There is no reason to worry that the speculations have been silent, it is normal. If bull turns to bear and a slow steady market, it also usually slow the market sentiment and noise. Why you will see this noise settling down is because the bull came sometime before the halving and that hype has died down for now but definitely the price will raise above the current ATH even beyond our expectations.

One of the major reason that the price must raise is that, it is traditional for btc price to increase beyond existing ATH after halving, so that has not happened. The current ATH happened before halving and so we are about to see an ATH caused because of the phenomenon of halving which is block splitting and reward for miners. So it is not a ruse that price will increase before the next ATH in 4 years time.