I think a long-term trend is starting to develop. Any TA pros care to weigh in?
I edited the Wikipedia article on "cup and handle" for style. Is that "pro" enough?
The Janyary--April 2013 bubble took the price from ~14$ to ~120$ (steady-state after the oscillations died out), and the November 2013 bubble took it from there to ~800$ (ditto).
It seems pretty certain that the Nov/2013 bubble was due to demand by the "popular" commodity speculation market in Mainland Chinese, opened to bitcoin by Huobi, OKCoin and other Mainland exchanges. That is supported both by articles in the media at the time, and by how the price reacted (and failed to react) to news since Dec/2013.
The Apr/2013 bubble too may be due to China; specifically to BTC-China catering to a different population in Shanghai, a special economic zone in China.
The "mini-bubble" at the end of May/2014, from ~450$ to ~650$, remains unexplained. However, its rise was sudden and not exponential. It may have been a few whales (perhaps only one) who got some insider info or original analysis, and "panic bought" a large amount.
From Feb/2014 to May/2014, the price dropped nearly 400$. Again, that drop was almost certainly due to shrinking of the Chinese demand in the wake of government decisions. The overall trend in that period was roughly exponential decay (rouhgly straight in the log-scale chart). Extrapolating that trend to the present gives ~130$, plus or minus some 30$.
The price is now ~130$ lower than it was at the start of the May mini-bubble. Therefore the drop since Jun/2014 cannot be due solely to that mini-bubble deflating. On the other hand, the difference between the price extrapolated from Feb--May (~130$) and the current price (~330$) is 200$, the same as the mini-bubble rise from May to June.
There is no sign that large stashes of OLD coins are being sold. Presumably, those who bought at 10$ or less are not in a hurry to sell, and may choose to hold for another few months in case there is another mega-bubble. Those who bought in November or later must be feeling very bad and presumably are more likely to sell in order to cut their
looses losses.
Therefore, my theory is that the decline since Jun/2014 was due mainly to the Chinese pulling out, according to the same exponential decay trend from Feb to May; while those buyers who caused the May mini-bubble are still holding.
If this theory is correct, then the price should gradually drop to the price before the November bubble (~120$) plus the increase of the May mini-bubble (~200$); that is, only a bit lower than now.
If the April 2013 bubble too is deflating, but the May mini-bubble is not, then the price should continue to drop gradually to about 14$ + 200$, that is, about 215$.
If the May mini-bubble is deflating too, but the April one is not, the bottom should be ~120$.
If all three bubbles are deflating, the bottom should be in the low double digits.
The markets that were responsible for the pre-2013 bubbles may have continued to grow. However, the price during their steady-state phases (such as Mar--May 2012) was quite flat, suggesting that the market growth was small or zero. Also, there is no evidence that use of BTC for e-payment has increased since January, and the attractiveness of BTC as an investment cannot be growing (net sales of SMBIT shares, for example, have been nearly zero for several months.) . Moreover, the influx of the newly mined coins would cancel some or all of that "vegetative" growth in older markets.
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