This is how I see BTC going down permanently.
Right now it's mainly a positive feedback loop. More people want in, more purchases bring up the price, bigger price = more profit -> attracts more people (repeat cycle).
Frankly most of the people riding the bitcoin train don't give a flying Fk about the technology nor do they want to use it daily, it's simply a get rich quick mechanism. People are piling all their extra cash into it while things are relatively stable. Interest rates are still low but people are mortgaged to the nostrils. Over half of north Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. The moment the economy requires people to start taking out their BTC to pay things like their mortgage, car payments and food (which are not payable in BTC) it's when it starts.
So you start off with the really weak pulling out of BTC and the "just okays" stopping from investing more. If at this point if the economy gets any worse, the just okays will start to also pull out, prices go down, people panic and it's a free fall. If it took single statement to drop BTC from $5k to 3k god knows how fast it will go when shit really hits the fan. Best part is how hard it is to get out. It's not like you can act quickly and cash out before you lose almost everything.
It'll never end up at zero because there will always be some people who truly believe in it, but unlike gold or real estate or stocks there's ZERO intrinsic value in BTC, maybe other cryptos that actually do stuff but not BTC.
See the thing is now it always bounces back because #buythedip. When people don't have spare money to buy the dip, there is no bouncing back. Even if the economy recovers, all the people burnt by buying at $4000 and losing most of their money will not go back. And unlike gold or real estate, it's a technology that's constantly evolving. By the time people forget about the past and want to jump back in we might have a completely different landscape, one based on block chain but that looks back on BTC like you do an old cell phone.
Lastly I hope the miners know a lot of gamers they can donate their cards to. I laugh at the thought of them thinking they'll get their money back for their rigs. The market will be flooded with GPUs driving down prices. During that glut, AMD/Nvidia will alsobe looking for sales since theirs will have fallen off a cliff, so they'll have to give some great incentives to get gamers to buy. At that point why would a gamer buy an abused 2nd hand middle of the road GPU when they'll be able to get some amazing new one for cheap. Good luck to that guy who just bought all those GTX1060s
