This is a good question and debate. The more liquidity we see across the entire available coins the lower price we'll see, and certainly more stable. The more people hodl, the more the price will rise.
I realize that throughput constraints may turn some folks off, it will lower liquidity. But that doesn't mean it will lower the value of bitcoin. A decrease in value will only come when there are more sellers than buyers, literally. So if liquidity becomes tough, but people still see "store of value" value in bitcoin we'll continue to see the price rise over the long term.
The shorter term fluctuations will always occur and are indicative of direct buying an selling moves. We see a dip after the holidays, perhaps people are taking earnings in bitcoin to replinsh their fiat reserves or simply because there has been a run up.
The greatest challenge in trying to find causation in bitcoin price movements is doing so with social or business events...the currency is so global that it's hard to attribute one country's actions to the movement of the price of bitcoin.
"store of value" has a limit.
some people think scarcity is a thing.. but if only 10 people hold say 42coin.. this does not make 42coin worth a few billion dollars..
utility plays a part of it.
if it has no utility then it doesnt matter how rare it is, no one needs to use it so no one wants it so no one asks for it.
its why all of the altcoins with small supply fail. because they think scarcity alone is a value creator
another example.
housing market.
people think if they buy a house at say $500k their asset will always hold a store of value of $500k..
check out the last 9 years and see if thats true.
when there is no demand for houses because people cant afford them or doesnt see the need of a 5 bedroom house or there is something else people see that does have utility for them thats not your house.. after a while you start dropping your ask price below $500k to tempt a quicker purchase. thus the house loses value.
now imagine it for something someone doesnt "NEED" at all because it does nothing tangibly..
scarcity is no longer something to rely on as a value store