Prepare for a Saturday long Ramble... it will be very Bitcoin centric, but will come around to Monero in the end...
This probably has less to do with Monero and more to do with Bitcoin however. BTC dominance is bouncing strong this week after the recovery from $20K to $25K, as opposed to falling further. Starting to get the 2019 vibes of a continued recovery for Bitcoin that leaves alts in the dust, regardless of how relevant they are. Ethereum being another example of failing to keep up with the no.1 reserve asset this week.
Many will probably argue this is do with SVB, and therefore the mentality of investors fleeing fiat or banks for a reserve asset such as Bitcoin, as opposed to speculating on altcoins. But personally I think this is just the recovery stage of the bear market whereby Bitcoin outperforms the the rest of the market and would of happened regardless, eventually, and least this year at some point.
Another year of consolidation in the current wide range of 0.04 and 0.08 could be the ingredient needed for something relevant to happen for this coin though.
Agree to a great extent. And I think the price rise DOES have to do with SVB as well as the other (and coming) bank failures, but is ALSO a recovery from the bear market, as well as the natural progression of Bitcoin's path. I think we are currently looking at yet another contender for a Bitcoin perfect storm. I will add some fundamental analysis to your technical magnificence. (And keep it at least a little on topic by the end, promise)
Time: Bitcoin is 14+ years old. Still survives. Almost everyone with money has heard of it by now. People WITHOUT money have TOTALLY got the message and are USING it. The value prop is understood by a significant (probably still minority) portion of folks.
FTX (Crypto): The smarter folks can see what FTX was: A crypto based super ponzi. And some of them REALLY know what it was: shadow gvmt attack on BTC, money laundering ring in collusion with TPTB. And people realize that Bitcoin is the one thing they DID NOT HOLD. The real meat here is still fairly badly misunderstood, but it's a continuum of understanding that at LEAST outlines that Bitcoin is unique. It's just the western 'man on the street' that does not know the difference. Smart money sees it, and people like the Nigerians get it. Folks are FINALLY starting to see what is wrong with the giant do-everything blockchain model.
Ordinals! This one is actually funny to me. It is badly misunderstood by most people... one side sees it as a great boon for Bitcoin that it can "do what ETH does! Whee!" and the other side is wringing their hands over "misuse of chain space! OMG!". And, well, there is also the folks who see it as a way to attack or embarrass Bitcoin. But this is just another round of all the same misunderstandings that have driven value into BCASH (et al), ETH and so many other scams. Of course Bitcoin can do what ETH does. It will just do it the right way in the end. Primarily OFF CHAIN with hashes written to the base layer. And blockspace will all be used. Every single bit of it. Every single block, in the end. And we will keep fighting about how to manage this part of Bitcoin's properties for decades past our lifetimes, I predict. In the end what Ordinals is hinting at is the development that will go into the Bitcoin ecosystem that will pretty much rip the rug out of every other value prop alts have. (Yes, maybe even Monero... but nuance there still, IMO)
The perfect geo-political storm: We are seeing this unfold now. And it is too much to really hit all the points here, but Wars, rumors of wars, pandemics, bio weapons, the fall of the US, the rise of China, the energy sector beginning to move from petro to minerals, the rise of Africa, the unveiling of the CIA state that is the west, the attempt at a socialist world order by the "elites", the decline of the $, CDBCs, and on and on.
The perfect macro storm: Like the prior this is huge, and too much to write about... but we are seeing the effects of the FIAT meltdown begin to ripple out over the entire world economic stage. This is where the Bitcoin value prop has a chance to really ignite demand. If you have a lot of value you are most certainly moving it around now (if you had not already started) and for the first time in it's history Bitcoin is a real contender for a risky, but attractive store of value.
In fact, THAT is what I believe we are ABOUT to witness... Little teenage bitcoin is going to solidify it's place in the world as a legitimate and unique store of value. What I believe this looks like (I am been saying this for years... so eventually I will either be right or just look crazier each time) is a breathtaking rise in the value as the scales finally get tipped by demand. Most people think that has already happened. I think it most definitely has not. Eventually Bitcoin will be worth way too much for the sorts of wild swings we have seen in it's history so far as nearly impossible to occur again. It would take too much value moving in and out to make any sense. We are simply not there yet. The APPL market cap still is more than FOUR TIMES the market cap of Bitcoin. Just APPL. Eventually this will no longer be the case. And I believe the market cap in BTC will be large enough for people to be able to do trades in it close to the entire value of it currently without moving the price all that much. I have no idea what that value is... but it is likely several multiples of the market cap of APPL (and GOOG, and MSFT, and Gold, and... and...) .
It is not going to take very many people deciding to move a very SMALL amount of their value (which is currently, obviously at risk) into Bitcoin as a "crazy hedge" to tip these scales. We have been building this powder keg for YEARS, and we are just about there now.
Monero? So... as we watch the world financial system(s) undergo the greatest turmoil since ~1971 we are also starting to see these powerful pushes further and further away from privacy. The central banks, who hold ALL THE POWER in the world, realize they have to RUSH to get their digital products out. And even the common schmuck is beginning to realize we are headed into a world in which privacy is an archaic value of the past. And Bitcoin, for better and worse, is a transparent ledger. Monero is perfectly positioned to continue to be used by people who understand the need for privacy. This need is only going to continue to grow. And I believe we have a LOT of headlines in the future that look like" "Nazi White Supremacist Group Taken Down by Bitcoin Chain Analysis" before Bitcoin ends up solving it's privacy problems (also off-chain), and the demand for Monero is only going to increase.
So... I agree with Dragonvslinux that the XMR/BTC pair is probably going to suffer in the short term (as it has) and probably also into Bitcoin's meteoric rise I keep predicting. But I believe it will hold better than the majority of alts, and I also think it will continue to emerge as THE privacy centric base layer for some time to come before Bitcoin also, probably, eats it's lunch. And i continue to believe an opaque base layer blockchain "coin" is perhaps the ONLY idea that has legs against the financial tsunami that Bitcoin is destined to be. Yet, personally I think if what one wants the most is a gain in USD value on their crypto, then BTC is the obvious play for a while.
