4.
Tracking the price of Bitcoin gives us a good indication of the overall cryptocurrency market in the past 18 months.
Bitcoin started 2017 at under $1,000 and took a dip when China[1] announced investigations into cryptocurrency exchanges in the country. At that point, the majority of Bitcoin trading took place in China, and the price of Bitcoin dropped to lows of around $775, while the overall cryptocurrency market cap stood at close to $15 billion.
Bitcoin made a slight recovery to well over $1,000 but by March 2017, dropped back down to below $1,000 when the SEC denied the go-ahead for a Bitcoin ETF[2]. The overall market cap dropped $5 billion in two days.
In April 2017, Japan declared Bitcoin legal currency[3], which saw the price jump back up over $1,000. The total cryptocurrency market cap stood at around $26 billion at that stage.
From April 2017 to July 2017, Bitcoin steadily climbed close to $3,000 while the overall market cap went past $100 billion. However, by mid-July 2017, the price came crashing down to below $2,000 in a few short days when the Bitcoin/Bitcoin Cash[4] split took place.
The effects were short-lived and, by the end of August 2017, Bitcoin recovered to almost $5,000 and the overall cryptocurrency market cap came close to $170 billion.
But then, on Sept. 4, China famously banned ICOs[5]. The move, however, caused far less of a correction than was expected. Bitcoin did drop to around $3,300 by mid-September 2017 but quickly recovered and, by the end of September 2017, it reached well over $4,000. The cryptocurrency market cap was just below $150 billion at this
