2017 was an incredible year for the crypto-world!

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Let us look back on the price changes, events and developments of some of the top cryptocurrencies.

So 2018 just took over and while many people count their yearly incomes, make ambitious and sometimes ambiguous plans for 2018, this is a well-suited time to take a look back at 2017 and review the the eventualities in the world of crypto. Many things happened. - The ICO boom, Bitcoin craze, blockchain hype, Bitcoin futures launch, Asian countries denounced and/or prohibited cryptos/ICOs. – let’s see which crypto events and trends 2017 brought us.

Big Events of 2017

Massive Bitcoin Growth

One of the most important trends of 2017 is, obviously, the massive price increase of Bitcoin, and many altcoins. Cryptomarket analysts and investors witnessed the unbelievable price of 10K. In December, it briefly peaked at $20K, triggering a huge correction afterwards. So many people still believe that the cryptocurrency market is a bubble, but we'll never know for sure until it pops, would we? At the very least, it’s quite a strong, enormous, expensive bubble!

Only recently, Morgan Stanley analysts stated that the actual value of Bitcoin might be $0 but there wasn't any significant negative impact to its value. Investors probably became more and more confident as they diversify their investments across dfiferent cryptocurrencies and different platforms. This minimizes panic-selling among investors and most people only expect a healthy price-correction after an all-time high. - Not a big crash, at least, not just yet.

The whole market capitalization hit $650 billion and Bitcoin's market cap is at around $320 billion.
This clearly shows that from the start, Bitcoin has grown at least 2000%. The market cap has overtaken Facebook capitalization and is very close to Microsoft’s.

The ICO industry is booming and improving. In December 2017, the capital raised from ICOs broke the $4 billion record. In the last three quarters of 2017, at least one ICO was held each day.

On the 1st of April, Japan Announced that they acknowledge virtual currencies or cryptocurrencies as a legal form of payment. Though the Japanese Finance Minister said Bitcoin hasn't proven itself yet as a “credible currency”, many more cryptocurrency exchanges were established.

Up until September, over 50% of the world's Bitcoin transactions were paid in Japanese Yen.
Furthermore, recenly, a local internet company declared that in 2018 they will pay part of their employees' salaries in the form of cryptocurrency. They're “all in” when it comes to cryoptos aren't they?

As far as the Russian crypto industry is concerned, the hero of the year is still the almighty Vitalik Buterin, the Well-known Ethereum creator.
Media discussions were all about his meeting with the Russian president Vladimir Putin, which was held at the International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg. It was a closed-door meeting surrounded by various rumors. After some time, Russian government has changed its outlook towards blockchain and changed its plans from a total ban to making sure that the legal status of cryptocurrencies and blockchain is confirmed and finalized before the summer of 2018.

Blockchain technology is slowly penetrating Russia and it’s about to be accepted in its neigboring country, Belarus.
Union State president Alexander Lukashenko has signed a decree that has made all transactions in crypto-currencies lawful.

"All smart and intelligent people know what stability and order are,” Lukashenko said. “They’re all trying to reach that shore. We’re prepared to arrange a dock and even a harbor.” Source

In December, Bitcoin made it to Wall Street, when CME Group and CBOE, two Chicago exchanges, started trading bitcoin futures. Remarkably, February futures are traded for an average price of $18,870.

In 2017, Some major tech upgrades to blockchain were implemented.
The best example is a SegWit upgrade, which improved Bitcoin protocol a lot with enlarged transaction volume and speedy processing.

2017 is indeed a year of soaring cryptocurrency prices and hundreds of ICOs.
It's perhaps what many people would expect: Over the course of the year, regulators worldwide moved forward to define how they would supervise what has been a legally murky environment. 2017 was perhaps one of the most important years on the regulatory front.

Many other significant eventualities have transpired.

• From China's ban on exchanges to the SEC's report on The DAO, we saw many investor alerts from regulators from many of the world's leading economies. Some cautionary statements about financial use of cryptos at times even became an advantage for publicity, especially for Bitcoin.

Please stay tuned to see a more in-depth price analysis of Bitcoin and a few top altcoins in my next blogs.

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