The current bust seems a very very natural thing to occur. Just look at the log of bitcoin daily prices to see that busts are common, and the current one is big but very similar to old ones. And would not be very unlikely that the bust continues some months more…

https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/price/all/USD?c=e&r=day&st=log&t=l

True. I think the point is that i am confusing rate of supply of bitcoin with selling the bitcoin. Before a bitcoin is sold, it has to be created, and that does not diminish its value… So the point is about market cap that was very low at the beginning. It all makes sense now.


I have another idea, which maybe is a bit off-topic. Let me explain:
 If the ratio of total bitcoin value of usual holders per total bitcoin value of criminal holders gets too high. There is, in my head, the possibility that bitcoin can start to really fall in value after some boom (that occurs from 2 to 2 years +/-). The idea would be that usual people, including, i don't know, JP Morgan desks or whatever and other actors, (institutions' behaviour are the big unknown here), after a boom, would start to sell their bitcoin positions like crazy just to hedge/short (to buy them only when they are very cheap), and this effect would be stronger than what is to me the great hodler of all, the criminal person, that does not want to short and prefers to stay more quiet and hold in bitcoin everytime.
I mean, i know this is very anti-market ideas but in financial markets, things can get messed up very quickly if the market is irrational as a whole, which is happens, even if many people do not want to admit. So the idea is that, at some point, that ratio would be so high, that, it would be possible that bitcoin could reverse the long term trend. (yeah, i know, HUGE hypothesis) Anyway, in extreme, the price would get back to the earlier level, and then the long term trend could change again (to positive growth), so, not so biiiig deal after all.

In the end, it is just a theoretical possibility. We have had great busts after the booms, but my point is that those busts can be a lot greater in the future, if more and more bitcoin holders start trying to short.
PS: I think we are experiencing the second major (in relative terms) bust since the beginning.

Hi guys.
I always thought the price of bitcoin was increasing exponentially since the beginning(not counting volatility and other kind of cycles). And it would make sense because, the positive growth rate of bitcoins is decreasing with time.
But...the truth it is that the growth rate of the value of bitcoin(in dollars) is somewhat steadily decreasing if you look at long term trend.
Actually, the peaks in the growth rate of the price are getting lower and lower.
Maybe the trend does not matter because maybe in the future the trend would be other one, but the truth is that at the beginning of bitcoin, the growth rate of the price of bitcoin was very high, and so do the supply of bitcoin! For that to make sense, the demand would need to be very very strong. At the same time, bitcoin is very popular now but the last boom was relatively weak if you look at the relative change (growth rate) of its price compared to booms in the past.
The theory says that the data is an anomaly (or there are unknown extra factors at play?), and it's true that in some year, the price behavior was very weird, as if bitcoin was starting to stagnate in value.
But, overall, it seems to me that the data says that the growth rate of the price is stabilizing. Which is weird because the growth rate of the quantity of bitcoin is much lower than the past and bitcoin is popular like hell and people should actually get eager to buy.
I wanted to hear some thoughts on this issue. Personally, I take the data with lots of salt, but even so, i think it does not make much sense the behavior that i just described.(Again: with the growth rate of supply of bitcoins being much lower than the past, price change is far from maximum. That maximum was actually when the growth rate of the supply was very high!)