Bitcoin at $5,000: What Has Changed Since 2017

This article was originally published by 8btc and written by Olusegun Ogundeji.Bitcoin has crossed the $5,000 price range again (after its first reach to that level in 2017) following a sudden breakout on April 2, 2019. This unfolding price scenario should not immediately be ruled out as a repeat of what happened in 2017. However, as the market reaction seems to be positive so far (given that bitcoin sits at $5,214 at the time of this writing), recent developments in the crypto space could be working to make today’s change different from 2017’s movement.InvestorsFrom active bitcoin wallets to those joining the crypto community through the likes of the r/Bitcoin subreddit, the number of new people in the space has risen. In 2017, the price breakout over $5,000 was one of the reasons many new investors joined the bitcoin train. Whether seeing it at $5,000 again for the first time after a year of slowdown would trigger the same 2017 effect is hard to determine. After more than a year in a critical bear market, price support for bitcoin has been built at over $3,000.Segregated Witness (SegWit)For the first time, daily median transactions per block, excluding Coinbase activity for SegWit-based transactions, reached over 1,000 on March 30, 2019. Activated for Bitcoin in August 2017 (on Litecoin in May 2017), the SegWit scaling upgrade was meant to help change the way data is stored on the network. Proposed as a solution to the sca...