bull run anytime now.  Just be patient and good things will come.

we won't be able to tell until the rally starts and is on its way and that can take an unknown amount of time. with that said i think we have already had that big sink that happened in 2015 since that was mostly with FUD and manipulative whale sales, similarly we had it at $6k when the manipulation and FUD caused the crash to below prices. although it is taking longer than 2015 to recover from this.
in any case i think the drops are over and there isn't much room left to manipulate it otherwise either so there is only one direction left to go.

Well, 2015 was the year prior to the bitcoin halving so, maybe we'll see the same cycle this year as we get closer to next halving in 2020? I don't know, I don't want to draw any type conclusions so early and be overly optimistic. It's January, we should give it a few more months, or wait until the second half of the year, then people might come up with some type of analysis to see if we're actually having the same pattern in market movements.

Things might be much different than 2015 as in those years not many people were aware about the crypto currency and those who even knew where not sure if it was bubble at that time or not. But now people know the history and every knows about crypto and its future potential how it can grow and change many things.

"there isn't much room"? sure there is. there's plenty of room between here and $0. :P


it was in 2013 when we started seeing memos/guidance from agencies like FINCEN and the IRS. we didn't have ICOs back then, but we did have securities and ponzi schemes. everything just gets bigger and bigger with each cycle, but it's not fundamentally different. we don't need a catalyst for a bottom to form. what we need is for sellers to dry up.

Nope.2019 isn't the new 2015,because the bitcoin price isn't 300 USD.The level of awareness and media coverage regarding bitcoin is way higher,compared with 2015.Many people that were joking about bitcoin back then,are changing their minds and accepting the fact that bitcoin is here to stay.

The market reacted accordingly and if we are sure about it, yes we're near at the bottom and there's gonna be the driving force that will push the price again upwards.

This kind of intentional FUD gives everyone a signal that we should be prepared soon. Whether this year is like 2019 or not, we'll know at the end of the year. But as of now, it's getting interested and more exciting on how low and high bitcoin will reach.

^^ I dont think the nominal price matters that much, its a ratio of demand against supply.    We do have more Bitcoin available in 2019 then we did in 2015, thats the process of mining.
However also demand is greater, awareness is probably much more and its arguable that BTC has a wider range of usage in various contracts or facilities to exchange and trade.      I still think the hidden factor is whats occurring with USD and its QE unwinding, where does that value get used

As in the Op we're experiencing almost the same growth pattern that has taken place in the year 2015. The price was found to stagger within few limits for a much longer time period. Now the same is happening with the price moving to and fro within $3500-$4100. Today the market has gone low to $3500 in recent days. Users have begun to speculate about the Chinese New Year making a relation with the growth of cryptocurrency.

in 2015 we had a very small market and the few people who were in that market already dreamed of high prices and had high expectations, so that every good news made the price increase. Today things are very different, they are different because the people's expectations have been broken along with the high losses from $20,000 to $3,500. And because of this people have moved away from the crypto world. We now need institutional investors and regulations to bring greater confidence to this market. we need stop scammers and volume manipulations. we need good quality projects for this market to be respected and reliable

"There's plenty of room between here and zero"

You see, we can understand that there was a price bottom only in retrospect, i.e. when prices have risen enough to justify and validate this conclusion. But for prices to rise the lack of sellers is nowhere near enough. We also need demand for that, what a surprise. And here's the catch. With speculative assets no demand means prices falling in the long run as there is no real value to prop them up. In other words, even if technically there are less sellers sticking around, their effect on price becomes multiplied as there is no demand either and consequently no support

There are some similarities but I wouldn't make such comparisons or expect the same scenario. In 2015 market was quite different compared with today, smaller number of investors and not such influence from the side. We can't expect the same growth pattern as it was back then. Today people are quite sceptic and reluctant to invest in crypto market so we need some fresh blood comming and some big influental investors to start the market moving in right direction.

I think there are much more people now involved with bitcoin than 4 years ago. There are similarities, and one more similarity is between 2014 and 2018, price suffered from drop both times for more than 80%.
I can imagine bitcoin price to break this support by the end of this year and rise to $8,000. There is a lot of time, many things can happen, we need to be patient and wait the end of the year.

I hope your prophecy really happened.
but there seems to be no strong indication for market growth in the near future, I agree something will happen towards the end of this year.
so the hope is just to wait and hold than to sell

So, the bottom would be something between $1400-$1900, since $171 is less than half of $371, and we would reach something between $4000-$5000 by the end of the year.

I really agree with you and I think along what you have posted too.  I have been following this market for quite some time now and I agree that the event that happened in 2015 may repeat itself.

Of course you can never be sure. But hash rate decrease in November predicted bottom in December. Same happened in 2011 and zero growth at the end of 2014. so we cant totally dismiss that bottom happened when many fingers points to it.  But even if bottom had not happened it will happen soon. I dont see almost any chances for additional year of downtrends.



2018 was huge loss for Bitcoin and not a 35% increase as 2015.    2018 was new 2014.




Only if bottom is yet still to happened. If that is the case we will know it soon.  

This.

Back before we were still optimists but in 2019, not only the market is not the same but, people feel discouraged. Influential investors could help yes but they really need to be big and we need more than one. The problem is these big investors aren't actually interested in investing in cryptos. The market showed too much volatility for a short period of time (and not for a positive point) and there is no signal showing THE good opportunity, so why would they?

What are those numbers based on? It looks vaguely like the yearly open in 2015 vs. the capitulation bottom, but the numbers are off.


That doesn't seem right. The hash rate drop followed the price drop. It was just loss-making miners shutting down. The hash rate stopped dropping after the price stopped crashing. How is the hash rate predictive of anything?

This was exactly the case in 2015. All you wrote, that was exactly what was going on back then. Sentiment is same. Difference is that thee is more Bitcoin and there is bigger demand for them and higher price.




It was exactly same in 2011 and in 2014. Few weeks before bottom happened.

I will be very grateful if that can be achieved, but it depends on the level of bitcoin adoption, and I think the movement of bitcoin this year is much more difficult than in 2015.

Volatility is not a bad thing on its own

In fact, if gold was as volatile as cryptocurrencies (or even half as much), we would see a dramatic influx of traders into the gold market. And here lies the real explanation of disappointment, i.e. it is not volatility per se that pushes away investors and big-time speculators. Gold is not volatile because everyone knows that it is worth on its own, no matter what. And this real value makes it so stable. Consequently, it is not volatility that repels investors like sun repels darkness. It is lack of real value which makes cryptocurrencies extremely risky

I think it may take more time for next bull run. I think the bigger the exposure in news more dumb* people there is. So the whole cycle takes longer to repeat itself. Maybe next halvening will be turning point.
I still think this is pretty accurate prediction.

*People who does it like "buy high, sell low"

http://i66.tinypic.com/ezmt51.jpg

The turning point may set in earlier

If the past is any indicator of the future (let's assume that for a moment), the price should start rising around 6-8 months before the halving. It is how it happened with the previous halving, which occurred in the first decade of July 2016. The prices started to rise since September 2015 from $200 and reached $600 by June 2016. So if the next halving is to occur in May 2020, prices should start to rise in the summer of this year

I want you to continue your speculation into the year of 2020 by taking scenarios from the year of bitcoin 2017. Surprisingly the year 2018 was just a replica of what we had in 2014 then why not 2019 will be having similar price fluctuation of 2015.

In contradictory, we need to take consideration about the familiarity of bitcoin among institutional investors and possibilities of ETF and etc. I mean to say the differences on external factors among 2015 and 2019 will be playing a big role in deciding where bitcoin market will be trading. Bitcoin had fallen in similar manner how it did in previous time after a new ATH but it does not need to follow same trend while rising up.

All markets are known for shocking and surprising us. I was confident that bitcoin will not fall in 2017 similar to 2014 (by considering number of bitcoin adopters and other similar factors) but it did. Now, we are expecting a sideways market in 2019 but my inner thoughts say, "expect more surprises than 2017".

There is possible that 2020 will be similar as 2016. But we need to get 2019 behind us to set such predictions.  One thing about 2020 is sure, That if bull run will not start at end of 2019 it will start in 2020 for sure.

Certainties don't exist here. If the demand is consistent, we might be going up continuously over a longer period of time, but not in a way people here consider it a bull run.

At this point it's safe to say that any sort of increase beyond the local highs being $5000, $6000, $7000, etc, is already something people are extremely happy with. The difference between current and previous bear market is that people are still somewhat hopeful that we'll recover soon, while back in 2014/2015 there was more doom.

It could be the improved fundamentals giving people hope and confidence, but still, that doesn't change anything from how market movers might want to see more selling before they are confident in buying it up.

That doesn't prove the bottom is in. It just proves hash rate drops when price drops. When price stops dropping, so does hash rate. Any local bottom (or long term bottom) will have this dynamic because there is a direct relationship between price and mining profitability.

But you have no way to distinguish between a local bottom (like a bear flag before new lows) and a long term bottom (like 2011). If we crash again to new lows, hash rate will probably crash again too.

In other words, price predicts changes to hash rate, not the other way around.

The anticipation around the next halvening will certainly be an obvious medium term high point I think.  Whether it triggers a greater move or not will take time, same as last halvening I can remember that being a dynamic.    People focused on the date literally of the block chain but the reduced supply of block reward is the turn of a vice adding pressure to the price not a hammer blow to ignite anything by forced effect - its cumulative.

So as always there is an anticipation of the movement but more importantly the actual fundamental effect is there but takes place over months

The scenario is good although we might experience another down trend, but that's alright as long as it will end up positive.

2015 is 3 years ago but it's possible, this market has trends and it happens most of the time, so I'm not thinking of quitting anytime soon.
I know one day it will start to rally, I mean big rally that will make us start speculating on the positive move.

We are just in the first month of the year, don't give up early, we still have 11 months to wait and see.

It's bad to conclude that this year is not gonna be good for the market as that will not show your support.
I'm saying this year is gonna be a good year, I don't know if it will happen but I believe good things are about to come.

We can't say 100% what will happen, we can make only speculation and wait to see what will happen, but yes this year can have some similarities with 2015 regardings bitcoin price, but i not think the price will go below 3000$ so i will just hold what i have and get more.

Somehow this is a good post for argument but somehow price is not always determined from past sometimes it determined by other factors like rapid adoption and many more.

That might be the case to happen but as I said this will not be the same as from past all we have to do is wait for your prediction until October and there might be a chance that this will happen.

Things were complicated before and after the previous halving

There was a good deal of hype prior to the actual date which allowed the market to be rising for half a year till a few weeks before the halving. Then there was a massive correction in June 2016 due to people booking profits (I told about such a possibility in May), with the Bifinex hack in August adding even more insult to injury. And the real growth started only in September of that year when the effects of the reward halving finally began to kick in

Yeah right, there are more days to expect and speculate of the price. I am just waiting what would be the results along the way, may it good or bad. Just keep holding or stay away at the market if it is too stressing. Then come back if everything seems to feel like there's a change already.

You are talking of the escalated growth. We cant expect that to start in October this year. That will have to wait until mid to end 2020 or even 2021.

In fact, no one knows for sure

It is not even a given that the next halving will have any effect on prices at all (unlikely but still). Let's not forget that the reward gets diminished with each halving while the number of coins in circulation constantly increases. In other words, it is like the law of diminishing returns, i.e. with each halving its positive and encouraging effect on prices should necessarily be tapering off, up to a point where it becomes completely irrelevant and massively overridden by a host of other factors

Price movement of bitcoin is one of unresolved mystery in this world so don't exoect something to be happen which was happened earleir because there are some people who will take the advantage of it and ill make money from most people's thought.Just invest based on your opinion asking others maybe some kind of manipulation involved.

People don't understand that it is important to look at the charts and the different time frames.

If any of these noobs paid attention, they would see that January, and basically the first quarter of each year is usually the worst time frame for Bitcoin. Even 2017, the year where the price made an insane run to $20,000 had to deal with a poor first quarter, and we still went from below $900 to $20,000 so it's not important what's playing out in the first quarter.

With the block halving coming up I'm pretty certain that the second quarter will be the start of a gradual increase, especially with how people know that halvings translate into price increases before the actual event itself. And who knows, perhaps that Bakkt and other institutions will start silently accumulating in advance as well. Makes perfect sense if they do.

I see what you're saying, but I think there's way too little historical data to make generalizations like that. If you look at 2011 and 2013, January was very bullish and preceded bubble phases. It's all about the long term market cycles, which don't really care about our Gregorian calendar so much. :)

Lets not forget that emission inflation will go under Gold emission inflation for the first time.  Gold yearly mining inflation is about 1.5-2%.   Bitcoins today's yearly emission inflation is 3.82%   At end of 2020 it will go to 1.78%.

Yeah, but you are not exempt from this policy either


As you suggest the noobs to pay close attention to the price action every January in particular and the first quarter in general, you should be suggested to look at the price action every December and the fourth quarter as well. And then you will see that the price had been rising every December and prior months in preceding years but not in the last October, November, and December. Basically, the pattern your refer to has already been broken

And we are just following the trend

Its hard to tell yet since we have access on a limited trend for 2019, meaning we still have more months to go before to confirm it. 2019 can be a possible sideways trend but I still hope for a more powerful uptrend. The hype can happen again, just make a new development and we will go high again.

They won't be complete mirrors of each other, but I think that the general sentiment that was within the market in 2015 was quite similar to what we are experiencing right now. The price movements that we observe are also quite similar.

We can't say for sure that we've bottomed, but I think that we are definitely in a similar circumstance compared to 4 years ago. Prices have dropped 80+% from the peak, which is in line with the bottom which occurred in 2015. We are also a year removed from the end of the bull market of 2017.

If we look at the halving as a benchmark for the start of each market cycle (which has basically happened throughout bitcoin's history), then the patterns do come clear. A recovery might come next year, but I don't think it will happen this year because prices are still consolidating. 2015 and 2019 obviously won't be 100% in line, and market anomalies can and will happen. But right now, prices seem low enough while the fundamentals have improved to say that bitcoin is undervalued.

Interesting to keep that in mind

But I don't think this will ever have any meaningful impact on price on its own (I mean Bitcoin's annual supply going below the supply of gold in relative terms). Most of gold is used in jewelry anyway (over 50%) while most of Bitcoin is used in speculation, so there is hardly any meaningful correlation as these are two completely different assets used for entirely different purposes

Maybe 2019 will see $160 again like 2015. The only thing that matters is demand, and that's getting weaker with no relief in sight.

price doesn't have to reach the previous ATH for it to be considered in a recovery. what you are talking about in 2020 is the ATH being hit and a new one being set not the recovery itself. the recovery will happen this year for sure. the drops can not go on any longer since they have gone on long enough, you can't really expect price to drop 99.9%!!! we already have about 85% drop. and the sideways may continue for a while but they also can't go on forever. and they also have lasted long enough.

Why can't we expect the price to drop so much?

Many altcoins including the top ones have dropped over 90% already (e.g. Litecoin has fallen 17 times from its ATH to its recent low). But how will Bitcoin be much different from them if things turn really bad for it? 3k is still a huge price from any point of view (other than looking at it from the 2017 highs) and there is a lot of room below, so to speak. I hope it won't be like that but saying it is impossible is not a good way to go in both trading and investing

It's possible but not very likely

Unless there is something like perfect storm or a Black Swan event (whatever it could be). Let's not forget that since 2015 the use of cryptocurrencies (especially the top ones) have expanded significantly in real life. This is a difference which makes the difference between now and then. So while Bitcoin can fall lower from its current levels, personally, I don't expect it to fall much lower (not below 1k if you are looking for a concrete price tag as the final support level) unless we hit a major roadblock or even a brick wall like a critical bug discovered and actually exploited

it could happen because I see there is good news for bitcoin in 2020 there will be a halving, if you look at some halving events that occur in bitcoin it will make the price of bitcoin very expensive, so wait until 2020.

I dont know why everyone expect repeating of some previous year. Why bitcoin should behave the same? I think every year is unique and this year is going to be special as well. Of course, we can find something similar in every year, but there is nothing special to search, bitcoin consists from ups and downs. As I love to say - we should hope for better, but also we should to be prepared for worst.

In simple terms, because people want to believe

For example, if you want to believe that Bitcoin is going to crash further, you will probably come up with the idea like we have been in a bear market for over a year already and there is no chance that it is going to change soon (actually, it is a damn good assumption, at least statistically). On the other hand, if we want to believe that Bitcoin has already bottomed or going to bottom very soon, you will start to draw analogies with 2015. But ultimately, neither approach is internally correct as it is only a matter of belief or faith, even though one can turn out to be correct in the end (just like a broken clock is right twice a day)

Are you serious. 99.9% drop would be price of Bitcoin at $20. Bitcoin will not go under $170 that was bottom 4 years ago unless something fundamental changes. And It will not go under much higher then that 4 years old bottom since many things dd changed in that time. Actually Bitcoin was not under $20 fro full 6 years. That is more then half time of its existence.

After all of those hard forks was done, no one would think that bitcoin price would drop to $20 these days. A lot was happening in the past and it surely makes bitcoin as worthy as people adapt to it during its lows and look at it now. It is gaining some fame through all of the people in the world just like the stock market.

Honestly, I don't expect Bitcoin to go under 1k myself

But in my post above I referred to a sort of Black Swan event, i.e. something that could potentially lead to prices this low. You might have heard about a bug recently discovered in the Bitcoin vanilla wallet, haven't you? If exploited, it would be that Black Swan event capable of wreaking total chaos in the cryptocurrency world and likely rendering Bitcoin useless and worthless in less than no time

I think the Bitcoin developers should develop an emergency plan if something as dangerous is going to happen for real. I don't know what it could be but maybe instantly freezing the network and then rolling back the blockchain in a consistent and reliable manner. I know this is not a good thing but it will be the lesser of two evils. And we have already been there anyway in 2012, if I'm not mistaken

No, I think bitcoin chart follow the same pattern again and again. Even though the adatopion of bitcoin is far more now than in 2015 but the charting pattern are almost similar.



Yes, last time bitcoin price spiked at halving and I am thinking the same will happen on the next bitcoin Halving. I am waiting for 2020 where we will see next bull run for bitcoins.

This are 4 years of Bitcoin cycle. Both 2015 and 2019 are the "Hard times create strong men" year.

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

many people still compare something that happened last year because they saw from the graph that happened and saw from the journey of the cryptocurrency price to see the development of cryptocurrency from year to year.

We cannot know if this year is look like in the year of 2015 because I want the value of the bitcoin to increase again. When bull run started we cannot know too what is the possible price of the bitcoin we hope more than 10,000 dollars we see so we can get more money. But now there is no bull run happen maybe the sign of the bull run last year december stopped and we need to wait more.

for the same reason why you can't expect the price to continue rising without a stop and reversal. at some point after the rise from $900 to $20000 it had to stop and come back to the balanced level. and now is the same, it has to go back up to go back to balanced levels.

are you seriously comparing shitcoins that drop 90% and more to bitcoin?!!
they drop because they are pump and dump and have to drop because their value is fake and purely based on speculation since they have no other usages in real world.
when bitcoin drops, it still has the real usages in real world so there is additional demand on top of the speculations.

just because 3000 is a big number, it doesn't make it a high price. what's next? you are going to say $312000 is too high for Berkshire Hathaway price and it has a lot of room to go down?!!

yes, this is truly a similar year, except that in 2015 there were not so many negative things, and now there are many negative things spread. however, I think, the potential this year has is the same as in 2015. I am sure, mid-year will show a good development for the price of bitcoin. maybe at the end of this year the price of bitcoin could be above $ 5,000.

That's a crappy argument if you ask me

There is no and cannot be "same reason" here. No asset can rise indefinitely but that doesn't in the least mean that it can't fall to 0, and this is particularly true with respect to speculative ones, like Bitcoin or whatever. According to this logic, the stock of dotcom companies couldn't turn into garbage just because these companies couldn't rise to infinity either. Somehow I thought people have actually learned something after the 2018 crash


Bitcoin can easily follow them. But if you want to believe (Bitcoin or otherwise), who am I to stop you?


0 is the lowest price potentially possible for the Berkshire Hathaway stock. Much bigger institutions failed (see Lehman Brothers)

Sounds big but thats not the protocol just some software that interacts with it.    Mt. Gox was a pretty big event for disturbing the price, it was the main exchange for volume of Bitcoin traded but it still wasn't important enough to call it off for the whole deal.   It was just a mistake for too many people to rely on a centralised website like that.   So far as I know there isnt a giant dependence on any 1 wallet so I dont see a bug would be as big news as previous failure we saw and then moved past

What negative things are you referring to? Bitcoin is fundamentally much further in every way than it was back in 2015, there are legacy institutions building infrastructure around Bitcoin, and the Lightning Network is exploding and actually experiencing use. Positivity after positivity, yet people are blinded by the bear market they find more interesting than what's happening under the hood.

Ah well, people apparently want to see the price go up in order to believe that Bitcoin is doing well.  ::)

But isn't that a valid assumption?

If Bitcoin is actually doing well as you say, why doesn't its price grow after all? Maybe, things are not as good as they seem to you? For example, you refer to an expansion in Lightning Network use but how do you gauge this expansion really? If you are you looking at the data from 1ml.com, 632 bitcoins can't make a dent in Bitcoin's total supply. We would need something to the tune of 100k bitcoins removed from the market to make a meaningful impact on Bitcoin's price (but that may take years)

that is a very extraordinary comparison, but in my opinion it is not that easy to predict the price of bitcoin. if the price of bitcoin only reaches $ 8k at the end of the year, that means bitcoin failed to reach the new ATH.

I give like 1% chances BTC will reach new ATH this year. Why do you think that Bitcoin will make a x10 in short 11 months? 1% is extremely extraordinary.   My prediction seems quite ordinary.

Before the high in 2017, we had 2016 and the rise before the bigger move.     We really are not at that point of even previous year prior to any bigger move, so how could we really predict a new high.

It is very unlikely, possible overall but it would make more sense to see a situation develop beforehand enabling that bigger rise.   Its generally how these things go, theres a swell before the big waves appear in practise

That's pretty conservative, I think we loss our faith with BTC already.

1% is tantamount to saying it's not gonna make an ATH this year, well for me I'm very much thankful already if I see it rise to $10,000
but I would not loss my hope that this year we can still achieve the best price, it all depends on the news, if there is a big news and people FOMO, then
we know already what's next, we could be surprise with the new ATH.

This is not Micheal J Fox movie(Back to the Future)that past can be bring back lol

But theres alot of similarities if we will look back at 2015 ,though this is not enough reason to expect another good things to come and fall for traps again.theres some issue of manipulation and we must consider those before putting another amount again.but if that will happen then it is something cause for celebration

It is hard to tell the future of Bitcoin to think that the world economy of 2015 is very far different from this year. We have to think that the standard way of living and the monetary movement before is quite different from now that these are some of the factors that we need to considere for this comparison. I will just hope for the acceptance of the ETF products as part of Bitcoin development for this year to trigger the bullrun.

looking at developments in 2015 and 2019, I think that is quite far. well, I'm starting to think that this year will probably be better than 2015. for now we can only see its development, but it's likely that the price of bitcoin and its popularity will be better this year compared to 2019.

Yes this is a thing. In whole 10 years of existence of Bitcoin there was no economic crisis. So we have no ideas how price will react to it.  2015 was year of big economic growth. If crisis strike tomorrow and we have 10% economic depression at end of year then there is possibility that 2019 will be more like 2014 or 2018 then the 2015.  But I believe this year will be still normal.

Well maybe but still no one can tell what will be the price of bitcoin every year because we all know how volatile market is. The important is bitcoin is still great price not in a super drip price.

2015 was a year of stabilization and rebuilding trust in the cryptocurrency market. I think 2019 will be very similar. After a year of price drops, investors will need time to trust again in crypto market and invest here their money. I think that prices will no longer fall, but the increases will be little - max +50% at the end of year.

No that guy is right. There is no reason whatsoever to think about ATH for this year. I doubt it'll even hit $10k this year. The bitcoin market takes a while to turn around after a crash. I wouldn't expect it to start moving up again until the second half of the year, and when it does its not gonna be moving fast. ATH might be possible in late 2020. and certainly the price in 2021/2022 or whenever the next peak occurs will make $20k look tiny.

It could be true because the situations similar with 2015 but I think this year, we can hope that every coins can increase although it's only for small price. At least, we can make a profit from trading and then if the time is right, the market will change to the bull market and it will cause every coins can increase higher like what we see in 2017-2018.


So this year looks like the stabilization was happen again because many coins can rise to test the market and some of them can break the higher price although after that, the price was down again. I believe that there is a new investor type that will come and invest in crypto and they can makes the market increase again.

the analysis is quite good in my opinion, but I have already discussed it here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5043315.msg49543548#msg49543548), happy when many people have started to see some of my articles written almost to a number of sites, so just want to see if it's true history will repeat itself, we all know soon going towards halving bitcoin next 2020, everyone hopes the value of bitcoin will return better

indeed .  year 2015 is where bitcoin is getting started . its not yet popular so its normal to see a verry low price that time  but today we are now on the year 2019 and bitcoin is slightly recognized by the masses  but its not exempted from the market correction . thats the reason that we still see some lows .


bullrun can come with or without etf's  but etf can help speed up this process . the the problem is will etf finally accept bitcoin this time ? lets hope so . in the meantime  , we can also do something to help the price to recover and that is to continue buying and hodling  .

If you have written these comparisons of years, you've noticed the most important thing that history is repeated and in the case of cryptos, the cycle was repeated several times.
But in order for this year 2019 to be 2015, there must be more investors and people have to believe more in the crypto than in money. Anyway, i believe such a scenario will be.

Many peoples said that there is resemblance between those two years, but it's just a prediction and some wishes from people, which will be great if it's true, but in reality we need to see the market conditions how interested people in putting the funds into crypto, until now the sign of growing still hasn't been seen

There was exotically same at start of 2015. Zero growth. Just sideways for more then half of year. Same as last 3 months. Probably same as next half year.

Hopefully, nearing the end of the year bitcoin can make a leap. And even though it's still a possibility, it doesn't hurt I believe, rather than selling it at a low price today.

Today feels completely different

I am really curious if people claiming that it is the same had been actually trading back in the day. I was, and what I see now is way different from what I saw in early 2015. Now we barely move a couple percent daily. In 2015 price action was a lot stronger. It basically means that supply as well as demand is now running dry, while in 2015 they were abundant (as I have no other explanation)

The next halving is in 2020,so the chances of having bull run in end of this year are not found yet but it may happen like other predictions says.

But I won't compare any year since you can see most unexpected thing at any time.

Now that's what I call pure speculation, however, it's flawed. You provided no premise for the price movements. In the past, those price fluctuations had more to do with adoption through MLMs and Ponzis. However, the intrinsic worth of Bitcoin has slowly gained traction as more institutions and mainstream market players got involved.

We should see a minor spike in price with ETF approval, say, a maximum of $10k but that's it - minor - then price will slowly drop down to 5k range. This should probably be the true worth of bitcoin for the long term, until scarcity sets in.

This is a section of speculation, so everyone who is reading this is aware that predictions are just "loud thinking". If you write that tomorrow BTC price will go up, nobody will buy, just because you wrote that. Here we only say our thoughts on whether this year will be similar to 2015. I think, yes.

In my opinion also. We need to attract the investors by introducing only the most stable yet reliable coin there is and having a voluntary campaign where we could introduce the coin or crypto to them widely by telling them how useful it can be. Then it may stabilize the market then attracting more costumers in the business probably... So yeah I'm still waiting for someone who will execute this plan thoroughly.

I would say 2019 will be a new 2017 as Bitcoin have been stayed between 3000-4000 for a long time, it can be considered as the later period of the bear.

Ok, so I'm going to remember this quote from this legendary poster, and if at the end of 2019 the price isn't close to $100k than I'll know that he's a fucktard. I'm pretty sure right now, but at that point I'll be 100% sure.

We would all want the scenario from 2017 to repeat itself and the bull run came as soon as possible. However, in my opinion this year will be like in 2015, ie a long period of stabilization, and 2017 will be repeated in 2020.

https://i.gyazo.com/c3b22427561b03260af9cc1b706e8221.png

8% is not enough for you?  You want 20% That will not happen in sideways market. At least not that often.

https://i.gyazo.com/604d964254a4ccee5de855b699ef0efb.png

2.5m Bitcoins volume is higher then at any point in December 2017 and January 2018.  It rarely went over 1.5m BTC back then.

If the price if bitcoin today is valued exactly like in 2015, then it makes sense that we only have 2 years before another drastic rise of bitcoin is about to happen again. With that, it's good to invest more on bitcoin while its price is still cheap for now.

I just think whole Bitcoin "eco-system" is much bigger now. So it takes more money to move it's price. Imagine you giving 10k$ in some random token, Bitcoin or gold. It would shoot tokens price up for few 100%, Bitcoin would be up 0,01% and there would be no effect on gold's price (0,000001%).
So same with bitcoin, when there were 5k people trading it every "big" buy or sell order affected price a lot. But now when there is 100k of people trading it + bots this order much be much bigger to move price for the same percentage. (all numbers are fictional, just to get better representation)

Do you maybe have a link to the historical graph showing trading volume in BTC? I can only find this but it doesn't show what you're saying https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/volume/2y?c=e&t=b.
But anyway I think talking about volume in crypto is pointless at the moment. IMO so much is faked that it's almost impossible to make real assumtions.

How long had you been waiting till the price started to move?

8 percent is more than enough for me, and I would be happy if Bitcoin moved at least 5% daily. But that was not the case till yesterday, and it is not certain either that the prices will go on like that tomorrow. We had been stuck in a tight range for weeks recently, so I can only congratulate you to turn up in the right thread at the right time with your post. Anyway, keep us updated

so far with every passing day, these days look more and more like 2015 period when price was at a bottom and things weren't looking happy and green to a lot of people so they started getting desperate and leave while the whales continued taking their bitcoins for cheap and accumulated them.
with the recent rise we are even getting closer to the similar breakout pattern of 2015 just before the big rise of 2x happened.

2015 was a turbulent year

Let's not forget that during that year there were two major lows. The first was in February (if I remember correctly), when the price went below 160 dollars, and the second was in late August, with prices dropping a little below 200 dollars (just for a few minutes). Between these two lows the price rose to almost 300 dollars in the summer (only to crash later), so if we are to follow the 2015 pattern, we may still see some bumps ahead

It will be very interesting a also very dramatic year on all kind of financial markets
First we have Brexit. No deal Brexit is no joke it is very serious problem for all EU economy and very big for GB

But biggest is corporation debt in China USA and EU.That is really huge and can trigger similar crisis like it was in 2008
We have also many social and political events coming
Election for EU parliaments and preparation for US presidential campaign
Now there are legal cases opened against Trump state of emergency

And we have technology world.It will be year of IOT begin year of 5G internet begin
and i think it will be new era in crypto currencies
We have bitcoin LN and Ethereum scaling
All together i think it will be year of change .changes.chaos on any field of our life
In a case of crypto i think we will have upward trend caused by technology improvement crypto currencies adoption and institution more investing in crypto
I think that upward trend will be slow but much more real and less speculative it was in previous year

 

Maybe, but there is possible to exceed on that expectations which is might near similarity happen in previous year2017 once bitcoin start to rise constantly. Its seem bitcoin now started to rise up, but its to early to celebrate,  I mean to say its a bullrun. We all just wait and perhaps iit will skyrocket on the middle of these year.

Probably this can be good assumption. Everything point for this same scenario only with different prices but path is the same. We could expect to see another movement bigger off course by the next halving not before. Unless something that is major and can impact in crypto community with big slap nothing else can change current price.

I hope so, bitcoin price really got a very good support at that point, we can see that bitcoin price is trading above $3000 for a long time and I do not thing that traders will let it go down anymore. I hope that very soon bitcoin price will regain its previous highest price, because bitcoin popularity is continuously increasing, I hope that bitcoin remain as top crypto currency for long long time.

I agree. 2015 was, if we forget crypto and focus on world economy, one of most prosper years. Even those countries that was most hit by 2008 financial crisis got out of the worst and their economy started expanding. But I dont think the worst will already happen this year but 2020, that will most likely not be the new 2016.  

The price showed some action in the last couple of days but it doesn't mean it will go on like that from now on. We had already seen these bursts of market activity in the past (say, in early January this year) and it still didn't last for longer than a week. In other words, we need a lot more action for longer timeframes to make plausible comparisons to 2015 patterns and draw any definitive conclusions in this regard (read, we can do that only in hind sight). Personally, I think we are very different from 2015

Simply put, I wouldn't be overly enthusiastic about this surge

This is a good phase, we have reached a much higher level than in 2018. I also hope that there will be far better changes and we will reach the level that happened in 2017. Everyone wants to feel this happening again and all we need to do is be patient to wait until the situation happens again. Let's party and we will get a big profit if we still have Bitcoin at the moment and then we sell much higher in the future.

Calm down, guys. We still have time to see the price increase. Actually, we can be happy if the price can stay at more than $4000 in this month because it will have a chance to raise more in the next month. But it could be 2019 is the new 2015 because we are now seeing which is "almost the same as in 2015" situations and conditions. In that year, bitcoin price does not increase too much, and it seems, the price is on the sideways phase, and now, I think we will see the market will moves slowly than before.

I never was enthusiastic about this or any surge.  Recent growth to the $4k is a correction from constant decrease that was happening in previous months.

About volatility and volume. I just listened one Mike McGlone today https://www.globalcryptopress.com/2019/02/the-time-to-buy-is-now-crypto-market.html who believes we had not reach bottom because there is to much volume and there is to big volatility. I guess someone should point him to the year 2015 and explain there was apparent way more volatility and way lower volume but we still reach the bottom.

This dude might be deep in shorts

You wouldn't really expect an unbiased view from somebody who has a certain financial position himself in some matter. As they say, you can't solve a problem by forwarding the job to those who created it in the first place, so don't expect a lot of sincerity as well as honesty regarding crypto from people who are themselves involved in it and thus interested in moving the market their way, be it up or down

Well, it is good to see a big change in the market. Price change in 2015 seems to have the similar pattern of the ongoing growth pattern. In this way bitcoin will get a big growth in the cryptocurrency network. When bitcoin grows automatically the entire cryptocurrencies existing in the market will surely make a big change in every asset growth.

Next halving can give the enough fire to make the lrices to reach next level but I think we are in need of something to ignite the prices before it even to make the cryptocurrency market to be alive since holders of cryptos were already starts having that they are waiting too long.

We almost withness the same pattern of the market movement that happened in 2015. I believe that what you speculated above may come to fulfilment before the end of the year, although Bitcoin market value maybe very much higher than the one you speculated above if all things remain equal.

Im not aware that a halving can boost the price .  is halving different from a fork ?  I only know that a fork can have an impact on the value of a certain coin that will be undergone unto a fork because people tend to buy more of that coin in the hopes of getting the same amount of fork coins  .

Forks have nothing to do with halvings

Halving is about reducing the supply of new coins while forks are adding to this supply. Well, technically, it is more about creating a new source of coins (different coins) but for simplicity's sake you can think along these lines. And since halving reduces supply by halving the block reward, it should at least theoretically lead to higher prices eventually. That's basically why people are placing so much hope on the next halving

The last three days gave me the impression of 2016, not 2015. In 2016, every time I checked the price, it was going up, without pause. But then, I was not following it too much, like today.

People got way too excited this past week thinking that just because we had a week of rising prices and high volume that meant the next bull run had started. People need to just calm down, it will very likely be at least several more months until the price rises out of the $3000s bottom. People shouldn't be so desperate to declare a bull run. It was just a pump during the bottoming phase of the market cycle. Let's not forget Bitcoin did two almost 50% pumps in 2015 during its bottoming phase from low $200s to $300 and both times fell back down before later on finally starting the bull run.  There is no reason to expect prices to rise out of the $3000s anytime soon, we're still only a bit over 3 months into the bottom, it could easily take another 6 months or more (though it certainly is possible it could start sooner with the bullish set of events that we know about all building up like Fidelity, BAKKT, NASDAQ?, possible ETF, crypto phones all happening, but just saying there is no reason to get excited over any rise in price thinking that the bull run has started only to get disappointed a few days later when the price drops back down and you realize that was just normal bottom-phase movement).

Next halving will halve the Bitcoin block reward from 12.5 to 6.25 BTC. That will reduce bitcoins yearly emission inflation to under 2% what is less then is yearly Gold mining inflation. So for the first time in history Bitcoin will become more scarce then Gold.  Of course we cant predict how much gold will be mined yearly in the future because that si not a mathematical fact same as Bitcoins emission, but I can speculate that will always be over  Bitcoins emision.

Gold is a far larger market, I'm wary of comparing the two when they are really different things.    Gold is stored over decades to centuries by central banks and then utilised as an asset.  Bitcoin is still very new, its far more dependant on its value to be useful in a transaction related capacity where as gold barely requires this to rise in value anyway.

2019 is still closer to the end of 2014 I think.   I remember the last half to block reward and it took a while after, so thats my parallel for timing it now

People are still massively confused about scarcity and how it works

I explained it a few times but it seems to be about right time to repeat the lesson. Bitcoin's yearly supply being less than gold's doesn't in the least mean that Bitcoin is more scarce than gold (the opposite can also turn out to be true, just in case). Any such figures are meaningless because there is no scarcity on its own as it should always relate to something, most commonly to some group of people (or the whole world population)

In this way, Bitcoin may already be more scarce than gold (say, per dollar worth per capita). I don't know if it actually is but you can always check that yourself. And while we are at it, I think it is correctly called supply, not emission. Are you coming from Slavic languages? Just curious

It seems bull market might actually star before October.  I heard so many times in past that in this cycle the bull market will happen earlier because whales know what will happen and they will want to be ahead of the curve and be faster then other whales.

There will be many false starts despite the recent positivity I doubt we are going to go straight up from here.   5500 to 6500 is a rocky area for being previous support.    Its a kind of ceiling, that push back can make people apprehensive and then we are lower then expected after that, etc


The thing that matters is the usage, theres lots of gold supply left in the earths crust.   It'll keep being discovered and mined as Bitcoin delibrately goes the other way and restricts block rewards and leaves miners with just fees levied.    So fees are related to usage and demand, thats really how I would compare the two assets

Gold will have demand rising also as paper money is destabilised by the tail end risks of QE programs, in short this QE of ten years or more is an unknown factor in global monetary circulation

With Lightning Network fees become extinct

And that's a good thing as money works better without an unnecessary overhead in the form of fees. Yes, widespread usage of this technology would make miners starve to the point of capitulation and then get out of business which in turn would threaten the Bitcoin network resistance to outside attacks. In this case, we should arguably expect the change in the underlying technology for block confirmations (consensus mechanism). But no matter the outcome, miners (and their fees) are not something which defines Bitcoin


All paper will burn

This is a very good guess, 2019 will most likely be one long year of corrections before we can start the next bull run, up to the next halving in May 2020
I think the market will get really bullish around Litecoins halving, just 4 months from now, so august and September cut turn out to be this year peak also for bitcoins.

I was mostly wrong, but at the end I guess i will be quite close :P   10% change is a lot for many asset, but tiny mistake for Bitcoin.

While I dont think that any year will exactly mimic another year each will be unique.  I do think it will show some similarities when we look back.  I subscribe to the fact that 2020 might be a sideways growth year like 2016, and 2021 might be the breakout year.  All speculation of course but I do believe it is a cool year here

actually it was a good and correct observation. the only thing you got wrong was the duration of the downtime. i believe that in each cycle (if we can call it that) the periods are getting shorter while the rises become bigger.
that means the downtime in 2015 was like this
1- reach the bottom at $220 ($150 wasn't the bottom) in Jan 2015
2- stay below $300 for ~7 moths and have a panic sell
3- breaking $300 resistance and starting to go up -> 37%
4- have another panic sell (bear trap mostly)
5- big FOMO breakout to $500 in Oct -> 72%
6- end with smaller bear trap by the end of the year. -> -32%
now 2019 looks exactly the same
1- reach bottom at $3200
2- remain below $4k until April for about ~5 months (start was in Dec last year)
3- break $4k and start going up. -> 45%
4- have the panic sell (bear trap) that is coming from $5k+ to $4k again
5- big FOMO breakout to $13k in June -> 83%
6- end with smaller bear trap by the end of the year. -> -52%

you see they are almost the same trend with a little bit difference in timings and a little in size.

nc analysis boi . i already forget that btc price were so dumped on the first few months of this year but luckily it goes up , up to this point that we have right now  .

 im still thankfull and happy despite the few drops that happen lately because its way more better than seeing btc at 3k+ usd each.  in terms of comparing , others do also love to compare prices of cryptos from the past years  , so its not basically a new thing to me .

To be honest I don't like such comparisons too much. To my opinion Bitcoin users are too much obsessed with finding patterns and comparisons of Bitcoin price in different time frameworks, always expecting the best intevals to repeat. Sometimes that makes unnecessary pressure.
Analysis could be good and useful however I'm more focused on present and how to get the best out of Bitcoin now.