A rare case of speculation.
I don't usually like to guess the price of anything but Bitcoin due to everything else being a total crapshoot, but since Hive is my number one I'll make an exception. Now that it looks like the market may have bottomed and September will be in the rearview soon it might be time to get hyper-bullish on alts... especially considering the alt market has been so suppressed compared to previous cycles.
Circling back to Bitcoin for context.
Notice the timelines. The macro chart on Bitcoin is insane right now. We've been in a downtrend for six months, which for Bitcoin is almost always bullish after the trend finally breaks (and vice versa). But it just so happens that the six month downtrend we find ourselves in is not only the result of hitting all time highs BEFORE the halving event (which has never happened), but also is the handle of a cup that's been printing for 28 months during the bear 2022 bear market and subsequent recovery.
Add to this Blackrock and Fidelity institutional adoption on top of 2025 already being the obvious 4-year cycle blow off top... and pretty much every indicator in the book is telling us we are about to have our faces ripped off next year as the price absolutely screams in an upward direction.
Remember how I said uptrends are bearish?
The Bitcoin dominance chart screams weakness as we head into the bull market year of 2025. Of course a maximalist would look at this chart and be like, "See! Bitcoin is eating up everything and soon all assets will be absorbed into BTC." Yeah, not how it works friend; get over yourself.
We've all seen slow and steady uptrends and stepladders such as this get completely wiped out in a single flash-crash. That's exactly what's going to happen this time around as well once we get to a certain breaking point. My guess would be that breaking point is Bitcoin getting above $100k and holding above $100k. At that juncture alts are going to absolutely rip as displacement from BTC liquidity flows into alts and completely floods the entire market.
Investors: Is Bitcoin Risk-on or Risk-off?
Blackrock: "No."
THE BLACKROCK OF IT ALL
Blackrock is kicking their marketing campaign of Bitcoin into high gear. The wheels are greased. Don't forget these guys have all the analysts and algorithms tracking everything. They know just as well as anyone else that the 4-year cycle is a thing. Add to this the fact that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy and Blackrock is so big that they can easily manipulate the price themselves and you've really got something cooking.
Obviously I have no love for Blackrock and I think there's a mountain of evidence that shows they are an extremely corrupt institution that abuses their power, but it would be foolish to look the other way as they make these moves. This is happening. Blackrock make number go up; it's what they do; it's literally the only thing they are good at. That is their job. Accept it.
Is it arguable that Blackrock created the very financial instruments that sent the housing market into a tailspin and crushed the world economy in 2008? Yes, that is exactly what happened. Could they do the same thing with Bitcoin and be the catalyst for the next bear market? It's smarter to assume this will happen than not. But it hasn't happened yet so that's not a today-Me problem. Try not to get absolutely drowned in the FOMO of 2025 and actually take some gains this time, fam.
Blah blah blah exposition exposition what about Hive?
Well in terms of BTC we've made the full round trip. Is it a good trade to move BTC into Hive here at the bottom? Possibly, but also it usually turns out that full capitulation is more of a V-shaped recovery than grinding the bottom support line. This chart still looks weak and will continue to look weak until we make a move either up or down. Moving in either direction is bullish at this point. I have to assume that Hive is going to outperform BTC next year just like all alts outperform BTC during this one golden year out of the cycle.
Fiat chart is also interesting.
We've already gotten a big capitulation dip here and morale was pretty damn low when it happened. This could easily be the bottom. At the same time anything in the 12-13 cent range is a screaming all in buy. Either way the window of opportunity is closing and if you want to make a move I suggest you do it before the beginning of next year.
Of course people on Hive are relatively poor so hardly anyone here has money to buy the dip in the first place. It's not like Bitcoin or Ethereum or Solana where you can boot up some halfcocked shitcoin and have the rich community pump it to the moon instantly purely on speculation alone. Hive has been a pretty disappointing non-performing asset on the average (not compared to fiat but compared to BTC and other blue-chip alts). It is what it is.
We also have to ask ourselves if it's just straight up greedy for Hive to crash more when the current price point is sub 20 cents. Imagine talking to your past-self when Hive was hovering at $1.60 for quite some time. We all know 20 cents is a great price but fear is higher now than it was when we were over $1. Exponentially so. FUD happens.
New users and New money?
How many whales did we pick up from the last 2021 bull cycle? As far as I can tell the only people pumping Hive were just the same old people that have always been here. Did we pick up a single new-money whale 4 years ago? I'm struggling to remember any fresh blood.
That being said we have to ask ourselves if we should be expecting new money this time around or is it just going to be old-school Hivers using their gains on other tokens to pump this chain. Unless we build some nice bridges out to BTC and ETH I think we have to assume it's just going to be the same old crew. While that might sound disappointing Hive went x35 last cycle from floor to peak without really getting any significant levels of adoption. Our liquidity is thin and the token is easy to pamp.
Are these bridges possible?
Is it possible that our connections to Lightning Network and ability to wrap Bitcoin into an LP with HBD will bring in new users? Maybe. Is it possible that VSC development and interoperability with EVM reach new users? Totally possible as well. Is it possible we have a game or some other app that gains popularity and bring in new people? Sure.
Official Guess:
With all this in mind my guess as to how hard Hive will pump next year is somewhere in the range of x20 to x100 from the bottom (wherever that happens to be over the next few months). This is obviously a huge range ($3-$16 Hive) but still it's going to take multiple god-candles to even hit the low end. At $2 Hive our top 20 witnesses are earning over a million dollars a year just from block rewards. Demand for HBD then creates Hive deflation/burning. Blog posts are paying out massive rewards. It all mashes together to create the kind of FOMO we get every 4 years without fail.
Even if we "only" go 10x from here that's... a 10x... in a year.
It's seriously greedy to feel entitled to more than a 10x.
Crypto has a way of brutally punishing the greedy.
I don't see that changing anytime.
Conclusion
So have I convinced myself to buy some Hive? I believe I have. Now's the time for me to start DCAing my BTC bag into alts... slowly. Going to allocate 0.025 BTC today (2.5M sats). At a price point of 305 sats per Hive that's over 8000 Hive. When it inevitably crashes tomorrow I'll buy some more. It's not much but it's honest work. Keep stacking.