Bitcoin getting ready for another leg up? Should we ignore the FUD?

Hey everyone, this is my first blog post here on steemit. I thought I would post about Bitcoin since its the reason either directly or indirectly that we are all here in the first place.

Right now, on July 8th, as of this writing, the current price of BTC is $2535 on Bitstamp. It's crazy to even type that. I remember getting into Bitcoin almost 3 years ago and the price was basically 1/10 of that.

Whats even crazier than BTC being at over $2500 is the fact that the price has been relatively stable for the last couple of months. Even though we have FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) everywhere due to the concerns of BIP 148, UASF, Segwit2X, AsicBoost, miner centralization and a potential hardfork, with the exception of a quick dump that went down to around $1850 (which quickly recovered) the price has been staying over $2000. I think this is key because $2000 is a round whole number and a key psychological level for traders. For the price to have stayed over $2000 for almost two months shows that there is real demand for bitcoin, even at these "inflated" price levels.

Back in February & March, we were in a similar situation. Around that time, the price was relatively stable around the $1000 level, despite the FUD surrounding the rejected Winkelvoss ETF. After the rejection, the price dumped shortly to under $1000, but the price evenutally broke out and rocketed out past the previous all-time high range of $1350 towards the end of April. Ever since then bitcoin has been trading in an upwards channel.

This channel has been tested 8 times just by my count when taking a quick glance at the charts. The blue arrow below is approximately the beginning of the "next leg up" that took us past the ATH and into the current channel we're in now. Since the breakout, the tests of the support of the channel are circled

Now I'm not saying that the price has to go up, but the fact that we are continually bouncing off the bottom range of this channel shows that it is infact a pretty strong channel. If we keep successfully bouncing from the bottom of the channel, perhaps it is time to test the top? If we do test the top of the channel, we could see price getting closer to $3000 and perhaps beyond, just as the UASF activates.

This is definitely not a suggestion to buy, and everyone sure seems to think the price will drop as people get scared and sell in anticipation of the Aug 1 date. From my experience, when everyone tends to think an outcome is guaranteed, the markets have a way of showing us different (Brexit for instance). Perhaps now is the time to be greedy when others are being fearful?