There have been many positive developments during the last five months and a few of the obstacles that were in Bitcoin’s way have been knocked down. An argument can be made that the good news is still not fully reflected in the current price.

That’s what Ronnie Moas, founder of Standpoint Research, said in a note to clients last Monday.

This is probably as good a time as any to remind you what we said on Twitter about Ronnie’s call. To wit:

lol. "target"

BITCOIN 2018 PRICE TARGET BOOSTED TO $14,000 AT STANDPOINT

— Walter White (@heisenbergrpt) November 20, 2017

coming later today:

"Standpoint raises Bitcoin target after price blows through previous target hours after it was issued"

— Walter White (@heisenbergrpt) November 20, 2017

See that’s the thing about Bitcoin and speculative manias in general. Because the buying is based on the greater fool theory, it can theoretically go on forever. It only stops when everyone independently comes to the conclusion that no one will be willing to pay more than wherever the thing in question is trading currently. That moment can come of its own accord, or it can be triggered by some exogenous event that causes participants to question whether other participants are getting nervous.

Right now, everyone assumes that everyone else is going to be willing to pay up for Bitcoin. Some of this is due to the apparently imminent launch of Bitcoin futures on the CME, a development Thomas Peterffy (known as “the father of HFT”) has warned could collapse the entire U.S. economy if cryptocurrencies are not effectively quarantined and cleared separate from everything else.

Risks aside, some folks are convinced that once CME and CBOE get involved, it’s off to the proverbial races as institutional interest will spike and more products will become available.

Ok, so that’s the backdrop for the latest leg higher in Bitcoin which, just a day after blowing past $8,700, very nearly broke through an incredible $9,200 overnight:

That puts Bitcoin’s market cap at roughly $151 billion

As a reminder, this has been anything but a smooth ride. This thing has plunged by 30% on at least three separate occasions this year alone:

What’s important to understand about that is that the higher the prices goes, the larger the psychological impact of those big drawdowns.

“The volatile price-action isn’t new, but the amounts at stake are growing all the time,” Bloomberg’s Mark Cudmore wrote earlier this month. “The wealth impact of  Bitcoin  moves is soon going to become large enough to have the potential to spill over to other markets,” Cudmore went on to warn, adding that “in January this year, you may not have batted an eye-lid at a 30% drop in your Bitcoin investment from $10,000 to $7,000, but if you held your investment until now, you may think differently about seeing your investment fall 30% from $80,000 to $56,000.”

And see that’s another manifestation of what the above-mentioned Peterffy is concerned about. These wild swings are fine if they are confined to the crypto space. But if, between futures and the sheer magnitude of the losses on something that can fall 30% at the drop of a hat from nosebleed levels, this gets pervasive enough and big enough to cause a contagion to other assets, well then we have a problem.

But while the risks are myriad, in the near-term speculative manias will be speculative manias and Bitcoin is now up more than 200% for the September “Jamie Dimon low”:

Over that same period, it’s added over $100 billion in market cap:

Of course when you go to make fun of Dimon, don’t forget two things. First, he’s going to be pocketing money when the CME launches futures.

But more importantly, Jamie never said it wouldn’t go to the moon. In fact, I bet his “target” price was higher than yours:

I’m not saying go short… Bitcoin can go $100,000 before it goes down.

Oh, and finally, according to Google Trends, more people are trying to figure out how to buy Bitcoin than gold….