The Shape

This past week saw a sharp downturn in the price of bitcoin and in cryptocurrencies as a whole. Hold firm.

Bitcoin has gone through five bull-run-to-skyfall patterns. Each time, mania gave way to despair. Of course, it was pronounced dead each time. The key here, lies in the word patterns. All five times, an exponential sweep upward then results in a just-as-sharp downward exponential fall. But, those falls have historically leveled out at a base that is much higher than the base prior to the upswing.

The gif below illustrates the pattern of "The Shape". It isn't always entirely spot-on, but there certainly is a consistency.

The general price-points* for each of the run-ups and pull-backs are listed in the table below.

Run-Up/Pull-Back	Base price before	Peak price	Base price after
1 Nov. 2010	0.12	0.44	0.27
2 Jun. 2011	1.00	29.60	4.77
3 Apr. 2013	18.72	230.00	87.66
4 Dec. 2013	93.36	1147.25	478.23
5 Dec. 2017	585.33	17549.67	?

*These prices were pulled from Coindesk's Bitcoin Price Index.