As it stands, I'm beginning to think this sideways near the top is a distribution phase before the market slow bleeds into a crash.
Given that you have experience with TA, you can certainly estimate much better what can happen in the market. However, I am a bit more optimistic, and I think that given all the circumstances, there will not be any drastic corrections.
Honestly, I'm not trying to predict. Years of trading has taught me that markets are quite unpredictable. I think more so in terms of
possibilities. Anyone who rules out the
possibility of a painful correction to the $13,000s or even the $11,000s is naive. It's something we need to be prepared for.
I like the way David (from the Godmode analysis thread) approaches this. Corrections are always inevitable, but there are two types of corrections: time corrections and price corrections. Time corrections are sideways without deep declines. Price corrections are deep and crash-like. It's impossible to know before the fact which one is coming.
The solution to the pandemic is now only a matter of time (months), the new US administration cannot be worse than the last (or maybe it can?), so some things may be normalized in terms of trade with China. Also, institutional money is constantly flowing into the BTC market, and halving has not yet shown its true effects.
Consequently, the conditions for a perfect storm (bull run) are becoming more likely in the next year or maybe a year later.
Don't get me wrong. I'm very bullish on BTC in the next year. I'm probably more bullish than almost anyone around here, given how few can even conceive of $500K or $1M valuations. I'm just talking about short term and mid term (weeks and months) corrections to the ongoing bull trend.