I know that many people are anxious for a price projection. so I'm going to cut to the chase, and give it to you at the start of this post, instead of the end. However I urge you to read the article in full so that you can have a better understanding of the calculations and methodology used. Here is the future price projection, presented graphically:

In the following paragraphs, I will not only show you how many new bitcoin users can be anticipated, but also, how much they are going to invest, and the impact on the bitcoin price. Once you understand the methodology, I think you will find the results are quite plausible.

You can find out a lot of information about bitcoin wallets and their sizes etc. from the website https://bitcoinprivacy.net. A particularly interesting area is the statistics area: https://bitcoinprivacy.net/stats.

This is where I got all my source data. I have carried out many different types of analyses using this data.

The purpose of what follows is to show you how I reach a plausible price projection for bitcoin over the next 12 months.

To keep it simple, I have decided to split bitcoin owners into three distinct groups:

Whales - those who own more than 15 bitcoins (worth over $90'000)
Dolphins - Those who own between 0.01 BTC (about $60) and 15 BTC (about $90'000)
Minnows - Those who own less than 0.01 BTC (below $60)

The majority of the bitcoins in existence are owned by the whales. They own some 14.3 million bitcoin out of the 16.7 million in existence. That's around 86.1%.

The dolphins own approx 2.3 million bitcoins, or 13.8%.

The minnows own around 18'000 bitcoin, or 0.1%.

In terms of numbers of wallet owners, there are around 116'000 whales, 4.7 million dolphins and 16.1 million minnows.

The minnows with balances of less than $60 are mostly "dust". The balance of most minnows is less than $3. A year ago, that would have been less then 50 cents. There are millions below 1 cent.. These tiny wallets are probably left over from some previous transaction and forgotten about. I do not count minnows as users of bitcoin.

This exercise focuses on the dolphins and the whales. The minnows' holdings of bitcoins are too small to change the price, whatever they do.

My analysis of the wallet sizes covered three specific dates:

19th September 2016
19th September 2017
19th October 2017

Number of bitcoin wallets on each date

Number of bitcoins owned

Dolphins are having the biggest impact on Steemit. In the year to 19th September 2017 they increased their ownership by 454'932 bitcoins, compared to the 242'183 coin increase by the whales.

Newly mined bitcoins in the year were around 690'000.

In the month from 19th September 2017 to 19th October 2017, the dolphins were again the biggest buyers of bitcoins, buying some 135'781 of them. At an average price of $4'300 per bitcoin, that's roughly $584 million of purchases.

Of these coins, some 50'765 came from newly mined bitcoin, and the rest, (85'016), came from other sellers. We can conclude that the segment called dolphins is growing rapidly.

In fact, based on an average price of $4300 over the last month, we can conclude that the dolphins purchased $584 million worth of bitcoin in the month, whilst the sellers (mostly whales), sold some $366 million worth of bitcoin. (85'016 X 4'300 = $365'568'000)

Supply and demand for the next month.

Supply for the next 30 days will comprise newly mined coins (54'583) plus selling by the whales. It is reasonable to assume that selling by whales will not increase. After all, the more they sell, the less there are left to sell. For the purpose of this exercise, I will assume they sell the same (in money terms), as last month, i.e 365'568'000). Therefore I expect them to sell bitcoin worth some $366 million.

Demand is likely to continue to come from the dolphins, as per last month. As we saw above, dolphins purchased around $584 million (net) into bitcoin last month. That $584 million was spread among 317'318 new users. Therefore, each new user invested roughly $1'839.97.

However we can see that the pace of growth in new users is around 7.23% per month. That's 7.23% of the old users. Therefore, next month we should have 7.23% of 4'708'650 as new users. That's 340'247 new users.

If each new user spends the same as users spent last month to buy bitcoin, we will have a total spend on bitcoin of 340'247 X $1'839.97 = $626'047'947.25.

Reconciling supply and demand allows us to compute price

Based on the above, we know that New buyers will want to spend $626 million on bitcoin. We also know that sellers will sell around $366 million worth of bitcoins (i.e. the same dollar amount as last year). The difference between the two numbers leave a shortfall of about $260 million to be spent on the newly mined 54'583 bitcoin in the month. Very roughly, that will translate into an average price for the next 30 days of $4'772. This is below today's price.

Let's look at how the price will evolve over the next twelve months based on this scenario:

Number of new investors per month = 7.23%
Amount each new investor would like to invest on average = $1'839.98
Maximum amount to be sold by existing investors (e.g. whales) = $365'568'800
Monthly amount mined = 54'583 bitcoin