I have my doubts about getting stuck in this particular zone for much longer because this price floating around $10k feels a bit uncomfortable (or is the word unsustainable?).. [...]
I know bitcoin likely does not give too many shit about these various macro-factors, but in the short term, seems difficult to sustain any kind of flatness, even if we never know for sure regarding how long are we going to be here in the $10k range.... in bitcoinlandia.
I’ll be a contrarian here. Partly to play devil’s advocate and pick your brain; this is a mere hypothesis:
$10k is a neat Schelling point: It
is comfortable. I myself have long taken to thinking of a bitcoin as “more or less worth somewhere around $10k”—or more precisely, I tend to think of a U.S. dollar as currently being worth about 0.0001 BTC, more or less. It is convenient because I am not a speculator, or even really an investor; my HODLings are my “savings account”, and I think of Bitcoin as
money more than as an impliedly non-monetary asset. How many others think somewhat similarly? It’s a nice round number; it makes for easy mental calculations when carrying on financial transactions with people who still use dollars as a unit of account (!).
Well, if the BTC price can stay between $9k and $11k for the next 6-9 months, I may start to reconsider my earlier assertion, start to become more comfortable in this price range and/or to change my current thinkenings on the topic.. I doubt it, but I might.. if there is a 6-9 month stickening to a somewhat $9k and $11k BTC price range.
Realistically, we have a BTC price battle going on (some might call it a war), whether you recognize such battle (war) or not.
We have largely achieved a baby level of BTC adoption at the retail level (as you seem to recognize such low level of adoption, too) and we have a quite a few BIGGER players that are just starting to dabble in BTC (and a few of them recently transparent about such dabblings - and front running of BTC measures). BTC is immature as fuck, but you have BIG players messing around with it. How you going to achieve stability from those kinds of circumstances - seems like pie in the sky wishenings, to me.
Furthermore we have the decently convincing and foundationally solid BTC price prediction models of: 1) stock to flow, 2) four-year fractal and 3) s-curve exponential adoption based on metcalfe and networking principles.
Yeah, who gives any shits about any of these BTC price prediction models or any other BTC price prediction models.. they are just hypotheticals, right?...
We should get real and figure out that the currently convincing BTC price prediction models have some power behind them. They are not merely abstract blah blah blah.. hopenings... as some would like to frame them in such a way...
In other words, we should not be ignoring the power of such BTC price prediction models, especially the combination of the three that I mentioned above and creating our own pie in the sky framework of "I am comfortable here at this price because it feels good." blah blah blah..
King daddy gives less than two shits if you, nully wully
#nohomo, feels good.
There are various fundamental principles that provide bases for our currently convincing and solid BTC price prediction models - that largely would become problematic if BTC prices were to get stuck for some strange reason in our current level for any significant period of time..
Yeah, perhaps stagnate around $300k to $500k in 4-6 years might make a wee bit more sense as some kind of round number to get stuck, but anyhow, around $10k seems like out-of-touchness with regards to what actual asset we are dealing with in the real world rather than some kind of fantasy preferences of stability that is stuck in some range that is practical and lower than our previous 2017 bubble...blah blah blah. Yeah, in 2017, $19,666 was not sustainable, but we are not in 2017 no more, Dorothy.
Thereupon, if some market factors are pushing the price up, and others are pushing down, and many people are setting walls of limit orders either just above or just below $10k, then why wouldn’t the price sustain this kind of flatness for awhile? Is it not to be expected to converge around these major milestones before it eventually diverges?
I don't buy it. You might want to consult with Torque about this manipulation within a range (around round numbers) angle, though. Like I already mentioned, if BTC prices are still floating around $9k to $11k 6-9 months from now, I might start to reconsider.. even though such a scenario still might ONLY be a result of short term luck rather than within any kind of meaningful, likely or plausible scenario that NOW should be contemplated, even though out of the blue, it could end up happening.. ..
I do think that the long-term trend is up, way up—just because supply is capped, and demand growth has barely even started toward its long-term potential. It will be some years before Bitcoin even remotely approaches saturation on the demand side! (Add to this the necessary compensation for depreciation of the dollar, Euro, etc.) So, at some point, we will need to break out and go far above $10k.
Well sure, and as you know, we have already had a correction that has been playing out for over 2.5 years.
I am not trying to impose any of my values on king daddy because I do not give any shits if it just appreciates 5% per year or even if king daddy were to get stuck between $5k and $6k for the next couple of years
(of course, financially and psychologically, I would prefer that BTC prices were not to go down to that price range, but I am also financially and psychologically prepared for such a possibility, too), but I just don't think that either flat or going down to $5k-$6k are likely scenarios under our current market circumstances, just like it is not likely to get stuck anywhere below the previous 2017 ATH (of $19,666) for any significant period of time that might last more than another year to 18 months...
Sure, there are likely going to be some surprises along the way of BTC getting to its previous ATH and surpassing the previous ATH and also getting to some new blow off top (presuming that another blow off top is in BTC's cards), and sure, we might get stuck in some price zones that seem to defy logic, but manipulators will try these kinds of BTC price manipulations and even be successful for a period of time and maybe for a period of time that is longer and lower than any of us would prefer, until they are not...
Ultimately, I just cannot give much weight to presumptions that you seem to want to employ, nullius, that seem to want to presume that there is NO kind of real battle (or war) going on in bitcoinlandia in terms of disagreements about where BTC's price is and where its price is going... and these kinds of ongoing battles do not contribute to your preference for periods of stable prices and presuming that BTC is even capable of stable prices at this point in its relatively short life and given the power of its fundamentals.. Do you realize that BTC is a paradigm shifting technology that has never been experienced before? Its a once in a life time disrupter, like the invention of the wheel.. or something equivalent...
Anyhow,.. here and there and at kind of unexpected place locations along the way, we might get some seeming periods of stability, but $10k just does not seem to be any kind of plausible one at this time and in my current thinkenings about potentially plausible scenarios. Sure, $10k would have seemed plausible a year ago, as a potential spot to get stuck for 6 months or longer, but we are NO longer at that place in BTC's price cycle... so there would be some kind of need to overcome a variety of factors underlying BTC price prediction models in order to enter into any kind of meaningful price stability in this $10k arena.
I also think that too-rapid increases driven by pure speculation are not good. That is the definition of a bubble.
Sure. We are in the midst of a BTC price correction, currently. Whether you label our current location as a 18% correction from $12,000 or a 25% correction from $12,500, it is still a BTC price correction, so then a question becomes how low and for how long will we go.. We could stop here and resume up, or we could get a 30% to 60% correction that lasts a few months. I don't proclaim to really have many ideas about where we are going.. even though i have a hunch that flat is not very likely at this point.
We could also say that we are in a 50% correction from December 2017, but that seems a bit too zoomed out, too.
I believe that it is largely reasonable to to suggest that the December 2017 peak of $19,666 resulted in a one year correction down to $3,124, and then a kind of flat and uncertainty period until about April 1, 2019 and we were confirmed to be out of that 2018 bear market as of May 2019 while we were in the midst of the 3 month price bounce from $4,200 to $13,880...
In the meantime, ever since July 2019, we have had a variety of BTC price corrections and also taking a while to get back to the late June 2019 highpoint of $13,880, yet along the way, none of those BTC price corrections, or even taking them as a whole have removed BTC from being confirmed to be in a bull market since May 2019.. which had started in December 2018.. even though we had not realized such bull market until May 2019-ish (of course, some people realized such bull market earlier and some people deny that we went into a bull market, and they can all go fuck themselves.. each and every one of them.... hahahaha).
Million dollar question remains, where are we at currently and where are we likely to go, which seems to be partly determined by figuring out the framework that you would like to apply, and seems to be largely addressed by the combination of the current BTC price prediction models as I already mentioned.
Furthermore, surely we can surely experience UPs, DOWNs and SIDEWAYSes at various points along the way... and you, nullius, seem to be speculating that $10k could be a potential sticking point along this path, while I am not. Does it matter? I am not sure.
For any of us, we may make a variety of tweakenings of our BTC strategies depending where the BTC price is at, how long we expect the BTC price to be here and where we expect the BTC price to be going.
Personally, since I have largely put myself into a kind of maintenance approach to my BTC portfolio since about early 2017, I do not make very many changes to much if anything that I do in respect to BTC, so surely sometimes I might have some disagreements with other persons regarding what to do, because I am in a different place with my particular HODLings. For example for me, if the BTC price goes up, I sell a bit of it (and i have been employing this approach since BTC prices were at $250 in late 2015), and if the BTC price goes down, I buy a bit. Sure, I might tweak a bit along the way, too, but in about early 2017, I considered that my BTC approach had migrated from BTC accumulation to maintenace (they are not absolute categories but points on a spectrum).
Accordingly, currently if some circumstances in my cashflow were to change, such as I were to win the lottery, I might inject part of such materialized hypothetical winnings into BTC which I consider to be a tweak based on changed circumstances. Furthermore, if I were to come across some decent sized unexpected expense - such as my car gets burned in a BLM riot, then I might withdraw a bit of BTC to buy another car... In any event, such tweakenings of my strategy are NOT very dependent upon where the BTC price is going while we are in our current area of $4k to $30k - maybe some bigger adjustments would be made to my particular system if it appeared that we would be going outside of that range any time soon.
When I was in a BTC accumulation phase, the way that I played with those cashflow issues would have placed more emphasis on making sure that I make progress towards reaching my BTC accumulation goals - which was more aimed at increasing the amount of BTC, rather than my current status that remains o.k. with something that approximates maintaining either a similar amount of BTC stash ... again on a discretionary spectrum rather than absolutes.
Sure, you, nullius, might be in a different situation (as compared with me) in terms of adjustments that you might make to your system or your BTC strategy if you were able to consider where the BTC price might be going in the coming year, perhaps?
I recognize that you seemed to battle me, a bit, in terms of giving credence to the liquidation mode, so maybe you would be somewhere more receptive to BTC accumulation and BTC maintenance and perhaps deemphasizing anything in connection with liquidation.. perhaps?
(especially since you may be purportedly attempting to maximize your BTC accumulation in order to be able to pass it on to a bunch of likely to be undeserving snot-nosed nulliuses ... hahahahahaha ) I do not want another November–December 2017 scenario.
King daddy does not give any shits about what you want.
Anyhow, if you recall that November/December 2017 price peak, it took quite more than a year to build up to such price peak, so the November/December 2017 price peak did not just happen out of the blue...
Of course, this time around we have differing macro-circumstances than we had in 2017. In 2017, we had forkenings and forkening threads, and we had ICOs, and surely some of our current happenings in the broader space could end up having similar effects on BTC, but king daddy is going to do what king daddy is going to do.
Whether it is time to go up now (and get some unsustainable pumpening), or or whether it takes one year or two years from here to peak, it is not as if any of us can prescribe BTC's price path to be gradual rather than explosive, even when explosive seems to be more within the cards of how these kinds of matters play anyhow. Haven't you noticed? Seems to me that whales have a tendency to manipulate BTC prices for too long and for too low, and what ends up happening is that BTC prices explode... and no one can really stop it, and perhaps some of that explosiveness comes from some players manipulating BTC prices too low and for too long, no?
Even if we were to proclaim that we would prefer that king daddy follows such a mild and gently path, I believe that NOT even the whales have such capabilities to control king daddy in such mild and gentle paths forward. Furthermore, even if Torque and some other members might conjecture that the whole damned BTC price trajectory is orquestrate by some supposedly existing powers that be entities, the odds seem quite unlikely that we are going to experience smooth and gentle BTC price movements, even if all of us get into a circle and chant for it. BTC no work like dat.
I am not watching the ticker and asking, “When moon?” I want to see a new ATH driven by increased adoption and usage as money—not by FOMO, irrational exuberance, etc.
It is what it is, no?
Of course, there may be some of us that could go out there and attempt to build and contribute to the BTC development direction that we want to happen, but in the end, we cannot really stop what is causing the BTC price to increase or decrease (use cases, speculation or whatever), and surely there can be some financialization aspects that contribute to adoption and upwards price pressures that might not exactly be healthy for BTC, but financialization tools can be used in part of the games that are attempted to be played by BIGGER players.. especially if they believe that they can make money or even attempt to achieve other objectives by playing around with such financialization tools include engaging in fractional reserve (rehypothecation) practices. There are likely goals to financially profit from BTC manipulation and there are also goals to destroy BTC, if that were possible.
Of course, at this juncture, increased adoption driven by loss of confidence in fiat currencies would not be a bad thing...
Sure, loss of confidence in fiat does seem to be one of our current BTC price pressure factors.. but surely there are no one cause situations in bitcoinlandia that cause BTC prices to go up, down or sideways. There are a variety of factors, and sometimes we will witness that BTC prices will move in the exact opposite direction of what we might have had expected and end up staying in some kind of less than preferred price range for a period of time that is much longer than we might have thought reasonable or sustainable ... .
Too much speculation also increases volatility, which slows adoption—which detracts from Bitcoin’s fundamental value!
You going to go out there and stop speculators? How?
With any network effect, speculation is one of the first use cases of any asset, whether we are referring to bitcoin or any other asset.
Speculation is not going to go away, even if other use cases develop around it, and even if the asset becomes more mature. Are you trying to suggest that bitcoin is too mature for speculation? Bitcoin is just a baby, so speculation is going to exist for a long ass time in bitcoin, whether we like it or not. Manipulation, too. So best to just deal with such speculation, manipulation and volatility rather than wish it away.
You know about the
7 network effects that are outlined by Trace Mayer, right? Even though Trace Mayer might currently be
persona non grata, there continues to be a lot of discussions and articles around the seven network effects that he described in earlier articles and interviews that can be Googled to look up a variety of such articles that flesh out those seven network effects.. and speculation tends to be amongst the first of the network effects to develop.. and it is not like speculation is going to go away once it starts.
Here's one rendition of the seven network effects - even though they can be fleshed out in a variety of other ways:
>>>>>>The 7 network effects of Bitcoin are:
Speculation — Speculators are attracted to this new asset class by its novelty and high volatility.
Merchant Adoption — Merchants are attracted by the profit margin increases which Bitcoin enables, namely: avoiding credit card fees and eliminating chargebacks.
Consumer Adoption — Consumers are attracted by discounts (a la Purse for saving on Amazon), increased transaction privacy, and greater economic sovreignty: e.g., the ability to buy restricted or otherwise unavailable goods.
Security — Insofar as the system is secured by miners and decentralized by nodes the network can be considered trustworthy. Likewise, as more speculators, merchants, and consumers come on board, the price increases and miners are incentivized to participate, further securing the network.
Developer Mindshare - Developers are attracted to Bitcoin because there is money in it, and because its open protocol and codebase enable permissionless innovation.
Financialization - Fintech firms and venture capitalists are investing in the Bitcoin ecosystem not only to facilitate main street investor speculation, but also because its programmable nature allows for the transfer and registry of assets of all types: titles, stocks, securities, etc.
Adoption as a World Reserve Currency - While the previous network effects build upon each other and help to raise its market capitalization, developers continue to enhance Bitcoin's scalability and utility. Eventually all transactions may be settled on the blockchain. Adoption as a World Reserve Currency may happen through the gradual recognition of Bitcoin as a technically superior form of money. More likely, however, is uptake resulting from: A) continued crises in other fiat currencies, or B) so called "speculative attacks" against weaker currencies, leading in either case to Hyperbitcoinization.<<<<<<<
Thus, I don’t see the $10k range as “uncomfortable”. As long as it has stable support there, I am happy for the time being.
I did not characterize our $10k range as "uncomfortable" in terms of any kind of personal preference.
I only characterized our current $10k price range as "uncomfortable" in the sense that I don't expect such price range to last for very long, but whatever, if such price range does end up lasting, I don't really care either. It is not like I am betting on some other direction. I just consider stability in BTC prices as a lame ass expectation because it remains unlikely, even if such stability does coincidentally happen in BTC from time to time (like a kind of temporary truce).