[CRUDite]

The bitcoin "bubble" was caused by an invention in the ecosystem. Bitcoin was "stuck" for a long time around $300, because it is not much good @ 10 mins tx time. Then a solution was published, the lightning network whitepaper. A mere 5 days later volume exploded and a period of 6 months of accumulation occurred where price was contained by large bid / ask walls. Volume dropped off after this point and the price rocketed up. The ultimate destination was the joint mcap of visa and mastercard, which it would in theory now be able to compete with at some point, which worked out at 18k per coin at the time. The collapse afterward is due to the fact that it must be used in this way and at that tx magnitude to justify that valuation. Your basic buy the rumour sell the news variation. It might thus range around 10k for a long time. Whether those who accumulated used bots or tethers or both to drive the price up rather than it being organic price action is debatable, and it seems difficult to prove. What is interesting to me is how fast money went to work on this after the technical hurdle was overcome.