Topic: Realistically, how do you think bitcoin will perform this year? (Read 579 times)

I think bitcoin is doing great this year

Many confuse price with value, when bitcoin was just created its price was 0 but its value was enormous, right now the price of bitcoin is decreasing but the value of bitcoin has not moved an inch that is something long term holders realize, which is why many are not selling, the true value of bitcoin is way higher than the all time high it reached some weeks ago. 

Hear about negative news in several country, i think this year more difficult than the last year 2017. For some reason, i hope bitcoin still strong as a primary crypto coins because we know crypto currency more restricted in several big country.
but we must has a positive thinking because who believes that bitcoin can raising up very fast at the end of 2017.

It has proven that bitcoins double its current price before the year end and now it has drop again like before however this time bitcoins are about in low level furthermore even almost all altcoins are with its dip and its because of manipulation of the price in accordance of BTC futures which have cause a same big rise and down in the whole market.
In the long run this year i am believing that we can see a massive adoption of the market and a good rise in the ber months this year because of a continuing adoption of digital currency.

My personal thinking seems we will not see bitcoin become big as last year 2017, until 5 months ahead.
I do not know why, but I only see the condition of bitcoin which is currently tended to be stable.
Move a little, then down again and repeat like this. Maybe we'll see the best position to be at $13000, hopefully.

Beginning of the year seems to be little worse than what's been expected to happen. The ongoing price fluctuation has given users the fear, because one who invested expecting good increase when the price was around $15000 has been experiencing the downfall. Possibly by the mid year can expect good price increase.

Well there's nothing to be sad about that though. A slow steady rise for me is a loy better than a sudden quick pump that surely will have an equal correction. I think we should even be thankful that the price is strong just above 10k with all the fuds circling around btc

Truly that bitcoin was unpredictable, last year there was an issue that after the fork bitcoin's value will fall but rather it goes up and continue growing until it reach its highest price achievement which is $20,000. Since bitcoin is now gradually decreasing, we should make some move but don't panicked, I guess should hold it because I believe that it will bu back. Don't afraid to loss because it is just temporarily, it is too early for bitcoin to perish.

Realism has little to do with Bitcoin and the rest of the Cryptoland valuations.  People have no idea what the values are based on, they talk up coins about having good projects, good teams, lots of announcements, do research... most have nothing to research beyond their white paper and an echo chamber of bullish (or bearish) commentary on various blogs and websites. That's not to say there isn't value, just there's not empirical or methodical way to analyse it.  So anyone is welcome to make guesses based on gut feel, if you predict up you're welcomed, if you predict along way up cheered and maybe ridiculed, but if you predict down its dismissed as FUD.    In short, dont know, I dont want to leave the party but have one eye on the door
 

Sadly, I think you are right. I suspect trading will be sideways until some positive headlines are announced.

As 2017 has shown, bitcoin is impossible to predict, we can only guess. My guess is that 2018, at least the first half of it, will be rather boring. No new ATH, and even the return to $20k seems to be unlikely. Hovering near $10k is more likely.

I would guess we're not going to see anything much over 20k, if I'm honest - it's reigned in now and will float around these levels for quite a while. Alts are where money is to be made now, let's face it.

If you would've asked this question last year, i believe anyone could have hardly speculated $1k, But you might remember how drastically bitcoin took an unexpected change and rised from $1000 upto $20000 within a months of brief time. Keeping last surge in mind, some speculators say that bitcoin may reach $40k by 2018 and i myself agree on their speculation because world is exponentially getting involved in blockchain technology

Price increase by 10% after a fall of 45% is nothing. I think that the credibility of bitcoin will come back only if the price of the transaction reduced. It seems to me that the main objective of bitcoin's become a currency. Use it as an asset to accumulate can turn bitcoin into a bubble. It is strange why the developers do not understand and did not take any action.

Bitcoin appears to be climbing back up, from a low of around $10,200 yesterday, up to $11,500 today (up more than 10% in 24 hours). Are we about to see another spike?

Governments can't control Bitcoin as it is a decentralized network. You know this. And I'm sure they know this as well.
The on ramps to invest in Bitcoin and cryptos in general are already heavy regulated in most countries. That's why we see so much ambitious efforts to build decentralized exchanges. There isn't anything left for nation states except banning the whole space what will drive it totally underground and make it totally anonymous.

In terms of price I*ve got no clue. Anything is possible. From making new ATHs to ranging around unexpected low price levels for many months. Time will tell.

Yeah that will be realistically speaking and not the $50k because it's too much to ask and too early to expect. Maybe if bitcoin will surpass at least $15k mark and keep rising and will just have some dips then it may be. Hope February will be yhe rise again of bitcoin.

Governments all over the world are using regulations as a tools to control bitcoin and bring the system under they subjection. I think bitcoin is going to overcome all they plan and strategies. I expect bitcoin to go as high as $50,000 in 2018 and that means one should not sell their coins because of the current happening. I personally will keep holding my coins until the price get above $100,000 because I believe this is going to happen one day.

50k by march is too much and i'm not even sure the price can reach $30k. January is a blood bath on the market, the price dropped to $10.5k right now but it will go up again later. The problem is how long the bitcoin price can reach after the crashed? I guess back to 19k on march.

Im still yearning at bitcoins positive side, true that segwit user has increase since the clog is still there in the network. Hopefully that this year 2018 issues will be resolve so that we could move further ahead in expanding bitcoins investors (more investor means price will go up).

Bitcoin has been with the battle with regulations and users losing trust in the network, FUDs everywhere in the internet and some news agency but still bitcoin price is fighting this in the market, if the regulations will be halted then this will yet to be another year of bitcoin.

I read news about Bitcoin, I did some analysation and I can say that this year Bitcoin should hit maximum 30k USD in value. I also think that average price of Bitcoin will be around 11K~15k USD.
Now let's explain why? - from my point of view.
Since the price of Bitcoin rise, we can see more charges and according to those businesspeople who attending to purchase, instantly looking for alternatives where they wouldn't be charged a lot(now we can see that other cryptocurrencies prices are in increase).
Bitcoin got huge media attention, so we can practically see every single news are about Bitcoin on the top of popular sites. That media attention is blade with two edges(this can change the price of Bitcoin drastically).
Now we have other cryptocurrencies in the game, so the price of Bitcoin should get some sort of average price form.

What nl247 said is on point, knowing how Bitcoin works, this is one of the questions you shouldn't hope for a "realistic" answer as we all know the nature of Bitcoin. The first month of the new year is nearing its end, but that doesn't mean we can get a concrete idea of how the performance of Bitcoin will be throughout the year. Predicting how Bitcoin rates are affected tomorrow is hard to know, how much more for the whole year? Always know that Bitcoin is incorporated with uncertainty and just like what nl247 said, we can only observe and hope for the best.

Absolutely. A lot of people are here just for the prospect of making money quick. They see bitcoin just like any other investment opportunities and even compare it to an affiliate marketing scheme like bitconnect. That really angers me, since they haven't done any research about what bitcoin is and they are starting to invest. Sure, bitcoin can be a great investment and has proven to be, but its main agenda is to provide a decentralized means of exchange for people.

I honestly think that bitcoin won't crash a lot further, even if it does it'll probably stop at $5k at the worst, which is still up 5x from last year. But more than likely, bitcoin will go up to around $15-20k and hopefully, have some support base at that level.

At the end of the day, fiat valuation of bitcoin is unfair and redundant for the long term.

i think thats not going to happen as bitcoin values tend to drop more and become stagnant for weeks and even months . now were closing to february but bitcoin seems the same ,  nothing more nothing less so i guess 50k by march is just a plain imagination and merely a dream that wont come to reality but still lets just hope for a better tommmorow that may come to bitcoin. overall even though bitcoins dumps it is still a good advanatge for most of us as they can now purchase bitcoin in a cheaper price.

There's probably very little chance of us reaching 50k by March. Even if lightning network was released tomorrow it wouldn't even lead me to believe such a thing could happen.

I think it's clear already that the far majority of the people here don't care about Bitcoin's technological capabilities. It has been like that from the moment I entered the crypto world, and it's still like that today. In order to value Bitcoin's technological capabilities, you have to understand at least the very basics, and that alone is already a near impossible task for those just caring about their insignificant shitty fiat investment. These people are happy when they cashed out their profits, and have the fiat sitting in their bank account. The only thing they do is complain about the high transaction fees....


Absolutely! Seriously, my target for 2017 would be $2k and $3k tops. Instead, we have seen the market nearly reach $20k during a crazy bull run. If we would have reached $5k today as all time high, the market would be in euphoric state, but now we have gone down from $20k to now $11k, we have gone down a lot, we're in a bear market, Bitcoin is losing popularity, etc. People have been far too spoiled, and they are stupid.

This year will be great for bitcoin, infact every year Bitcoin price will keep increasing..

I wouldn't mind a slightly bearish market for the next couple of months. I feel like we really needed it after the insane growth. We will also be able to see who's here for the money and who really is bullish on the technology. We musn't forget that $10K still is a damn nice price. When you would ask me in march of last year where I'd like to see bitcoin I would've told you $3K a piece would be nice and $5K would be very optimistic and yet here we stand. We tend to take the insane gains for granted.

At this time its really not the right time to predict on what not will the year run and how smooth or rough its going to be but one thing is sure either route is not going to be easy because we have had a poor start in my own opinion and everything happening does not suggest that might likely change because the market is just dull generally but all we can do is to wait for the market to lick up itself. When that happen, the likely possible outcome can be known.

Doesn't it appear that the newcomers that were caught in the push to $20k have probably cashed out and actualized their losses, maybe these people will be unlikely to jump back on the bandwagon when bitcoin starts recovering, hence the overall pool of possible newcomers is reduced with every crash, due to the amount of noobs being burned each time.

Sounds reasonable.
I also think we will see another downwards push to scare the last remaining weak hands out of the market. And after that we'll probably go sideways until june or july.
Right now all the newcomers' believe in Bitcoin and their patience will be tested.
The big money wants the noobs and crypto kiddies out of the market. This is pretty obvious imo.
So either you have strong hands and can go through that, no matter how hard it will be for some out there, or they just leave and will regret it big in 2 years.

It makes sense. I think the real bullish trigger will need to come from lightning network, and as long as we don't have that, we'll keep hovering within $10,000 (could even be sub $10,000) and the $15,000 mark comfortably.

If we're completely honest and look at the market from an unbiased (ie, non exaggerated bullish) perspective, we are still holding strong and belong exactly where we are right now.

This longer period of a non upwards moving market allows people to consistently accumulate coins at these 'lower' levels. If people don't use this time to accumulate, I seriously don't know what they are doing here.

It's a fantastic opportunity. Especially for those who bought at much higher levels. If you buy now, you will automatically lower your overall entry price. It's just a matter of logical thinking.

My prediction:

Slow grind down for 6-8 more weeks, one final dump to scare the fk all out of the market (probably dip $7-8k-ish), and then the downtrend will be broken. Then a little up, and then pretty much sideways for 3-4 more months.

The thing about momentum trades is once they top and pop, they never will return to your market until a new bottom is found and the downtrend has reversed. This usually takes a LOT longer than most people have the patience for.

This seems highly optimistic, I don't see any indication of why we'll reach $50k by March personally. Do you have any evidence to back up your predictions, as the LN isn't anywhere close to mainstream yet.

As mostly it is driven by the demand and supply and demand will keep reducing as right from the beginning of the year we had South Korean getting stricter with the norms, Now its France and Germany who have decided to crackdown on btc thus it is putting a near end for its citizens if they decided to ban or if put regulation it will be much better for the bitcoin world. So may be we can have a negative impact of all this news on the price and may be it may rise and fall back again with such types of news if it keeps happening.

Yes I hope bitcoin also can reach $ 20,000 or $ 40,000 in this year. I see in this month bitcoin increase slowly, but I sure in a few month later bitcoin will increase fast. Because the price down so many investors will buy again bitcoin for invest. Some country still problem about the government ban bitcoin, it will a little bit effect about the price. But you said "don't put your eggs in one basket", I agree with this statement, because if one basket have problem, you don't have another basket again to support you. So will be better have 2 or 3 basket for investment.

I expect the price of bitcoin to stay in between $8000 and $30000, there may be fluctuations that are outside of that bracket but that would be something that is temporary and short lived, as the pendulum should always return to its initial range eventually. Just like this dump, even though the price has gone under $10k, it didn't mean that it went under for long because the real support is at $10k mostly.

It's hard to predict exactly what will happen, since there are so many outside influencers that can't be predicted in the month of january like governments. I think that the price increase will slow down compared to last year, aka no more doubling every 3 months this year. But bitcoin should still see daylight from this bear market right now, climb to $15k-16k, and the challenge the $20k barrier again.

For an investor, your portfolio should be designed to work in every scenario, and no scenario should result in you losing all of your money. Don't put your eggs in one basket, even if it's bitcoin.

Every year, bitcoin has different performance level and this year might also differ from last year. Last year bitcoin had its one of the best performance by reaching many all-time highs that peak to almost $20k last december before slowing down for price correction. This year performance will still depend on supply and demand and positive factors that will boost bitcoin price. Repeating its last year's performance wil remain to be seen as bitcoin price still consolidating. I think this year's bitcoin performance will again differ from last year.

According to the experts, bitcoin will have a good performance this year. There are only factors that have caused its price early this year like the stock market supply and demand. But eventually it be stable and its votality will be lessercompared to what happened today. So, I believe that the experts in cryptocurrency are right. And there is nothing to worry about.

Bitcoin is the most valuable cryptocurrency in the world, and we are all assuming and expecting a good outcome about it just like how it perform last year. Well, value rely entirely in us, so let us just ask ourselves about it "how we are able to make the performance last year to do same thing this year'' let us not wait, let us act so it will 'REALLY' happen.

I think bitcoin will rise to about 11k  because many have strongly invested in it , and looking at the year 2018, Predicting its price  rise this year may not seem to be an easy task to do, as Bitcoin may become more Volatite than last yaer. So I think bitcoin is  experiencing a dip period  that once we can scale through this period , possibly by february 2018, there might be a possibility for the price to rise between 12 - 15k, how ever it may not be  as fast as  expected.

As usual that bitcoin will perform well for this year. Noobs will think that it's the end of bitcoin but the year is just starting right? There are too many days to see a light and that basically will make bitcoin give a good movement.
This is still a fine support for us and the new ones need to be calm and wait for it's slow movement but just like 2017, the same wave can happen for this year.
Jan 2017 = $1,000   / Jan 2018 = $9,000
Dec 2017 = $19,000+ / Dec 2018 = 

Agree with this. There are lots of hedge fund buyers sitting just below $10,000 and they're keen to doversify in case the stock market falls back (the bull run in stocks is getting old and must come to an end).

Some are saying that this year is the year of harvesting of our hard work in investing, as the experts says that it could reach before the end of the year to $45k and some says $100k, whenever the price doubled or tripled for as long as we have enough fund to enjoy the benefit of holding and not only watching those person celebrating their income, and it is not possible since we do have stock that extremely have high volatility and susceptible to bubble bursts.

Because of the huge rise in 2017, I think Bitcoin price rise this year would not be that big but I am sure this year would probably be one of the most significant for Bitcoin because if lightning network really fixed slow transactions, then Bitcoin investors as well as users will have more confidence in it. Overall I think Bitcoin would not perform badly this year but it won't perform greatly in terms of price rise.

In my own opinion, most people know about bitcoin doesn't know how bitcoin perform at certain time and the value of bitcoin at a certain place because it depends on the buyer in the market that demands bitcoin. If there are too many supplier then the value of bitcoin goes down so, no matter how many bitcoins you have but the demand of bitcoin is low, the performance and value of bitcoin won't increase. It's all about supply and demand (too many SUPPLIER the price will inflate, If the supply of bitcoin is rarely or seldom the price will surely increase and everyday trading of bitcoin increases the performance).

Don't get fooled by that. Ever wondered why is that?

Doesn't it bother you that the price is propped by new wave of wanna-be-rich-quick "normies" who don't know and don't care how Bitcoin works?
Doesn't it bother you that the price is propped by printing USDT likely out of air? Do you really believe they hold over $1.6 billion in their bank deposits?

Judging Bitcoins strength by it's price is a two-edged sword and, quite frankly, it's pretty stupid. Is Bitcoin 10.77% weaker than it was 24 hours ago? Its price is.

I think it will stay above 10k because there is still strong support.

But I also think we are having a very hard time to go above 13k (or even 14k) because once that point is reached, it seems everyone is selling again.

So I think we will stay in the corridor of 11-13k (maybe 10-14k) for a long time.

I can't remember my exact realistic expectations at the end of 2016, only months after I'd used Bitcoin properly and was familiar with it. I felt the buzz from people around me, believing 2017 was the year Bitcoin would once again test its 2-yr ATH but that optimism had been there the year before. Everyone was taken aback by the strength of 2017 as it turned out, so I would say that this year may be underwhelming, if only because of the gains last year.


Ordinarily, yes. But last year, even Bitcoin's most outspoken adversary Ver, had said that everything core had failed to do (in his eyes) was the sole reason Bitcoin never reached its $10k mark. Last year was actually stacked against Bitcoin on so many fronts: the ETF, followed by the big block fork threats, regulatory pressure, dark market take downs... and yet, inexplicably, Bitcoin strengthened in the face of adversity.

I'm curious to know what would happen if the opposite took place this year. And my instinct is $50k is too far away, Bitcoin's first eye should be on $20k and to maintain that. But for me, if this is the year where Bitcoin keeps trying to break but cannot, and the $10k floor is established for good, it will be a very good year.

No way to exactly know but it is my opinion that if the lightning network gets activated in this year we could easily reach 30k or 35k since that will solve one of the main issues with bitcoin right now, if that does not happen then it is likely  we remain in a range of 15k to 25k that is low I know but this seems to be about right since many people will be nervous due to the increasing regulation and fees.

Well, you have to put yourself in the regulators' shoes. Think of this scenario for example:

I'm quietly buying few $millions worth of bitcoins with my criminal proceedings, then I just sell under my own name on legit exchange. I declare it and pay CG tax.
When questioned when did I get those bitcoins from, I just say I got in early, I either bought them cheap, or mined, or got them from someone when they were worth zero etc.

There are no procedures in place to prove/disprove my story. And getting that regulated is complicated on every level.

- they cannot ask me to show the history of my btc transactions, as I was never require by law to keep records of such, and law doesn't work backwards.
- even if they wanted to analyse the records of transactions (and accept it as proof of crypto-holdings originating from legal activity) that would require a small army of dedicated blockchain experts. And I don't think there is a single competent person with a comprehensive knowledge of every cryptocurrency out there (some of them are anonymous, some are not blockchain based etc). After all, any regulations would have to relate to cryptocurrencies in general, not only to Bitcoin.

So what can the regulators do in such case? They could let it slide for now, but one thing is for sure, they won't tolerate it for long.
And this is just one example.

So I expect to see either:
- A complete ban on crypto, likely preceded by few false-flags (something in the style of NHS cryptolocker bitcoin-ransom attack) - to make it look like they have no choice but to ban it; or
- they will require everyone who currently holds any cryptos to declare it. Then allow only trading on licensed exchanges, or require you to record every P2P transaction (or maybe just above certain value).

I don't see any other options. And none of them is good for cryptos.


Well, Bitstamp was/is registered in the UK, so is CEX.io and probably few more. Also you can use any exchange and transfer fiat to/from UK bank account.
Also George Osborne was posing to photos in front of BTC ATM, so not sure what 'ban' do you mean.

Even if that would be possible then there's still the problem of governments banning it. It's EXTREMELY naive to assume that governments will allow some crypto coin to replace their own fiat currency. I loved this quote in that regard:

"One of the keys to sovereignty is control of currency and tax. Cryptocurrency interferes with both of those, so it’s inevitable there will be regulation. It is as inevitable as snow in Davos."
https://www.express.co.uk/finance/city/907121/bitcoin-Cryptocurrency-price-risk-bans-Emmanuel-Macron-Angela-Merkel-France-Germany

If you think governments will just sit back and let cryptocurrency replace their own currency, then you're really out of your mind. It's as likely as governments to permit selling uranium and cocaine in a grocery store.

It seems I'll be the only one here so far against the grain.

I don't think 2018 will be the year of BTC. I'd like to think it will be the year of cryptocurrency, but I just don't have faith that the small and fighting core group of dev's driving the development of bitcoin will drive it to the levels some of you are saying.

I have very high hopes that the community as a whole will come together and develop a bitcoin 2.0 in a sense. One that is able to scale and handle the level of transactions you would see with Visa or MasterCard. This will be needed if you want to compete as a viable alternative to other currencies.

If bitcoin stays above 5k this year, i'll be surprised. The reason I think this has been mentioned many times:

~Transaction times, fees, government regulations etc...

I agree that SegWit adoption has been slow so far, because a few big businesses
are slow in integrating it into their systems.

However, I disagree about the transaction times. The mempool is down
to only ~105k transactions, which is more than 50 % lower than the peak
level of network congestion. Even transactions with 40-50 Satoshi/Byte
are confirmed within a few hours.

I guess that the entities that were spamming the Bitcoin blockchain
have stopped for now, because it didn´t have the effect that they hoped for.

1. Segwit acceptance is still very low. Online wallets and exchanges haven't adopted to segwit yet. Core is still to release the optimum version (15.6) which is set to release in May.
2. Last year not many expected the year to end with such a huge price. So this year expectations are pretty high, so maybe this year the prices will be a bit more stable and not go up by much. Altcoins will be unstable, obviously in the mean time.
3. Lighting network, am interested to see on how it's set to perform.
Overall, bitcoin should have a tough fight with altcoins in giving a good profit to people who think of it to be an investment. Altcoins shall win when it comes to having goof profits because it's trading. Prices shall not go more than 50,000$ if any predictions are to be required though achieving it is much unlikely.

I'm expecting 25k around March, 50k by May, and something between 70-100k by the end of the year.

But we will have more volatility than before. Price is already doing swings of four digits, going from 13k to 11k in a matter of hours.

One thing that I want for bitcoin is to decrease the fees. LN can solve that, as most users will be on smartphones, not running nodes. This will unclog the legacy chain.

Another thing I want is smart contracts for bitcoin, to increase its security and made it more trustless. Conditioned payments is the future.

Oh I agree, some people will start using it. I think that's actually necessary, people NEED to use it in order to see that it doesn't work. People will NEED that moment of realization "wait a minute, without paying $80 to open a channel I can't pay my friend". Only after that moment it will die.

in one word: great.

this year we will have lightning network up and running for good and despite all the FUD that has been spread a bout this great technology for second layer transactions, it will be adopted. and the adoption is not something far far away! it is happening as we speak.

currently there are about 100 nodes running and they are growing the LN network super fast. of course it needs a lot more time but i expect in 6 months from now we will see everyone having a LN wallet and using it. with at least 50000 nodes.

There'll no doubt be more regulation, but I don't see how much more there can be really. The largely voluntary regulation somewhere like Bitstamp forces on you is already degrees more ludicrous than any other financial market.

If you want to see what a non authoritarian country where an effective 'ban' already exists, look to the UK where it's been effectively 'banned' since inception.

There are no exchanges here. P2P is good and strong. If you can't be bothered with that then you head abroad.

As for price, no idea.

This is traditionally not a great time of year so it's a bad place to get a feel for future movements.

Well segwit is really not good enough, transaction times are still very high. And Lightning network is a joke, it will fail for sure: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/reasons-why-lightning-network-will-fail-2792933

So once people realize that, the value will go to 0. I think it will take a while though, I'm not sure if it will be this year. But I do strongly believe it will go to 0. The only reason BTC is so high, is that people have some dream in their heads about what BTC COULD be. But it's not a realistic dream at all. That realization will kick in some day.

Bitcoin currently still has many opportunities to experience an increase in prices, has begun to see that currently Bitcoin users begin to apply the use of Bitcoin in everyday life. Although a few days ago there was a decline in prices due to the intervention of several countries that do Bitcoin baned regulations. But this does not last long, now we can begin to see the result that there is an increase in volume on the number of market share transactions Bitcoin in the world.

I am optimistic that this will further strengthen Bitcoin as one of the financial systems that will be used in the future.

Good days but it will return, and personally I do not count the price shown on the small exchanges in different regions of the world. Small volumes = high fluctuation of the price.

The price will keep fluctuating essentially between $11k and $13k for several days or maybe weeks but it will at some point rise again. The question is when? I think at the end of February.

If everything stacks up in bitcoin's favour expecting ~$50k by the year-end doesn't sound unreasonable.

But further major countries crack downs on crypto could and will sway the price in the opposite direction.
Things like this are pretty concerning:
https://www.express.co.uk/finance/city/907121/bitcoin-Cryptocurrency-price-risk-bans-Emmanuel-Macron-Angela-Merkel-France-Germany

Further, stricter regulations (if not complete ban) seem inevitable. Laundering money with btc is not wide-spread yet, but it's pretty easy.

You did not get comments obviously because no one can know exactly how bitcoin will end up fairing this year. We can only be optimistic that with segwit being increasingly adopted and LN in the picture, things can get better but who knows what the outcome of all these will still end up as?

Early last year, if you had ask me this question, do you think it would have been realistic if I mentioned to you that bitcoin would hit almost $20k? No one would have even believed $10k. I guess we just have to wait and see, hoping that we get another nice ride this year but I won't be too relaxed waiting for it, so I will rather just follow trends and wherever it leads us, good and fine.

No comments? I'm looking to make an average of everyone's estimation and update the OP with it after I've received a significant number of replies.

So, as many are well aware, Bitcoin saw a huge rise in 2017, peaking over $20,000 in some regions;

Of course, it would be tremendous to see those kinds of gains again in 2018, but with regulatory pressure coming down hard, bitcoin has in more difficult waters than ever before.

With segwit acceptance increasing, and the advent of the lightning network likely by year end, how does bitcointalk think BTC will perform this year, and why?