We could argue about how even the current price (5.8k) is cheap considering that it possibly go up to 20k again, but to maximize profits, the smart thing to do is buy while is cheap, not on the way up.
I don't understand why some people still look back at the $20k peak and think it has much importance. It was reached while we were going through a massive ICO bubble where it didn't matter what price people bought at.
All people cared about was to buy $10k worth of Bitcoin or Ethereum and convert it straight to whatever token people were interested in. The price of Bitcoin and Ethereum didn't matter at all.
Right now the price does matter because there is no ICO bubble. If people buy Bitcoin, it's purely based on Bitcoin and nothing else. In other words, if we reach higher levels, it can be seen as a new all time high based on legit demand.
I agree to an extent. I don't know why people talk about $20k as that is the thing to get back to, when in reality the last peak is the starting point for the exponential gains to begin on the next bull run. So looking to get back to $20k only makes sense in the context of after it crosses that the real gains will begin.
But to say the bitcoin and ethereum prices didn't matter at all is a bit silly. Those were the main two things people were watching, bitcoin first and foremost of course. Sure ICO's were a big part of the bubble, but its not like bitcoin's rise in 2017 wasn't real or didn't matter because there was an ICO bubble. First off the ICO bubble meant an exaggerated bubble for Ethereum, not bitcoin. Bitcoin was just normal bitcoin bubbliness. The ICO craze helped bring in people to crypto which contributed to bitcoin's bubble, but that's just part of the market. To say all people cared about was buying bitcoin to convert it to a token is simply not true at all. The token was never the end goal. More bitcoin, or more Ethereum, was the end goal. People didn't care about the ICOs, they cared about the gains in Bitcoin or Ethereum that they could get by buying an ICO, and selling it a hundreds of percent profit in a short period of time to get more of the main things: bitcoin and ethereum. So that directly goes against what you are saying. Bitcoin was what people cared about, ICOs people didn't care about, they just wanted the profit. Which is no different than the trading that has always occurred in the market.