Update July 2022
One possibility is starting to look more and more likely to happen instead of an alt season or crypto winter.
If digital currencies are a centralized i.e., government, attempt to shift away from fiat, and the evidence supports that,
And if inflation is the new normal, which it probably is,
Then digital currencies are likely to start growing again soon with government support, until CBDCs are ready in major currencies, at which point the decentralized digital economy will be trashed.
There isn't an easy way to justify the Japan Yen and Korean Won charts against bitcoin but if bitcoin is to be trashed eventually it would be better for all sides not to have either of those economies too dependent on bitcoin. Institutional traders in those countries will probably be hesitant if the coin economy starts going up now without a good correction.
Various things, like climate change, are serious enough that it doesn't seem likely a long bear market in crypto would serve too many interests.
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Two different things two different groups of people are expecting soon, alt season and crypto winter.
Alt Season is a time when interest shifts away from bitcoin and large cap coins towards smaller more diverse coins.
Crypto Winter is a sort of crypto recession when there is a down or flat trend in the values of most digital currencies.
As of mid to late June 2022 coins are still consolidating, or correcting, and that may continue until traders in all major currencies feel the charts are not bubbly.
For example bitcoin may look okay vs the dollar.
https://www.tradingview.com/chart/?symbol=BITSTAMP%3ABTCUSD
But large Korean traders will be hesitant until it also looks good against their currency which requires consolidation below 21 million KRW.
https://bitcoinwisdom.io/markets/bithumb/btckrw
And the Japanese Yen chart likewise is not to solid for a move up yet.
https://www.tradingview.com/chart/?symbol=BITFLYER%3ABTCJPY
Because the digital economy is so artificial i.e. controlled by large players trying to create the illusion of a groundswell, it's possible that those people will use the ambiguousness of current economic fluctuations to gain more control of the digital economy.
Normally a 'recession' is followed by 'expansion' all within a fiat bubble. So most people will react to the current situation as it develops believing that is how things are.
But if the 'shift to digital' is part of an organized effort to protect the global infrastructure from the unsustainable money supply antics i.e., inevitable inflation, then the shift from 'recession/expansion' to 'recession/collapse/inflation' offers a lot of opportunities for those people to profit against the public, both as individuals and groups.
There are a bunch of variables a person has to keep track of.
1) The superficial commodity aspect of digital currency vs the real commodity aspect
A digital currency that does not produce a real commodity is not a commodity except to people who are used to pretending fiat is a commodity. And to those deluded people the fake digital commodity is stronger than the fake fiat one. This provides a wide open area for 'authorities' and big investors to continue bleeding wealth from the public i.e., shifting wealth to institutions and bigger investors.
Digital currencies which produce real and valuable commodities do not exist yet, but they would be easy to create. The basic problem hindering that is the endless tendency of those in power to limit their paths to those which will give them a competitive edge.
At this point it's very unlikely the global economy will get from 'here' to 'there' without a very long period of harmful instability.
2) The inflation curveball is still not on the popular radar
In a conventional 'properly managed' fiat economy there are cycles of contraction and expansion. Businesses boom for a while, wealth is created, then commodity prices increase and the expansion slows in an attempt by 'managers of the economy' to prevent commodity supply from being the limiter. This contraction skims some of the froth off the economy and lets commodities, like food, become more affordable again.
Digital currencies have created a fake commodity which might hypothetically act as a sponge to draw speculative money away from necessary commodities, and keep commodity prices at a level that will not lead to civil unrest.
The economic problem at the moment is that a lot of people expect the cycle to continue endlessly, which it can't.
So what happens potentially when an economy cannot escape contraction and start expanding again? And why would that happen eventually?
The balance between commodity supply and population is dependent on some variables that can change, but ultimately there is a limit to the ability of the planet to support an increasing population. By looking at how current political leaders handle other problems, as well as by factoring in human nature, a person can make a guess at how things may develop, and what role digital currency would play.
In Progress