@miscreanity, imo all that you described is supports my logic on why Bitcoins (cryptocurrencys) crypto winters are becoming longer in duration and less extreme in depth, i.e. speculation is gradually being supplanted by actual adoption. All those anecdotal reasons dont supersede the mathematics of adoption
(theyre a manifestation of the mathematics but remember smaller things grow faster in percentage terms than larger phenomenon). The speculation that remains will overshoot the reality of the ecosystem adoption and we will get another decline (formerly known as crypto winter), it just will not be as deep (but it will be longer) than the prior one:
Bitcoin isnt getting waterfall collapses because the adoption is ongoing despite any price changes, thus not everyone in the ecosystem is panicking when the price peaks and declines (in 2014 and 2015 venture capital continued to pour in while the price was declining and ETH issued the first ICO).
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The 2011 BTC decline was -93% and 5.5 months crypto winter in duration. The early 2013 -67% correction was short-lived and not deep enough so it was just a step along the move to the high at the end of the year. The 2013-2015 decline was -83% and 13.5 months crypto winter in duration.
So clearly Bitcoin is in another huge up move to be followed with a subsequent decline which will
be less than -83% but
much longer in duration than 13.5 months. Bitcoin plateaus in that way, because the mania about it (its replacing the world monetary system!) gets ahead of the actual implementation, adoption, and use case realities, and
this time will not be any exception.
The 2014 2015 crypto winter didnt stop the ecosystem from booming. ETH issued an ICO for $18 million in 2014 which was shocking to all of us at the time (but I think Mastercoin has done a $1 million ICO in 2013 and @jl777 afair had raised 1500 BTC for SuperNet). Also the venture capitalists were increasing their investments throughout the crypto winter. I expect the same and at an increased level for the coming ~27 month decline after the peak perhaps with 8 years before the next peak is reached at $1 million per BTC.
I think $100k is plausible before the ensuing ~27 month decline by perhaps -2/3 of the price. We should at least reach $40k on this peak (although we might get a multi-month pause and correction after reaching $18k $25k first).
Examples of the speculation exceeding the reality is the recent LN demo wherein people think that suddenly means that everyone can instantly buy coffee with Bitcoin and they think the fundamental insecurity of SegWit on Bitcoin is solved:
It looks like news of LN transactions on mainnet happened yesterday when the pump started, I wonder if it's related. The video got a lot of views:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a73Gz3Tvx3kIm not gonna lie tho, it looks pretty slick.
What if it ends up working well? Let's say it catches on and the average Joe end user happily can buy coffees with BTC finally (they don't care about any of the technical details anyway), and there is no segwit attack and we all get rich from holding BTC? It's a possibility.
A controlled demo really says nothing about the game theory of
Mt. Box centralization of the hubs of LN. And the fact that most users will simply choose to have an account with a hub and thus be given fractional reserves. And the failures of hubs like we have failures of exchanges now. And the runs on the bank. And the surge spikes of settlement load on the main chain. Etc..
Were a long way from knowing which electronic currency people are going to want to use to buy coffee. Even if LN worked perfectly it would not necessarily win the adoption race for uptake.
I cant predict whether SegWit will be a failure mode for BTCSegWit. Well have to wait and see.