We tend not to think much about fundamental value when performing technical analysis. gbianchi has a nice post at
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/24-feb-report-bitcoin-price-theory-proposal-394221 in which he finds that the price scales at the 9/4 power of the number of wallets (which I would presume tends to scale with the number of user-years). Network theory tells us that the value of a network scales with the square of the number of vertices (accounting of 8 of 9 fourths of the exponent).
The number of wallets from Q3 to Q4 went from ~350k to ~1M, a factor of ~3, while the price scaled by roughly the 8 or 9/4 power of that factor. This suggests to me that the fundamental value of bitcoin has increased at least as much as the price did from bottom to top, during that time. Probably bitcoin is now undervalued, and will be even more undervalued at the extreme. Consequently, I would be surprised if the trip back up from the eventual capitulation bottom is a protracted one. It should move with great force, and will probably never go below 1000 again unless there is a concerted attack or a technical catastrophe. The number of users will at least double during this quarter, which should at least quadruple the network-derived value component.
As luxury retailers market to the bitcoin demographic, use of bitcoin is likely to see aspirational emulation. International remittances for real estate purchases seem to be present news, but are a very small-scale thing. Volume remittances on the scale of diaspora populations are very slow in coming. I have yet to meet a New York taxi driver who knows what is bitcoin. When at least half of them know, I think we will be approaching the remittance volumes which will impose a monetary valuation (aside from the network valuation) component between 3k and 5k USD. That can happen quickly within a given ethnic enclave, but each enclave is a silo-ed market.
Wow. Gbianchi's analysis is some high level shit. Really impressive.
He basically came up with a mathematical formula to explain why I am so bullish on bitcoin. I keep screaming that we need to pay attention to fundamentals and this is the kind of fundamental analysis I have been referring to.
Short term charts do not tell us when a current rally or retraction will end or, more importantly, how long it will last.
Great find. Thanks for posting.