After the ATH break, which came unexpectedly before the halving date, people started to talk again about a possible
Bitcoin Supercycle. To know what the Bitcoin Supercycle is, you can read
this article on Cointelegraph which is surprisingly good.
In short: A Bitcoin Supercycle would break the "cyclic" nature of the Bitcoin price evolution we had in the last 11 years (since 2013), where sharp uptrends culminate approximately a year (or a bit more) after each halving and are followed by bear markets which go down more than 70% compared with the previous ATH. In a Supercycle, the price would continue its uptrend, perhaps a bit less steep than before, but we would not see a bear market of let's say more than 30-50%.
My take on this theory is that the way people use Bitcoin and invest into it must be change fundamentally until this will happen. But we may already be close, and it is even possible that the next bear market will already be much softer than the previous ones.
The current mentality of the Bitcoin community is still one of speculation "riding the waves" or "hoard and sell". Many will say that they're HODLing, but they will sell when they perceive the market has reached a top and will go down, or when there is already a clear downtrend.
This is what has to change. Instead, we need:
1) More people HODLing for longer periods than 4 years. I'm aware that not everybody is able to do this, but people with some savings can. And they would help the Supercycle to materialize, and profit in the end. You have to take always into account: if the Supercycle is finally there, and you sold, then you'll very likely regret it.
2) More people using BTC as a currency. This does not mean only for "payments", but also for example for remittances or for crowdfunding businesses (that's why I in generally approve the ICO model, only that of course you have to be wary about scams). This creates additional liquidity, and liquidity is helpful to mitigate crashes because it creates thicker order books. And crashes are what people fear most, and what makes them panic sell, and ultimately drives BTC down.
3) More people buying into the falling knife in bear markets. Even with the current 70-80% bear markets, buying at less than ~33% of the previous top actually always has meant that you will be able to sell for profit in less than a year, and if you have 3 years time to HODL then you have profitted always even if you bought near the top (excluding the 69-73k run).
4) More people DCAing into Bitcoin, and not only while the bull roars.
So basically when these four things occur, then the Bitcoin Supercycle is near, according to my personal opinion obviously. All these four items lower the probability for a deep bear market. This is also a self-sustaining pattern: if people see that bear markets aren't that scary anymore, they will HODL for more time and not panic sell.
Some people may think that "the ETFs already fixed that". But I'm not so sure about this. The ETFs could create more long term investment (my item 1) and add liquidity (item 2), but the reality is also that the market can become saturated at some point (still not now, of course!) and then at local tops there could be more outflows than inflows due to profit taking. And from this point on, deep bear markets still would be possible.
As time passes by, the skills and predisposition of the people about bitcoin and crypto in general changes for the better as anything that becomes better with age. What in the past would usually spell panic selling would not faze even the regular noobie at present, not only because they are more knowledgeable than newbies in the past were, but also because the community that bitcoin has harbored across the years turned into a solid cabal that allowed people to provide support and assistance among people who are already scared and confused about the state of the market in these situations, whereas in the past we're left to fend for ourselves.
I think all of this goes to show that what we are building here, intentionally and inadvertently shaped bitcoin not only to be a formidable currency that would stand the tests of time and the market, but also a community and an industry that is inclusive, smart, and actively looking for better ways to expand its reach. We keep this shit up and soon enough we're going to break the minds of ever critic out there, everyone who's had a doubt about bitcoin's validity eveer since it broke out the market in 2016, and every Ripple CEO who wishes they can be as big as us. LOL.