I stick with my prediction made when Bitcoin was in the $600s, that it will need to settle at $150 or below, before we've reached the bottom. I think Bitcoin is now well correlated with gold (in terms of the stampede to Private Assets coming after the Sovereign Debt Big Bang on 2015.75), which Armstrong expects won't bottom until settles at $1000 or below ($680 is the minimum possibility) sometime just before or after 2015.75.
I had also noted long ago how BTC's chart resembled silver, and so I am quite confident that the recent intraday touch of $151 (on BitStamp, $166 on Bitfinex) with a closing well above that, was not a capitulation (we had the same pattern in silver having flirtations with $26 until it finally broke through down to $17). All the permabulls such as rpietila will have to capitulate and sell some at these lows before we will have bottomed. That panic sell off was not capitulation by all yet. We need more pain first to wring their hands of optimism and hope and turn them to dismay and hopelessness. Then we will have bottomed.
There is a bounce now on news, and I would sell the news (just as everyone should have sold the recent bounce in gold):
http://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-investment-trust-gets-finras-ok-to-become-public-bitcoin-fund-1425242094https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-price-making-higher-highs/If it bounces even higher first before falling again, that won't be refutation of my prediction.
Folks imo, crypto-currency won't be ready for another prime-time until after Oct. 2015.
I don't catch a falling knife. I especially run away from investments where there are preachers who are trying to manage the float with their words and brethren. When expert speculators become managers, I run away because that is not their talent.
Btw, rpietila checked with me as he was deciding to go "all in" (i.e. buy much more than he had bought at lower prices) on BTC at $10 in early 2013 (or let us say he was advising me to buy and also getting my confirmation in addition to the confirmation he had already received from numerous of his contacts, myself only being a minor relatively insignificant one), and I responded that he was probably correct. As a speculator, rpietila is very astute. I appreciate any advice he gives me as an unaligned speculator. When he has become married to an investment, I no longer weight as highly his opinion on that investment, because I don't think he can be entirely objective in that case where he has vested interests.
I post there here not to spite my very generous friend (btw he has paid in full + extra for all past arrangements), rather because I am advising him as I did when I advised Jason Hommel to not double-down on the failing marriage by making a child and buying a $million home. Alas, friend's advice is often ignored.
I suppose I won't post again here for months, which was the case last time I posted in this thread.
Here are two posts on Armstrong that are relevant to his prediction record and methodology:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.10638476https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.10617644