Weak article, based mostly on wishful thinking. They mostly renew the old "argument" that "because hashrate is high, price will go higher". They suppose miners are great at predicting prices, and if they predict prices right, they'll be right ... Someone found circular reasoning here?
The error in this "school of thinking" is that miners already invested in Bitcoin - in the form of mining hardware. They cannot get out easily, and most of them very likely invested in hardware in 2017 when the market was all bullish. Current price should be OK for them to profit, so why should they turn off their miners?
In conclusion, I think it's impossible to predict a price rally only because of mining activity.
The closer we come to the block halving, and the important events and developments, the price is pretty much guaranteed to increase, especially in the latter part of 2019.
As much as I would love a "guaranteed" price increase, there isn't such a thing ... Otherwise, why are people not buying NOW and sending BTC to da moon again? It's because there is some fear in the market.
It isn't that easy that after one dump more we'll grow again. BTC is already valued pretty high, so there must be reasons to invest in it. A new bull market can be triggered by a "fundamental" reason - e.g. a well-working and popular LN or another technology making mass adoption possible, or simply by greed. 2017 was a mix of both - the fundamental reason being Segwit and the financial products based on BTC (futures etc.) launching, and greed complementing these reasons to a very bullish picture.
I agree with some of what you're saying, but you're contradicting yourself here.
Saying "fundamental reasons" are needed to trigger bull markets, but dismissing reward halving or hashrate increases as possible such reasons isn't supported by any reasoning you provided. What I do agree with is where you state that "greed" (or more appropriately, "demand") is important, it's one of few factors we can measure in any way at all. Lightning network use cannot be measured very effectively, the only way that matters (counting the number of Lightning channels) is going to be rendered irrelevant once exchanges begin to use Lightning.
And so empirical measurements are the key, I believe. Even demand is a difficult metric to accurately ascertain. It's all very well claiming that this event or another was the cause of a given price move, but it's always just a theory. There will exist some extent to which Bitcoin exchanges and those responsible for big news stories (e.g. "Chinese gov bans Bitcoin for the 100th time") are colluding in pump and dumps. I think we're all too aware of specious numbers (I hesitate to call it "data") coming from exchanges already (remember the laughably high volume figures that certain exchanges would publish, or the innumerable solvency numbers and subsequent bankruptcies that have taken place?).
The advantage of the reward halving is that it's empirically factual, there is no maybe or perhaps about it, and the time and the magnitude are known to all. The BTC supply (and it's 4 yearly halving) is the only accurate component of the price equation that exists. Unfortunately for your arguments, the same is true of the hashrate; it's impossible to manipulate and the effects on Bitcoin's value proposition and price are well known (if somewhat complex and disputed). Talking up (easily manipulated) events is simply playing into the hands of those who may seek to manipulate that price. And you wouldn't want to fuel or be associated with manipulation, would you?
