From a macroeconomic point of view, bitcoin has only ever gone upward in its trend over the past 11 years. In less than a month bitcoin will have its 12th birthday. Maximalists and hodlers will celebrate it like it’s their adopted child coming of age. After all, bitcoin is becoming a teenager – entering its 13th year, the right time for it to mature and begin showing its real strength.

The last ATH (all time high) reached by bitcoin was in December 2017, three years ago to the month. And coincidentally here we are in December once more, looking for a monthly bullish candle to round off the bullish year for bitcoin.

The difference between price reaching $19800 ATH this time, and the 2017 ATH of $19700 is the volatility, as well as the past year’s gains. Back in 2017 bitcoin had made an annual growth of 1800% at the blow off top, and then rapidly retraced around 40% within the same week. I remember it well, since it was the month that I became conscious of bitcoin and bought my first satoshis.

The retrace thereafter was brutal, but after three years I have gained my sea legs, or volatility legs, and am happy to ride out any swings. This time around, in December 2020, price has again made its ATH and stopped just short of the psychological big even and resistance of $20000, but this time the build-up as well as the retrace have been gentler.

In 2020, since January 1, bitcoin only made a yearly gain of just under 200% (although if we take the March corona dump into consideration the gain from there has been closer to 400%). This is far less of a gain than compared to the 2017 pump to the same $20k ATH.

Furthermore, on reaching the recent ATH, price did not have a massive 40% retracement or correction, but only an 18% dip. Thereafter price rapidly bounced back up to the current $19k range again. So we are at the same price range but under totally different conditions compared to 2017 and the last ATH.

And therein lies the possible key to realizing that we are nowhere near this cycle’s ATH yet. $20k is now only the first resistance and once we break it with volume, and close above it, we will see much more upside for the entire year ahead.

So although I am hesitant to buy bitcoin right now – since we are at the ATH – I will be willing to buy any significant dip that comes, if it comes. For all we know price might just keep climbing in this bull market. One indicator that is flashing buy signals right now is the bitcoin Hash Ribbon, which you can see at the bottom of today’s chart.

The red patch shows when the hash rate started to dip in late October. It then shows the end of that phase as the red patch comes to an end. Thereafter, the main specific indicator is the blue dot, which is the buy signal.

Usually within a week or two of that blue dot, we see price push upward once more. Now the buy signal is at the past ATH which is counter-intuitive. Who wants to buy the top after all? But since the halving of May 2020, we are no longer in a bear trend but a strong bullish one, and this buy signal has seldom been wrong.

Otherwise the big institutions would not now also be continually buying all the newly mined bitcoin like there’s no tomorrow. Do they know something we don’t? No, we all know that bitcoin is going to the moon. They are just more confident that the time is right to buy. And when you are buying millions of dollars worth of bitcoin at a time, you need to be really confident.

So the small fish or retailers like us can rest assured that when the whales are buying, it means we can confidently ride along in their wake and buy as much as possible too. After all, price is still destined to climb 5x from here and touch $100k – ballpark figure. The math and the code built into the architecture of bitcoin by Satoshi, all indicate that the uptrend will continue like clockwork.

So don’t be shy, continue to buy and you will see bitcoin touching the sky, making us all fly in the next ATH.