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This was the year when the world woke up to cryptocurrencies. When the Bitcoin price bubble burst in December last year, after touching nearly $ 20,000 (£ 15,886) per currency, governments, banks and technology giants began to sit down and take notice.
The city found itself faced with a decision: Bitcoin is a vehicle for fraud and money laundering or is it a legitimate asset class? For some crypts it had become a means of speculation on the market, while others considered it a milking cow. Companies have changed their name to include the word blockchain – the technology on which the cryptocurrency is based – and have seen their stock prices increase. Celebrities have also joined in the fun, with characters like the boxer Manny Pacquiao and the music mogul DJ Khaled who promise to launch their digital coins.
In a unique testimony of the power of currency, the rapper 50 Cent is back famous from the edge of bankruptcy in January after accepting the payment in Bitcoin for his last album in 2014. The cryptic mania is even permeated with the House of Lords when Baroness Michelle Mone announced in October she will return to the world of digital coins through a new initiative that supports startups with symbolic financing. In some ways, he also convinced Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak to join her.
The sudden interest of regulators and famous faces hit the market in shock waves, wildly waving the price of encrypted coins throughout the year. Now Bitcoin, which remains the largest cryptocurrency in the world by market capitalization, has almost returned to pre-bubble values at a minimum of $ 3,130 this month.
But what happened to the market between these two points? Here is a breakdown of the six main peaks and pitfalls of encrypted prices as they happened.
2018 in cryptocurrencies
On January 16th, the day now called Red Tuesday hit the market. Bitcoin fell short of $ 10,000, a full 50 percent below its peak of 2017. Even its biggest bed partners, Ethereum and Ripple, lost more than 30% and 46% respectively in just one day .
The decline followed comments from South Korean government figures that indicated a harsher position for encryption than expected, including a potential trade ban while they understood the best approach.
Running scared in the face of no regulation, a number of banks like JP Morgan, Citi, Lloyds and Virgin Money have decided to ban their customers from using their cards to buy crypts a little more than fifteen days later. The value of Bitcoin further crashed, touching a minimum of $ 5,920 on February 6th.
But in true cryptic style, the bearish attitude towards Bitcoin did not last long. In contrast, Morgan Stanley announced that it would open a trading desk for derivative coins, while South Korea has eased its position against the crypt. On February 19th, the bull race returned to full force when Bitcoin climbed back over $ 11,000, a staggering 80% more than its annual minimum just two weeks earlier.
Source: Wirex
The decline soon resumed in what is now known as the closest thing to the cryptocurrency at a stable period, in constant decline because the summer and autumn months have provided investors with a much needed break.
The main news indicators for the decline seemed to dissipate, and the value of Bitcoin approached again at the February low by the end of June. In a short market spike, 12 days of earnings were wiped out in less than 16 hours on September 5, but this volatility was later downsized to its lowest levels in 15 months.
By mid-November, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies seemed destined to end in 2018 in a reasonably predictable state, providing the authorities with a little sense of confidence in order to be able to effectively regulate the market.
Unfortunately, the notoriously rebel community of Cripto quickly reversed this notion. On November 14th, the bitcoin derivative currency, bitcoin money, was again divided into a so-called hard fork to create two new currencies, bitcoin cash ABC and bitcoin SV. Its price has been slowly decreasing since then.
The future of digital resources
The analyst Etoro Mati Greenspan has declared to the City A.M. at the time of the fork that part of the problem was that the increase in cryptographic coins in 2017 had "sent higher markets than can be logically supported by the adoption of the real world, and so we are now witnessing a retracement of this".
Starting from this week around the value of $ 3200, the volatility of bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies has finally hit the bottom? How will the next year for the new asset class?
"Regulators are overheating with cryptocurrencies," said Dmitry Lazarichev, co-founder and CEO of the London-based cryptographic payment startup Wirex. "Once the regulation is fully implemented, the parties seeking to defraud people with false [fundraises] it will be eliminated and only a handful of quality coins will remain. "
Both Lazarichev and Greenspan have anticipated a significant boost to the use of so-called stablecoins, which are digital assets linked to a widely used currency such as the pound or US dollar to reduce volatility.
Lazarichev added that he expects that a number of traders will begin to accept stablecoin in 2019 as a form of payment for goods and services, benefiting from its low cost in terms of payment infrastructure and protection against chargebacks.
"2018 was a crucial year for the crypt," he continued. "You can not ignore the impact of the interest shown by people like Goldman Sachs, Fidelity and Blackrock, and we expect to see that the commitment will continue in the next year."
