Bitcoin's price, exceeding $1,000 and approaching $1,100 in just the first few days of the year, levels not seen since late-2013 when it's price briefly exceeded $1,200. This top, of course, was followed by a crash in the price of Bitcoin, sending it down to below $250 soon after. This has led some skeptics to claim that this price rise, too, is a bubble. However, many things are different this time around. The size and computing power of the Bitcoin mining network, which confirms and validates transactions, has risen exponentially since then, and the number of users, merchants, and exchange volume has grown similarly. Moreover, the rapid rise back in 2013 is now attributed to fraudulent trading and price manipulation that exploited illiquid and immature markets, and which eventually led to the famous collapse of the primary, and corrupt, Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox. This past year's rise in price has enjoyed liquid, developed markets with many exchanges in competition with one another, and without any evidence of price manipulation.
Demand for Bitcoin as a currency is also likely to continue to grow in 2017, again as China has promised to restrict capital outflows and to devalue its currency in order to protect exporters. Another large economy that has seen increased demand for Bitcoin is India, whose government surprised many by scrapping large-denomination banknotes and causing a panic for cash in the country of more than a billion residents. A rising U.S. dollar has also caused some in emerging markets to seek alternatives to fiat currencies as debt denominated in dollars becomes more expensive to service. (For more, see: Bitcoin Prices in India Soar Amid Demonetization Drive)
2017 may also see increased focus on Bitcoin as the dominant digital currency amid many hundreds of alternatives (sometimes called 'altcoins') including notably Litecoin, Ethereum and Zerocash. Some proponents of altcoins had hoped that improvements or enhanced features that made them objectively "better" than Bitcoin would help dislodge it as the dominant player. Those efforts have seemed to fail, as Bitcoin continues to climb, its market cap now approaching $18 billion, while its next closer competitor, Ethereum is struggling to break through $1 billion. So-called Bitcoin supremacy or dominance is also likely to damper efforts of private blockchain implementations that have been attempted largely in the financial sector, notably with the consortium R3CEV or IBM's Hyperledger project.
Read more: Bitcoin Predictions for 2017 | Investopedia
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