As the year comes to an end, Bitcoin seems on a mission to make all but the wildest price predictions of 2017 a reality.

Making ruthlessly short work of the gap between $6,000 and $7,000, Bitcoin is poised to top yet another historic milestone. Having just celebrated its ninth birthday with a bang, the digital currency has shown no signs of a hangover on the day after. It’s been on an absolute rampage since and doesn’t seem to be stopping just yet.

The uncertainty surrounding the August hard fork, and potential Chinese ban seem a distant memory as the price has to continued to rise of late. At the time of writing, the cost of a single Bitcoin is a staggering $6,852 – an all-time high for the digital currency-cum-commodity. Potentially positive news from China, and the tease of institutional cash pouring in via the CME future’s market poised to launch by the end of the year seems to be driving the price ever-closer to the psychological milestone of $7,000.

This has year has, without doubt, been Bitcoin’s. However, Satoshi Nakamoto’s experiment has had to face more than its fair share of challenges since the start of 2017. Early rejections by the US Securities and Exchange Commission cast its Wall Street adoption in doubt in March and rising transaction fees across the network began to severely limit BTC’s use in business. Bitcoin entered the summer dogged by infighting amongst its developers and the threat of being overshadowed by Ethereum was real.