I don't know if you guys follow the general Macro metrics of Bitcoin but I like to see what's happening at a high level. Here is a chart I've been watching closely. The wat I see it, more transactions spread around the network means more adoption. I feel as though this could be a good leading indicator of where the BTC market is heading. Obviously we all look at the current price but with that aside, do you guys have any charts that you watch?
https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-popularHeavy Hash rate folks, I'd be particularly interested to see what you're watching.
I follow quite a few, but as a small-time miner (~ 1 Tbps + or -), I am partial to: https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty
This shows both Bitcoin and Litecoin difficulty metrics and predictions -- both of which I am mining (FYI: my one and only pool that I've mined BTC on for almost a year is BitMinter)
And it just so happens, that as I write this, it predicts the next difficulty at just+0.91% above current; however, that has been falling all week. Will we see a difficulty DROP this time? It's still looking that way, but of course not guaranteed until it happens.
I also follow the same. The estimation follow a trend where is over-estimate the difficulty for the most part until like 2 days remains. Then, most of the time, the estimation is really really close to reality. There is another important trend to know too, it's that most of the time, at the end of a difficulty a bunch of Hashrate is added into the network. So for now, we are close to 1-2% but more hashrate could be added until the end of the difficulty. BTC is going down tho, might not happen.
EDIT: all indications for now tell us that we might see the first negative adjustment since a long time. (maybe forever ? can't tell)
Once again, big hashrate push at the end of difficulty cycle ... It will be an increase I guess !