I do think that bitcoin has the potential to increase in price a lot more, and quickly.  But keep in mind that it can't continue up at an exponential pace forever.  There's a finite amount of money in the world and other investments and currencies that other people will want to hold.  It's not a great indicator, but I think that market cap can give us some idea.  Apple, one of the largest companies today, has a market cap of around $825B.  If bitcoin hits $100k, with around 18M coins, that's a market cap of $1.8T.  If bitcoin continues to do well, that may be reasonable in the next decade or so.  But if you start to look at prices around $1M/bitcoin, we're talking a market cap of around $18T-$20T.  That's approximately the GDP of the entire United States today.  It would take a long time, if ever, for it to get that high.  So while the potential for continued growth exists, it's not going to keep increasing exponentially.

I guess it depends on the jurisdiction in which you reside, but at least in the US, capital gains on bitcoin aren't that complicated if you buy and hold.  It gets more complicated if you trade it a lot.  In any case, the basic idea in the US is this: you are required to pay capital gains taxes on the profit you make when you sell bitcoin (not when you buy it).  You can also write off losses.  So if, for example, you pay $1000 for a bitcoin and later sell it for $3000, you would pay capital gains taxes on the $2000 profit you made.  If you bought at $3000 and sold at $1000, you could deduct $2000 (although there are limits on the amount you can deduct per year) from you taxable income.  Additionally, if you hold you bitcoin for more than a year before selling it, you pay the long-term capital gains tax rate, which is generally lower than the short-term one.

Bitcoin's behavior lately hasn't really been that crazy by historical standards.  In absolute terms, price swings of $1k are certainly a lot.  But in percentage terms, they're more in line with the way bitcoin has behaved in the past (although +20% in a 24-hour period when we went from ~$4800 to ~$5800 was outsized, even for bitcoin).

I agree that blowing through $5k was a great sign of higher prices to come, and that it could take time.  I think that the consolidation that we're seeing since the rally occurred is very healthy and sets the stage for another leg up.

But I'm not as sure as you are that the bitcoin gold fork will lead to a price drop.  If everyone dumps their forked coins for BTC, that could lead to a further increase in demand and thus price for BTC.

Originally, I thought that the recent rally was at least being heavily influenced by the upcoming bitcoin gold fork.  However, a couple days ago, I saw some speculation about the possibility that China could reopen bitcoin-yuan trading again at some point (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-12/bitcoin-explodes-5600-30-end-chinas-golden-week-holiday).  If that's what's behind the recent rally, then bitcoin's price may revolve around how those rumors develop rather than what happens with bitcoin gold.

This is some good advice.  Trading is not easy; many fail at it over the long term (if not the short term).  Bitcoin has kind of become like the crypto equivalent of broad stock market indices in the sense that you will probably make a decent profit by buying and holding longer term.  Trading is only worth it if you can beat the return that bitcoin will give you.

If you really are set on learning to trade, then I advise the following:

1. Do some basic investing (e.g., buy some bitcoin on some pullbacks) so you can try to earn some money while you learn how to trade.
2. Recognize that learning to trade will take a lot of time and hard work, and will take years to learn to do well.  If you don't enjoy staring at charts for hours, stop here.  Trading is not for you.
3. Don't quit your day job (see #2).
4. Start by taking some time to learn the basics of what trading is and how to do it.  Youtube has a lot of good material.
5. After learning how to trade, learn more about technical analysis and spend time developing a trading plan that fits your personality.
6. Backtest and forward test your plan, either on paper or with very small trade sizes.  Optimize your plan.
7. When you think you have a sound trading system, trade small amounts first and increase your trade size slowly as you gain confidence.  Learn to control your emotions.
8. Profit.

I agree that bitcoin is certainly the strongest cryptocurrency, but it's no where close to the strongest currency in the world.  To be such, it would have to beat out reserve currencies like the dollar and yen.  By comparison, bitcoin is still in its infancy.

The fact that this is true shows one of the problems with bitcoin--currencies are supposed to be for making financial transactions, not for making people rich.  The crazy rise in the price of bitcoin over the years has made it more of an asset than a currency.

Since we broke above the China crash level at $4500, and especially since we broke to new highs above $5k very decisively, a crash does not seem to be in the cards in the near future without some kind of catastrophic news event, like bitcoin being banned in a major country.  I think we could easily see a retracement back to $5k to give that level a good vetting, but more than that does not seem likely right now.  I think that the segwit2x fork still has the potential to cause some major market gyrations, but I think we're still too far out from that to see much of an effect yet.

You're welcome.  But please be careful.  I haven't done any actual backtesting, so I don't have any statistics that definitely say that this is a great idea.  If you already have something that works, you may want to just stick with that.  As the saying goes, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."  One of the biggest mistakes traders can make is abandoning something that works for them for something they hope will be more profitable (which often ends up not being the case).

Also consider this: if people dump their "bonus" coins after a fork, what are they going to do with the money they receive?  What if they use it to buy BTC?  Or what if they dump the "bonus" coins for BTC directly?  In either case you get the same result: more demand for BTC.  The result ends up being that BTC continues to go up in price after the fork.  Obviously this is just speculation, but it's something to keep in mind.

Investment is driving the price higher.  People see the price going up and want to get on the bandwagon, so they buy in, too, and the price climbs even more.  It doesn't have anything to do with mining.  If anything, mining decreases the price as miners sell the bitcoin they mine to cover their costs.

It's possible that the upcoming forks are decreasing the available supply of bitcoins for sale as owners hoard their coins so they can get the extra coins when the forks happen.  Decreased supply makes it even easier for price to rise.

If this coindesk article is to be believed, the recent rally is due to the upcoming forks:

https://www.coindesk.com/logical-not-bitcoins-coming-fork-boosting-price/

If this really is due to the bitcoin gold fork, it will be interesting to see what happens afterward (if the fork happens).  You might think that BTC will selloff, but if everyone is trying to get BTG so they can dump it to get more BTC, that might actually make BTC rally further.

Actually, I would disagree with this.  I think that reading/research is important until you find a trading system that works for you and continues to work under different market conditions (range, trend, etc.).  Once you do, that's it--you stick with that trading system.  Refine, optimize, and adjust it slowly over time as needed so that it continues to work.  There's no need to go looking for anything else.  There are a lot more systems that don't work than the number that do.  Once you find a successful one, don't give it up looking for a better one, which probably doesn't exist.  "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Well, I guess the market has given us a resounding answer in the last day: China is no longer critical to making new highs.  Japan and South Korea seem to have filled in the space left by China, and the increased positive chatter from large financial institutions (e.g., Goldman Sachs) may well be drawing in new investors.  Additionally, just because China has shut down their exchanges, that doesn't mean that Chinese investors have sold all of their bitcoins.  They could still be holding, hoping that BTC -> Yuan trading will resume at some point.

Does the price of bitcoin really have to drop after the bitcoin gold fork (if it happens)?  People may dump their bitcoin gold as quickly as they can to make something from it, but that doesn't mean that investors will necessarily be selling their BTC.  If for no other reason than because the price of bitcoin tends to do a lot of surprising things, we may end up with a rally after the fork.

I think a good part of the answer has to do with the reason(s) behind this crazy ~$1k increase in the last day.  If it's just because we made another ATH, then I think $10k is going to be pretty hard to hit.  But if a significant part of it is because people are hoarding to get extra forked coins, then I think $10k might be possible even within the next week or two.  While bitcoin requires significantly more money to increase its price than other cryptos, it all comes down to supply and demand.  If exchange supply shrinks (e.g., if people are hoarding), then increased demand (e.g., for extra forked coins) will lead to an even greater rise in price than normal.  And with all of the recent talk of big institutions (e.g., Goldman Sachs) entering the crypto sphere, the extra attention may be attracting more investors/money.

Right now, I'm not exactly sure what to think of the surge to ~$5800.  These are the points I see in favor of it not being related to upcoming forks:

1. There has to be some newfound confidence in the market that we've gotten past China's issues.

2. You usually see some follow-through in a strong move that breaks to new highs.

3. Bouncing off $3k so quickly probably left a lot of traders hoping to get in (or get back in) around $3k.  And if they've been waiting for another drop to that level, the break of $4500 confirmed that that probably won't happen (any time soon, at least), which may be leading to a lot of panic buying.

But there are some things that make me wonder if upcoming forks may be playing a significant role:

1. As I said above, I would expect follow-through on a break to new highs.  But ~$1k in 24 hours, which is about a 20% increase, is a lot, even for bitcoin.  I think the break of the previous $1100 high was part of a move that was only about a 10% increase.  This makes me think it's more than just a break of the previous ATH.

2. Except for LTC, which seems to be an anomaly, almost all of the other cryptos are down double-digit percentages.  This suggests that a lot of people are dumping other cryptos to buy bitcoin.  This is a big change from earlier this year when everything was going up together.  This demand for bitcoin only makes me wonder if people aren't starting to hoard for extra forked coins.

I completely agree.  And sometimes you have to try out different methods to see which works the best for you.  And I think it's important to point out that you really should be able to learn to trade for free.  You shouldn't have to pay for expensive classes that are probably taught by people who aren't good traders themselves (if they are traders at all).  If you're going to spend money on something to help you learn to trade well, spend it on a mentor who has a long track record (that you can verify) of trading successfully--someone who can guide you personally and be an accountability partner for you.

Weeks and months--ok, yeah, that makes more sense then.  Cryptos are so ridiculously volatile that week/month charts for cryptos are probably like year/decade charts for stocks.  The highest I go is the daily chart.  I often go down to 30-min and occasionally even 5 min for extremely volatile times (like right now).

For trading purposes I think it's important to look only at the major ones.  The lesser/no-name ones that pump-pop-and-die don't really follow much in the way of predictable TA patterns.  I've pretty much just kept an eye on bitcoin.

I would also note that I'm not a huge trader, in part because I don't have time to watch the charts continuously.  But I have taken a few successful intra-day bitcoin trades (without losers), and I watch for MACD-price divergences a lot, and they look like they indicate directional exhaustion pretty well.

It's hard to be consistent with day-trading.  If you're not, you will slowly (or maybe not so slowly) lose all of your capital.  Make sure you have a back-tested proven strategy if you're going to day-trade.  It's also tricky because you need to pay attention to the market all day long.  But, given the wild swings that bitcoin has, there's plenty of opportunity to profit.

Personally, I do a little bit of day- or short-term trading, but for most of my cryptos, I either hold or hodl for a while.