It will become very clear whether the cycle theory is dead. If it is that will give us interesting and new perspectives of everything.
I thought that in my earlier post that I was actually attempting to suggest that cycle theory is dead and alive at the same time.. or maybe that the existence of cycle theory is not black and white in terms of the extent to which it continues to have any influence even if it might not retain its earlier seeming dominant influential status.
In other words, there could be a bit of error in attempting to suggest importance in regards to the extent that cycle theory is alive, dead or in some other status. or the extent to which cycle theory might end up losing its dominance in light of current/future bitcoin price dynamics.
Regarding your "this time is different" assessment of the manipulation. There has to be some difference because the players and the tools are ongoingly changing, yet I doubt that all frameworks for looking at prices and/or price dynamics are losing their importance. In other words, large players have frequently tried to control the BTC price for as long as they can, including keeping it down as much as they can and for as long as they can. The extent to their success (or lack thereof) might give us some signs, even though many times, the manipulation is likely intended to contribute to the loss of confidence to inspire coin holders to release their coins.
Importance is very subjective. What I meant here that if the theory is really dead, we will interesting new stuff not that it is important in the ultimate scheme of things.
What else is new?
Surely there are some of us who might overly rely upon certain kinds of metrics or certain kinds of models or certain commentators in order to assess what we think the price of bitcoin is going to do in the short, medium and/or long term to the extent that any of those matter in regards to whether we are going to act and/or change our behaviors.
In late 2021 and early 2022, I had given some of my then assessments of the probabilities where the BTC prices might go including up and down and various price range potentials. Each of those were snapshot view attempts to at best capture my subjective assessment at the time that I was typing eahc of the post. So I have various pieces of information that influence my assessments at any given time, and even my behaviors are likely not to change very much, even if some aspects of my assessment change, except if some core motivating factor were to potentially strengthen or weaken my bitcoin investment thesis which is biased towards long term HODL.
There surely are some guys who might not feel that they are capable of making any kind of detailed assessment in regards to how they consider probabilities, so they may well end up getting influenced into changing their views more easily, whether they rely on cycle theory or some other indicators and/or person's that might help to inform them how to think on the topic of whether the BTC price might be going up, down or sideways within the timeline that they consider to be relevant for their acting or not acting on the information.
In recent time many people have been obsessed with this theory regardless if they are bullish or bearish people. That is pretty uninteresting, I would like some new perspectives on the market. They will come faster if the theory is confirmed to be dead, so a bullish 2026 would do it.
In the last few years (and even quite recently), I have been quite hostile towards members who were poo-pooing cycle theory and coming up with their own bullshit frameworks, when cycle theory was one of the strongest ways of thinking about bitcoin price dynamics, whether short, medium or longer term.
So yeah, I had not been too accepting of guys just making up various bullshit models and acting like cycle theory did not exist.
So in that regard, there have always been varying weights given to cycle theory whether the theory was subliminal in the ways that bitcoin price dynamics was being viewed or more directly incorporated into aspects of models (such as stock to flow has had a quite a bit of emphasis on cycle theory, even though I had not seen anything from PlanB in recent times).
Even if 2026 ends up being bullish, that does not mean that cycle theory is over, since some guys (including yours truly, perhaps, I am not ruling anything out for my lil selfie) might just proclaim that the cycle had merely been extended and the 2025 / 2026 period merely represented some other variation of a double top like we had double tops in 2013 and also in 2021, yet those double tops merely played out within a calendar year when our current potential double top situation could just end up dragging out for two calendar years.
In other words, not everyone is giving up on some of the ongoing dynamics of bitcoin prices that might be merely attempted to be manipulated by the new and the BIGGER players, yet bitcoin still might end up having to regress to the mean in terms of what it was going to do but was prevented from doing based on BIGGER players attempting to manipulate it so much into a desire to create appearances that the cycle no longer exists, when in fact the cycle is just still underneath.. we just have to allow it to play out (carve it out of the stone that is still there, and there happens to be an angel (or a cycle) contained within the stone).
Price hovering around 90,000 USD which considering sentiment in the space is fairly neutral is actually quite bullish. I mean 90,000 USD would have been a dream 5 or 6 years ago. We have come a long way but the price could be so much higher & with time, it will be. Spot ETFs were not approved long ago, institutional involvement will soar over the next years. Boomers will add Bitcoin to retirement plans. Mature investors don’t have weak hands so those coins will continue to be swept up & stay off the market.
Saylor will continue to take a huge amount of coins off the market. We are at the very beginning of what I believe is the maturation of Bitcoin. It is entering true mainstream now, price will follow & I will be surprised if we don’t breach 1M USD by 2040. I am looking at 250,000 USD by 2030. We just need to keep buying, there could be a certain amount of institutional suppression going on to keep prices low whilst they accumulate but that will stop. When their bags are full, they will let it go. Look at precious metals, investors moaned for years and now they are flying. Be patient, Bitcoin is going to the moon.
I see $250k by 2030 as somewhat bearish, I think we're going to reach it sooner.
But even so, I'm fine with your predictions. Even now, $90k is a dream come true to many of us entering @ $200 a coin, so, yes, a win-win in my book. Looking fwd to the future!
For sure, bitcoin seems to be in quite a great place that would have had been difficult to imagine, even as recently as early to mid 2023. Not that I give too many shits about the various financialization activities around bitcoin, the financialization of bitcoin (including the entrance of Blackrock towards getting excited about bitcoin and pushing other "TradFi" entities towards excitement about bitcoin) seems like it was going to take way longer to really drag a lot of the TradFi forces towards some forms of friendliness towards bitcoin - even though their paperization is a bit of double-edged sword in regards top the trap and and attack on bitcoin angle that seems to simultaneously exist with those various products and what they seem to be pushing (or trying to push).