I'll throw my opinion out there. Why not? I'm not a broker, nor some pipe smoking professor. I do smoke a pipe, but that's irrelevant
My advice is worth at least what you paid for it.
First, yes, Bitcoin will again see 20K. I'd say relatively soon.
I've watched, sometimes participated, in this magnificent experiment almost from the beginning. The blockchain technology is changing the way money works, whether the old school likes it or not. Unlike paper money, this is revolutionary, rather than merely inflationary. It takes money back to the gold standard without gold. Gold used to be the braking factor on what politicians and other scamming bastards could pull off. Now, it's looking like it will be Bitcoin and a few of its successors.
As for the recent correction, if you've been involved as long as I have, you've seen this (literally) a hundred times. Exuberance, followed by a runup that's crazy, making a few people rich and a lot of people cry because they are too damn stupid to pay attention.
Bitcoin is new.
Yes, NEW. It's not quite ten years old. What we, in the generations now living, call 'old' money, is not particularly old. Fiat currencies have been around for a while, in various forms, but they are basically a 20th century phenomenon. There are examples that go back further, of course, but the general acceptance of unbacked paper dates to the middle of the 20th century.
Further, Fiat currency has an unparalleled record. Not ONCE has it failed to fail, and yes I am including the "almighty dollar" in that. The year before Bitcoin, it experienced BY THEIR ADMISSION an 85 percent inflation. Yeah, they called it an increase in the money supply, quantative easing, and all sorts of other bullshit, but inflation is simple. You add to the money supply.
Bitcoin is currently inflationary as well, but since it's modeled on gold mining, it's ultimately deflationary. Contrary to Keynes' very eloquent bullshit, a coin that constantly INCREASES in value vs goods is NOT a crisis nor a cause for concern. It promotes stability, thrift, and savings. Bitcoin ain't there yet, but it can be.
Certain developments that are clearly in the pipe militate towards a wild ride, followed by a degree of stability. One is the lightning network. When Bitcoin can be used for fractional payments at or above the speed of VISA, 'traditional' fiat is doomed. Because by its very nature, no government can control or manipulate the SUPPLY of Bitcoin, they must either accept it or go to war against it. It seems that most governments are being cautious (in itself somewhat miraculous) and looking at ways to incorporate it into the 'traditional' structure without too much disruption. That is a reasonable, but again doomed, approach.
Because this is disruptive. There is NO way to hide the movement of BTC. There is no way to manipulate its supply without destroying everything that makes it valuable, and given the huge network, probably no physical way of doing it anyway.
The rise in fees and congestion of the blockchain are serious issues, for different reasons. The rise in fees is a GOOD thing. Right in the beginning, in Satoshi's white paper, it was the DESIGN of bitcoin that it would continue to be mined long after the block reward was gone or minimal BECAUSE of transaction fees. Now, he didn't forsee (at least that we know) that it would become as centralized as it has. But it still holds. Gold is expensive, and transporting and guarding it is too. This makes Bitcoin a premier method of exchange!
But the network congestion, coming on top of the high fees, militates the other way. There are a number of proposed solutions, some better than others, but this is not as big a thing as it seems, right here, right now. Why? Because Bitcoin is moving more towards the role of a store of value and a coin for large transactions. This is good. However, this does present the myriad choices of alts. This too has been the same throughout history. One Ring To Rule Them All rolls off the tongue nicely, and has no utility.
In my opinion, as things stand, Bitcoin is likely to take on the storage role, and BCH the everyday transactional role. And I see Lightning Network as the bridge between the consumer, who isn't so paranoid about 'trustless' transactions to begin with, and the movement of bitcoin. VISA does not move that much money in a given moment, in reality. It RECORDS that much movement. Settlement is daily, weekly, sometimes even monthly. Lightning can, and will, settle more transactions, faster, than visa. That it is not AS trustless as bitcoin is NOT a major issue. What IS a major issue is that it will make it possible for Joe Public to stop off at Starbucks and buy an overpriced cup of coffee with his Lightning wallet FASTER than he could do it with his Visa card. The consumer public is all about convenience.
This will lead to wider adoption without a great deal of hype, and this will be a continual upward pressure on Bitcoin while simultaneously taking some of the pressure OFF of the blockchain. Plus, it should work with other coins
My short term prediction is that BTC will continue to bounce back and forth in slightly narrowing swings with the upper bound at about 12.5K and the lower at 10K for a few weeks, with the swings getting narrower for a while, and then it will break upwards. I'm guessing right around the end of February that the floor will raise significantly, while the upper bound remains similar. I base this on Tax Returns. The American market, particularly, finds itself flush with temporary and illusory cash right around then.
My longer term prediction is looser in terms of time, because of several factors. One, we do not know what China is going to do regarding Cryptos. We can infer from the backlash that South Korea is going to tread carefully to avoid civil unrest. I think that crisis has passed. Japan, having adopted it as a legal instrument of trade, will put some upward pressure on it.
The two wildcards from where I sit are BCH, which has already addressed the scaling issue, and Lightning. If Lightning gets a good public debut by the end of March, I would bet those who bought at the ATH and held will be laughing a lot, and those buying and hodling now will be hysterical. The day that bitcoin, even via a sidechain, achieves 40K transactions a minute, is the death knell for traditional fiat. Nations at that time will have NO CHOICE but to acknowledge Bitcoin, and probably approve it as legal tender.
Given its global scale, and the fact that there will never be more than 21 million bitcoins mined, it HAS to rise in value. The moment it goes mainstream is the end of it being inflationary.
The World's Population stands at 7.5 billion and rising. Medical technology at it's extreme edges is ready to extend our lives. Do the math. Bitcoin at 20K was a bubble, but only because it was premature. This isn't tulips, and it's not .coms. (though that one turned out to also be more a matter of being premature than being wrong). It's something new. A means of owning wealth that does NOT CARE from whence you came. Anyone can get it, and it will grow in value so long as its utility exists. Nuclear war could render it valueless, maybe, but not much else at this point.
Buy and HODL while you still can get a good chunk!
