What caused it?
Maybe it is because you haven't been around for a long time. Me myself is around for more than a year now and in this particular period of the year, I can see bullish run but that's because of Japan's official acceptance of Bitcoin. We haven't heard anything with that much impact lately so the market is dependent on "normal" circumstance. Yes we are sluggish now but you haven't seen much. I witnessed the panic selling due to Bitcoin's hardfork and the drastic crash of Bitcoin's price just couple of months ago. This bearish market is more of "laying low" at the moment.