Thoughts?
1. the 2017. was triggered by VC money that needed to buy btc to pay off some tranche(contracts) that succeeded in november2017
the price of 2017 should have not gone up so much, but speculation, hype and FOMO pushed it too high and that temporary bubble burst by spring 2018
2. some of then contracts had a 12 month lock. meaning november 2018 release to spend.. and so they did
(mid november to mid november was no coincidence)
3. asic manufacturers startd swapping out old redundant s9 asics in october and started using the spare space for quality testing(mining for profit) new next gen asics. but knowing the wider community cant get these next gen asics until end of dcember they they didnt want to shoot their own foot or cause controversy by pushing the hashrate up.. (they learned that lesson in october 2013). so instead they knew they could still win blocks, still profit while running less asics to keep hashrate down.
4. it has nothing to do with drama of altcoins. the altcoins are the lemming that got hold of old gear cheap so totally unrelated. alt coiners just took the drama they created as a way to glory hound themselves some fake news that they are influential. but reality is they are not. there is no arbitrage evidence they even affected the prices