it's foolish to gauge bitcoin prices on historic recurrence as what makes history repeat are the human factors which are predictable and repetitive such as speculative activity, greed and etc.
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i can only think of a few things at the moment but i can assure you, times have changed a lot lately and for history to repeat for bitcoin something unusual and on a big scale has to happen.
I think it's foolish of you to say that it's foolish to see that history is more or less repeating its patterns in any sector of life. We as humans are lazy and prone to falling into autopilot mode. Every day we do the same things the same way. You wake up at 9, drink coffee and go to work. Change yourself and you will change your environment. Stop drinking coffee at nine and you will be amazed by the changes in your life it induces. If only you had enough personal power to really notice the correlation.
You can't argue the fact that in 2011 Bitcoin came slowly and painfully down from its ATH to its bottom and to make matters worse, exchanges got hacked, people got scammed.
You also cannot argue the fact that in 2014 Bitcoin has been coming slowly and painfully down from its ATH and to make matters worse, Bitstamp got hacked.
So there clearly is a pattern but at the current stage it remains unclear whether the bottom is in or not and what the next catalyst for bitcoin price surge/drop would be. My personal belief is that in 2015 bitcoin will skyrocket and this will happen concurrently with the crash of some conventional markets.
Ironically, even though we can see clear similarities, we still don't know what happens next. It's foolish to assume that the repetition will be precise and if that's what you wanted to say then I agree with you. By the first law of the universe --- the law of conservation of irony --- I would say that we should expect the unexpected.
Since everyone's attention is fixed on the price of Bitcoin and people have different expectations for it, it could happen that nothing really happens to BTC this year. Instead, another coin could rise from the shadows and experience a major appreciation of its value. I have one candidate: Nubits. It's essentially the only cryptocurrency out there that has a steady market cap. We all know that when BTC goes up, all the altcoins also go up, and when BTC goes down, all the altcoins go down. All the altcoins except Nubits. Perhaps people have had enough of the volatility that comes with cryptocurrencies? If that's the case, I predict future so bright for Nubits that we gotta wear shades.