Bitcoin price cycles

[Raize]

1. Which model is the "too" conservative, once you said the later of the two models and once you said the first one ?

The one that says we're going to $60k over four years is too conservative compared to the one that thinks we'll be over $10k in under two years. I can't/won't explain why, but suffice to say that $10k in under two years is just the start of it.

2. Your best model or the model you are working on is the one that estimates $10K at Dec. 2017, am I right ? If yes, then why would be reaching $60's K at 2020/2021 could be wrong ? What will stop the increase ?

I'm just not divulging what happens after 2017, because I'm in this to make money and I need some of the people who could potentially read this to despair and sell into potential buy walls.

The $60k at 2020/2021 model also expects the price to bump over $10k briefly in early 2019, I just don't show that part. Suffice to say, the newer model is more accurate, don't focus too much on the old one.

There isn't anything "stopping" an increase, it's more of an estimation of human nature. What do you think is going to happen when the price goes from like just under $1k to over $10k in under a year? Of course people are going to sell. All my models attempt to do is use previous hype cycles to build expectations of the next price cycles, they are estimations of what could happen, not necessarily what is going to happen. I have backtested or verified them with respect to previous hype cycles, however.

Also, I am focusing on "bear side" potential, but I've had a few people who have PM'd me tell me I should focus on using the bull side data (with the assumption that bear side is too conservative and might be inaccurate because of this). I have not yet thought about averaging the two, but I'm not sure how you "average" together dates. It doesn't seem possible. Of course, I thought modelling trends in volume wasn't possible either and that proved to be wrong.

3. I believe in the $60's K somehow because from the above numbers, the numbers seems to go exponential, and this is how Bitcoin behaves, am I wrong ?

Well, the exponential price swings are more due to the hype cycle and human nature than anything else. The problem is that -- with Bitcoin -- the traditional hype cycle is also ingrained into the pricing structure for the underlying commodity. The more adoption the more valuable the underlying asset or unit is. In this case this means that Bitcoin will almost always hit higher "lows" after bubbles pop, but it also means that increases will occasionally be very short and very exponential.

I know there are number of people who say "with higher adoption we'll have less volatility", but that's an absurd comment to make at this stage of the game and perhaps in general. When talking about what Fakhoury mentions here, the "behavior" of an asset like Bitcoin, we should probably do a brief look into historical pricing. Has anyone ever heard of Jay Gould? Well after the gold rush and when the civil war was coming to an end, America had been trading for a few years in greenbacks but prominent people were calling for a return to a gold standard. Jay Gould had an idea to corner the gold market and devalue the greenback by having President Grant close the "gold window" similar to how Nixon would end up doing it nearly a century later. They convinced President Grant through somewhat-deceptive means, but perhaps with a valid argument. The notion was that by making gold scarce and highly valuable, the value of the greenbacks held by the public would decline and therefore goods would become cheaper to foreign countries. In practice, the price of gold went from low amounts to $145 and nearly $160 after the conversion of greenbacks to gold had been closed.

Over a century later, after Nixon closed the gold window, inflation quickly began to get out of hand. While Volker at the Federal Reserve had increased lending rates, the Hunt brothers and some wealthy Arabs used a similar tactic and their own wealth to corner the market on silver. This brought the price to over $55/ounce, something that wasn't met again till 2012. The "solution" that was used to stop them by COMEX was to argue with regulators that they needed to close margin accounts. This was used to force the price downward and the Hunt brothers were victims of this scheme despite the fact that it was not their fault the exchanges couldn't deliver on the assets. Ultimately, they were the recipients of the first big Fed "bailouts". I would speculate that while the Hunt brothers settled with those they owed, the US gov't may have worked on a deal with the Arab shieks that led to the start of the petrodollar.

The point of both of these examples is to show that silver and gold had been trading for centuries and they were still volatile. The idea that more adoption makes Bitcoin less volatile is errant, IMHO.

Right now we're in a similar situation as these two historic examples. With Saudi Arabia being seen less as an ally and more as an enemy (the death of the petrodollar) and Federal Reserve interest rates at all time lows, all that remains is for some enterprising billionaire to step in and first borrow as much as they possibly can to invest in Bitcoin and try to corner the market, using their own personal wealth and perhaps that of others as insurance against the borrowed money in order to litigate if they are unable to receive delivery of their coin. The market is ripe for this sort of turmoil, and someone could stand to make a huge amount of money in the process, as the media tends already to go nuts at the first sign of 10% or more increases in the price of the nascent crypto-currency markets.

So yes, I think exponential prices are possible, but I don't think this is some inherent "behavior" of Bitcoin, but rather as a result of speculators that are aware of the scarcity of coin, the hype cycle, and the nature of man. We've all heard the quote that necessity is the mother of invention. That may have been what led to Bitcoin to begin with, we needed it to combat the rampant inflation over the entire world. I'd similarly argue that scarcity is the mother of opportunity, and if it is possible to destroy the Federal Reserve banking system by borrowing against it to pump crypto currencies that will inevitably replace it, then some enterprising soul is eventually going to do exactly that.

The question about where to start a cycle is interesting, and one I struggled with.  I have already had to change the exchange I based my numbers on once (Gox was significant earlier, and since then Bitstamp is my source of numbers, and that may change again).  But there was value assigned before that... thing is, if the cycle length is correct, when exactly it started doesn't matter.  The up- and down-trends still match up, and the events occur ~900 days apart.  The earlier you start taking data from, of course, the smaller the sample size, so I wouldn't weight it too heavily.  I already don't assign too much value to cycle 1/phase 1, as the price was much more volatile and the market so much smaller.

Yes, bouncing around between exchanges and using early market pricing isn't ideal, but like you said, ultimately you just have to pull the trigger and start somewhere. I wanted to focus on the bear-side, and right from the git-go after Mt Gox came out at ~$0.10 the price immediately started falling, so I had to start there. What is sad is that the sample size was maybe two dozen total traders (if even that!) so it's probably not going to be great.

I like your 900-day cycle though, and I'll try to take this into consideration as time goes on. Even with us speculating here, there might be some risk, as many traders will take some advice as gospel and others will try to make money off of the people who try to follow it. I originally thought (at least in 2014) that the price of coin was going to fall to ~$60/coin, so I missed the bottom of $160 this time around. I did make some reasonably significant purchases in the $240 range, but it wasn't anything like I did back in November 2011 when I was able to spot the $2 bottom. Back then, though, we had these huge buy walls we could take advantage of, and those seem to have all but disappeared in the last 2-3 years.

Anyway, like you said, it might be fun to speculate, but none of this should be taken as actual trading advice. No one can predict the future. I just wanted to get some predictions out there for fun and this thread seemed like a good one to put them in. Maybe I'll be bumping it here in a year to do a "see? I told you so!" in jest. Good luck in your trading everyone!

[1715172146]

1715172146

[Fakhoury]

1. Which model is the "too" conservative, once you said the later of the two models and once you said the first one ?

The one that says we're going to $60k over four years is too conservative compared to the one that thinks we'll be over $10k in under two years. I can't/won't explain why, but suffice to say that $10k in under two years is just the start of it.

2. Your best model or the model you are working on is the one that estimates $10K at Dec. 2017, am I right ? If yes, then why would be reaching $60's K at 2020/2021 could be wrong ? What will stop the increase ?

I'm just not divulging what happens after 2017, because I'm in this to make money and I need some of the people who could potentially read this to despair and sell into potential buy walls.

The $60k at 2020/2021 model also expects the price to bump over $10k briefly in early 2019, I just don't show that part. Suffice to say, the newer model is more accurate, don't focus too much on the old one.

There isn't anything "stopping" an increase, it's more of an estimation of human nature. What do you think is going to happen when the price goes from like just under $1k to over $10k in under a year? Of course people are going to sell. All my models attempt to do is use previous hype cycles to build expectations of the next price cycles, they are estimations of what could happen, not necessarily what is going to happen. I have backtested or verified them with respect to previous hype cycles, however.

Also, I am focusing on "bear side" potential, but I've had a few people who have PM'd me tell me I should focus on using the bull side data (with the assumption that bear side is too conservative and might be inaccurate because of this). I have not yet thought about averaging the two, but I'm not sure how you "average" together dates. It doesn't seem possible. Of course, I thought modelling trends in volume wasn't possible either and that proved to be wrong.

3. I believe in the $60's K somehow because from the above numbers, the numbers seems to go exponential, and this is how Bitcoin behaves, am I wrong ?

Well, the exponential price swings are more due to the hype cycle and human nature than anything else. The problem is that -- with Bitcoin -- the traditional hype cycle is also ingrained into the pricing structure for the underlying commodity. The more adoption the more valuable the underlying asset or unit is. In this case this means that Bitcoin will almost always hit higher "lows" after bubbles pop, but it also means that increases will occasionally be very short and very exponential.

I know there are number of people who say "with higher adoption we'll have less volatility", but that's an absurd comment to make at this stage of the game and perhaps in general. When talking about what Fakhoury mentions here, the "behavior" of an asset like Bitcoin, we should probably do a brief look into historical pricing. Has anyone ever heard of Jay Gould? Well after the gold rush and when the civil war was coming to an end, America had been trading for a few years in greenbacks but prominent people were calling for a return to a gold standard. Jay Gould had an idea to corner the gold market and devalue the greenback by having President Grant close the "gold window" similar to how Nixon would end up doing it nearly a century later. They convinced President Grant through somewhat-deceptive means, but perhaps with a valid argument. The notion was that by making gold scarce and highly valuable, the value of the greenbacks held by the public would decline and therefore goods would become cheaper to foreign countries. In practice, the price of gold went from low amounts to $145 and nearly $160 after the conversion of greenbacks to gold had been closed.

Over a century later, after Nixon closed the gold window, inflation quickly began to get out of hand. While Volker at the Federal Reserve had increased lending rates, the Hunt brothers and some wealthy Arabs used a similar tactic and their own wealth to corner the market on silver. This brought the price to over $55/ounce, something that wasn't met again till 2012. The "solution" that was used to stop them by COMEX was to argue with regulators that they needed to close margin accounts. This was used to force the price downward and the Hunt brothers were victims of this scheme despite the fact that it was not their fault the exchanges couldn't deliver on the assets. Ultimately, they were the recipients of the first big Fed "bailouts". I would speculate that while the Hunt brothers settled with those they owed, the US gov't may have worked on a deal with the Arab shieks that led to the start of the petrodollar.

The point of both of these examples is to show that silver and gold had been trading for centuries and they were still volatile. The idea that more adoption makes Bitcoin less volatile is errant, IMHO.

Right now we're in a similar situation as these two historic examples. With Saudi Arabia being seen less as an ally and more as an enemy (the death of the petrodollar) and Federal Reserve interest rates at all time lows, all that remains is for some enterprising billionaire to step in and first borrow as much as they possibly can to invest in Bitcoin and try to corner the market, using their own personal wealth and perhaps that of others as insurance against the borrowed money in order to litigate if they are unable to receive delivery of their coin. The market is ripe for this sort of turmoil, and someone could stand to make a huge amount of money in the process, as the media tends already to go nuts at the first sign of 10% or more increases in the price of the nascent crypto-currency markets.

So yes, I think exponential prices are possible, but I don't think this is some inherent "behavior" of Bitcoin, but rather as a result of speculators that are aware of the scarcity of coin, the hype cycle, and the nature of man. We've all heard the quote that necessity is the mother of invention. That may have been what led to Bitcoin to begin with, we needed it to combat the rampant inflation over the entire world. I'd similarly argue that scarcity is the mother of opportunity, and if it is possible to destroy the Federal Reserve banking system by borrowing against it to pump crypto currencies that will inevitably replace it, then some enterprising soul is eventually going to do exactly that.

The question about where to start a cycle is interesting, and one I struggled with.  I have already had to change the exchange I based my numbers on once (Gox was significant earlier, and since then Bitstamp is my source of numbers, and that may change again).  But there was value assigned before that... thing is, if the cycle length is correct, when exactly it started doesn't matter.  The up- and down-trends still match up, and the events occur ~900 days apart.  The earlier you start taking data from, of course, the smaller the sample size, so I wouldn't weight it too heavily.  I already don't assign too much value to cycle 1/phase 1, as the price was much more volatile and the market so much smaller.

Yes, bouncing around between exchanges and using early market pricing isn't ideal, but like you said, ultimately you just have to pull the trigger and start somewhere. I wanted to focus on the bear-side, and right from the git-go after Mt Gox came out at ~$0.10 the price immediately started falling, so I had to start there. What is sad is that the sample size was maybe two dozen total traders (if even that!) so it's probably not going to be great.

I like your 900-day cycle though, and I'll try to take this into consideration as time goes on. Even with us speculating here, there might be some risk, as many traders will take some advice as gospel and others will try to make money off of the people who try to follow it. I originally thought (at least in 2014) that the price of coin was going to fall to ~$60/coin, so I missed the bottom of $160 this time around. I did make some reasonably significant purchases in the $240 range, but it wasn't anything like I did back in November 2011 when I was able to spot the $2 bottom. Back then, though, we had these huge buy walls we could take advantage of, and those seem to have all but disappeared in the last 2-3 years.

Anyway, like you said, it might be fun to speculate, but none of this should be taken as actual trading advice. No one can predict the future. I just wanted to get some predictions out there for fun and this thread seemed like a good one to put them in. Maybe I'll be bumping it here in a year to do a "see? I told you so!" in jest. Good luck in your trading everyone!

I'm amazed at how professional and cultured you are, I'm really glad to be learning from some one like you.

Side note : I'm sorry hacknoid if the thread is taking another curve of what it used to be, if you are annoyed or something, kindly don't hesitate to PM me in order to take this talk into the PM's.

1. I still see as you said, the destination to $60K after 4 years, will start depending on your newest and best model, which speculate the price to be $10K at Dec. 2017, even if you didn't mean it, but I guess you stated it, or did I miss something here ?

I fully understand your intentions in making money from this, and all of us in this game for this, even the believers.

2. I had a conspiracy theory in mind and I would like to hear from you about it, aren't Governments and Banksters afraid of Bitcoin where for example assassination of core developers could happen for example ?

3. Could really governments start buying Bitcoins where they think that it's best for them to take Bitcoin as an friend not foe ?

4. What you think about this, since you've talked about this a bit earlier in your above reply

The bitcoin network is also by no means old, Segwit is about to be released which doubles network capacity, and the Lightning and Thunder networks which are in the pipeline are going to allow for literally billions of off-chain transactions per second.

I also agree with you that the Global Banking Cartel hates decentralisation. The banking cartel’s main competitive advantage has been the control of money supply. Presidents have supposedly lost their lives over this e.g. Abraham Lincoln and JFK. It goes as far back as the Rothschild’s with the statement “As long as I control the nation’s money supply, I care not who makes its laws”. All central banks in the world are private owned.

Where I disagree with you is the fact that they can’t ban bitcoin. It is exactly the same as the torrent file sharing network, every time governments attack it more nodes in the network keep popping up. My view is that deep down governments like Bitcoin, as the world has been run by bankers and not governments (and at times the difference between the two is a bit blurred). Money creation is finally being taken out of the baking cartels hands. I think that governments would have banned bitcoin now if they wanted to, they would control the onramps of fiat currency into digital currency by banning apps in the app store etc. It is also a catch 22 for them, they can’t ban the bitcoin protocol as it transcends all firewalls, it is completely immune. All they can try and do is hamper it, and that causes the Streisand Effect.

There is also a bigger issue at hand here in that all fiat currencies land up becoming completely worthless. When America went off the gold standard in the early 1970’s, Kissenger and Nixon made every country in the world buy oil in USD which created demand for the USD and any country that tried to renegade, they bombed. Gadaffi, Sadam, and now Assad. This created the petrodollar, which is now dying, as China is buying oil from all these countries in any currency except the USD (China just signed a USD400bn bilateral oil agreement with Russia to bypass the US). China is also dumping tons of American debt, which was being bought up by an unknown entity in Belguim at first, and now an entity in the Caymen Islands (everything points to the banking cartel buying it, because no one wants a vast stack of US debt anymore).

There is compelling evidence that the UK and the US have sold all their gold to China. Fort Knox could well be empty, and it is common knowledge that the Comex Vaults are empty. The biggest Ponzi scheme is that for every ounce of gold in the Comex vault (main gold vault), there are over 300 owners that are trading that same ounce in the gold market in the form of a worthless paper contract.

When the USD collapses, they can’t issue another fiat currency as it would be exactly the same as what Zim did last month, it is massively inflationary to the point of finding yourself exactly where you started virtually immediately. They also can’t offer a gold backed currency because there is no gold. It is conspiracy theorist, but it makes sense (Gordon Brown sold most of the UK’s gold).

My personal belief is that that it is a stroke of genius from the US government:

1. Sell all your gold to China
2. When the USD slowly collapses everyone would flood to bitcoin to preserve their wealth as they can’t use gold.
3. The US government debt which is denominated in the USD would be inflated away.
4. The US would then accept taxes and pay civil servants in digital currency, and they have not defaulted on their debt just let it inflate away.
5. Keep gold as a “Barbarous Relic” as they call it.

There is a great series of you tube videos to watch by a guy called Mike Maloney (Dad and Norm you must also watch them) which is very important to watch right now. It is called the “Hidden secrets of Money”: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mike+maloney+hidden+secrets+of+money

He states that we are going to see the biggest wealth transfer ever before 2020.

Another great website to follow is Zerohedge. It does sound a bit conspiracy theorist, but it is not in main stream media’s interest to report on this as it would cause panic.

I saw the start of the bank runs here in the UK in 2007 with Northern Rock and people queuing outside the bank exactly like the great depression, the banks were bailed out by the government, and the can was just kicked down the road and the problems never fixed. South Africa never saw this because China piled in with USD35trn worth of debt to prop up the world economy and especially South Africa. Now all governments have passed a law stating that there are “Bail-Ins”, which means when the bank fails they first go for customer’s deposits to prop the bank up. It has already happened in Austria, Cyprus and Portugal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc6Hp_Zq3rU

I remember the first day working at HSBC and was completely shocked to see that they were still using 1970’s legacy systems, and I immediately thought that this has to change, and then I saw the network diagram that consisted of over 600 systems all connected with “sticky tape”. I thought how on earth is this going to be replaced with modern technology? I now know that you have to pretty much start afresh and personally feel that blockchain technology and specifically THE blockchain will be the solution.

Time will tell. I feel that the next 5 years are going to be the most important in our life time, and it’s going to affect everyone globally.

5. While talking in simple terms, what do you think about this as well ?

if it turns out as predicted, $50000 by march 2017 would be plausible.

That would require a mountain of real people to suddenly throw vast amounts of their hard earned money at something almost all of them still know zero about.

Theories and fractals and friends are all well and good but don't play along with the real world.

What da f thats to much prediction for you men,  bitcoins price didnt really reach for that price as you mentioned and I see the biggest price reached by bitcoin in history is at 1k$ and follows by big crash hope it will not happen for this time, but for predicting bitcoin will reach to 50000 thats a lot of zero for predictinng and very imposible to happen and manny money tO invest so the price will go to that,  but the nearly prediction price is @ 700-800$ mark by that it can be decent and true to come prediction and we can say safe zone for bitcoin to avoid big crash

it will happen.

huge rallies cause the price to overshoot and then a large correction happens, but it will always end up being higher in the end.

what you fail to understand is that bitcoin is LIMITED and therefore the only thing that actually is impossible is for the price to stay this low.

assuming bitcoin will be adopted by more users it means the price will have to go up. And not by just $50 either.

More like by 100x at least.

Even $700~$800 is way too low.

Next rally will go to ~$3000 at least, but more likely $5000

If there is one after that (most likely in 2017) expect to see 5 digits (40~50k)

it's inevitable.

Imagine 30 million people (and 30 million people is not a lot on over 7 billion people worthwide) all want to buy 1 bitcoin for $500. We won't have enough bitcoin. So they will have to bid higher and higher. The 'poorer' people will have to live with less than 1 bitcoin.

I can not stress this enough:

the average amount of bitcoin people will have is less than 0.003 bitcoin

so therefore, 1 bitcoin has to be an INSANE amount of money. and $50k is just the start. f you think otherwise, basically you're saying bitcoin will never be used by more than ~10 million people. And that's an even more insane prediction than the ones i am making.

Just because you lack logic and mathematical skills doesn't make me delusional. I base my predication on math and logic, you base your predictions on what your 'feelings' tell you is 'right'

[hacknoid]

Side note : I'm sorry hacknoid if the thread is taking another curve of what it used to be, if you are annoyed or something, kindly don't hesitate to PM me in order to take this talk into the PM's.

Well I did title the thread "Bitcoin Price Cycles", not just "MY Bitcoin Price Cycles"

I'm enjoying the healthy discussion; no worries.

[Fakhoury]

Side note : I'm sorry hacknoid if the thread is taking another curve of what it used to be, if you are annoyed or something, kindly don't hesitate to PM me in order to take this talk into the PM's.

Well I did title the thread "Bitcoin Price Cycles", not just "MY Bitcoin Price Cycles"

I'm enjoying the healthy discussion; no worries.

IMHO, I knew this would be your reply, bulls seems to be kind and friendly also

Edit : Are you keeping track with MY thread or shall I get some bears to assassinate you and steal your bitcoins

[hacknoid]

Side note : I'm sorry hacknoid if the thread is taking another curve of what it used to be, if you are annoyed or something, kindly don't hesitate to PM me in order to take this talk into the PM's.

Well I did title the thread "Bitcoin Price Cycles", not just "MY Bitcoin Price Cycles"

I'm enjoying the healthy discussion; no worries.

IMHO, I knew this would be your reply, bulls seems to be kind and friendly also

Edit : Are you keeping track with MY thread or shall I get some bears to assassinate you and steal your bitcoins

  Good moods all around these days, for sure.

Yes, yours is definitely one of the few threads I regularly (>1x per day) follow.  Keep up the great work!

[Fakhoury]

Side note : I'm sorry hacknoid if the thread is taking another curve of what it used to be, if you are annoyed or something, kindly don't hesitate to PM me in order to take this talk into the PM's.

Well I did title the thread "Bitcoin Price Cycles", not just "MY Bitcoin Price Cycles"

I'm enjoying the healthy discussion; no worries.

IMHO, I knew this would be your reply, bulls seems to be kind and friendly also

Edit : Are you keeping track with MY thread or shall I get some bears to assassinate you and steal your bitcoins

  Good moods all around these days, for sure.

Yes, yours is definitely one of the few threads I regularly (>1x per day) follow.  Keep up the great work!

It's not mine, it's OUR'S

Waiting for Raize to come online and reply, I'm setting on fire waiting for him tbh.

[hacknoid]

Side note : I'm sorry hacknoid if the thread is taking another curve of what it used to be, if you are annoyed or something, kindly don't hesitate to PM me in order to take this talk into the PM's.

Well I did title the thread "Bitcoin Price Cycles", not just "MY Bitcoin Price Cycles"

I'm enjoying the healthy discussion; no worries.

IMHO, I knew this would be your reply, bulls seems to be kind and friendly also

Edit : Are you keeping track with MY thread or shall I get some bears to assassinate you and steal your bitcoins

  Good moods all around these days, for sure.

Yes, yours is definitely one of the few threads I regularly (>1x per day) follow.  Keep up the great work!

It's not mine, it's OUR'S

Waiting for Raize to come online and reply, I'm setting on fire waiting for him tbh.

 

The price in Canadian dollars is coming so close to $1000 again... wonder if it will be tonight?  New CAD ATH?  (Now I don't want to sleep!)

[Fakhoury]

Side note : I'm sorry hacknoid if the thread is taking another curve of what it used to be, if you are annoyed or something, kindly don't hesitate to PM me in order to take this talk into the PM's.

Well I did title the thread "Bitcoin Price Cycles", not just "MY Bitcoin Price Cycles"

I'm enjoying the healthy discussion; no worries.

IMHO, I knew this would be your reply, bulls seems to be kind and friendly also

Edit : Are you keeping track with MY thread or shall I get some bears to assassinate you and steal your bitcoins

  Good moods all around these days, for sure.

Yes, yours is definitely one of the few threads I regularly (>1x per day) follow.  Keep up the great work!

It's not mine, it's OUR'S

Waiting for Raize to come online and reply, I'm setting on fire waiting for him tbh.

 

The price in Canadian dollars is coming so close to $1000 again... wonder if it will be tonight?  New CAD ATH?  (Now I don't want to sleep!)

Don't forget to watch the price at Bitcoinity.

Me as well, I don't want to sleep, I've several tabs open here, BitcoinWisdom, Twitter, Reddit, Bitcointalk

The rally has stopped a bit, if it will continue, we could see $1K in CAD, I give it 95% chance.

[uki]

As for the new ATH discussion, here is my old observation from the early days of this thread, that should still be valid. 

hacknoid, thanks for an interesting topic.
I am not a big fan of cycles in TA, but there is one thing that actually is very interesting in your chart. If you look at the ratio between the max and min price in each cycle, you will observe very interesting story, namely, for the first cycle (market introduction) we made more than 1000-fold increase ($0.01 to $30) in price, for the second cycle (initial adoption) we made about 100-fold increase ($10 to $1200). That leads me to a very interesting conclusion, which actually matches my expectations, in the third cycle (I would call it broad adoption) the price will go up ten(teens)-fold maximum. That would mean $2-3k as the realistic price target for the next 900 days.

[hacknoid]

As for the new ATH discussion, here is my old observation from the early days of this thread, that should still be valid.  

hacknoid, thanks for an interesting topic.
I am not a big fan of cycles in TA, but there is one thing that actually is very interesting in your chart. If you look at the ratio between the max and min price in each cycle, you will observe very interesting story, namely, for the first cycle (market introduction) we made more than 1000-fold increase ($0.01 to $30) in price, for the second cycle (initial adoption) we made about 100-fold increase ($10 to $1200). That leads me to a very interesting conclusion, which actually matches my expectations, in the third cycle (I would call it broad adoption) the price will go up ten(teens)-fold maximum. That would mean $2-3k as the realistic price target for the next 900 days.

I entirely agree.  We have definitely followed the trend, for the relative increases to be less each time.  Also earlier, I plotted some graphs:

So, I noticed something else interesting.  I took the ratios of the values in Phase 1 for max and end prices (ratio of max/start and end/start), and plotted them on a graph.  Linearly doesn't work, but on an exponential axis the trend is remarkably clear through three cycles:



Notice here that there is a very definite trend in decreasing price ratios, and also that the trend lines are virtually parallel, meaning the ratio of max price to end price is also pretty consistent.  

So what happens with Phase 2 data?  Here you go, with trend lines plotted:



Well now that doesn't work.  This indicates that the end price would be greater than the max price, which clearly is not possible.  However, it is possible to get a value that closely works:



Choosing 3x for both the max and end price results in a reasonable plot.  However, these lines clearly are not anywhere near parallel, and this would not hold for a 4th cycle, even if it works for this time.

So, it indicates to me two possibilities:  either a max occuring at the end of this cycle (Jan 2017), or else Bitcoin is going to do something completely unexpected on this time around (at least in terms of price ratio increase).  Even in the former case, it looks like the trend is changing, and next time could be anything.

Note I still am expecting a rise in price this phase, but maybe it will actually be greater than last time...  

Now, this is trying to quantify with exact equations what will happen, so it's probably not right.  However, it would indicate, based on the slowing trend, to reach a maximum this phase of about $1250 USD/Bitcoin, at around the end of the phase (Jan 2017).  So far, it's possible.  However, if we exceed $1250 before the end of the phase, then this model doesn't hold.

It's not the core concept I am illustrating, just an interesting trend I had observed from the data.  

In any case, I think you are correct, uki, in that the relative peaks will be lower than previous cycles.  However, since last cycle we hit a peak about 10x the value at the start of the cycle, we can be lower this time, but still be anywhere up to a peak of about $4000.


EDIT: I guess I've committed myself to saying we are likely in for a peak price of somewhere between $1250 and $4000.  Note: NO GUARANTEES!

[jehst]

If the magnitude of the bitcoin bubbles decreases by a factor of 10 each time, then there will essentially be no more bubbles after a few more cycles. This doesn't really make sense to me. Looking at gold and silver, you have large bubbles occurring indefinitely for hundreds or thousands of years. I think bitcoin will be similar. The bubbles will go on indefinitely (as long as bitcoin survives). Instead of getting smaller and smaller, the magnitude of the increases may trend down and then back up and then down, or the cycle length may change.

[uki]

If the magnitude of the bitcoin bubbles decreases by a factor of 10 each time, then there will essentially be no more bubbles after a few more cycles. This doesn't really make sense to me. Looking at gold and silver, you have large bubbles occurring indefinitely for hundreds or thousands of years. I think bitcoin will be similar. The bubbles will go on indefinitely (as long as bitcoin survives). Instead of getting smaller and smaller, the magnitude of the increases may trend down and then back up and then down, or the cycle length may change.

As for bubbles going infinitely, it all depends on the context. If there is nothing more than speculative pumps and dumps driving the price of Bitcoin, I would expect 2-3 more cycles with lowering bubble ratio until the general public gets fully bored and quits it for good (therefore my theory about that factor decreasing by 10 with each bubble). If, in contrast, there are additional developments so that Bitcoin gets global recognition (similar to that of silver or gold, for example) and the price action can be less influenced from such thin-air speculative pumps, then I expect the story to go on for longer, with occasional bubbles being bigger than the previous ones. Which is basically what you say. The critical assumption is, however, to get the mass adoption, or at least to get there as close as possible. That is an open issue for me, atm.

[hacknoid]

If the magnitude of the bitcoin bubbles decreases by a factor of 10 each time, then there will essentially be no more bubbles after a few more cycles. This doesn't really make sense to me. Looking at gold and silver, you have large bubbles occurring indefinitely for hundreds or thousands of years. I think bitcoin will be similar. The bubbles will go on indefinitely (as long as bitcoin survives). Instead of getting smaller and smaller, the magnitude of the increases may trend down and then back up and then down, or the cycle length may change.

Even if we don't have bubbles as we have come to know them, it's possible that instead we'll move to a model of slow, steady increase.  There has to be a top somewhere, but we could still be likely quite far from that top.  However, it's easy to see the long term uptrend in price, plotted on a logarithmic axis, has never been broken.  Even during the long downturn of 2014/2015, the long term trend was still up - we were just taking a long slow road down from the massive late-2013 bubble.

That is not to say we won't have any more bubbles; just that they may not be on the same scale, or repeat at the same relative intervals, as they have historically.  Bitcoin still has an extremely small user base in relation to potential (the entire world population), and a tiny market cap in relation to just about any significant metric. 

[keystroke]

I think we are entering another super-cycle but there is still going to be a ceiling on stable price, which can be temporarily overshot, due to the cost of mining taking up too much of the world's energy consumption.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=694401.msg9186092#msg9186092
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=694401.msg7841448#msg7841448

Would be helpful to run these numbers again.

[Raize]

As for the new ATH discussion, here is my old observation from the early days of this thread, that should still be valid. 

hacknoid, thanks for an interesting topic.
I am not a big fan of cycles in TA, but there is one thing that actually is very interesting in your chart. If you look at the ratio between the max and min price in each cycle, you will observe very interesting story, namely, for the first cycle (market introduction) we made more than 1000-fold increase ($0.01 to $30) in price, for the second cycle (initial adoption) we made about 100-fold increase ($10 to $1200). That leads me to a very interesting conclusion, which actually matches my expectations, in the third cycle (I would call it broad adoption) the price will go up ten(teens)-fold maximum. That would mean $2-3k as the realistic price target for the next 900 days.

I like what uki is saying here, because powers and magnitude could be trended as well, but then for trying to find a cycle where do you start and stop? Do you say it went from $12 to $120 pretty quickly or it went from $120 to $1200 pretty quickly, or do you take the whole thing and say it went from $12 to $1200 over the course of a year? I mean, before that we had a $0.10 to $30.00 increase in under a year before that, so maybe it's only a 3000x increase to 1000x increase to now *only* a 300x increase? And if so, when does the "bubble within a year" start?

Sorry if I'm asking more questions, but it's stuff like this that we should have answers to if we're going to be speculating. I think a 300x increase in a year's time is just as likely as a 10x increase from $150 to $1500 over three years just prior to that. :/ Of course, then that puts a yearly increase from a basis of $1500 to over $300k, which seems silly right now.

I think that's why I tried to do a bear-side evaluation of the price on a longer timeframe and took into account the entire history over the longest time frame possible. I'd rather be conservative in my estimates than really go pie-in-the-sky and be wrong, but I have to accept that it is possible growth continue exponentially till all 6 billion people are affected in some way daily by cryptocurrencies.

Of course it seems to the average poster that it would be equally-silly right now to be talking about prices like $10k and $60k within four years as "conservative" when the price is still well under $1k, but I've never cared much about what people think. I venture to guess that hacknoid feels the same about his model which could end up being accurate or more-accurate as well, but maybe just off-set by a couple of months and followed up by a "super-cycle" as others have mentioned. I didn't mean to hijack this thread, either, just thought it was similar enough to mine that it seemed worthwhile to discuss here. Plus, I suspect the people in this thread are interested in timing and cycles, so it might be beneficial to talk about a LOT of them as we spot them.

1. I still see as you said, the destination to $60K after 4 years, will start depending on your newest and best model, which speculate the price to be $10K at Dec. 2017, even if you didn't mean it, but I guess you stated it, or did I miss something here ?

Yeah, I still think we'll eventually reach $60k sometime by 2021, regardless of model. There's just so many people in the world that may eventually jump into Bitcoin that what we call "Bitcoin" in 5 years might not even be Bitcoin anymore because the average person won't own one and we might have more technical names for smaller units. The word bitcoin might end up being demoted down to just a lower-case btc and we'll be talking about "mbtc" which we shorten even further to just "mills" even. We'll probably still use the BTC or BTC symbol in some respects, but global finance as a whole might all be nation-state side-chains and we're exchanging in units that are measured in agreed-upon BTC increments. If you look at what side-chains and the lightning network is, it's basically a way to be your own bank. It could be that normal Bitcoiners suddenly start becoming independent bankers who issue and secure their own on-chain representations of BTC. Some countries may have laws about individuals issuing their own physical coins, but very few (if any?) countries have laws on the books about issuing virtual/crypto currencies. Prior to the 1910s, bank notes were commonly used as currency in the US that were actively and regularly traded. And this is while the greenback was still in use, too!

The creation of the Federal Reserve only ended up making a single note what they called "legal tender". Some people that want to outright end the Fed. In some respects, I've been this kind of person over the years, but what I'd really like to see is just an end to the legal tender laws and a return to allowing gold, silver, and other bank notes being viable solutions for resolving debt obligations. This is less controversial than ending the Fed, and probably an achievable solution in our lifetimes for US citizens.

2. I had a conspiracy theory in mind and I would like to hear from you about it, aren't Governments and Banksters afraid of Bitcoin where for example assassination of core developers could happen for example ?

Oh dear. I try not to speculate on conspiracy theories despite the fact that I sometimes tangent a conversation into talking about the petrodollar or what-not. Even though my talking points might be similar to those that conspiracy theorists talk about, I don't speculate on lizard-men or the Illuminati, nor do I think the government itself is bound to some sort of evil cartel or jewish conspirators or anything. It's pretty easy to see which politicians are "bought" by which special interests using public data, but I don't think that just because AIPAC "owns" Lindsay Graham that it means they get to dictate some grand conspiracy of a New World Order or anything. It's very likely that AIPAC itself, for example, is made up with lots of people that have a wide range of opinions on the purpose of money as well!

I do suspect that core developers could and are being influenced, but I try to evaluate what they are saying without regards to who "owns" them. I know some people are concerned about Blockstream. And Blockstream for example could be argued to be "owned" by PwC. So maybe PwC wants Bitcoin to be more "auditor-friendly". But then I start to think about what it was Satoshi was building and what we all signed into when we were getting involved in 2010-2011, and the blockchain is probably best built in this manner, open and independent, with a lot of "banks" existing on top of it with it as a huge settlement network. Naturally PwC wants to have staff that learn how to work with something like that and if it only costs them a few hundred grand per year to have near instant-access for their staff to the people that are actually coding the new order of global finance, is that really all that absurd?

If PwC wants to pay the salaries of core developers to build what we were already expecting them to make anyway, then it doesn't seem right to complain about it. Yet, anyway! There still may be reason to despair about some things. For example, I worry about how the core developers are more Western-based and seemingly anti-Eastern philosophy in some respects. I worry about how English-based the communications are and how much they adhere to IRC discussions, which might not be popular to other technical people and could become "insider-driven". This is less of a criticism and more of an observation, however.

I don't think it behoves anyone to worry about what could happen to core developers by evil actors till it starts happening, though. I worry about the absence of some early Bitcoiners like DeathAndTaxes. I worry about how the US gov't treated BurtW. I don't think these sorts of things come from a conglomeration of Banksters and Gov'ts working together to hurt Bitcoin yet, but there is always the possibility that someone, somewhere, really wants Bitcoin to fail. Regardless of who may be behind ill-intent, it doesn't mean organizations they have ties to are working for any sort of overall agenda to destroy Bitcoin. The blockchain has the potential to benefit everyone, after all! We can ALL be the next big banking institutions and the people will trust our technical and financial expertise to safeguard their wealth in ways that traditional banking didn't provide them. Decentralizing banking will help avert crisises like what happened in 2008. It'll also help keep banking executives honest. whereas it could be argued that traditional bankers are really only good at schmoozing with politicians and bureacrats to protect their empires, the future successful bankers might be the folks who work independently and provide their customers the best service and protect their assets FROM the politicians and bureaucrats that want to inflate currency and ruin the people's store of value.

3. Could really governments start buying Bitcoins where they think that it's best for them to take Bitcoin as an friend not foe ?

Yes, they could buy, or just governments can easily start accepting Bitcoin as payments for fines and etc. There are no laws that I'm aware of that prevent them from doing so, though the legal tender laws require them to also accept fiat. I do suspect we're less than maybe five years away from a first world country eventually accepting Bitcoin as payment of fines/fees/etc. It might not be the US, but the US (and perhaps a state like Texas) does seem like a likely government that would eventually do this. There's really no risk for them to do so. I believe that Wyoming (US state) might still have laws on the books allowing people to pay for some things in gold. It's just never used. Similarly, states could accept Bitcoin if they really wanted to. So could the Chinese accept it for fees or fines if they so desired, but they are more top-down driven right now, it would likely require their primary state government to accept it before the provincial governments could.

4. What you think about this, since you've talked about this a bit earlier in your above reply

Well, he's mostly right with some statements and maybe borderlines on some others as they approach the conspiracy angle of things. I'm not sure ALL of the gold in certain reserves have been sold to China but we do know COMEX is kind of screwed and allows contracts for more in gold than is regularly mined. That shouldn't be a problem as long as no one takes delivery, but like the Hunt brother's example, what is to stop someone from eventually doing exactly that?

The way COMEX goes about ensuring prices don't accumulate too much is through margin calls, which will only work for so long till alternatives to it in India and China start becoming more widely-available and used by someone attempting to corner the market again. Then maybe you'll see the real price of gold accumulate higher than COMEX and the paper ETFs can keep up. That'll be a fun bubble to watch pop as the entirety of the Western world asks how derivatives markets like this could still exist when we just had a housing crisis that showed why this was a problem only eight years ago. Western bankers love their derivatives markets! The public be damned, though, because the governments are always going to bail them out.

I'm not sure that both the foreign and domestic gold held at the Federal Reserve has ever been audited at the same time, which is probably my one and only "conspiracy" belief, I think they both should be audited to ensure that the same gold they show Germany they have isn't the same gold they claim the US public owns. Aside from that, the petrodollar isn't even a conspiracy-laden topic anymore. It's common knowledge that OPEC has required all contracts to be made in USD since the 70s.

When it comes to how worldwide finance works, I always try to consider a term called "Hanlon's razor". My belief is that Western governments aren't corrupt, they're just incompetent. The full statement is "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." I don't think bankers, politicians, and bureaucrats are
evil, they are just dumb, and the public will inevitably suffer because of their incompetence.

5. While talking in simple terms, what do you think about this as well ?

I don't have much to comment on this one. I'm not going to take the same tone that zimmah did, at least. Without any context, I'll try to analyse "the average amount of bitcoin people will have is less than 0.003 bitcoin".

I don't know what led to that comment, but I'm going to assume it went something like this:
1. There are ~6 billion people in the world.
2. There are going to be about 20 million bitcoin in active use till it hits 21 million in 2140.
3. 20,000,000/6,000,000,000 = 0.003 repeating so that means there's enough Bitcoin for everyone to own .003 BTC which means that most people will own less than that cause there will always be wealthy people and institutions that own more.

Does that sound about right? I wasn't involved in this conversation, but it seems like that might be the argument. That said, I'm not sure how we're supposed to address it. Take gold for example. How many people the world over own any gold? Do they need to own any at all?

It's possible that very few people will ever own Bitcoin itself. Instead they might own side-chains representing goods or services that get settled once per month or at other iterative times. It's hard to visualize or process this fully right now as we all deal in Bitcoin as if it is a normal investment for us and don't see our ownership of coin as a way to settle other people's payments. It is possible that you and I could be banks in a decade, though. We'd protect and run Bitcoin nodes for ourselves and hire technical staff to maintain the nodes and we'd store our immense wealth in cold wallets, sure, but we'd have hot wallets with a few thousand or tens of thousands of dollars in equivalent crypto-currecies in them. All of our friends and family would trust us with storing their wealth and we could issue side-chain currencies or use side-chains that each of us trust and for the ones we don't trust, we could settle in Bitcoin itself.

Ultimately we'll have to trust our own technical and finance staff, but naturally the people who understand the technology better than others while still understanding people better than others will build the most successful systems. My guess is that there will be a lot of M of N or Shamir's Secret Sharing in use in the future business world. A lot of people's reputations will be hinged on how well they secure their private keys and pass phrases. It'll be a different world for sure. So many people right now are not used to being held accountable in Western finance. I doubt they'll be able to tolerate it. That's part of the reason why I think things like the DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) and such might be better sold to the Eastern markets, but over time the whole world will eventually see the value in it.

[Fakhoury]

Thanks again Raize for taking the time and the effort to write such a very long and detailed reply.

If you don't mind, I would like to take the discussion a bit into the "price" route.

In the middle of what you've typed and I can infer from what you type and how you think that you are not that type of person who just write any shit, even if giving out an example.

Of course, then that puts a yearly increase from a basis of $1500 to over $300k, which seems silly right now.

Since you've said $300K and William Mook (https://ihb.io/2014-05-01/news/rockets-scientist-william-mooks-700000-bitcoin-price-target-5818) said $700K and others said $1M.

What let you say $300K, is that your "non-conservative" target ? If not, what is it ?

And, what do you think about the above 3 numbers please ?

Thank you my friend and waiting to hear from you.

Thank you again hacknoid although I feel pity for you that I didn't see $1,000 CAD yet on BitcoinWisdom (although you've touched it somehow)

[Raize]

Since you've said $300K and William Mook (https://ihb.io/2014-05-01/news/rockets-scientist-william-mooks-700000-bitcoin-price-target-5818) said $700K and others said $1M.

No, I was just showing how one could pick and choose when to start a cycle to make incorrect assumptions. Even though my modelling goes back to the less-accurate $0.10 to $1.20 era, at least it sort of takes into consideration that there might be a "super-cycle" that includes the 900 days model that hacknoid highlights here in this thread. I just think things could go a bit more crazy (in a good way) than a 900 day cycle would dictate.

The guys picking over $100k might be right, but it could be decades before that is a stable price. I don't think we'll see $100k in the next four to five years according to my modelling. Maybe in fifteen or more years, but I think even a $100k/coin valuation might be pushing it.

I'm using a bear-side modelling, however, to be more conservative. A bull would only look at the bull-runs and use only those as their basis. I'll show you what a bull-side model might look like.

Consider that the run from a low $2 in 2011 to a high of $1100 or so in 2013 may have increased Bitcoin's exposure from a few thousand people to hundreds of thousands and was a 550x increase. Even with a low of $160 a 550x increase would still be well under $100k. The increase before that was from $.10 to $30 or a 300x increase. Now a bull-side analyst would say: "Well, this cycle we're going to see (550x - 300x) + 550x = 800x increase from the previous low, so if the low is $160 that would mean $128k. I know a few guys who have done exactly that, but those are people trying to time the top. I'm not trying to time the tops, I'm trying to safely sell so I am not chasing the price back down. Though I often wonder if each subsequent bull run is going to make Bitcoin so prevalent that I won't even have to sell back into fiat again.

IMHO, to go over $100k would require an increase that is exponentially higher than either of the previous ones. I'd rather not speculate that such a thing is possible myself, but you see people all over the net and even on this forum doing just that. The whole reason I posted here is because hacknoid is actually trying to be accurate and not just pulling out random numbers. He's shown he's doing an awesome original analysis, and so are many of the other commentators in this thread. I feel honored to be posting with people who seem to "get it" like I have tried to.

I would encourage you to maybe look into or read more about what Richard Dennis did and the Turtle Trading system. There was a write up a while back about how if in 2012 someone started with $10k in USD and invested using one of the turtle methods in bitcoin, they would have made $3.6 million by the end of 2013 while someone who did just a normal buy and hold would have made only $1.8 million. Here's some links to look at:
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/trading/08/turtle-trading.asp
https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/2a22zf/qwhat_can_you_learn_from_a_turtle_a_the/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dennis

I don't recommend this strategy myself (I'd never recommend a strategy where you sell something short, in fact), but I would say that if you find something that works, and you backtest it and it works during a bear run or a bull run, stick with it and don't get emotional. Trade like the turtle traders did, according to set rules. Also, just because someone like me says something like $10k in a year or $60k in five years does NOT mean you should trade based on it. I have guesses at best. I do some trading based on those guesses and I've done quite well for myself, but I'm not sure my models or trading strategies will work for everyone. Missing the start of the bear market could wipe me out very quickly, in fact. I think that's why I've tried so very hard to be conservative, even though my comments and an estimation of $10k in a little over a year might be seen as very bullish in the present market.

[Fakhoury]

Thanks again Raize, thank you

I found what you said is really well said and perfectly matches with the way we've to think with. What I want to say is, being extremely conservative, from my humble point of view, is extremely great as you will always be ready for the worst expectations, and since we are talking in numbers here, so it's $10K in Dec. 17 and $60K in 2020/2021, and I KNOW, it's guesses and speculation.

Don't worry, for me at least, I'm an investor, not a seasoned or day trader.

I didn't look into the turtle strategy yet, but what I think it's about is, to go slow and steady better to go fast and be non-sustainable.

If you don't mind, I want to ask you two more questions :

1. I don't know if I've stated this before for you or not, as you may know, the money in circulation in China deposits (I think) is $22 trillion and our market cap is $12 billion, and I highly guess you are aware that China is in love with Bitcoin, so don't you think that we will say at least like $1 trillion moving into Bitcoin, or lets say $500K billion as also China is addicted to gamble on things that get them high returns and don't forget the network effect, what you think ? We didn't talk about China much in our talking.

2. Since you are aware about PwC and Blockstream, they somehow have influence on Core and I've read a medium article that somehow they could benefit us (in terms of price), so in the light of this, what do you think about this (http://bravenewcoin.com/news/bank-of-england-and-pricewaterhousecoopers-partner-to-explore-putting-fiat-currency-on-a-blockchain/) ?

Thank you buddy and waiting to hear from you as always, ASAP

On the other hand, my friend, hacknoid, congrats. on achieving $1,000 CAD, my timing was bad I know , but I knew that we would get there

Edit 1 : Dear Raize, what you think about this and about Vinny in general ?

[hacknoid]

Wow, certainly some deep discussions going on, which I think is great!  Kinda reminds me of the talks I had with friends many years ago, when over a few beers we'd chat about all kinds of deep things.  Anyway, not to get all sentimental or anything ....

Some good points raised...

Regarding max possible valuation... There are many interesting theories about how high the value could go, and a lot of that depends on how adoption is picked up.  Certainly if a large percentage of the population were to decide it was worthwhile to have some Bitcoin, then the price can reach some of those numbers.  There are also many theories regarding if certainly percentages of other markets were to flow into Bitcoin (gold, offshore holdings, etc.)  Rick Falkvinge did an interesting analysis several years ago about how high the price could be if Bitcoin became the chosen route for many different avenues, including international trade settlement, gambling, etc.  Any of those things becoming a primary use of bitcoin could easily drive the price to the 10's or 100's of thousands of dollars.  However, would they happen?  It makes sense, but certainly the option to "roll your own" is always there.  However, I have to wonder about the effect of the DAO "hack" and what that will do.

To sidetrack for a second, from what I read, the "hack" happened as a result of exploiting an actual rule of the DAO.  Now, I have no investment in Ether or DAO tokens, but I have been watching them with interest.  From the point of view of my analysis, certainly any "distraction" from Bitcoin as the digital currency of choice will slow adoption.  Ethereum is interesting, but is also a dangerous, unproven game.  And I think that has played out in the last few days.  Complex systems are prone to complex bugs, or "features".  Bitcoin has been battle-tested for more than 7 years, and still shines.  Some of the best minds have tried to break it, including Dan Kaminsky, and it held up.  So this certainly argues for trust going with the proven party.  It will be interesting to see where things go from here.  I think a lot of people who don't comprehend the whole industry will latch onto "cryptocurrencies are hackable" as a tagline, and stay away. 

But the numbers are changing.  More and more people are learning about what Bitcoin is and why it should be trusted.  I myself was just blown away by it when I first came across it and knew it had a great future ahead.  Will there be more competing cryptocurrencies in future?  Certainly.  Will the majority of the world's population adopt Bitcoin and/or own some?  I doubt it, at least for a long time, maybe a full generation.   I'm not a millennial myself, but I got it.  However a lot of the older generation, the talking heads on TV and the investment advisers and those with the money, don't and won't get it.  Unfortunately, as it is disruptive tech, many people are hard to move from their old models.  And you don't have to contribute it to conspiracy theories to think that pushback against Bitcoin is real.   There are many people whose actual livelihoods depend on the old models.  And this isn't just journalism or publishing - this is the people with the money and power.  So expect some pushback.

As for Blockstream, I was blown away by the concept of sidechains, and thought this was just the thing to finally do away with most/all of the competing altcoins.  It's simply smart, and I am believing that those implementing it still think highly of Bitcoin.  Nobody knows what the future of Bitcoin will look like, just like they couldn't imagine in 1994 (or earlier) what the Internet would look like in 2016.  Things will grow and evolve... they have to.  It's part of technical evolution.  Unfortunately each time someone tries to completely "replace" Bitcoin, it slows this down.  But that will happen.

Thanks again Raize, thank you

Agreed - thanks, Raize, for your input in this thread.  Sorry I didn't address all your points, but I did read your posts!

On the other hand, my friend, hacknoid, congrats. on achieving $1,000 CAD, my timing was bad I know , but I knew that we would get there

Thanks!  Made me quite happy today to see 4 digits again in Canada.  Price has been hanging around just under that for many days now, so it was nice to see, even if just briefly.

[hacknoid]

That question is a hard one... these things really haven't become clear until they are over and done with.  However, looking at the rises in the past in phase 2, they both occurred over the course of about 1 month.  So I would say a significant increase over the course of a week, say about 30%, or more would be pretty indicative we are in E.  50% or more would pretty much confirm it for me.

Interesting thing to note at this point - we still have not been increasing at anywhere near the rate of the previous "bubbles".  We are only about 20% increase over the past week, and 65% over the last month.  However, note also that we have not had any significant pullback during that time (not trying to jinx it).  I take this as a good sign, in that we are not going up too fast, at least not by crypto standards. 

I guess what I am saying is that despite the significant increases recently, it doesn't looks to me like we have really begun the major rallies we have seen in the past.  Whether we have now changed to a more conservative, slow gain model, or we just haven't hit our stride yet, remains to be seen.  We may be entering, or on the verge of entering a new stage where we don't have those bubbles like in the past.  Instead, it's short, sudden uptrends in price, that level off quickly.  As Uki  quite rightly pointed out, the trend has been for smaller "bubbles".  We may be headed there, but that could be a good thing.

If we are indeed changing trends, then hopefully we can avoid the long-term blowoff period we experienced in the latter half of cycle 2.