Despite of the harsh 75%+ bear markets, the general tendency in the last 15 years has been bullish. This can continue 1-2 decades more, or maybe less than a decade, but the interesting question is what will happen when this long term bullish trend comes to an end. We're already seeing that the volatility to the upside was lower in each of the 2011, 2013, 2017 and 2021 bulls. If this pattern continues, and this is quite likely, then we will eventually hit a ceiling difficult to overcome for seveal years after.
But would that make Bitcoin a bad investment if you invested near this ceiling? That's the big question, and I was referring to that point. If the short term profit investment pattern continues, then it is likely that indeed those who invested near the top will lose, and the bear market will be deeper than before if there are indicators hinting that the ceiling was reached. For example, one of these indicators could be that the USD exchange volume at the top of the bull market was only as high as in the preceding bull run, or even lower, indicating less buyer interest.
The optimistic scenario is that Bitcoin is not longer used as a short term speculation vehicle in this scenario but for longer term saving and for value transfers. Basically what Boyapati meant when he wrote "
The Bullish Case for Bitcoin". In this scenario the price near the "long term top" could be probably relatively stable, so even those who invested late won't see major losses.
How do you know it will come to an end? Maybe it will end up being smaller in the future, but that means the bear runs needs to be smaller as well. So far it has been 15 years and we had good cycles, and I believe there is no reason why we can't do more than 15 years again, there is really no reason for it to stop, that could very well happen again.
So what I think we could see right now, would be bitcoin having the same cycles until we die, after that is not my problem. We can definitely see lower volatility there is no doubt, and lower peaks ROI but that doesn't mean it will "stop", it will just be less, and like I said, less is fine because bear runs will be less in return as well. We will also make a good amount of money on bull runs thanks to every bear run as well, as long as you can achieve to buy during bear run and sell during bull run there is nothing wrong with having at all, we should definitely consider an never ending increase for sure.