A bubble or a ball? New records: bitcoin rate $ 7500, capitalization $ 125 billion

Bitcoin, 'torn' past and forthcoming hardforkami to pieces, strangely enough, continues to one by one to stamp historical highs. This week, on November 4, the BTC / USD currency pair once again broke the previous records, surpassing the $ 7,500 mark, giving investors a profit of 30% in just 7 days and 50% in two weeks.
Capitalization bitcoin also reached a new high - 125 billion dollars, and the total capitalization of all kriptovalyut first surely exceeded the bar $ 200 billion. This figure is comparable to Apple's revenue for 2016 ($ 215.6 billion). More than 60% of the capitalization of the crypto-currency market is in bitcoins, and the second place is still held by the Ethereum with $ 28 billion. The third place went to Bitcoin Cash, exceeding $ 10 billion.

Remembering how difficult bitcoin grew in price all year 2016, rising from just $ 400 for 1 BTC at the end of 2015 to $ 1,000 by the beginning of 2017, you can call the events of the last week a resounding success for this revolutionary currency, which continues to amaze not only ordinary people , but also the leading financiers of the world.
The reasons for such rapid growth may be several. Consider the most notable of them in order.
May 2017: $ 2000. Legalization of Crypto-Currency in Japan and the boom of traders

According to the Poloniex exchange on May 16, the number of active traders since January 2017 increased by more than 600%, the number of transactions increased by 640%. Earlier, at the beginning of April, the Japanese currency regulation law gave the crypto-currencies the status of a payment facility. Crypto-exchange exchanges were not so difficult to use, and the low entry threshold for this type of market, including the lack of identification of traders in most countries, allowed many traders to join the bid around the world.

June: $ 3000. Interest of Asian investors

In early June, many foreign media reported on the resumption of withdrawal of funds from the largest Chinese crypto exchange Huobi, BTCC, Okcoin. As it turned out later, the withdrawal of funds, suspended in February of the same year, was initiated by the exchanges themselves without direct government intervention, but a month before these events, the People's Bank of China Inspectorate was interested in the work of crypto-exchange exchanges.
The market reacted very positively to these events. Trading volumes in particular increased strongly on the Chinese stock exchanges in the first days after the ban was lifted. Below is an increase in trading volumes on the BTCC.

August: $ 4000. First hardcore

Someone called this event a mistake, someone is the opposite of salvation. Opinions were divided, because part of the Bitcoin community wanted to speed up the mass distribution of payments in this currency by increasing the block size and the speed of transactions, at the same time reducing the cost of commissions for them. Since consensus was not achieved, it had to be done in a relatively fast and radical way - a branch of the blockbuster version called Bitcon Cash (BCH), in which the maximum block size is 8 MB by default.
The miners who wanted to support the project simply switched to another network, as new equipment was not required. Those who wish to have the 'free' coins of the new currency should have at the time of the hardcore have the bitcoins in their wallets. After there was a hardfork, the owners of web wallets and balances in BTC on stock exchanges charged 1: 1 equivalent amount of BCH. Owners of personal purses were able to get BCH by importing private keys into the wallet of the new altkokin. Someone immediately exchanged the BCH back to the BTC, others left them in their own time.
The price in August could be seriously affected by such factors:
Before the hurdle, traders sought to buy bitcoins in exchange for fiat or altcoyins to get BCH - the price of BTC grew;
After fork, some traders began to change BCH to BTC - the price of BTC was growing;
Supporters of Bitcoin Cash invest in it - the price of BTC slightly fell;
Over time, it became clear that the price of bitcoin is not going to fall, there are no serious reasons for concern and doubting investors with double force dragged the BTC price up all August.
September: we fall from $ 5000 to $ 3000 and rise from the ashes. Ban of ICO and closing of stock exchanges in China

In September, all the crypto-currency community shocked the news about the ban of ICO in China. The People's Bank of China and other government commissions on September 4 were ordered:
Prohibit private individuals and organizations from conducting ICO. Those who have already raised funds in this way need to return money to depositors;
Banks can not deal with ICO;

Fundraising platforms should not trade or exchange tokens;

The users of crypto-exchange exchanges also suffered, and later the stock exchanges themselves. After a new and unexpected NSC order, on September 16, representatives of BTCC, Huobi and OKCoin, as well as other Chinese exchanges, announced closing dates to which traders can withdraw yuan from their accounts. The trade in crypto-currencies for the yuan fell under the government ban, which may last indefinitely. The dates were different, but mostly it was the end of October.

On October 31, the last Chinese stock exchanges stopped trading currency for yuan and began migration to other jurisdictions - Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore.
After the announcement of the ban on exchange trading, the BTC rate collapsed even more than after the news about the ICO. There was a slow recovery to $ 5000, which lasted from the end of September to the middle of October.

October: $ 6000. Two hardfork and a major announcement at the end of the month

In October, having learned the lesson from Bitcoin Cash, everyone was waiting for two new forks: Bitcoin Gold on October 25 and Segwit2x in the middle of November (hardfork is assigned to a certain block number, so its date and time may vary depending on the change of hashtrays of the miners - .). It is logical to assume that all during this period are purchased and keep the BTC, to participate 2 more times in the distribution of coins of new currencies. Altkoins are getting cheaper, bitcoin is torn to around $ 7,000, but it can not exceed $ 6,500. Of course, one should not say that growth was caused only by new hardfork. There were positive news in the industry, and objectively there were more than negative ones. More and more people were recognizing about crypto-currencies and demand for them continued to grow.

It is important to note here that since the official date of the Bitcoin Cash fork (August 1) before the opening of the trades in pairs of BTC / BCH and USD / BCH on a variety of exchanges, different times have passed - some exchanges were ready on the same day, but many postponed charging BCH to of the week. And the moment of fixing Bitcoin Gold on October 24, when the so-called snapshot was taken, which recorded the state of the network before the hard-core, was even more interesting. Several exchanges charged and launched the BTG futures trade a few hours before the snapshot, others immediately after it, and some completely refused to support Bitcoin Gold. In addition, there was not even the most hardfork - 12 days after the 'snapshot', the blockade of this altkoka was never launched, which means that most users can not get their coins.

Thus, the high volatility of BTC in the last two weeks of October was mainly due to the speculative game around BTG, in which some traders bought bitcoins before the fork, while others earned on this increase, for some time lowering the rate.

On the last day of October, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) announced that it intends to launch a trade in bitcoin futures as soon as appropriate approvals from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) are received. The launch of trading is planned until the end of 2017.
November, $ 7,500 ...?

At the beginning of November, after the announcement of regulated trading in Bitcoin futures, the rate of the BTC / USD currency pair soared above 7.5 thousand dollars. Will he stop at this point? Or at 8 000? Or go to the moon? And maybe after the split as a result of the hardcore SegWit2x will fall in correction to $ 1,000, and the title of 'this Bitcoin' will go to another crypto currency? Time will tell.

Unfortunately, now the market is developing an extremely uncertain situation, which can lead to the collapse of another bubble and a long correction. Many investors have invested in bitcoin for short-term profits and will withdraw them at the first sign of a major rollback. And their number certainly exceeds the number of people ready to store their savings in bitcoins and use the crypto currency in everyday life.

However, the gradual development of the financial infrastructure, the willingness of an increasing number of enterprises to accept payment in the crypto currency, as well as the growing interest of large exchange players from traditional markets, give hope that the 'bitcoin bubble' will be an elastic rubber ball that will continue to jump on more and more high steps on the way to acceptance all over the world.

🤗 source: from the author 🤗