The beginning of 2018 has proven to be a turbulent trading period for Bitcoin this January, while questions are revolving around Bitcoin’s price decline. Investors and onlookers are asking why the sudden aggressive decrease in value for BTC/USD pair? This brief report will make note of the critical event(s) in government and exchanges, which have impacted the crypto-currencies markets globally.

Governments:

2018 marks an important year for regulation and taxation of all crypto’s in the United States 2018 and globally. The Korean government’s attempt to strongly regulate the country’s Crypto Exchanges has had a significant impact on pricing for the beginning of January. 2017–2018 marks China’s ongoing enforcement of legislated limitations on crypto miners and ICO’s. This increases the difficulty to operate as a crypto miner within China thus impacting price outlays, which has a direct correlation of global “hashing” capabilities. Reduction of global hash increases time for completion of a block, thus increasing timelines; beyond 2021 for final quartiles of mining that will slow the distribution of Bitcoin to the entire world.

Exchanges:

A few exchanges have been lost in 2018 as result of government attempts at regulation of the crypto markets. This has brought us to the “finer” emergence of the issues that are taking hold of the crypto market.

2017–2018 Timeline

2018 Challenging Timeline:

1. 2017China’s ICO regulation: Price decline approximately 5,000–3,300 this issues returns 11/2/2018 with restrictions on Miners.

2. U.S. Governmental Taxation: Price decline 15,115 to approximately 9,300 at the low; this issue hits public eyes on 12/21/2018.

3. Bitconnect and DDoS attacks 1/15–1/17: Bitconnect announces DDoS attacks and the exchanges full closure due to a “cease and desist” order from 4 states. The announced closure will be finalized within 5 days.

2018 Outlook and Conclusion:

Bitcoin is in the early stages of development, the technology of Cryptocurrencies are hard for the consumer and governments to grasp who all seek to acquire benefits from the technology. The current stage is critical for the structural development of Bitcoin and the pressure gained in the last few months to become a “legitimate currency”. There will always be clashes between the community of idealist and the reality of millions of future users of crypto and this is healthy. Many are on the sidelines waiting for Bitcoin’s legitimacy, which can only be facilitated by government regulation. So today after the eradication of “questionable” exchanges, there is a clear path for growth by Bitcoin. These events, which transpired only makes way for a $50,000 dollar token in 2018. The 2018 bad has provided the necessary room for expedited growth as miners continue to mine the coveted 21 million limited supply of tokens.

Sources:

Article: China’s ICO’s 11/2/17 https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2017/11/02/cryptocurrency-exchanges-officially-dead-in-china/#60572b012a83

Article: U.S. Taxation:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-21/tax-free-bitcoin-to-ether-trading-in-u-s-to-end-under-gop-plan

Article : Bitconnect:

DDoS is short for Distributed Denial of Service. DDoSis a type of DOS attack where multiple compromised systems, which are often infected with a Trojan, are used to target a single system causing a Denial of Service (DoS) attack -Wiki

https://news.bitcoin.com/bitconnect-shuts-exchange-citing-string-excuses/