In 2014 the biggest bitcoin exchange got hacked and huge amounts of funds went missing. In 2018 next to nothing has really happened to warrant such a dramatic increase. The only real parallel between the two is they were both large spikes followed by downtrends. 2018 shouldn't follow 2014 in being a long bear market unless something significant happens to make that the case.
yeah, because of the Mt Gox hack which took out a lot of people's money who were in the market and I think led a lot of newer people (like me) to leave the market for a few years, so the bear market was especially long. All signs point to this current bear cycle to be much shorter. Last one took 1.5 years to make the turn around and another 1.5 years to get back to around the ATH, and then a few months of ups and downs around the old ATH and then 7.5 months of boom time.
This year, if the recent boost off the bottom is indeed the start of the turn around then it only took 7 months to turn around instead of 1.5 years. I wouldn't be surprised to see $20k get hit next spring or summer and then the next boom to happen between mid-2019 and mid-2020.
Basically 2018 is looking like 2014 and 2015 combined. 2019 may very well be analogous to 2016 and first half of 2017.
