Bear in mind that I started this thread less than a year ago, the thing had only just reached 6k and was already parabolic, if what you say is true;
Then why on earth would anyone risk “mining”, just to break even given the fact that what you say here seems logical. ?
Especially when the whole thing is of no intrinsic value whatever ?
The hopes are that once all the coins/blocks are mined their price will rise exponentially due to the scarcity.
The amount of coins that can be mined are not infinite - so, the less there are = the harder they will be to come by => price will rise as the demand grows. That’s what we saw last december - too much hype and demand. The FOMO was real.
Good read:
The reason why I would be very cautious about investing in Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency is that governments won’t allow decentralized currencies to threaten their own sovereign currencies. Cryptocurrencies are still marginal, so governments stay idle. But if any crypto seriously threatened, say, the USD, its days would be numbered.
Every major government in the world is contemplating the introduction of its own cryptocurrency. So there’s a real chance that all cryptocurrencies, except those issued by a government, will be banned. That will allow governments to harness the blockchain technology while retaining control of money.
Sauce:
How can anybody know when to escape anything. You can set an objective, sit tight at a bearish cost activity flag, me I have taken out my unique venture and will ride this pattern hazard free. Whatever you do know nobody offers at the best, you will either offer early and miss a few benefits or offer late and miss a few benefits. Each Trader/Investor faces this
Are you an automated spam bot?
[edit 2 - from that same article @purtle ]
[quote]…Get Ready for the Crypto Dollar
The case for sovereign cryptocurrencies is even more compelling. As soon as we have a “crypto dollar,” “crypto renminbi,” or another sovereign currency, governments will be able to get rid of money laundering, tax evasion, and avoid a lot of other problems that come with cash.
Major governments will work together to ensure that they have control over money issuance and tax collection…[/quote]
A thought has just occurred to me … If I had bought 100 when I was thinking of doing so for say £100 - I could have sold them at Xmas or thereabouts and bought 20 houses to rent out with the proceeds. 
However, bitcoin according to previous posters costs more and more to produce as it’s numbers increase. So it is an “asset” with limited supply.
So lets look at it as a useable currency - say I take on a mortgage for 50 bitcoin to buy a house with an equivalent value of say $300,000 . at say 6% interest - what is my monthly repayment in bitcoin ?
Now assume I work and get paid 2 bitcoin a month for my efforts. If the Hype is correct, in a year’s time my wages will probably have gone down to 1 bitcoin a month or less. but my mortgage payments will still be the same ! in 2 year’s time, I will have been repossessed because of teh increasing value of bitcoin against any measure of wealth or earning capacity. ie MASSIVE DEFLATION is taking place if we even try to think of it as a currency or “money” Buy a house today, it will be worth 1/4 of what you paid for it in 3 years time. You can NEVER sell it for a profit ! - How can you run any system with these attributes for their monetary system ?
[Edit - I’ll come back to that silly quote later - enough to think about in this post alone ! 
]
Wow this chart is crazy. The good old days of 2017 when FOMO and price manipulation ruled. Your thoughts on the future, @Clint?
I think there’s money waiting on the sidelines looking for way more stability than we’ve been seeing.
Forecasting the future price of bitcoin is way above my pay-grade.
But, just for fun, I’ll mention the latest predictions of über-bull James Altucher.
In a recent promo-piece for his cryptocurrency newsletter, Altucher detailed 4 crashes over the history of bitcoin, ranging from -70% to -92%, the 4th crash being the latest one (last winter).
Each of the previous 3 crashes was followed by an exponential price rise, and Altucher claims this 4th one will be no different. He not only predicts some mind-boggling gains in bitcoin, but also pins down the exact trigger and the exact trigger date that will launch these gains.
Altucher’s mind-boggling bitcoin prediction is $100,000 by January 2019. And the trigger he claims for this unbelievable bull run will be the approval of a bitcoin ETF by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on September 30, 2018 – five days from now.
Make of this what you will.
If you want to daydream about quick riches, here are two charts which James Altucher is using to illustrate his prediction –
And $100,000 bitcoin is not Altucher’s most outrageous prediction. He says bitcoin will hit $100,000 on its way to $1 million – in a single move. You can’t say the guy doesn’t hang it all out there.
And John McAfee is down on his knees, hoping, hoping, hoping that Altucher is right 
Nice. I’m sure by the time crypto hits a 50 quadrillion marketcap, someone might actually find a legitimate use for these things
That guy is something else for sure.
You said that right.
Wow, what a prediction. I would think that a rally like pictured would move soooo much more in October and November, right after an ETF release. But $100,000K… in 3 months? I don’t know Maybe a move back to $20K by the new year, and then the insane money in 2019 Q1. Unless institutional money goes crazy, but I imagine “they” would look to more than just one ETF being approved to really get moving.
Here’s another very bullish prediction for bitcoin. This one, published a couple of days ago in ProTrading Research, is not quite as extreme as James Altucher’s prediction; even so, it shows the bitcoin price approaching $100K around mid-2019.
I have copied and pasted an enlarged image of the chart displayed in the article, and then posted a second image of the same chart with corrections to the price pattern shown in 2017. I did not check the price pattern in any other year.
What the creator of this chart is trying to show is that the long-term swing highs and swing lows in the bitcoin price lie on similar parabolic curves which are rising with respect to the chart’s logarithmic y-axis (the price axis).
Accordingly, the long-term bitcoin price trend is also following a rising parabolic curve, essentially tracking along the mid-line between the swing highs and swing lows.
All of that may or may not be accurate, depending on the price line plotted in the chart. The error I noticed and corrected in the 2017 prices does not invalidate the author’s theory regarding the price trend, but other (undiscovered) errors might make it invalid.
Thanks for sharing Clint. An exponential phase is up and coming, perhaps to coincide with ETF adoption either this year or early next year. Very interesting.
It’s a very depressing market.
Ask and you shall receive.
