Realistically, how do you think bitcoin will perform this year?

[GetOutOfMyLife]

So, as many are well aware, Bitcoin saw a huge rise in 2017, peaking over $20,000 in some regions;

Of course, it would be tremendous to see those kinds of gains again in 2018, but with regulatory pressure coming down hard, bitcoin has in more difficult waters than ever before.

With segwit acceptance increasing, and the advent of the lightning network likely by year end, how does bitcointalk think BTC will perform this year, and why?

[1714619575]

1714619575

[GetOutOfMyLife]

No comments? I'm looking to make an average of everyone's estimation and update the OP with it after I've received a significant number of replies.

[nl247]

You did not get comments obviously because no one can know exactly how bitcoin will end up fairing this year. We can only be optimistic that with segwit being increasingly adopted and LN in the picture, things can get better but who knows what the outcome of all these will still end up as?

Early last year, if you had ask me this question, do you think it would have been realistic if I mentioned to you that bitcoin would hit almost $20k? No one would have even believed $10k. I guess we just have to wait and see, hoping that we get another nice ride this year but I won't be too relaxed waiting for it, so I will rather just follow trends and wherever it leads us, good and fine.

[pawel7777]

If everything stacks up in bitcoin's favour expecting ~$50k by the year-end doesn't sound unreasonable.

But further major countries crack downs on crypto could and will sway the price in the opposite direction.
Things like this are pretty concerning:
https://www.express.co.uk/finance/city/907121/bitcoin-Cryptocurrency-price-risk-bans-Emmanuel-Macron-Angela-Merkel-France-Germany

Further, stricter regulations (if not complete ban) seem inevitable. Laundering money with btc is not wide-spread yet, but it's pretty easy.

[InvoKing]

So, as many are well aware, Bitcoin saw a huge rise in 2017, peaking over $20,000 in some regions;

Good days but it will return, and personally I do not count the price shown on the small exchanges in different regions of the world. Small volumes = high fluctuation of the price.

Of course, it would be tremendous to see those kinds of gains again in 2018, but with regulatory pressure coming down hard, bitcoin has in more difficult waters than ever before.

With segwit acceptance increasing, and the advent of the lightning network likely by year end, how does bitcointalk think BTC will perform this year, and why?

The price will keep fluctuating essentially between $11k and $13k for several days or maybe weeks but it will at some point rise again. The question is when? I think at the end of February.

[iqlimasyadiqa]

So, as many are well aware, Bitcoin saw a huge rise in 2017, peaking over $20,000 in some regions;

Of course, it would be tremendous to see those kinds of gains again in 2018, but with regulatory pressure coming down hard, bitcoin has in more difficult waters than ever before.

With segwit acceptance increasing, and the advent of the lightning network likely by year end, how does bitcointalk think BTC will perform this year, and why?

Bitcoin currently still has many opportunities to experience an increase in prices, has begun to see that currently Bitcoin users begin to apply the use of Bitcoin in everyday life. Although a few days ago there was a decline in prices due to the intervention of several countries that do Bitcoin baned regulations. But this does not last long, now we can begin to see the result that there is an increase in volume on the number of market share transactions Bitcoin in the world.

I am optimistic that this will further strengthen Bitcoin as one of the financial systems that will be used in the future.

[sjefdeklerk]

Well segwit is really not good enough, transaction times are still very high. And Lightning network is a joke, it will fail for sure: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2792933.0

So once people realize that, the value will go to 0. I think it will take a while though, I'm not sure if it will be this year. But I do strongly believe it will go to 0. The only reason BTC is so high, is that people have some dream in their heads about what BTC COULD be. But it's not a realistic dream at all. That realization will kick in some day.

[gentlemand]

If everything stacks up in bitcoin's favour expecting ~$50k by the year-end doesn't sound unreasonable.

But further major countries crack downs on crypto could and will sway the price in the opposite direction.
Things like this are pretty concerning:
https://www.express.co.uk/finance/city/907121/bitcoin-Cryptocurrency-price-risk-bans-Emmanuel-Macron-Angela-Merkel-France-Germany

Further, stricter regulations (if not complete ban) seem inevitable. Laundering money with btc is not wide-spread yet, but it's pretty easy.

There'll no doubt be more regulation, but I don't see how much more there can be really. The largely voluntary regulation somewhere like Bitstamp forces on you is already degrees more ludicrous than any other financial market.

If you want to see what a non authoritarian country where an effective 'ban' already exists, look to the UK where it's been effectively 'banned' since inception.

There are no exchanges here. P2P is good and strong. If you can't be bothered with that then you head abroad.

As for price, no idea.

This is traditionally not a great time of year so it's a bad place to get a feel for future movements.

[BrewMaster]

in one word: great.

this year we will have lightning network up and running for good and despite all the FUD that has been spread a bout this great technology for second layer transactions, it will be adopted. and the adoption is not something far far away! it is happening as we speak.

currently there are about 100 nodes running and they are growing the LN network super fast. of course it needs a lot more time but i expect in 6 months from now we will see everyone having a LN wallet and using it. with at least 50000 nodes.

[sjefdeklerk]

in one word: great.

this year we will have lightning network up and running for good and despite all the FUD that has been spread a bout this great technology for second layer transactions, it will be adopted. and the adoption is not something far far away! it is happening as we speak.

Oh I agree, some people will start using it. I think that's actually necessary, people NEED to use it in order to see that it doesn't work. People will NEED that moment of realization "wait a minute, without paying $80 to open a channel I can't pay my friend". Only after that moment it will die.

[fabiorem]

I'm expecting 25k around March, 50k by May, and something between 70-100k by the end of the year.

But we will have more volatility than before. Price is already doing swings of four digits, going from 13k to 11k in a matter of hours.

One thing that I want for bitcoin is to decrease the fees. LN can solve that, as most users will be on smartphones, not running nodes. This will unclog the legacy chain.

Another thing I want is smart contracts for bitcoin, to increase its security and made it more trustless. Conditioned payments is the future.

[pitiflin]

1. Segwit acceptance is still very low. Online wallets and exchanges haven't adopted to segwit yet. Core is still to release the optimum version (15.6) which is set to release in May.
2. Last year not many expected the year to end with such a huge price. So this year expectations are pretty high, so maybe this year the prices will be a bit more stable and not go up by much. Altcoins will be unstable, obviously in the mean time.
3. Lighting network, am interested to see on how it's set to perform.
Overall, bitcoin should have a tough fight with altcoins in giving a good profit to people who think of it to be an investment. Altcoins shall win when it comes to having goof profits because it's trading. Prices shall not go more than 50,000$ if any predictions are to be required though achieving it is much unlikely.

[Samarkand]

Well segwit is really not good enough, transaction times are still very high....

I agree that SegWit adoption has been slow so far, because a few big businesses
are slow in integrating it into their systems.

However, I disagree about the transaction times. The mempool is down
to only ~105k transactions, which is more than 50 % lower than the peak
level of network congestion. Even transactions with 40-50 Satoshi/Byte
are confirmed within a few hours.

I guess that the entities that were spamming the Bitcoin blockchain
have stopped for now, because it didn´t have the effect that they hoped for.

[ClutchThese]

It seems I'll be the only one here so far against the grain.

I don't think 2018 will be the year of BTC. I'd like to think it will be the year of cryptocurrency, but I just don't have faith that the small and fighting core group of dev's driving the development of bitcoin will drive it to the levels some of you are saying.

I have very high hopes that the community as a whole will come together and develop a bitcoin 2.0 in a sense. One that is able to scale and handle the level of transactions you would see with Visa or MasterCard. This will be needed if you want to compete as a viable alternative to other currencies.

If bitcoin stays above 5k this year, i'll be surprised. The reason I think this has been mentioned many times:

~Transaction times, fees, government regulations etc...

[sjefdeklerk]

I have very high hopes that the community as a whole will come together and develop a bitcoin 2.0 in a sense. One that is able to scale and handle the level of transactions you would see with Visa or MasterCard. This will be needed if you want to compete as a viable alternative to other currencies.

Even if that would be possible then there's still the problem of governments banning it. It's EXTREMELY naive to assume that governments will allow some crypto coin to replace their own fiat currency. I loved this quote in that regard:

"One of the keys to sovereignty is control of currency and tax. Cryptocurrency interferes with both of those, so it’s inevitable there will be regulation. It is as inevitable as snow in Davos."
https://www.express.co.uk/finance/city/907121/bitcoin-Cryptocurrency-price-risk-bans-Emmanuel-Macron-Angela-Merkel-France-Germany

If you think governments will just sit back and let cryptocurrency replace their own currency, then you're really out of your mind. It's as likely as governments to permit selling uranium and cocaine in a grocery store.

[pawel7777]

There'll no doubt be more regulation, but I don't see how much more there can be really. The largely voluntary regulation somewhere like Bitstamp forces on you is already degrees more ludicrous than any other financial market.

Well, you have to put yourself in the regulators' shoes. Think of this scenario for example:

I'm quietly buying few $millions worth of bitcoins with my criminal proceedings, then I just sell under my own name on legit exchange. I declare it and pay CG tax.
When questioned when did I get those bitcoins from, I just say I got in early, I either bought them cheap, or mined, or got them from someone when they were worth zero etc.

There are no procedures in place to prove/disprove my story. And getting that regulated is complicated on every level.

- they cannot ask me to show the history of my btc transactions, as I was never require by law to keep records of such, and law doesn't work backwards.
- even if they wanted to analyse the records of transactions (and accept it as proof of crypto-holdings originating from legal activity) that would require a small army of dedicated blockchain experts. And I don't think there is a single competent person with a comprehensive knowledge of every cryptocurrency out there (some of them are anonymous, some are not blockchain based etc). After all, any regulations would have to relate to cryptocurrencies in general, not only to Bitcoin.

So what can the regulators do in such case? They could let it slide for now, but one thing is for sure, they won't tolerate it for long.
And this is just one example.

So I expect to see either:
- A complete ban on crypto, likely preceded by few false-flags (something in the style of NHS cryptolocker bitcoin-ransom attack) - to make it look like they have no choice but to ban it; or
- they will require everyone who currently holds any cryptos to declare it. Then allow only trading on licensed exchanges, or require you to record every P2P transaction (or maybe just above certain value).

I don't see any other options. And none of them is good for cryptos.

If you want to see what a non authoritarian country where an effective 'ban' already exists, look to the UK where it's been effectively 'banned' since inception.

There are no exchanges here. P2P is good and strong. If you can't be bothered with that then you head abroad.

Well, Bitstamp was/is registered in the UK, so is CEX.io and probably few more. Also you can use any exchange and transfer fiat to/from UK bank account.
Also George Osborne was posing to photos in front of BTC ATM, so not sure what 'ban' do you mean.

[BartS]

So, as many are well aware, Bitcoin saw a huge rise in 2017, peaking over $20,000 in some regions;

Of course, it would be tremendous to see those kinds of gains again in 2018, but with regulatory pressure coming down hard, bitcoin has in more difficult waters than ever before.

With segwit acceptance increasing, and the advent of the lightning network likely by year end, how does bitcointalk think BTC will perform this year, and why?

No way to exactly know but it is my opinion that if the lightning network gets activated in this year we could easily reach 30k or 35k since that will solve one of the main issues with bitcoin right now, if that does not happen then it is likely  we remain in a range of 15k to 25k that is low I know but this seems to be about right since many people will be nervous due to the increasing regulation and fees.

[buwaytress]

I can't remember my exact realistic expectations at the end of 2016, only months after I'd used Bitcoin properly and was familiar with it. I felt the buzz from people around me, believing 2017 was the year Bitcoin would once again test its 2-yr ATH but that optimism had been there the year before. Everyone was taken aback by the strength of 2017 as it turned out, so I would say that this year may be underwhelming, if only because of the gains last year.

If everything stacks up in bitcoin's favour expecting ~$50k by the year-end doesn't sound unreasonable.

But further major countries crack downs on crypto could and will sway the price in the opposite direction.
Things like this are pretty concerning:
https://www.express.co.uk/finance/city/907121/bitcoin-Cryptocurrency-price-risk-bans-Emmanuel-Macron-Angela-Merkel-France-Germany

Further, stricter regulations (if not complete ban) seem inevitable. Laundering money with btc is not wide-spread yet, but it's pretty easy.

Ordinarily, yes. But last year, even Bitcoin's most outspoken adversary Ver, had said that everything core had failed to do (in his eyes) was the sole reason Bitcoin never reached its $10k mark. Last year was actually stacked against Bitcoin on so many fronts: the ETF, followed by the big block fork threats, regulatory pressure, dark market take downs... and yet, inexplicably, Bitcoin strengthened in the face of adversity.

I'm curious to know what would happen if the opposite took place this year. And my instinct is $50k is too far away, Bitcoin's first eye should be on $20k and to maintain that. But for me, if this is the year where Bitcoin keeps trying to break but cannot, and the $10k floor is established for good, it will be a very good year.

[mike4001]

I think it will stay above 10k because there is still strong support.

But I also think we are having a very hard time to go above 13k (or even 14k) because once that point is reached, it seems everyone is selling again.

So I think we will stay in the corridor of 11-13k (maybe 10-14k) for a long time.

[pawel7777]

...
Ordinarily, yes. But last year, even Bitcoin's most outspoken adversary Ver, had said that everything core had failed to do (in his eyes) was the sole reason Bitcoin never reached its $10k mark. Last year was actually stacked against Bitcoin on so many fronts: the ETF, followed by the big block fork threats, regulatory pressure, dark market take downs... and yet, inexplicably, Bitcoin strengthened in the face of adversity.
...

Don't get fooled by that. Ever wondered why is that?

Doesn't it bother you that the price is propped by new wave of wanna-be-rich-quick "normies" who don't know and don't care how Bitcoin works?
Doesn't it bother you that the price is propped by printing USDT likely out of air? Do you really believe they hold over $1.6 billion in their bank deposits?

Judging Bitcoins strength by it's price is a two-edged sword and, quite frankly, it's pretty stupid. Is Bitcoin 10.77% weaker than it was 24 hours ago? Its price is.