Bonus points if one can point to a well researched article on positive catalysts for BTC in 2018.
Only thing is no one knows when and how deep the pullback will be.
It could go up to 12-15k and then drop to 3-5k. Or it could go up to 20k and drop to 1k. No one knows.
Disclaimer: I've only mined and sold my BTC since 2011 no speculation.
- me-too buyers drawn by the huge 2017 increases
- investors that have a mandate to seek out high-risk investments for a certain %age of their portfolio, and are gradually overcoming technical and regulatory barriers ( https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-16/bitcoin-e... )
For a decrease
- MtGox style failure of a company holding a lot of coins
- crypto-diversification as other projects get stronger
A major holder of bitcoins tries to pull more than can be converted into a national currency. This basically topples what I equate to a ponzi scheme when people find out that it doesn't convert so easily back and forth at current evaluation, and reduces the value enough that others fearful of loss start to try to convert as well.
I think that this is probably the most likely scenario where people discover that bitcoin, as a currency, is a bad idea: deflationary currencies cannot succeed (the rate of creation goes down while population goes up, so it must be deflationary). Further, it shows that bitcoin as a commodity/investment doesn't work, because to be honest there is nothing backing it up. What recourse do you have when the bitcoins you bought at 10k are now worth 1k? What real gain/loss has occurred that the rest of the GDP need concern itself with?
Philosophically, I believe that bitcoin has presented an interesting technological breakthrough, but the implementation of production is off. I do believe that in the future that we'll see national currencies using blockchain technology.
In the meantime, I'm not going to worry about it, and I'm not getting involved. If some of my friends become wealthy for it, then great for them, but I'm not particularly keen on 'get rich quick' or market timing schemes.
I agree bitcoin is inadequate as a currency. (I think ETH is better as a currency, since it sort of has the "tax base" of executing contracts and enshrining the results on the blockchain.) I view it as a store of value. If your wealth is mostly represented as various numbers in various databases (mine is,) then bitcoin is a robust form of integer storage, or at least vulnerable in ways that are uncorrelated with my other wealth storage providers.