It is common to see people claim that Bitcoin follows the pattern which was established in 2017. I understand why they want to think this way as it took less than a year to reach 20k by the year end starting with just 1k in January that year (at a certain point price had even momentarily crashed to 750)

But it is unlikely we are going to see that pattern right now. If anything, it feels more like we are back in 2015. In the first half of that year we were making lows (the last local low was in August at around 200) and only since the fall Bitcoin started to gain momentum in earnest. Then the halving came in July 2016 and the real run-away growth kicked off in a few months (in September 2016, to be exact) being somewhat postponed by the Bitfinex hack in early August

For that matter, things look more like we are following the 4 year cycle in which the Bitcoin reward halvings play an ever important role, and we are in the beginning phase of a new cycle. The implication is that we shouldn't be overly optimistic and expect too much of 2019 as it is more like 2015 rather than 2017 (and 2018 was our 2014). Indeed, things never repeat themselves but the overall outlook should be clear by now

So what are your thoughts?