I've spent most of the afternoon thinking about what ways this bull market will be different than the last bull market, and how those differences could affect how Bitcoin and Alts run up this time around.

The Last Bitcoin Halving

The last Bitcoin halving took place around mid-2016. As you can see from the chart below, price began increasing slowly until the halving on July 9th, 2016. Price continued to run up for another 17 months until we hit the high around December 16th, 2017.

It's interesting to see the small run-up in price in July and October, with the dips shortly after Bitcoin Cash was forked and Segwit fork was canceled. It seems as all the forks did was add some volatility up until the run up to all-time highs. I would argue after the division between Bitcoin's future was "resolved" is when the FOMO really sat in and we saw a huge run-up in price over the next month.

My guess for this time around the parabolic run-up will be much "smoother" and happen sooner this time. I think all the discussion around the forks led to a lot of uncertainty with Bitcoin's future causing large investors to sit on the sidelines to see what will happen.

Ethereum's Dominance

It will be interesting to see how Ethereum handles this market cycle and if another project such as EOS or Tezos is able to flip them. Of course, there is always the chance that Ripple is able to make that happen, but I'm not so sure it will happen this time around since it's not as "cheap" as before.

One thing I found interesting as well during the altcoin markets before and after the Bitcoin run was before, most made huge gains in Bitcoin price, while after alts made huge gains in USD price and decent gains in Bitcoin price.

Without all the uncertainty, I"m going to make a wild guess and say that everything will rise together this time around. Alts will rise more slowly and as Bitcoin begins to the peak we will see money begin to flow back in the alts and they will hit their all-time highs a month or so after Bitcoin.

Defi is what will be helping drive the Ethereum price up this time. I don't think ICOs will have as big of an impact this time around especially with the SEC cracking down, but if new regulations are implemented this could change as well. Another aspect that I think will hold Ethereum back this time is there was a lot of Korean money being invested into Ethereum last time, that at least some of that money, will go into other projects like ICON.

The Rest of the Alts

I would love to see both Tezos and EOS flip Ripple or should I say XRP. I'm not sure what project could flip ETH, but if I had to go with my gut it would be Tezos. It will be interesting to see how this project performs in this upcoming Alt cycle since it's a relatively new project.

It will also be interesting to see what happens to projects that are "dead" who have no development in the past few years. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them start to pump and new developers come in and try to take them over, at least during the bull market.

Any thoughts on how this bull market will or will not unfold like the last one?