Pissedoff: I agree with some of your assessment, but NOT all of it.
Personally, I believe what is causing the price to go down is manipulation, and there are some that want to continue to push the prices of BTC down so that they can continue to accumulate and at some point (maybe 1 month from NOW or maybe 6 months or possibly longer), there will be attempts to manipulate in the opposite (upwards direction)... One large whale would be within his/her power to manipulate the price upwards into the $3k to $5k territory, b/c was the price starts to go upward, there will be other whales ready and willing to jump on board.
Really, bitpay and similar are good for bitcoin because they cause liquidation opportunities - which people need to have in order to have additional confidence in BTC when prices go to the next upward level. Surely, if people are NOW using bitpay and similar to liquidate and they are NOT replacing their coins, then surely, you are correct that those services are merely being used to sell coins... but really, I doubt that those services of bitpay and similar are what really is causing downward price pressures... you can watch the market and see that the downward pressure comes from the purposeful and strategic attempts to dump large quantities of coins on exchanges, and while that conduct remains profitable, that exchange dumping conduct is going to continue.
Additionally, some of these dumpers are accumulating coins on the sly.. so that they will have plenty of coins when the time comes for the upward momentum.
What is causing the slump is people are dollar cost averaging out, everyone is saying the transactions are up, that's because everyone is selling. Those are transactions.
Your various analyses seem to be a bit back-asswards to me - as if you are grasping at straws attempting to find various explanations for the price, while at the same time ignoring various obvious and more important facts.
Yes, surely people engage in dollar cost averaging, and maybe even such dollar cost averaging may emphasize buying on the way down and selling on the way up. In this regard, a lot of the dollar cost average selling would have already taken place a long time ago. Accordingly, that dollar cost average selling theory does NOT pan out in the real world.
Bitcoin is very different from Gold for example, the cost and difficulty to mine gold is pretty static. If the cost to pull an ounce of gold out of the ground is $300,
when gold hits $299 they stop mining gold, when they start back up the cost is still $300
With bitcoin, when the price of mining a bitcoin drops below what it cost in electricity and equipment to mine one, people will mostly stop,
When they start up again the cost to mine a bitcoin will be higher than when they stopped.
mining is NOT very directly correlated to price. Surely, there is some correlation; however, there is going to be the same number of bitcoin's produced whether the cost per bitcoin is $1 per BTC or $1,000 per BTC. The price of bitcoins may cause an incentive for miners to decide whether to hold or to sell in anticipation, also, of what they expect to be the future price. At the same time, some of these miners may be in positions in which they have to sell, yet miners tend to be amongst the most bullish in their long term predictions of bitcions, so at these current prices, they have inclinations to hold while planning to sell later. So if miners are selling, they are likely NOT selling large stacks of their holdings.
The overarching problem is that bitcoin users are not savvy investors, they panic sell and hardly ever buy low.
Therefore the overwhelming majority will watch BTC go down to $50 and walk away and never look back, on to the next new thing.
Maybe bitcoin users are NOT sophisticated, but they are learning about bitcoin as we go, and some of them are wanting to increase their BTC holdings to sell and to buy back. I would NOT necessarily attempt to lump bitcoin holders as being any kind of special creature because a larger culprit in the market is the fact that the BTC market cap is small and it can be manipulated by fairly small players who are willing to put their money on exchanges. In that regard, it is much easier and faster and cheaper to move BTC onto exchanges than it is to move fiat onto such exchanges. Good luck, if you believe BTC prices are going into the double digits any time soon. I would be quite surprised if BTC prices go lower than the $250 to $275 range.....
Never say never in Bitcoinlandia, but seems pretty unlikely that BTC prices will fall that low, absent some fairly catastrophic news - b/c a lot of aspects of the BTC fundamentals remain strong, including adoption and liquidation venues.
Then companies like Bitpay and Coinbase will be stuck with hundreds of thousands of near worthless BTC.
There is no fed to sell your BTC back to, so many will be left holding the bag.
I am sure that those business are sufficiently protected for BTC price fluctuations, and they are continuing to expand and to take some of their profits in dollars. Coinbase, for example, has recently expanded into about a dozen European countries. Surely, I do NOT know their financial details, but I would anticipate that they have a decent business model and they seem to be fairly profitable and fairly widely accepted player in the bitcoin services space.
If Paypal does not announce that they will utilize BTC in their model before the Christmas holidays, then we will see $80 BTC by the summer. Then everyone will sit on them, never to return.
Bitcoin prices is also NOT dependent on any one factor or any one player. Yes, it would be good for bitcoin to obtain further exposure through Paypal, but any NON-occurrence of that one factor is NOT going to be detrimental to bitcoin prices.... there may be other factors or a combination of factors that cause negative pressures on bitcoin prices, though... including the fact that some big players continue to be o.k. with accepting low manipulated btc prices and are continuing to accumulate bitcoins behind the scenes.
So, more likely at some point in the next 1-12 months, we are going to experience incredible upward manipulation and momentum of BTC prices and with this upward price movement, many fiat holders on the sidelines will jump in to attempt to experience profits in the BTC space.
