Disclaimer: This post is not expert market advice and should not be used to buy, sell, or hold any assets. Please always consult a licensed investment advisor. The author does not hold a position in the assets mentioned. What you are about to read in this post, does not apply to Bitcoin HODLers, since they (claim) not to care about Bitcoin's market price.
Intro
With 86 days until the end of the year, a price prediction for Bitcoin is something most authors in here have already posted about. You may have seen any kind of technical analysis, using all kinds of indicators under the sun. In reality though, there is no need of that. All you need to see, is the trades and the order books in centralized exchanges, like Binance. Minute charts are also quite useful.
Market fundamentals
Trades are win/lose games: When you buy an asset - Bitcoin, for instance - the entity selling it to you is either making money (has bought it at a lower price), or losing money (has bought it at a higher price). Same happens when you sell an asset; you either win or lose money. Until the asset is sold, there is neither profit, nor loss. Any profit made though, is someone's (past or future) loss.
Over 90% of the BTC volume comes from market orders: This means that only about 10% of the volume appears on the order book beforehand. And out of the orders appearing in the order book, the vast majority is either cost-averaging orders, or take-profit/stop-loss orders. In a normal market, the graph for those orders would be 'V-shaped'. In the Bitcoin market, it's V-shaped up to a point, and then several huge orders are breaking this V-shape graph. In bar charts diagrams, you will see, say, 30 BTC for the first bar, another 30 BTC for the second bar, 25 BTC for the third bar, and 100 BTC or more for the fourth bar - and this is often happening with bars not ending up in round numbers (e.g. $52,200, not $52,000). Such huge orders are there for a reason.
It costs more to move the market $200 than $1,000: As you move farther from the current market price, volumes per order start getting smaller, or you get fewer orders for prices far enough from the current market price. In order book bar charts, you may see bars (at the $100 scale), often for under 1 BTC. Given that 90% of the volume comes from market orders, all you need to to to move the price up or down is a massive market order that will beat the order book and the market order flow coming from other market participants (the suckers). At any given time, you would need around 600-1,000 BTC to move the price about $200, and another 300-500 BTC to move the market another $800. That's around 900-1,500 BTC to move the price $1,000. Depending the time of the day, you would also need around 300-500 BTC in supporting orders, to stabilize the price at the higher/lower level, until fresh market orders start to accumulate. That's where massive limit orders come to use, when placed beforehand. When your market order meets your limit order, the only loss you occur is the exchange fees, since in practice, your limit order cancels your market order - or effectively, you are buying/selling your own BTCs. This is something though you cannot do manually. You either need bots, or market sentiment (FOMO or FUD, depending on the movement). And with 'analysts' spreading the news you want, your job is a piece of a cake.
In a regulated market, this is called 'price fixing' and it is prohibited. But who needs regulation in the Bitcoin markets?
The 'market' can stay insane longer than you can stay liquid: Price fixing works even better when you move the price at insane levels, very fast. That's what you can achieve with forced liquidations of margin positions. With the distance from a margin call to forced liquidation being set at around 3%, all you need to have the market moving higher or lower, is to trigger forced liquidations, and cover your open positions through forced liquidation automatic orders. FOMO or FUD will do the rest for you.
Market analysis: How the $120,000 came up
Price fixers are not hiding what they are doing. It's the suckers not looking at (or unable to comprehend) what is happening.
At this point, price fixers rely on the $100,000 myth, to move the market up. Each day, the market is moving up around $1,000 at minimum (sometimes over $4,000), and every 3-4 days we get a price correction of about $500-1,500. That's net $1,500 at minimum every 4 days - $2,500 on average.
So, the math is simple. With 86 days remaining, divided by 4, that's 21 full periods, and a half. Take 21 and multiply it to $2,500, and you get $52,500. Add to that $3,000 to 5,000, for the half of the 22nd period, and you get $55,500 to $58,500, on top of the $54,500. That makes us $113,000. Add $7,000 as a Christmas bonus, and there you have it!
Remember though: Price fixers are making insane money when others are losing insane money. If everyone expects the market to move up, they will make insane money, by moving the market down. All they need, is to drive the price down enough to trigger forced liquidation orders from long margin positions, and suckers' FUD will do the rest.
Why Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is the most widely known crypto asset. It's the first (and often the only) crypto asset every newbie sucker will buy. In short, this is where the money is. And this is why you won't see equally intensive price movements with Ether or other mainstream crypto assets - although there are exceptions, like Dogecoin, but there price fixing works in a different way than Bitcoin.
