.....since about May, we are still confirmed to be in a bull market, so there could be some fireworks here that people interested in BTC would like to witness... and yeah we could go back down to a bear market, but probably we would need to get down into the sub $5ks and likely even below our April 1 breakout price of $4,200.. which could be a bit of a challenge to get there. NOT impossible, but surely a challenge.
Agree with most of your points.
Just one question : How are we confirmed to be in a bull market ? ( Empirical evidence)
I will agree that not everyone is confirmed, but the move up from $4,200 and then staying above $6k for a decent amount of time in May confirmed tentatively the entering into a bull market, which has not been subsquently refuted by further market performance which would likely need to bring us quite a bit below $6k. and to stay there... of course, passage of time should be considered too, but part of the underlying presumption is that we do not bounce in and out of bull market, bear market, bull market so easily... and sure sometimes we might end up being in one or another but not able to really confirm what we are in for many months after we are already in it...
The shape of the chart looks to me like a rally in a bear market.
Yes, we have differing conclusions. Of course, with subsequent BTC price performance you could be correct, even that the rally to $13,880 did not bring us out of the bear market, we just had a bit of a fake out that lasted more than 7 months...blah blah blah... but I doubt that we are there, yet.
It has that sort of shape, with the rises sharp, and the falls grinding and waterfall-like.
The shape was like a bull market up to June this year, but suddenly everything changed with that spike to 13500.
Do you really believe that BTC bounces in and out of markets in less than year time frames? Doesn't seem to be the case in bitcoin, at least currently. You will concede that October 2015 to December 2017 was a bull market, and I will concede that January 2018 to December 2018 was a bear market. So we agree on those time frames? Accordingly, we are trying to figure out where we are at currently, and maybe you are correct to suggest that it is no longer unambiguously a bull market, but I would assert (like I already did) that we gotta get much lower to get removed from having had tentatively converted into a bull market as of May 2019... which would end up getting retrospectively labelled back to January-ish.. and of course, we can have some differences of opinions on those matters too... regarding relevant break out points or the foundational points from which we would like to measure.