What are the economic and political dynamics that can positively drive bitcoin price to and above the critical price of USD20,000? Is this possible before the end of the first quarter of 2018?
Well in terms of regulation, I think that if more countries start accepting bitcoin as legal tender, like Japan, Switzerland, and now Germany, it will help adoption, because merchants will have more incentives to use it. Since in terms of development, bitcoin is getting better, all we need are good tax regulations, so that it's adoption increases.
If adoption kicks in, and big names like amazon move into crypto, we will see a huge boom in it's price, like we saw in 2017. There is a chance that these thing take time, and that we will see a hole year of consolidation where nothing happens. Let's not forget the halve in 2020, so that could work as a catalyst as well. Not really worried about that though. We had plenty of periods lie this, where people thought bitcoin was "dying", and then we had the 2017 boost.