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Economics is a joke that has, in its current form, no place at institutions of higher education.
You're conflating two things here. More below.
"Conflating" is a logical flaw, and I doubt that I have made any logical flaws in my attempt to suggest that many of us are attempting to speculate here about bitcoin using a variety of factors that each of us concludes to be material and relevant, and some of those factors and speculations will be moar correct than others, and it is far from futile for folks to make such attempts even when probability speaking many folks will end up getting a variety of facts and even assessments of "fundamentals" wrong.
With no word have I said 'never'.
To the extent that it may or may not matter, I read some of your assertions that way.
I specifically pointed to the current state of crypto, which makes fundamental analysis (beyond mining cost) completely impossible.
You concluded that the phraseology "completely impossible" does not rise to the level of "never"? O.k. I see language and nuance differently from you.
Hence, no obvious fundamental value that can give you any idea of where we are currently standing.
I doubt that we disagree about the fact that bitcoin price movements is not merely pushed by fundamentals, and that is part of the reason that peeps engage in technical analysis to attempt to measure price movement momentum. Of course, there are attempts to measure both fundamentals and TA, so concededly, many folks will attempt to engage in multi-variate analysis to the best of their abilities, even if they proclaim to lean more heavily in one camp than another (in terms of what they believe drives price).
As said, you're conflating all of my post with the chart drawing you see most of in these places (crypto).
I am just providing my opinions and feed back, which is one of my purposes involving myself in this thread.
The chart drawing and analysis is part of a branch called technical analysis. It tries to identify trends and shifts in market psychology.
What I was talking about is fundamental analysis, which is much more objective (to the point of accuracy of data) as it analyses underlying assets, costs, profits, revenue as well as risk and opportunity premiums and so on of a business.
Thus, fundamental analysis gives you an objective value of a company, around which the stock price fluctuates.
I don't have any problem with that, and maybe there could have been some more clear way of making your points. i don't know. If you want to talk only about one aspect, and you believe that serves some kind of purpose for you (or anyone who you believe might be reading your points), then that is up to you.
Technical analysis tries to quantify the fluctuations (stemming from market psychology and the implied trader behaviour).
O.k... It get's at momentum, too, and surely I am no expert (nor do I strive to be) in parsing out how each of these practices are different and can be (or should be) separated out for greater attempts at clarity.
Bitcoin's price stands almost exclusively on the emotional and speculative leg of technical analysis right now, and that won't change until we get to a scenario where "Y proportion of X market" is traded against BTC.
Sounds like more absolutism attempts to me, here, but sure, go ahead and attempt to define where bitcoin is at this particular moment as compared to where it will go (or should go).
This is also why Bitcoin went from 20k to 3k. Because technicals pointed towards that being the likely outcome (note that nothing will ever give you the exact numbers without).
Fair point that sometimes momentum will drive price more greatly than fundamentals, but even you likely acknowledge that each of the concepts TA driven and fundamentals driven is on a spectrum, and likely even a combination of both, while we are likely never (look I used the word never) witness purism in terms of what is driving price, whether short term or longer term.
If Bitcoin could be assigned a fundamental value of $10k we would've most likely not seen a significant drop below $10k,
You are talking pie in the sky about something that is not going to happen. Cannot just assign a value and get peeps to agree upon it, because BTC prices are driven by differences of opinion regarding what it should be.
as FOMO would kick in and revert the price towards its fundamental value.
I doubt that BTC's fundamental value is as objectively identifiable as you seem to be making it out to be, because it is a product of time, and also a product of battling over what it should be. If the BIG bad bears get their way, "fundamental" value from their point of view will be around $1,500 in the near future, and they will keep it there as long as they can... but that is not going to happen because there is disagreement, and they are not able to keep it in the same place for very long periods at a time (does not stop them from trying).
Similarly, it would retrace from $30k to $20k if the latter was its fundamental value, as people would sell in order to buy back at a price closer to the "real" value.
Again, I think that you are misusing this term.. fundamental value to attempt to assign an objective value, and I know people do that in order to engage in price finding and to also either push the price in that direction or to attempt to predict the price movement.
Don't get me wrong from my response, here. I understand the concepts of fundamental value and technical analysis and how the concepts are attempted to be used and described, and merely because some folks use the terms in one way or another does not mean that any of us should just lie down and accept such gravitations towards concreteness that might be misleading regarding the combination of factors that affect both BTC price movement and perceptions of BTC value.
Technical indicators give you a confidence interval for the deviation from the fundamental value as well as the speed of convergence towards it. But since that doesn't exist in Bitcoin, a quasi-fundamental value is given mostly by mining price + moving averages (technicals).
Seems to me that you are attempting to lock yourself to much into "pure" thoughts.
Hence, it doesn't matter if Bitcoin is more "mature"
Of course, maturity matters in terms of where BTC is at on the s-curve, which means exponential growth that should be factored into probable futures that may or may not happen.
until a fundamental value is near universally agreed upon by global markets and easily identifiable.
That is not going to happen, but won't stop people from trying to get agreement and identification, which to me, seems to be a bit too much of an attempt at constructing concreteness that does not exist.
It'll keep trading more or less the same until then.
Of course, one of the most certain things about bitcoin is that it is likely to continue to be extremely volatile until more and more market cap flows into it, and it becomes harder to manipulate.
P.S. The 'battle' is mostly just trading based on technicals with some people getting caught in between and making up narratives that fit the current market. Hence the odd timing of news stories and whatnot. They push trades implied by fundamentals over the edge so to speak.
You seem to recognize that BTC price is pushed by a variety of factors including but not limited to TA, fundamentals, news (combined with FUD and FOMO), adoption and networking effects.