A lot of you may have looked at the title here and are currently shaking your head in disbelief. How can the price jump more than $10,000 in just a few months? Despite the impressive 5x price growth since $800 back in March, surely anything in the five digit range is just too much. I have no crystal ball and I have no magic genie to tell me the future price.
Let’s look at the evidence
But using the same tools that are available to me and you, I truly believe that we will reach the $15,000 barrier just before Christmas 2017. Just in time to buy all those extra holiday gifts I’ve always wanted. So lets look at the evidence. Firstly, as should be obvious, we are in the midst of a massive bull run. And the intensity of this run has only been increasing.
The above chart shows the first stage of this run. From March to Mid-June the price rose to a saliva inducing all time. A pullback did follow, due to the ongoing debate around the scaling issues that continue to face bitcoin, but following the slaying of opposing chains, the bitcoin bull only got stronger.
The rally pressed on and in just over a month, bitcoin rose to almost $4500, without breaking any significant support levels. The strength of the bull perhaps surprised many, but one look at the global LocalBitcoin volume (an indicator of bitcoin demand) and you will see that adoption of the cryptocurrency has strengthened exactly in line with its price movements.
We must remember from this that the price of bitcoin is set by the market. The market is determined by the users, and the demand for real world uses has only increased. From its acceptance as a legal currency in Japan back in April, its pending acceptance in India, and to it finding its home in major global industries such as online gaming or money remittance. This relentless demand has only pushed the price up beyond what even Satoshi Nakamoto himself thought was possible. Now many of you are thinking, this is all well and fair, but how do get from here to $15,000. That would require an unprecedented acceleration the likes of which we have not seen. But as many hardcore bitcoin price enthusiasts have noted – including the legendary “masterluc” (he of previous bull/bear fame), the wave structure of the current run greatly imitates that of previous bull runs.
With the price hovering at around all times high of $4000, it seems a floor of $3500 has been established. This price is the lower bound for normal price, as indicated in the charts above. The next pair of lines (the widest space) is the accelerated growth phase and the final phase is the super growth phase. With bitcoin demand sharply growing it seems the super growth phase it where the trend will find itself very soon.
Plenty of punch
Some of you may question the impact of the scaling debate on this. Segwit will activate on 23rd of August. This will solve the block size limitation problem, packing data more efficiently into each block and thus more transaction data per block will help to speed up transaction speeds. This will have serious positive implications on bitcoin’s adoption for real world uses. Followed up by Segwit2x in November, the strengthened bitcoin chain that emerges will have plenty of punch and the price will only reflect this.
Once the majority of the bitcoin’s self-uncertainties are resolved there is nothing to stop this new form of money from expanding its global impact. $15,000 may seem like a stretch of the imagination too far to some, but at this point already there is nothing to hold back mainstream bitcoin adoption.
Great wave of momentum
Bitcoin has finally won the attention of the too-big-to-fail banks who for so long tried to ignore it as a nerd’s dream. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Fidelity are some of the big boys to have shown recent optimism in the cryptocurrency’s price. More press coverage only brings more users, more adoption and more in price action. While $15,000 may seem super extraordinary to some of you out there, note that bitcoin’s price has not even entered bubble territory yet. A usual bubble shows a parabolic shape that is indicative of all asset bubbles, but bitcoin currently hasn’t even begun to show this again. There is a great wave of momentum building and it is set to carry bitcoin to unprecedented heights.
$15,000 – watch this space.
