The holiday season is in high gear, and bitcoin has started recovering from a devastating plunge by 30% which took place just three days before Christmas. However, it is not the only unusual thing that occurred to the father of all cryptocurrencies within the past time. So here are the most exciting bitcoin challenges which happened on the threshold of the New Year and new rounds in bitcoin’s development, expected in 2018.
Bitcoin capturing futures market
Whether regulators were ready or not, Bitcoin started heading towards Wall Street, as since December 1 two American exchanges began racing for bitcoin. The first to embrace the “Big Daddy” was Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), which launched the trade of bitcoin-based futures. Later, on December 17, bitcoin shot to a new record of $20,089 just before the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) entered the game. Nevertheless, it turned out that CME had less effect on bitcoin price than Cboe.
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After the bitcoin futures trade launch, it was expected that bitcoin would grow in price. It happened indeed but for a short period. December 22 this currency went down to $11,885. However, the similar crash occurred to the whole cryptocurrency market in general. Despite the fact that a week later after the CME launch, bitcoin faced another 30% crash in 2017, this sort of recognition of bitcoin by two exchanges marked the milestone in the world’s acceptance of this digital currency.
Bitcoin Cash scandal
On August 1 Bitcoin Cash was created, “when Hong Kong-based digital currency exchange Bitfinex said a minority of bitcoin miners would be “forking” to create a new version of bitcoin to make trading faster and easier,” as Reuters reports.
Just after around four months since then San Francisco-based bitcoin exchange Coinbase claimed that its customers would get the ability to purchase, sell, transfer and receive the clone of the original bitcoin. It was a surprising announcement. However, it was later followed by a scandal.
Later, Coinbase had to suspend buy and sell orders on its GDAX exchange. The reason for this was a significant volatility. A day later the company promised to investigate allegations of insider trading by employees. They were prohibited to trade Bitcoin Cash in the lead up to the launch.
New hope for 2018
Given that in 2017 bitcoin has grown by 1700%, in total this year was a positive one for bitcoin investors. Therefore, they hope that 2018 will be even better.
According to LendEDU bitcoin investor survey, almost 77% of people who pile into bitcoin believe that next year the investments returns will be higher than the returns of 2017. At the same time, about 75% said that in 2018 they were going to raise the size of their investment into bitcoin. However, the survey was conducted before bitcoin’s crash on December 22 and included only 564 citizens of the US who invested in this cryptocurrency.
Meanwhile, in November, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong estimated that at least $10 billion is ready to be piled into the bitcoin market. At the same time, the early investor in bitcoin Dan Morehead, who is also a founder and CEO Pantera Capital, believes that bitcoin will rise in price next year after a significant drop at the end of 2017.
According to the report issued by the Wall Street Journal, one more exchange Nasdaq may start bitcoin futures trade in June 2017. Another hopeful news for 2018 is that first major Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs Group Inc intends to launch a trading desk to make markets in digital currencies.
As usual, nobody can be sure what to expect from bitcoin next year. However, nobody can deny the fact that it’s rooting deeper into the world’s financial system.
