Peaks and troughs in Bitcoin\'s performance are becoming more frequent, as the market reacts to every little setback or advantage. Previous crashes happened in 2013 and 2014, and the mid-week January 2018 crash saw the cryptocurrency market dropping some $200bn in a matter of hours. Bitcoin is notorious for its volatility, and market uncertainties around the world have the capacity to incite jaw-dropping spikes in performance.

On January 17th, Bitcoin\'s price plunged all the way down to $9,186, making a colossal drop of more than 50% over the previous month\'s value. This could be attributed to many things, such as Visa withdrawing crypto card provision services or BitConnect closing its trading platform.

The news from Asian regulators has also been an important influence on markets, as South Korea fears exchange bans, and China moves on smaller facilities. On the other hand, mining companies and businesses are dispersing into Europe, North America and Japan, so it may just be a quantum shift in activity.

Furthermore, GDAX started trading in BCH and the first Cboe futures contract closed on January 17th with a healthy balance, so prices started going up again, – all but two altcoins showed increases on January 18th.