Higher difficulty means less profit for miners, so they need to dump more percentage of their daily mining income to pay bills.... That's something bad for bitcoin price (and only good for security).
Highers transactions means more users, but if they are not willing to buy then it doesn't mean price will go up. People like to invest when price is going up, and when they look last year chart they get scared as fuck. This users will probably buy, but they will feel the real urge to buy when bitcoin is 2x or 3x over ATH because bitcoin will be "cool again" and they won't want to "miss the train".
I have discussed at length in the other thread why it is naive to assume that miners (well most of the ones that matter i.e. industrial ones) have to dump their bitcoins in order to pay bills.
They have several other revenue streams that can cover these costs.