We are at Dec 3, 2017´s price... 12 days later we were at ATH.
Based on the above we could be in the next bear market within a month.
That is a very good observation. The exponential rise we are in at present is just the sort of move that ends a bull run, and starts a long bear market.
However, comparisons with Dec 2017 are invalid for a number of reasons.
My own observation is that the medium-term chart looks strange compared with 2015-6. Price has significantly deviated from the nice steady early stage bull market of the first few months of the year, and now resembles a late-stage bull run. However, that is not to say that there couldn't be other developments.
That makes for a greater unpredictability.
You could be losing credibility if you were to embrace that bearmarket theme too much, Majormax. When people speculate about pie in the sky scenarios and happenings that have very low probability of playing out, then that is NOT a "good observation." So, in that regard, I appreciate your assessment that this is a bit of an uncertain situation rather than something that is flipflopping between bear market to bull market to bear market.
Markets, including bitcoin, don't just switch back and forth from bear to bull to bear without a bit of reason for it.
Yeah, of course, if this market gets too overheated, then we have decent chances to experience a large and perhaps drawn out correction, but that still would not signify that we immediately transitioned back into a "bear market".. just makes no sense....
NOW if such a BTC price correction were to take us below $5k and even stay prolonged for 6 months or more, then that would be another story regarding whether the more accurate assessment would be that we actually would have transitioned back into a bear market...
In other words, if bear wannabes, have not gotten the memo (you seem to recognize this fact), we are currently in a bull market until circumstances justify changing the label, so even if we get a bit too overheated in our current UP, that would not mean that we are all of a sudden, again, transitioned into a "bear market." Otherwise, I agree with you assessment that we are in a bit of a strange territory, at the moment, but since when have we ever expected bitcoin to act within TA parameters of mature markets, when BTC's market is no where near mature, and there is also a bit of a exponential adoption s-curve that can account for some of the irrationality towards the upside that might actually allow buy support to keep up with some of these seemingly outrageous and ongoing upwards price moves.