Bitcoin price literally doubled in one year but since $1200 price range is a little high for most of the people they rather find alternatives to direct buying Bitcoins which would be mining and as long as people can mine for themselves with a cost of even %80 of the current market price they will definitely do it, so unless difficulty increases that much as to make it more profitable to simply buy the coins and not mining them I don't see $3000 or even near $2000 in this year.
Even if ETF approves then people will go and mine instead of buying into the hype.
Home based casual mining is long gone,it is not at all profitable to mine bitcoin with the difficultly level we have,the positive side is that since the alt coin market is rising along with bitcoin people will be investing their time in mining alts and then convert those coins into bitcoin and that is the possible situation now,the speculation of bitcoin will continue and new grounds will be broken with time.
Yes exactly it is happening now. Either way whether the people convert the traditional currency or the altcoin in the end they buy bitcoin. It means that the bitcoin market is ultimately improving. The speculation of the BTC will remain and will continue but this is not a huge issue for the BTC holders because they all are ready for the situation coming to them.