Bitcoin Market Crash - External factors involved...

Over the last two weeks as a fellow crypto currency trader I sat there watching my altcoin portfolio plummet in value. After researching online over the span of two weeks I discovered the first factor was China banning ICO (Initial Coin Offerings) causing the value of Bitcoin to plummet as whales or investors started slowly pulling their money out of Bitcoin. This caused a relatively low panic period of selling which caused the value of my remaining altcoin currencies to decrease.

However, the market slowly started to recover, but then there was still an uncertainty on China's stance on ICO's, regulations and the future of Chinese Bitcoin exchanges. This was clearly on investors minds. Rumours then started spreading about the temporary ICO ban - this came at a time where an altcoin called NEO was steadily growing its value hitting the $55 mark in August. The China-based blockchain platform NEO, formerly known as Antshares completed its rebranding last month has recently updated its brandname as well as given some guidelines for the NEO Network 2.0. This caused NEO shares to rocket in price which all happened before China made these recent announcements.

Consequently, the Bitcoin market took a turn for the worse when Charlie Lee the founder of Litecoin Tweeted: "Looks like this time China finally banned Bitcoin exchanges (Anonymous Source I trust fully). Theres only one response just HODl". This led to further panic on the market causing currencies to drop even further, but at a later stage this did lead to China announcing that it was closing down exchanges based within China. Charlie Lee has built up a huge following on Twitter as people classed him as a reputable source.

Optimistically - I held my nerve and did not sell as I felt that the market would then improve, but then the final blow hit Bitcoin this week causing the Bitcoin to crash even further: Jamie Dimon (JPMorganChase) CEO made an announcement at a finance conference on his views on Bitcoin. He goes onto say: Bitcoin is a 'fraud' that will eventually blow up' going onto say Bitcoin "It's worse than tulip bulbs. It won't end well. Someone is going to get killed," Dimon said. Bitcoin fell to trade around its session lows after Dimon's comments. Dimon's criticism came at a time when some well-known figures on Wall Street are starting to embrace the cryptocurrency. David Coker, an expert in bitcoin at Westminster Business School, said "it was surprising that Dimon attacked bitcoin as JP Morgan was working on its own cyrptocurrency called Quorum. One can’t help but wonder if Mr Dimon’s comments regarding cryptocurrencies would apply to JP Morgan’s own offerings, should they come to market?” Coker said.

As a result Bitcoin dropped in value and so did Ethereum and other altcoin currencies. This was a great time to buy this week with the top 20 altcoins selling at ultra low prices. This news caused markets to drop for around two days and by Friday evening GMT and Saturday morning the markets picked up momentum. On Friday morning the U.S woke up and investors started to buy low by pumping up the value of Bitcoin and other altcoin currencies .

The question is will Bitcoin hit the $6000 dollar mark in 2018 and can it recover from any further external factors?

My hope is Bitcoin and its other blockchain altcoins will be adopted widely in the future by embracing and understanding the benefits it can bring. A digital currency encryption technique that will regulate the generation units of currency and verify the transfer of funds, operating independently of a central banks in the future.