Once the price has been stagnant for a while, smart money starts to move in and the price rises around 5000-7000 usd and then some early gamblers will enter, also a bankers and Wall Street might buy in and if that happens, the price of bitcoin will for sure go to 1000 000 usd/btc.
i like your big sky thinking but it don't feel that simple to me. people were saying the same in 2013/2014 by the looks of things and they ended up having a bad time.
we need to wipe out the current breed of manipulators to step on up. the only thing that'll do that is more buyers. let's see if there's a compelling reason for them to show up.
I think people in 2013 and 2014 are very different from people today. Those people were probably bagholders who bought their bitcoins at 1000 usd or slightly under and now probably a portion of them have sold their coins at loss.
Bitcoin cannot be manipulated since there is no naked shorting unlike in traditional markets. Sure you can set a sell or buy wall but they can be bought immediately. Manipulating the price down succeeds only if there are dumpers who have loose and shaky hands or miners with tons of coins and electricity bills piling up. Now the status quo is that the shaky hands have been shaken out from the markets in 2013-2014, and new stronger hands have taken the lead. So this issue has solved. Now we need to solve the issue of miners: actually we had a good solution yesterday when the block reward halved and miners have less coins to dump, therefore shorters will find it harder and harder to find the poor people who have to sell their coins for the covery of a short position.
I am expecting a super pump in bitcoin during the coming months/couple years. A pump that might attract even bankers who will prolong the pump to one we have never seen before and it makes all of us ultra rich.
I beg you guys - do not sell too early - prefertably never ever, just buy and hodl.