Its been a very rough month for Bitcoin and Altcoins in general. Theres no doubt about that. Regulations, FUD, and manipulation have scared a lot of money out of the market. In December we were looking towards the market cap reaching a goal of $1 trillion for cryptocurrencies. Just 3-4 months ago that goal would have sounded like more of a joke than something realistic. We started the month of December at a $300 billion market cap and In just 20 days time the market cap doubled. By January 7th it almost tripled, reaching $833 billion! Seemed like an incredible move forward for the entire cryptocurrency space. Unfortunately, a lot of that money was both manipulation and FOMO. The market was flooded with money from people that were trying to use this space as a get rich quick scheme. CME and CBOE Futures were introduced in December and have negatively affected the price. We thought the price increase that created Bitcoin's all time high was an enormous step ahead for Bitcoin, only to later realize that it could have been purposely manipulated for institutional investors to make money by shorting Bitcoin's price. Since then we've seen nothing but decline for Bitcoin and they've only continued to go lower and lower. Manipulation, news, regulations, and FUD have all seemed to come together perfectly, at the right times, to send the price crashing down further and further and we may not be at the bottom yet. The beginners must be scared to death,and rightfully so but if we're to look at any of the positives in all this I think one of the most important is that this will weed out the weak hands and the ones trying to use this space as nothing but a money maker. The ones that will last are the true believers in the technology, the ones who know that this technology will change the way the world works. Its scary yes, but do I think this is the end of Bitcoin? ABSOLUTELY NOT! One thing Bitcoin is VERY good at doing is recovering. The next best thing its good at is going up. So if Bitcoin wants to go down then let it. It acts as a great time to accumulate more at a low that we may never see again. This a a great time to incorporate a buy/hold strategy. Look at it this way, One year ago at this time Bitcoin was worth about $1000. Pretty good 600% profit for one year right? I'm still very bullish on Bitcoin for the long term and I think most people in this space would agree. While it does suck to see how much it has pulled back, sometimes we need to step back and take a look at the gains it has made in the past few years regardless of the bullshit and what good has come out of it. Bitcoin is resilient and will remain that way. Its proven that to everyone time and time again. This isn't the first time people have tried to stop it or bring it down and it won't be the last. Bitcoin is King and it became that way for a reason. Trust in that reason.
I'd just like to say that this is my first Steemit post everyone.Please go easy on me. I'm not a professional analyst, financial advisor, or writer. I'm just a regular guy trying to learn and be involved in something I'm passionate about! Thanks