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.
I think its just the public sentiment too. I think in 2015 there was a real fear that Bitcoin might not ever get back to 1.2k As bad as this previous bear market was, there was still an underlying confidence that we would get back to 10k, 20k, and eventually go to 100k and beyond. I never thought the money left, it was just sitting there waiting for the bottom, in 2015, the money left and wasn't waiting to buy again.
Also, in 2015, people weren't anticipating that the next bull run would take Bitcoin to 20k, you can go back and look at the topics, most people though 2k, 3k or 5k would be the absolute top, and that it wouldn't happen until 2018 or 2019. I think the people buying now are buying for the long term, which means the supply for sale is very limited, with a high demand, the price has to surge. Now if all these people buying don't plan to sell until at least 100k, combined with the demand rising, AND the halving which will further limit the supply. Also the miners in 2015 were likely not holding the way miners are now holding the Bitcoin they earn. I think right now we are indeed setting up for a bull run that will exceed 2017 percentage-wise that will last until 2021.