So if bitcoin drops back to $1k-$2k levels, do you honestly see it ever going back to $20k and beyond? I mean this bubble is definitely different then 2013. Everyone knows what bitcoin is now, 2013 was no where near the mania that we saw in 2017. A lot more people got burnt this time around, people were mortgaging their houses for crying out loud.
A lot of people are saying $100k bitcoin, but who the hell is going to spend $100k per Bitcoin? The average Joe does not have that type of money. The market is full of speculators, not adopters.
Bitcoin has had one heck of a rise going from fractions of a cent to $20k in less then a decade. People have this thought that it will always go higher, but how many people who have that kind of money to push bitcoin beyond $20k are going to do it?
I have a hard time seeing a more hyped market then what we saw in 2017. This isn't the end for cryptos, but we may never see such a high priced bitcoin ever again. Hopefully I'm wrong, time will tell.
And another thing people don't realize is that a big part of the reason bitcoin and other crypto prices got so high was simply because of manipulation.
And bitcoin was at 20 billion in volume in December, now it's just above 6 billion. Do people honestly believe that we are going back to $20k with such low volume? Thats a lot of money being traded. To get to $50k and $100k, imagine the type of volume needed? A lot, there's not enough interest anymore to sustain these types of prices.
History has shown that once an asset class bubble bursts, it never recovers to become a bubble again there are rarely any "second chances", if any at all.
Paradoxically, a volatile and rapid appreciation of a currency, is a failed currency. By definition, currencies are supposed to be recognized, accepted and stable mediums of exchange for goods and services not just another speculative boom-bust asset class driven by speculative mania like art.
Cryptocurrencies can only be considered for adoption once corporations, governments and charities deem the asset class as stable. However, speculators and traders desire anything but stability and thrive on the volatility of 10% intraday price swings the demographic here are experienced pre-millennial traders from other asset classes, whom quite frankly are careless in regards to the future of cryptocurrencies. So, the demographic 'invested' in cryptocurrencies are the millennials whom have a pseudo-understanding of cryptography and blockchain given their affinity to technology; but with a lack of trading experience and anti-establishment views, they simply adopt a unidirectional mentality, i.e. 'hodl', in the vein that prices will perpetually rocket to the moon.
Its a classic case of where the millennials know the price of everything, but the value of nothing. Real-world intrinsic value will be set by the 'whale' pre-millennials.
So who actually has any altruistic concern about the future of cryptocurrencies? Nobody. Hence, the bubble bursts. The ALT/BTC tokens are the epitome of manipulation and fraud.
Cryptocurrencies are a speculative side implementation of legitimate blockchain technology. Use of blockchain such as distributed ledgers for say the Asset Servicing areas of investment banking are genuine solutions. Once legitimate uses of blockchain are adopted as real-world applications, its then likely a second generation of cryptocurrencies may emerge as stable alternatives to fiat with greater adoption.
Quite possible that the likes of Google, Microsoft and Amazon lead the way with the next generation cryptocurrencies by acquiring the current players. In comparison to a mobile farm in rural China, cloud mining with say Microsoft's Azure decentralised platform with their vast, secure and robust datacentres is most technically feasible and trustworthy.