Yeah. Strong bullish rally till .. ehm .. 3.97? Then, park at 3.65. 

That's what my crystal ball say. We will see.

Sorry I really do not know much about this technical analysis lark, so please just answer the one question I care about...

How the hell can you predict that people are going to return to Bitcoin? The situation is that we have had a massive influx of people when Bitcoin was in the spotlight, and then they got bored when the price went back down and they all left.

With a "real world" market I can understand that there are trends that repeat, but in this case what you are basically saying is that you predict almost everybody that left Bitcoin for whatever reason will (very soon) decide that they believe in it again and will buy up tons of coins.

My non-technical analysis skills tell me that Bitcoin became a craze for a short while which led to the huge price rise, and just like yoyos, scooters, and pokemon cards, the non-technically analysed trend all these things followed is that the craze wont be hitting again any time soon.

I'm sorry to say but I think your non-technical analysis skills are not very good. Thing is the $32 peak was a hype bubble fueled by tons of speculation. What we have been seeing now is people leaving who never really cared about Bitcoin in the first place. Which I think is actually good.

What is happening is a change of hands, the future rise of Bitcoin will be based less on speculation and hype but more on actual achievements. This will be a slow process that will take place during the next 12 months and the years to come but the fact is Bitcoin is getting more useful slowly but surely, merchant activity is growing, it's just a matter of time when Bitcoin finds a place in some significant markets and gets some attention based on real developments, not just potential.

So while this change of hands takes place we might see a further downtrend (or not), even a total crash (or not), but Bitcoin will certainly come back up as long as it is functional and legal. It's simply too useful for some purposes and it's just a matter of time when it is widespread in certain markets.

It's still a gamble though, it's not guaranteed that it'll stay reliable and legal. But odds are it will, and if it does, I can pretty much guarantee it'll see significant growth. The transaction counts we've been seeing so far, from the peak of 10k-15k transactions per day to the current average of 5500 transactions per day are going to be SMALL numbers when Bitcoin really takes off, and then the price will also be on another level.

And by taking off I mean finding its place in niche markets. We'll be talking about significantly higher transaction counts. Going mainstream is a big challenge and I'm not sure if Bitcoin can manage that, but it's okay if it doesn't. It can be very useful in certain niche markets and still be way bigger than it is now.

So far it seems that anytime the exchange rate stagnates in a relatively narrow range for a long period of time the best bet is that a significant downward movement will be next.  I have absolutely no confidence that 3.7 holding for at least a week will precede the formation of a significant uptrend.  But, hey, I think this project is over for all practical purposes anyway - it doesn't store value well and it's a poor currency.  I would love for things to be otherwise, but it's over guys.

Actually, no. The 4.18 low held for a fairly long time and we saw multiple rallies during that time. Those rallies didn't have enough strength to be trend changers however and that's the main reason why we went down further. But the lower we go, less is needed to cause a significant rally percentage-wise. I do think a further drop is possible, even likely, but we're getting closer and closer to a real reversal.

I don't even think it has started yet. The store of value capabilities of Bitcoin don't matter much yet because it's so small of a market with massive speculation. This situation will likely be much better in the future. The same goes for its uses as a medium of exchange. Bitcoin is actually very far from over, it's not over as long as the core functionality is intact and it remains relatively easy to exchange to fiat currencies.

Pretty sure there is a lot further to fall, and the technical analysis here is basically a stopped clock at best.  (When was the last time S pronounced an immediately actionable "sell" signal?)   But it's premature to say the experiment's over just because the bubble is.  There will be considerable renewed interest in bitcoin if someone figures out a financial arrangement involving bitcoin that works much better than corresponding arrangements using real money.  The cryptographic/scripting features of bitcoin mean this is a real possibility.  Arguably, this already happened with the Silk Road, but that has obvious problems, and can only support a relatively small valuation.  (How small, I don't know...)

Oh it does - if you value Bitcoins by themselves and don't make your valuation of them dependent on the current BTC/USD exchange rate.

Of course I know what you mean with your statement and it makes sense, but look at it this way: a dollar bill or a dollar bank account are nowhere near as good a store of dollar-value as an encrypted and well backed up Bitcoin wallet stores your Bitcoin-value.

If it was universally accepted, it would make for a great currency - the properties of Bitcoin itself don't make it a poor currency, it's the low adoption rate and resulting high volatility that makes it cumbersome to use as a currency.

For one group of people it's over, for another one it's just beginning. I can understand that everybody who bought high or expected to "get rich quick" it must be a bit disappointing, but there's so many more people who haven't even heard about Bitcoin yet.

Over time, the software will mature, the mobile apps will be secure and easy to use. It doesn't take very much to get us there. The longer it exists without major security breaches, the easier it is to convince people that it is trustworthy. With a lower price and new generations of GPUs, mining will become easy again and the faucet will be more generous. All that together will inevitably lead to new people just trying it out and hopefully spread BTC to a much larger part of the population.

By then, Bitcoin could truly make for a great currency.

  I guess the rating must be EVEN STRONGER NOW!  OMG, whatta steal!!!

Bwahaha

https://bt.irlbtc.com/view/48565.0