Bitcoin is currently around US$120 000. It very briefly went through that psychological barrier, fell back to US$112 000, and will soon go decisively past US$120 000
Historically, Bitcoin followed a pattern of wild peaks and long depressing falls, but has now decisively broken from that pattern, because everyone wised up. The idiots stopped piling in on the peak, and the wise started buying on the dip.
We now have a lot of lettuce hands, people who when they think they see a wild peak, bolt. With the result that the wild peaks they think they see do not happen, Bitcoin rises slowly and steadily without wild peaks.
in 2014 Bitcoin hit a peak of a $1000, which was completely unjustifiable given the state of crypto currency tech at the time, the abysmal state of actual usage, and the inability to make transactions in reasonable time, but was a justifiable bet on its future prospects.
But this was a wild blow off peak caused by too many idiots with no comprehension or knowledge of crypto currency piling in.
It then fell steadily to the $250, with everyone proclaiming Bitcoin as pet rocks and Tulips. But now it was back on its long term growth path, and the saying “Buy on the dip” came to be widely said, and widely believed, which made each subsequent dip less severe, until now we no longer have severe dips.
It then proceeded to rise slowly and steadily to $2000 in 2017, whereupon we got another wild blow off peak to eleven thousand caused by the ignorant idiots piling in.
At this time, Bitcoin hit its much predicted scaling limit. Fees surged from $0.40 to over $50 and confirmation times spiked, with the result that payment processors were apt to lose your bitcoin, and bitcoin adoption dramatically reversed. Bitcoin was unusable as money, and use as money was the whole idea. The value of Bitcoin is based on the expectation that it will eventually replace fiat — but obvious what we had could not be used to replace fiat.
In 2018, however the level two currencies, liquid and lightning, were introduced to get us past the scaling limit. Bitcoin fell back to its long term growth path, $3 500, and resumed its steady path of growth, based on the expectation that it would replace fiat.
High and fluctuating transaction costs and frequent slow transactions remained a serious though steadily diminishing problem for a long, long time, but the growth of the level twos has fixed that problem, and now transaction times are low, and and transaction fees are around twenty cents per transaction.
Roughly at this time the current enormous horde of crypto currency scammers and shills appeared, promoting their innumerable knocks off the one true crypto currency, Bitcoin.
We now have something like ten thousand scam crypto currencies. Plus the non scam currencies Litecoin, Monero, and ZCash. ZCash recently changed its name, presumably reflecting its latest adoption of bleeding edge tech — I cannot keep track. It still ahead of its time. The latest tech looks insanely great — much as starship looks insanely great on paper, and will be insanely great once Musk fixes explosions on the launch pad and rapid unscheduled disassembly during re-entry. Right now, however, my bet is on Nova and Poseidon over the ristretto-25519 curve, which compared to what Zcash has adopted is less bleeding edge. Ristretto-25519 snarks are large and relatively costly to verify, but if you are using Nova, you only need one snark per block, and all the rest is Nova folds. So it can do what ZCash hopes to do, with technology that is slightly less bleeding edge.
Then in 2021 we got another blow off peak to $60 000, but this time considerably less wild. It then fell to $20 000, perhaps in part because the scaling limit problem did not yet seem solved, but hey, the solutions had only been running for a couple of years, and needed time for adoption.
And since then, Bitcoin has been steadily on its long term growth path, without crazy peaks or frightening crashes.
With the introduction of the Grail Bridge, I expect to see level two Bitcoins running on blockchains with more advanced technology, running on snark based blockchains.
Ideally we want lightning over snark based level twos.