I guess im quite conservative with my 2.5 - 3k prediction
If crypto ever is to become an asset class among metals, land, RE, bonds and fiat, it will have to be x1000 higher than now.
So we are in front of 3 questions:
In order for crypto to become to become "asset class among metals, land, RE, bonds and fiat," it will need to be able to handle transaction volumes, on the main chain. at least comparable to the un-leveraged or "monetary base" level of these assets. This will be possible if the current trends of falling real costs of CPU time, bandwidth, digital storage, digital memory etc. continue. I am talking of a continuation of the trends of the last 50 years.
- whether (after 8 years of consecutive ATHs and continuous progress, if it still was a fad...)
No
- how (BTC can keep its position, or something else...)
I doubt very much that Bitcoin will keep its position over the long term since the current Bitcoin protocol is hard coded to not scale the number of transactions per second (blocksize) and the only viable long term blocksize scaling solutions that I am aware of, and are sustainable would be very similar to those of Monero. The trouble with Monero like blocksize scaling solutions in Bitcoin is that they require a tail emission, which would be an unacceptable change in the Bitcoin social covenant.
- when (how high do we go now, how high next time...)
It is possible that over the short term we may see an increase in the Bitcoin price above the last ATH; however
over the long term I remain a bear with respect to Bitcoin because of the long term fundamentals of the blocksize issue. At the recent San Francisco Monero meetup one of the participants commented to me: "The product is transactions". If one limits the number of transactions per second one in effect is limiting sales. This begs the question would one invest in a company for long term growth that has a hard limit on the gross sales?
I still hold a nominal amount of Bitcoin; however since September 2015; I have replaced the bulk of my Bitcoin holdings with a combination of Monero, Canadian Dollars and US Dollars. This portfolio of Monero, Canadian Dollars and US Dollars has out performed Bitcoin handsomely during this period of time with a significantly lower downside risk.
Edit: The rise of the order of 10^6 in the price of Bitcoin between December 2009 and December 2013 followed by at best a flat market since December 2013 can be explained as Bitcoin's growth until the 1 MB blocks were filled up followed by stagnation since the 1 MB blocks were full. Another way to put this is an increase in the value of a company until the hard gross sales cap was reached.