Academics on Bitcoin bubble – market value should fall by more than 1/3rd before year-end

This is an interesting piece highlighting network effects and their impact on the price of BTC 

Growth of new active bitcoin users is slowing

• Metcalfe’s law says the value of a network is proportional to the square of its users.
• And thus, it indicates that the cryptocurrency’s market capitalization will not grow as quickly as it has
• By a generalization of that principle, bitcoin’s market value by the end of the year should be no more than $77 billion

(would be a decline of around 35%)

• “Looking forward, our analysis identifies a substantial but not unprecedented overvaluation in the price of bitcoin, suggesting many months of volatile sideways bitcoin prices ahead (from the time of writing, March 2018),”

And, more:

• The researchers found four distinct bitcoin bubbles that correspond to “Log-Periodic Power Law Singularity” (a mathematical model for evaluating speculative bubbles)

There is a summary at CNBC worth checking out:

BTC chart update (hourly chart) over the past days, been struggling anew since 7K gave way::