This is something that the Bitcoiner newbies, whiny traders, and even some OG veterans need to understand.
Repeat after me:
The price range all last year was never real. It was a mirage. The support price when "excessive leverage has left the building" is the only thing that determines true market value.
That argument defeats itself, because it cuts both ways: You fail to account for leverage in the opposite direction.
I strongly suspect that the current $20k–$22k range is a mirage, caused by massive organized dumping of the market using borrowed coins.
The price range right now is not real, except to three types of people: (a) Fools who got long-squeezed and liquidated like me, (b) buyers who prudently kept reserves available to buy BTC now, and (c) whoever the hell is reaping huge dollar profits from shorting Bitcoin. OK, well, I guess that the price now is real. By your argument, it is not real.
This is something that the Bitcoiner newbies, whiny traders, and even some OG veterans need to understand.
(So, what is the “real” Bitcoin price? I am rebutting an argument here, not proposing my own. Well, my own would be simple: The real price of Bitcoin is whatever it trades for in actual transactions between buyers and sellers, at any particular moment. The market is ridiculously manipulated and distorted in numerous ways; that is the nature of a free market, all the moreso for such a volatile, ultra-liquid asset as Bitcoin. Don’t like it? It is only an argument against free markets; but until someone appoints me as the Dictator of the Universe, I prefer the free market to the practical alternatives in today’s world. Practiced properly, realism is idealism.)