Wow, the first graph in this article looks exactly like the graph of the bubble phenomenon (http://i.imgur.com/Amon5PR.jpg). I guess stability will increase, which is a good thing.
key differences: The downslope in most bubbles is twice as steep as the upslope. For bitcoin it was half as steep. Bubbles typically drop below the pre-bubble price.
One possible reason for the differences: Bitcoin speculation is less of a leveraged instrument than most other speculative activities. This is about to change as Bitcoin makes it onto ETFs (where leveraged investors can play more easily) and if potentially leveragable contracts (like ripple) gain in popularity.
That is, if you believe Kindleberger's thesis in "manias, panics, and crashes".
To me, it looks like January 15, 2015 could easily have been the final moment of despair in the the 2014 downtrend. Of course, only time will tell.
Sidenote: That bubble graph has been posted hundreds of times (literally) on the bitcointalk.com forums and reddit over the past few years, for different bubbles even: 2011, 2013 part 1, and 2013 part 2. The posters often proudly & spitefully think they are first to see the resemblance, and are usually received pretty poorly... It is an inside joke at this point. So I found it entertaining to see the comments in this thread here (not trying to say anything negative about the posters here :)
When all the greek and chinese people who have jumped in (see the transaction spike in the article) in the last two months discover that no one will buy their coins then we will see the trough. I have to say though, I genuinely did not see the switch out of the recent past coming - good luck to the folks who did, and commiserations to the folk switching in ...
