RE: Bitcoin: I'm not convinced we're not going to drop to $5000 or below 📉
Very interesting post! I think the chance of a long term (24-36 months) bear market is quite low. Two very important influencing facts for me are the all-time-high equity & real estate markets + more and more regulation.
The first one tells me that portfolio managers will look for decorrelated assets to diversify and are hedging for a crash. Bitcoin (or crypto in general) seems to be quite decorrelated. And when a portfolio manager comes across a decorrelated asset class, the risk in is being NOT exposed to that asset class.
The second reason is the fact that in 2013/2014 virtually no significant parties were really talking about crypto regulation and there sure wasn't any guideline. Nowadays there are and there need to be. Without clear rules, entrepreneurs and existing companies will not risk breaking the law.
I feel reason 1 and 2 are building up, especially in the last 6 months. The next 6 months we might see the magic intersection of the both, resulting in the next bull market!
;-)
Thanks!
Good point about the other markets, I feel too that there's a good chance they may enter bear markets and may seek something decorrelated. However.. is Bitcoin really decorrelated? I haven't done my research on this so I truly don't know but is there any actual good data backing this up? Because it wouldn't surprise me to see crypto crashing alongside with the rest of the economy - although of course I would prefer decorrelation. #pessimism ;)
Actually, as long as I've been in crypto there have been talks about regulation and integrating with the existing order. Like the Bitcoin ETF plans from 2013 and 2014 as well. Or the 2014 New York Bitcoin regulation stuff or the Chinese regulation stuff in 2014.
Personally I am not so sure today's sentiment is that different from back then. It feels like more of the same, but on a slightly bigger scale (with a bigger price to match, but still the same pattern).
I hope to god you're right though! Timing is certainly important and I hope the stars align correctly this time around. Truthfully I wouldn't really mind Bitcoin dropping to $4K either because then I get to buy more for cheap. But still, I can't shake the trauma from 2013/2014.
Also, I see a potential decoupling of altcoins from Bitcoin coming up. I consider it a potential path for Bitcoin to follow it's logarithmic chart and go down, but altcoins decoupling and perhaps skyrocketing for a while.
I say this because it makes sense with all the excitement surrounding Ethereum and the likes. And also, I believe that every crypto investor goes through the same evolution: first you discover bitcoin, then you discover altcoins, but in the end you go back to bitcoin. I think 'the herd' was in stage 1 until now, and they may be entering stage 2. This would let Bitcoin ride out it's long bear cycle, until the herd discovers that decentralization is the only true valuable thing in blockchain which could then drive the next bull run.
About the decorrelation, check website out: https://www.sifrdata.com/cryptocurrency-correlation-matrix/ and check the 365-day correlation between BTC and SPX (S&P 500 index). It is pretty much 0 and in the last 9 days it was even quite negative :-)
And I agree there were talks already on 2014 about Bitcoin and crypto, but those were mostly that, talks. Nowadays countries like Canada, Singapore, Switzerland, Japan and China have quite some clear regulation (even though a lot more has to come). Also Bitcoin Futures are actually there and legal on the CBOE and CME. Next to that, I feel there is a lot more pressure from the financial status quo + entrepreneurs for clarity on regulation than in 2014.
Interesting thoughts about the decoupling of altcoins from Bitcoin. I havent's put in much thought on that one. As long as there are no mainstream use cases in which altcoins are used on a daily basis (and with and actual business model), I don't see any reason for decoupling though. Everything is just speculation until then. But as I said, I haven't looked into it that much yet. I generally look at things from a macro-economical perspective :-)
actually, I just got thinking on what I just wrote about how I wouldn't consider it strange if Bitcoin would go into the long slumber, but altcoins might skyrocket. Then I decided to give the ETH/USD logarithmic chart a look to see if that theory would hold any merit, and lo' and behold below the ETHUSD log chart.
Notice how there is a channel too, but as opposed to Bitcoin which is halfway on it's way down, Ethereum's log channel looks like it has reached the lower support. This could indicate that we may see serious bullish action?
Like I said, altcoins in 2018-2019, Bitcoin in 2019-2020 wouldn't surprise me at all.